When And How To Use An Alias In Business

A mem­ber once asked a ques­tion about the legal­ity of using an alias or pseu­do­nym in copy.

That is, is it legal to write the copy in the voice of a fic­ti­tious char­ac­ter, or telling the story of a fic­ti­tious char­ac­ter enjoy­ing the ben­e­fits of your offer?

Using an alias in busi­ness is a com­mon prac­tice. How­ever, if you’re con­sid­er­ing using an alias or already are using an alias, there are a few things to know to keep your head above water with the law.

Using an alias or pseu­do­nym is gen­er­ally fine, as long as within the intrin­sic nature of the alias there’s no false or mis­lead­ing infor­ma­tion meant to induce the con­sumer to buy.

If the alias is used to mis­rep­re­sent the facts, or indi­rectly does so by its mere exis­tence, you’re break­ing the law.

It’s like the dif­fer­ence between mak­ing a promise ver­sus mak­ing a claim.

If your story implies what your clients will get, then you’re mak­ing a promise. And a promise made by a fic­ti­tious char­ac­ter is fine since the char­ac­ter rep­re­sents the busi­ness mak­ing it.

(Keep­ing promises is a dif­fer­ent ball of wax.)

But if it states what your past clients have done, then it’s a claim. Because the fic­ti­tious char­ac­ter rep­re­sents a client, or presents infor­ma­tion as fact. Therein lies the difference.

So ask your­self, does your alias make a promise? Or a claim? If the lat­ter, is the alias a part of that claim?

Here are two exam­ples to clarify.

1. Alias as Narrator

You tell an non-​​obvious, per­haps dra­ma­tized story of a fic­ti­tious per­son who ben­e­fits from your prod­uct or service.

The story shows your prospects what they should do, and what kind of results they should expect, by watch­ing the story play out. The teller of the story, or the per­son in the story, is com­pletely fictitious.

This is fine as long as what is promised is true, and you deliver on your promises.

For exam­ple, John Doe gets into an acci­dent. He picks up the phone and says, “Uh oh, bet­ter get Maaco!” And then the screen fades to a scene with John, with his now repaired car in the back­ground, shak­ing hands with a Maaco mechanic and a huge smile across his face.

How many times have you seen com­mer­cials like that?

Now, here’s the exception…

The fine line is when the story doesn’t imply what one should do but what one has actu­ally done, which rep­re­sents and implies, pre­cisely, what the per­son will get based on what was rep­re­sented as fact.

In other words, it’s no longer a promise.

It’s a claim.

Stated dif­fer­ently, when the adver­tise­ment states or even just implies that John is an actual client, a real per­son who got that exact ser­vice, in that exact way, with those exact results, you are mis­lead­ing the public.

The story implies peo­ple will get the same. Specif­i­cally, it is no longer a story but a tes­ti­mo­nial. And tes­ti­mo­ni­als, by law, must be true.

The sub­se­quent sale, should any occur, is there­fore acquired fraud­u­lently, because peo­ple believe that John is a true client and offer­ing a real tes­ti­mo­nial for Maaco. The story is pre­sented as fact when it is not true.

And that’s illegal.

Remem­ber the story of the Wal-​​Mart cou­ple who drove their trailer across the United-​​States, going from Wal-​​Mart to Wal-​​Mart, and blog­ging about their (seem­ingly only) pos­i­tive experiences?

The back­lash was mas­sive. And merciless.

Legal­ity aside, it became a PR night­mare. Some argue that the stunt would have been safe — and even that’s arguable, too — if the blog had a proper dis­clo­sure inform­ing read­ers that the char­ac­ters were fake.

(In fact, the mas­sive back­lash inspired the pop­u­lar­ity of the terms “flog” and “flog­ging,” which means “fake blogging.”)

2. Alias as Provider

If you call your­self a pen name to tell the story in your copy, and this pen name doesn’t mis­lead, you’re OK — as long as it is clear that peo­ple are not buy­ing from your fic­ti­tious char­ac­ter but from the busi­ness it represents.

They are buy­ing from a real busi­ness with a real busi­ness name. For exam­ple, you don’t buy burg­ers from Ronald McDon­ald him­self, right? You buy it from McDonald’s restau­rants, the busi­ness Ronald represents.

Here’s a scenario.

When a sales let­ter is signed by “Mr. X,” if Mr. X is telling the story and plays the role of a nar­ra­tor (not a busi­ness entity), then you’re fine.

Mr. X (or any other alias) is telling the story, or even mak­ing the promise, on behalf of the com­mer­cial entity you’re doing busi­ness with.

The fine line, in this case, is when you state that Mr. X is a real per­son, and that per­son makes claims or presents infor­ma­tion as fact on behalf of the com­mer­cial entity, such as past expe­ri­ences, clients, or results.

Gen­er­ally, this is OK too, as long as the facts are true, and the alias is not the provider with whom you’re doing business.

But if you do this, you not only need to include real facts in your story (as always), but also be fully pre­pared to prove them when asked by either the pub­lic or the government.

If the FTC ever comes knock­ing at your door, you bet­ter have proper doc­u­men­ta­tion and real proof to back up your claims and save your anatomy!

What about a busi­ness name?

Hav­ing a busi­ness with a fic­ti­tious name is def­i­nitely legal, pro­vided that you have filed the proper doc­u­men­ta­tion (such as reg­is­ter­ing your busi­ness, incor­po­rat­ing, or fil­ing a “doing busi­ness as” state­ment), and car­ried out the proper trade­mark searches.

This is a nor­mal part of doing busi­ness, even vital for brand­ing purposes.

The issue is not with the name but when the exis­tence of the busi­ness, its actual clients, or any results achieved are works of fiction.

Ulti­mately, the ques­tion to ask is, does it tell a story to make a point? Or does it mis­lead and deceive to make a sale? Whether inten­tion­ally or not, the lat­ter is out­right fraud.

To sum it all up, using an alias is fine as long as you are not mak­ing claims as that alias.

You, using your real name (or your real busi­ness name), can make claims until the sun goes down. You own them and peo­ple know who to turn to if the claims are false.

And if you use an alias to tell a story, whether dra­ma­tized or writ­ten in a sales let­ter, you’re gen­er­ally safe. How­ever, if you make claims under an assumed name, then it is ille­gal when the assumed name is pre­sented as fact.

Of course, before you ulti­mately decide to use an alias, par­tic­u­larly if you’re con­cerned about whether or not you’re cross­ing a line, con­sult with an attorney.

I’m not a lawyer and the above should not be con­strued as legal advice. Plus, this arti­cle should be viewed only as a par­tial or gen­eral opin­ion and com­men­tary, as every indi­vid­ual case is unique.

It is based on my years of expe­ri­ence, espe­cially work­ing with doc­tors and lawyers in my early career when I first estab­lished my com­pany, The Suc­cess Doc­tor, Inc., which used to focus strictly on doc­tors and ser­vice professionals.

(Hence, the name “The Suc­cess Doctor.”)

Finally, props go out to my friend Mike Young, Esquire, an Inter­net mar­ket­ing lawyer who reviewed my response. I highly rec­om­mend his new book, “Inter­net Mar­ket­ing Legal Secrets Revealed.” (And yes, that’s my affil­i­ate link.)

Update: Please read some of my com­ments below. Some great ques­tions were asked, along with my answers.

About the Author

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