What happens when marketing creativity and legal strategy work hand-in-hand?
This is the question CIE Legal’s Raph Goldenberg and Kaye Ho discussed at the NORA – National Online Retailers Association – Marketing Leaders lunch on 19 September at Vue de Monde.
Early engagement saves time and money
“Imagine spending months with an agency to develop a creative concept, and spending hundreds of thousands on production, only to find that legal won’t approve the campaign. Or developing a series of ads, and showcasing them to the CEO, only to find that they need to be changed to be compliant,” said Raph. “These aren’t imaginary scenarios – they’re real instances where time and money have been wasted unnecessarily – and it can be avoided.”
Raph continued, “Legal and compliance are factors to be considered right at the start of campaign development. It’s not just about disclaimers and wording – there are implications for comms strategies as a whole. Understanding the legal parameters before investing in creative development is time well spent.”
Listening to understand
Raph and Kaye went on to discuss ways they have worked collaboratively with creative teams inside their client organisations. “First of all, we recognise that lawyers have a lot to learn, so we start by listening and understanding the wider business and marketing objectives” says Kaye. “Legal’s job is to support marketing, and we can only do that by understanding what you’re looking to achieve.”
Clear policies and processes
Kaye continued, “Then it’s about having a clear process for engagement and sign off: do we all know who does what, when? Are there SLAs for turnaround times? Who is the ultimate decision maker? We also work with clients to put playbooks in place that make the job of checking more straightforward; developing a standard set of disclaimers, articulating the organisation’s risk appetite or developing a rule book that can be used to identify concepts that clearly pass or don’t. It’s about removing variability where possible, so cut-and-dried cases can be dealt with easily, leaving time to collaborate on campaigns that require more discission and debate.”
In their presentation and in the discussion that followed, Raph and Kaye demonstrated that it is possible to create campaigns that achieve cut-through while also being compliant: early engagement and collaboration are the key.
The advertising and marketing team at CIE Legal advises household name brands on compliance: our advice sits behind some of the most creative and notable campaigns you’ll have seen in recent years. If you would like to engage lawyers who will work with your creative teams collaboratively, please contact Raph Goldenberg or Kaye Ho.
