The blacklist runs through the middle of this profession

How we work

Why that is a feature and not a constraint

Belgian economic law treats most commercial practices as a question of effect: was the average consumer likely to be misled, and did it distort a decision. A short list of practices is treated differently. They are unfair in all circumstances, which means there is no balancing exercise, no need to establish that anyone was actually misled, and no commercial justification available. Three of those practices sit exactly where public relations works.

The first is paid editorial. Using editorial content in the media to promote a product where the trader has paid for that promotion, without the paid character being clear from the content itself, is prohibited outright. The second is pretending to be a customer. Falsely representing yourself as a consumer, or creating the impression that you are not acting for business purposes, is prohibited outright, which covers the whole family of tactics that involve posting as an enthusiastic member of the public. The third concerns reviews: submitting false consumer reviews, commissioning another person to submit them, misrepresenting reviews or social endorsements, and claiming that reviews come from consumers who actually bought the product without taking reasonable and proportionate steps to check, are all prohibited outright.

Read together, those three remove a large part of what is routinely sold as modern communication, and what is left is better work. If a claim has to survive being checked, it gets evidence behind it. If paid placement has to be labelled, the distinction between coverage you earned and coverage you bought stays honest, and you can tell which one is actually working. If nobody can pose as a customer, you find out what customers really think. The rest of the discipline here follows the same logic: no promise of coverage, because that decision belongs to an editor and a contingent fee creates an interest in obtaining it at any cost; no legal advice, because this is not a law practice and anything with legal consequences belongs with your own lawyer; and media lists treated as the personal data they are, rather than as an asset to be traded between clients.