The neighborhood influencer now has a contract (and so do you): AGCOM guide for SMEs

It's nine o'clock on a Tuesday at the end of September, and I'm sat at the corner table of Berto's trattoria in Portici, the one by the window looking out over the Granatello pier. I'd popped in to talk about something else entirely — a website refresh, two quotes to close off — but he's not even listening. Phone in hand, fingers still dusted with flour, pinching and stretching the screen with his thumb like he's reading a medical report.

"Look at this, Umberto." He turns the screen round to face me. A girl, two and a half thousand followers, posted three stories from his dining room last night: proper clams and spaghetti, a fritto misto, the babà to finish. "Best spaghetti in Portici. Get yourselves down to Berto's!" Bill: nought euros. Deal: a handshake over the counter. "I did her a favour, Umbe', what's the harm in that?"

The trouble is, since March this year, under Italian law, Berto hasn't done anyone a favour. He's commissioned covert advertising. And the responsibility for what's missing from that story — three letters, A-D-V, nowhere to be seen — isn't just hers. It's his too.

Three authorities, three different jobs

First things first, let's clear up a mix-up that's doing the rounds across Italy, fuelled by headlines that treat three separate bodies as if they were one and the same. They're not, and it's the first thing I explain to every client before we've even got onto the subject of influencers.

Without this map, any conversation about influencer marketing is a non-starter.

Why we're talking about this now and not a year ago

AGCOM's first Guidelines date back to January 2024. For two years they sat there as a manifesto — a well-written set of principles without any instructions for use. Then on 23 July 2025 came resolution 197/25/CONS, updating the Guidelines and approving the Code of Conduct. And on 16 March 2026, AGCOM published the two documents the market had been waiting for: Annex A, the regulatory framework, and Annex B, the operational FAQs — format by format.

That's where the abstract principle turns into practical instruction: where the disclosure needs to sit, how visible it has to be, which point in the caption. The grace period's over. Anyone doing digital promotion — from the multinational to the neighbourhood trattoria — is now working under active watch.

The case that lit the fuse (and that almost everyone tells wrong)

You can't talk about this subject without mentioning the Pandoro Gate. But it needs telling properly, because ninety per cent of people sum it up with the wrong line: "She got fined for not writing ADV."

That's not quite it. Chiara Ferragni — via her companies Fenice and TBS Crew, fined €1,075,000 — and Balocco — fined €420,000 — were penalised by the AGCM, not the AGCOM. And not for a missing label, but for an unfair commercial practice under the Consumer Code (as the AGCM's statement sets out). The messaging implied that buying the branded pandoro at triple the price would fund a donation to Turin's Regina Margherita Hospital. The donation, as it turned out, had already been made months earlier, a fixed sum with no link to sales.

Here's the distinction: hiding the fact that you're advertising is one thing — covert advertising. Lying about what that advertising achieves is another — a misleading practice. The Pandoro Gate lit the political fuse that sped up AGCOM's Guidelines. But technically it's a separate case, judged under different law, by a different authority.

Who counts as an "influencer" in law (spoiler: so does the girl doing Berto's plates)

When I say "influencer," Berto pictures someone strutting down a red carpet or driving a borrowed motor round Dubai. With that image stuck in his head, he feels automatically safe. He isn't.

Under AGCOM, an influencer is anyone who creates or curates content for the public, controls its editorial choices, and receives something in exchange — whatever form that takes. No bank transfer needed. A swap of goods will do: a free product, a complimentary treatment, a night's stay, a dinner.

The moment that girl sat down at Berto's table and watched her bill drop to zero in exchange for two agreed stories, a proper contract for services had been struck. The meal is the payment. The stories are what's owed in return. In the eyes of the law, she's a promotional operator. Berto's the advertiser. Neither of them can hide behind how informal it all felt.

