Before/after marketing: consent and honesty checklist

Marketing consent for before/after imagery is a written, specific agreement to show a patient’s image on named channels. This checklist covers what to settle before a simulation or treatment pair goes on your website, your Instagram or your waiting-room screen.

Before/after imagery is the most persuasive asset in cosmetic dentistry marketing and the easiest to get wrong. This guide is not legal advice, and marketing consent is not the same thing as treatment consent.

Consent

• Written, specific, revocable. A marketing consent is not the treatment consent. It names the channels (website, social, print), and it records how the patient can withdraw.
• Identifiable means identifiable. A cropped arch shot can still identify a person to the people who know them. When in doubt, use the same consent standard for the crop as for the face.
• Simulated subjects need provenance too. If your example images are rendered simulations rather than treated patients — as the illustrative examples on this site are — your own records should say so, with the same rigour as a model release.

Honesty in the caption

• Label simulations as simulations. If the “after” is a software preview rather than a clinical result, the caption says so. This is both an honesty rule and, in many jurisdictions, an advertising rule.
• No outcomes in numbers you cannot defend. Claims like “same-day” or “painless” attached to a transformation image invite complaints that outlive the campaign.
• Consistency between image and offer. If the picture shows a full makeover and the linked offer is a whitening special, the mismatch does the damage at the consult, not in the comments.

Provenance and records

• Keep a source record per image. Who the subject is (or that it is a simulation), when it was captured or generated, and which consent applies. A simple spreadsheet survives an audit; memory does not.
• Version the caption with the image. When an image is reused in a new campaign, the honesty questions are asked again — the original caption is evidence, not a template.
• Third-party examples carry the duty. Stock libraries and vendor example sets (including SmileCraft’s own illustrative examples) do not transfer your advertising obligations to anyone. Your name is on the post.

The litmus test

Before publishing, hand the image to someone outside the practice and ask what they think it promises. If their answer overstates the outcome, the caption — not the audience — needs to change.