The Legal Regulation Of Celebrity Advertising

A famous person is well known by the society and usually trusted by other people. Therefore, lots of business hire famous people to represent their products and services. At the same time, those famous people are making good profits. However, as the market becomes more and more competitive, this kind of famous people representing method is showing its downside. There are many stars representing for some low quality products or sometimes even fake products only because they can make lots of money. This kind of behaviour hardly hurts the consumer right and damage the development of the free trade market. In China, there is no low enforcement to enforce how a representative should responsible for the products they are representing. This article talks about how the government and law should enforce the representative in order to make the market develops properly. This article contains of four parts. The first part is a general introduction of representative, including the different kinds of representative, the unique affection of representative and the necessary of law enforcement. Famous person is a special group of people, they are different from normal civilian.They can influent other people. There are different of famous person includes: movie stars, famous sports players, successful business person, politics, professionals. There are few reasons of why business like to use a famous person to be there representative in the AD. First of all, they have reverence. Secondly, a famous person leads fashion, people learn from them. Thirdly, a famous representative can attract the consummer's attention and make the product known by more people. In addition, this article explains how necessary the law enforcement is. Famous person makes lots of money by represent for a product, at the same time they should be responsible for what they believes and says in the AD. A false statement made by a famous person in the AD could damage lots of people and the society.The second part of this article talks about the enforcement on AD representing in other big country around the world. For example, in Sweden, the public and media supervises the the AD; In US, the famous representative must consider what they say as a testimony and guarantee it; The Korean government supervise the ADs through a pre-examination method; The Canadian government requires the representative to use the product or services before represent them; If the representative makes a false statement in the AD in France, they will be put in jail. Japan also has a law to control the representative. In these countries, there are different kinds of enforcement to supervise the market. In China, although there is a charge against false statements in the ADs, but it is only for the business, the owner, not the representative. There are some policies saying if a famous person represents for a low quality product is wrong, but the policies are not laws. The legal system is not completely developed.The third part, which mainly elaborated the legal liability system of the celebrity advertising, includes three aspects, the responsibility nature, the improvement and the reasonable limitation. Above all, the celebrity advertising ervise the market. In China, although there is a charge against false statements in the ADs, but it is only for the business, the owner, not the representative. There are some policies saying if a famous person represents for a low quality product is wrong, but the policies are not laws. The legal system is not completely developed. is subject to assume certain legal liability. What the celebrities provided to the hirers is a kind of special personal advertising i.e. speaking on another behalf, rather than a general service. The consumers relates directly to the advertisement hosts, which is indiscerptible to the celebrities. Once the products or the services recommended by the celebrities violated consumer's rights and interests, the celebrities are also obliged to undertake the same legal liability with the advertisement hosts. The responsibility assumed by the celebrities is derived from violating the economic law on the maintenance of social and public interests rather than a general civil liability. Secondly, it spelled out the reasonable limitation of assuming the responsibility by the celebrity advertising. There is a necessary prerequisite for assuming the responsibility by the celebrity advertising, when they speak on behalf of the false advertisement, while not assuming all the responsibilities of the advertised products and the services once they speak on behalf of the advertisements. The so-called false advertisements have the several kinds as below: fraud and false advertisements, exaggerated advertisements, quirkish advertisements and the advertisements confusing the public opinions. In addition, it expounded the gradual improvements of the responsibility system. First, as to confirming the attribution principle, it is needed to distinguish between the different types of the celebrity advertisements whereby to establish the different principles of attribution. The suggestive advertising and the descriptive advertising should adopt the fault liability principle; the advising advertising should apply the offense deducting principle, and the testimony advertising need to apply no-fault liability principle. Second, as to the bearing of the responsibility, it's necessary to distinguish the difference among the in order to establish the different ways of the responsibility assuming. Third, the celebrities, advertising hosts, advertising agencies, and the advertising promulgators should burden the joint liability resulted from the damages. However, with respect to the specific design of the legal system, it is necessary to avoid that the celebrities transfer the legal responsibilities into other advertisement parties via the rules of joint liability due to the advantages of the celebrities'status, thus the legal provision of joint liability become a dead letter.The fourth part introduces the supervision system. The pre-examination is the main method of supervision. Any false statement should be eliminate by this examination. The current examination system in China has some deficiency. The government should set up a independent department to supervise the representative. At the same time build a famous person credit file. For medical commercials which are the special and important ADs, there should be some limitation of representing.