“Consumer Disclosure Icons” in Mobile and Social Marketing

Posted onOctober 28, 2015 by admin

The advent of mobile and social marketing has created a significant headache for attorneys and marketers alike. The FTC has stated that consumer disclosure requirements to avoid deception (e.g., ensuring that disclosures are clear and conspicuous, are in close proximity to the statement requiring the disclosure, are sufficiently prominent, are in understandable language, are not hidden behind a non-descriptive hyperlink, etc.) apply to marketers regardless of the medium in which they are delivered. Whether you’re delivering a marketing communication via email to a desktop computer, via social media, or to a mobile or wearable device, these rules apply.

The result is an understandable tension between attorneys trying to ensure that required disclosures are being made to control risk, and marketers seeking to deliver a compelling message and CTA (call to action) in a limited amount of space. Attorneys need to partner with their marketing brethren to find creative solutions to achieve both goals.

One idea for common ground here from an industry perspective worth pitching is to develop a set of standard “consumer disclosure icons,” or CDIs, that use a single character to denote a standard marketing disclosure phrase, e.g., “additional purchase required,” “no purchase necessary,” “subscription required,” “terms and conditions apply,” “sponsored promotion,” “paid advertisement,” etc. These could be something as simple as a set of initials in a box, such as the following for “no purchase necessary”:

Using these as a single character in a standard browser font would mean each CDI only takes up one character in a text-based communication, freeing up valuable real estate for the communication itself. Each could be a hyperlink to a page with explanations of the meanings of standard CDIs. Companies would want to use them consistently, e.g., at the end of each paragraph with claims triggering a disclosure.

CDIs would not work for non-standard disclosures, and companies would need to be careful not to improperly use CDIs where a custom disclosure is required.

Through efforts such as “Operation Full Disclosure” in September 2014, the FTC is looking to the industry to demonstrate their compliance with standard consumer marketing requirements even as the medium in which these messages are delivered continues to evolve (and shrink in size). Devising a set of consumer disclosure icons for common disclosures in visual mobile and social marketing may be a solution embraceable by marketers, attorneys and regulators alike.

Revisiting Risk Management

Posted onOctober 12, 2015 by admin

A couple of years ago, I wrote an article on “Risk Management 101.” Risk management is not the same as risk avoidance — taking risk is an important driver of business growth. As an attorney, it’s important to recognize that “zealously representing your client” is not the same thing as insulating your client from risk. Risk in business is like risk in investing; you have to be willing to take a loss if you want to achieve solid growth, and your appetite for risk determines how much risk you’re willing to take. Any risk management decision is a decision on whether or not to proceed with a particular course of action (or inaction) given the balance between the potential benefits and the potential risks. Given the importance of risk management, I thought it was time to revisit the topic.

What to do with business risk. Once you’ve identified a business risk, there are four things you can do with it:

Mitigate it�by following or implementing technical, administrative or procedural steps or safeguards, or best practices, to reduce your company’s exposure to the risk;
Shift it by making another party responsible for the risk exposure through contract terms (e.g., representations and indemnification, liquidated damages, etc., requirements to be named as an additional insured or loss payee under the other party’s insurance), or through obtaining your own insurance;
Reject it�by walking away from the proposed course of action or inaction that causes the business risk; or
Accept it by proceeding with the proposed course of action or inaction knowing it could cause an exposure based on the business risk.

When faced with a business risk that calls for a risk management decision, you should first reduce the risk, then decide what to do with the remaining risk.

