I would call it advertising. Paid advertising.
I’m still wondering where Dr Carson said “Mannatech Magically cured his prostate cancer”? You know. The title of this so-called article.
I haven’t seen where he said it.
In his videos, he said that after three weeks of taking the product, his symptoms disappeared. I have also heard him say, when he finally did mention that he had surgery, that he only had surgery because he feared that other people taking the supplement might not take the product properly.
I call a paid endorsement by a well know brain surgeon a relationship, involving him to the point of legal liability. He also credits Mannatech with funding his endowment chair at John’s Hopkins.
I guess you could try to define it in a Clintonesque kind of way. As one Freeper put it, “I did not have supplemental relations with that company, Mannatech Lewinsky.”