Under the threshold doesn't mean outside the rules

AGCOM draws a line between "relevant" influencers and everyone else. You're relevant if you clear one of two thresholds: 500,000 followers on a single platform, or an average of a million views a month. Only they're required to register on the public register, updated twice a year, on 15 April and 15 October.

This is where most Italian business owners make the mistake I've seen play out dozens of times at the agency: they read "500,000 followers," picture the girl with 2,500, and feel in the clear. Staying off the register only lets you off the paperwork — registration, having a named contact, filing reports. It doesn't let you off the transparency obligation, which for 99% of local micro-influencers is still very much in force, under the umbrella of the Consumer Code and the IAP's Digital Chart.

Anyone working with local creators — and it's a strategy I keep recommending, I covered it in Il micro-influencer di quartiere — shouldn't stop doing it. Just factor in a new fixed cost: compliance.

The disclosures that work (and the ones that only look like they do)

AGCOM's Annex B has cleared out the jungle of made-up acronyms and half-hearted graphic tweaks.

Format by format, here's what matters most:

• Posts and carousels: the disclosure needs to be on the very first line, visible before "See more," not after.
• Reels and video: an on-screen caption in the opening seconds, on top of the disclosure in the caption itself. AGCOM doesn't set an exact number of seconds, but it needs to stay visible throughout the opening section — not flash up and vanish.
• Stories: every single story in the sequence needs its own disclosure. Sticking it on the first one and hoping people twig that the rest belong to the same set won't cut it.
• Live streams: a constant on-screen overlay plus a verbal disclosure, repeated every time there's a call to buy.
• Reposts: if Berto reshares an undisclosed story on the trattoria's own profile, he compounds the breach — he doesn't fix it.

The free-meal case: back to Berto's

For gifted products with no contract and no publishing agreement, the required disclosure is "Gifted by [Brand]" or "Product sent by [Brand]." There is an exception, but it's a narrow one: the product must appear purely incidentally, no visible logo, no prior or planned collaboration, no guidance given by the company, and no rights granted to reuse it. All five conditions together, not a pick-and-mix.

Let's hold that up against Berto's table. He offered a ninety-euro dinner. He'd agreed the two stories beforehand. The girl filmed the dishes close up and named the place outright. There's no incidental appearance here, no absence of agreement. His situation doesn't fit any exception going. It's covert advertising, full stop.

Bobby in Shoreditch has been doing this for ten years already

It was a Wednesday in mid-September, me in London for two days of meetings, sat in a café on City Road with my hands wrapped round a flat white still too hot to drink. Outside, the red brick of Shoreditch's old warehouses was still dripping from the night's rain. The client I was there to see — a bloke who runs a pub near Borough Market, I always call him Bobby — turns up ten minutes late with his excuses about the traffic on City Road already loaded. I tell him the Berto story expecting a bit of shock. He looks at me like I've just explained that water's wet.

In the UK, disclosure isn't some new regulatory novelty — it's a conditioned reflex, driven by a network of bodies that's been at it for over a decade, with a division of labour every bit as precise as Italy's split between AGCOM, AGCM and IAP.

• CAP (Committee of Advertising Practice) writes the rules: it's the body that drafts and updates the UK Code of Non-broadcast Advertising, Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing — the code that sets out what counts as a valid disclosure. It's the functional equivalent of the IAP's Digital Chart, not an authority with direct powers to fine.
• ASA (Advertising Standards Authority) enforces those rules: takes complaints, runs spot checks, publishes rulings and handles the "naming and shaming" of non-compliant accounts.
• CMA (Competition and Markets Authority) steps in when a case goes beyond disclosure into large-scale consumer protection — it's the one with the power to hand out serious fines.
• Local Trading Standards teams get involved as a last resort for the most serious cases, with proper administrative policing powers.

The disclosures allowed — the ones written into the CAP code and enforced by the ASA — are pared right down: Ad, Advertising, Advertisement feature. "In collaboration with" doesn't cut it, exactly as in Italy. Two systems that never spoke to each other landing on the same answer is, to my mind, the best proof going that this isn't Roman red tape — it's regulatory common sense the whole of Europe is catching up on, just at different speeds.

