Taisho reposted paid Instagram reviews on its own shop — without the PR label

Taisho Pharmaceutical, one of Japan's biggest over-the-counter drugmakers, sells the supplement 'NMN taisho' through its own Taisho Pharmaceutical Direct Online Shop. In April 2024 it asked three influencers to post about the product on Instagram in exchange for the supplement itself and roughly ¥10,000 each. On Instagram the posts carried the proper PR label.

Taisho then lifted excerpts of those posts onto its own product page — 'Gaining attention on Instagram ⤴', user names, photos of people holding the product, testimonials about the patented formula — without disclosing anywhere that the posts had been requested and paid for. The company's reasoning was that content on its own website would obviously be read as advertising. The Consumer Affairs Agency disagreed: the displays made it difficult for consumers to recognise them as business representations, wherever they appeared.

On 13 November 2024 the CAA issued a measure order under the stealth-marketing rules added to the Act against Unjustifiable Premiums and Misleading Representations in October 2023 — the third such enforcement action since the rules took effect. Taisho said it accepted the order sincerely and would prevent recurrence.