To reduce the risk, the attorney will partner with his or her business counterparts to mitigate and shift as much of the risk as possible. For example, the attorney will work with business owners to determine if there are procedures in place to control the risk, or whether procedures could be put in place to help control the risk. The attorney will work with the company’s insurance group to see if its insurance will cover the risk. If the risk is arising in the context of a contract, the attorney will work to incorporate risk shifting provisions into the agreement to control the risk. The goal is to reduce the risk as much as possible, but be mindful that there can be an ROI impact here. If mitigating a risk through new processes, new insurance premiums, etc. increases the cost to the business, the overall costs from taking the course of action is impacted.
Once the risk has been reduced, a decision has to be made to accept or reject the remaining risk. Unless the risk relates to a violation of law, the attorney will turn to the business decision-maker to call the ball. When presenting a risk decision to the decision-maker, (1) describe the business risk; (2) explain what risk mitigation steps will be implemented or taken; (3) explain the potential costs related to the remaining risk (both tangible, e.g., cost, and intangible, e.g., impact to the business), and the benefits of the course of action; and (4) let the business decision-maker call the ball. This way, the business decision-maker can make an informed business risk decision. The amount of detail you go into is often driven by the speed at which the decision needs to be made. If a decision must be made quickly, you may not have the time to explore risk mitigation steps first, in which case you can describe the mitigation steps that could be taken. Consider your audience — be as concise as possible in describing the costs and benefits to management. Make sure the person that is approving or rejecting the risk has the authority to do so within the organization. Lastly, the attorney and business person should ensure that the risk management decision is documented in case an issue arises later on.

What to do if a risk exposure occurs. While the initial instinct when something bad happens is to assess blame, an authorized decision-maker who makes a well-informed business risk decision should not be “thrown under the bus” if the risk exposure ultimately occurs. If proper risk management procedures are followed, the exposure should result in a review of the risk management decision to see if other “hindsight” data points would have impacted the risk management decision if known at the time, and determine if changes to the decision-making process or the company’s risk profile are appropriate on a go-forward basis. Risk exposures will happen in business. If a decision-maker is disciplined (or worse) in the event of an exposure just for making the business risk decision, even if the benefits far outweighed the potential risks at the time the decision was made, the company will send the message that good risk management practices don’t matter to management. Reward those who follow good risk management practices.

Accepting a business risk is the same thing as electing to self-insure against the risk. If you don’t identify and manage a risk, your business is accepting the entire risk without any mitigation steps. For small risks, this usually doesn’t cause a problem. For bigger risks, this can be catastrophic. Understanding, implementing, and fostering solid risk mitigation practices at your company can make all the difference.

How to stop (or start) Word redlines changing to “Author” on document save

Posted onOctober 1, 2015 by admin

You’ve probably noticed that in certain documents, as soon as you click “Save” all of your Word redlines change color and switch from your name to “Author.” If you’re like me, when negotiating or commenting up a document with others I prefer to “layer” redlines in different colors so everyone knows whose comments and redlines are whose. This can help avoid confusion and keep the negotiation process running as efficiently as possible. There’s nothing more frustrating than redlining a document only to find your edits changed to Author the second you save your draft. (I’ve had situations where my business team commented on a draft assuming the “Author” redlines in an agreement were my redlines, when they were really from the other side.) This author information for redlines is one example of the “metadata” that Microsoft Word saves with your document.

On the flip side, there are times you may want to remove all of the personal information in a document regarding authors (e.g., when releasing a policy or document that had multiple authors, and you don’t want to show who worked on what parts). Word includes an option in the Trust Center which lets you remove all personal information from a document upon save. If this option is selected, metadata (including names of redline owners) is stripped out of the document when it is saved. If your redlines are changing to “Author” on save, it’s because this option is turned on in your document. This is a document setting, not a global setting, so changing it for a given document changes it for that document only.

To turn on or off the removal of personal information from a document upon save in Office 2010 or 2013, follow these steps:

Click on “File,” then “Options.”
In the “Options” box, select “Trust Center” at the bottom of the left-hand menu.
In the “Trust Center” dialog box, click the “Trust Center Settings” button.
The Trust Center should open on “Privacy Options” (if not, select it). You’ll find what you are looking for under “Document-Specific Settings” – it’s the option “Remove personal information from file properties on save.”
If it’s turned on, it will look like this. To turn it off, uncheck the box, click “OK,” and close Word Options. Your redlines should now stay as-is when you save the document.
If the checkbox and option is turned off and grayed out like in the image below, you will have to do one thing before you can turn it on, you need to first run Document Inspector by pressing the button on this screen and manually remove all metadata under “Comments, Revisions, Versions and Annotations.” (You can run Document Inspector at any time to manually remove metadata from a Word document.)