The CMA has a line that deserves framing above every till: "I wasn't paid, I just got it for free" is not a legal defence. Not paid, got it free — doesn't count as an excuse. Applies to freebies, press trips, affiliate codes, borrowed products, the lot.

There are three details the British system has that Italy still doesn't, and that I reckon will land here eventually:

• The 12-month rule: if you've had a commercial relationship with a brand in the previous year, you have to disclose even content about them that wasn't agreed in advance.
• Strict liability for the brand: the company's on the hook even if it didn't know what the influencer was going to post. Not knowing isn't an excuse.
• Naming and shaming: the ASA publishes a list of non-compliant accounts and buys targeted ads aimed straight at their own followers. In one spot-check investigation, nearly one story in four examined turned out to be advertising — and of those, only 35% carried a clear label.

Who foots the bill when things go wrong

Worth noting the contrast: in Italy, penalties are almost always cash fines set within a statutory range. In the UK, the ASA leads with reputation first — and only in the most serious cases does it hand things over to the CMA, which when it does step in applies a far harsher cap than any Italian penalty: 10% of global turnover, not just local.

The most dangerous misconception is thinking the risk disappears below the threshold. It doesn't — it just changes which authority's watching, from AGCOM to AGCM. And administrative law has a principle worth writing up in big bold letters: liability is shared between influencer and advertiser. Berto can't tell the inspectors "she wrote it on her own phone." The businessman benefiting from that content is jointly responsible, whether through a failure to check or a poor choice of collaborator. The notice lands on both doormats.

What Berto needs to do first thing Monday

You don't need a solicitor to offer a dinner in exchange for two stories. You need a bit of method.

1. Get it in writing, even just a WhatsApp message, before the meal — don't rely on a handshake.
2. Give the exact wording to use, don't leave it up to whoever's posting.
3. Check the content within 24 hours of it going up, not weeks down the line.
4. Keep the proof of the request: a screenshot's worth more than a thousand excuses.
5. Apply the rule to everyone, mates and family included. Inspectors don't check how fond you are of each other — they check whether the disclosure's there.

Real examples, good and bad

Bad, Italy: the Pandoro Gate, already covered above, remains the textbook case for just how much it costs — in money and reputation — to blur commercial messaging and charity.

Bad, UK: the Cocoa Brown / Olivia Buckland case, ruled on by the ASA (ruling A19-561238, published 21 January 2020). The former Love Island contestant had posted content sponsored by Cocoa Brown, the self-tan brand, flagging the commercial relationship only with the hashtag "#BrandAmbassador" tucked at the end of the caption, plus a mention in her Instagram bio. The ASA found both wanting: the bio isn't visible while scrolling through the feed, and "brand ambassador" only signals some general link to the brand, not that there was payment and editorial control from the brand over the content. This was the second time Buckland had been pulled up for the same thing — the first, in 2018, involved a W7 Cosmetics lipstick. The Authority ordered a "clear and prominent" identifier such as "#ad" for every future collaboration.

Good — a typical example: in fashion and beauty, it's now standard contractual practice to require both the native "Paid partnership" tool and an explicit text disclosure, with a penalty clause for non-compliance. I'm describing it as a typical example because it reflects settled market practice, not any one specific contract.

The stance I won't soften

I get Berto's instinct: "Here's another law making life harder for people trying to earn a living." It's the wrong instinct.

Regulation isn't an obstacle for anyone working honestly. It's the sturdiest barrier ever built against those who, for years, poisoned the local market with bought reviews and free dinners dressed up as spontaneous enthusiasm. Whoever always paid the right suppliers and communicated openly ended up competing against the cunning of people cutting corners. Now that cunning has a price tag. And if your marketing's been honest from the start, this isn't bad news. It's the end of unfair competition that's gone on far too long.