The encyclopedia · Advertising & PR · Marketing decision · 2025
Rohto's 'V5 Act Vision' posts looked like reviews — the CAA called it stealth marketing
Japan's CAA ordered Rohto to stop stealth marketing after it reposted Instagram reviews it had paid monitors to write, without labelling them as ads.
Rohto Pharmaceutical · 2025-03-25
What happened
Rohto Pharmaceutical recruited third parties through a monitor-recruitment website, gave them its 'ロートV5アクトビジョンa' supplement free (one bag of 62 tablets, about two months' supply, ¥5,400), and instructed them to post specified images and text about the product on Instagram.
Rohto then excerpted and displayed those posts on its own website under wording such as '"わたしも"使っています from Instagram', without disclosing that the posts had been solicited. In one ad running from 30 September 2023 to 29 July 2024, the Instagram image was set so that clicking it did not reveal the post's body text, hiding the '#PR' and '#ロート製薬' labels from viewers.
On 25 March 2025 the Consumer Affairs Agency issued an order under the Act Against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations, finding a violation of Article 5(3) — the stealth-marketing notice. It was the second case against a major pharmaceutical firm after Taisho in November 2024, and the first where the investigation centred on a monitor-recruitment website.
Why it happened
- Paying people to praise your product and reposting it as genuine consumer opinion hides the advertising relationship
- Designing the ad so the '#PR' disclosure could not be seen turned a grey area into a clear breach
- A trusted pharma company backfiring on the goodwill consumers extend to health claims
- Repeating the pattern flagged in Taisho showed the industry had not yet absorbed the rule
The lesson
An endorsement you paid for is advertising; hiding that is the offence. Recruiting 'monitors' to post and clearing the disclosure label turns a review campaign into stealth marketing.
Aftermath
Rohto published a formal apology and notice on its website the same day, acknowledging the order and committing to correct its practices. The ruling reinforced a pattern the CAA set with Taisho: influencer and monitor campaigns must clearly disclose their commercial nature, and health-supplement sellers are held to the highest standard.
Sources
- 消費者庁 ロート製薬株式会社に対する景品表示法に基づく措置命令について (2025-03-25)
- 読売新聞 ロート製薬 ステルスマーケティング 措置命令 (2025-03-25)
- ロート製薬 公式のお詫びとご報告 (2025-03-25)
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