Testimonial Rules: Consent, FTC and ASA Basics for Marketers

This article is general information for marketers thinking through their own process, not legal advice. Rules on testimonials, endorsements and consent vary by country, change over time, and depend on the specifics of a campaign — who's speaking, what's being claimed, and where it will run. Before relying on any of this for a live campaign, check current guidance from your relevant regulator (in the US, the FTC; in the UK, the ASA and ICO) and talk to qualified legal counsel about your specific situation.

A customer agreeing to be filmed answering a question is not the same as agreeing that the footage can be used in an ad, posted on social media, or kept indefinitely. Treat these as separate permissions and be explicit about which ones you're asking for. The cleanest approach is to ask for both at the point of recording, stating plainly where the clip might appear, so there's no ambiguity later about what was agreed.

If a customer received anything in exchange for recording a testimonial — a discount, a gift card, free product, or even priority support — that relationship generally needs to be disclosed wherever the testimonial is published, under both FTC guidance in the US and ASA rules in the UK. The general principle regulators apply is that an audience should be able to tell when an endorsement might not be entirely independent. Keep this in mind even for small incentives; the scale of the incentive doesn't remove the need to disclose it, only potentially how prominent the disclosure needs to be.

If a testimonial describes an unusually strong outcome, regulators in several jurisdictions expect either a disclaimer making clear that individual results vary, or evidence that the result shown is genuinely typical. Avoid editing a testimonial in a way that implies a guaranteed or typical outcome if you haven't substantiated that claim elsewhere.

• Get explicit consent to record, separate from consent to publish.
• State specifically where the clip might be used (website, paid ads, social, sales material) rather than a vague "marketing purposes".
• Disclose any payment, discount, free product or other incentive given in exchange for the testimonial.
• Avoid implying a typical or guaranteed result from a single customer's story without support for that claim.
• Keep a dated written record of what was agreed and by whom, in case you need to revisit it later.
• Re-confirm consent if you want to use the clip in a way not covered by the original agreement.
• Check current FTC, ASA or ICO guidance (or your relevant local regulator) before a live campaign, and consult legal counsel for anything higher-stakes.

A customer may ask you to stop using their testimonial after it's been published — because they've changed companies, the relationship has soured, or they simply changed their mind. Have a process ready to remove the clip from active use promptly when this happens, and keep a record of the request and the date it was honoured. See Video Testimonials vs Written Reviews: Which Builds More Trust? for related considerations when a testimonial is repurposed into text form, which carries the same consent requirements.

Frequently asked questions