CASE STUDY

We need a way to give marketing the direction they need, fast.

With a small legal team of two, this fast-growth commercial business needed a way to offer marketing colleagues legal guidance that was on-point and on-demand.

The Problem

This legal team received urgent requests from the marketing team to review and approve marketing content.

Typical requests ranged from reviews of advertising campaign content to online forms for competitions to build brand awareness.

The requests were handled by a single lawyer who had to balance these urgent tasks with the rest of the legal service needs for this 550+employee organisation.

The challenges included:

  • the lawyer felt they had to peer review everything from copy to form content

  • the marketing team did not have confidence to self-review

  • where the lawyer had input, the communications and marketing team had to redevelop, re-format copy and at times, start from scratch causing campaign launch delays

The demand for legal support was increasing week on week. The lawyer needed a way to support the business growth in a way that guaranteed the legal advice was available.

I developed an on demand marketing standard hosted via an internal intranet site to solve the challenge.

I worked with the legal and marketing teams to create a solution that met the business and the legal compliance needs.

The Process

  • Problem Definition I assessed the range of marketing requests lodged with legal and identified the issues causing the biggest bottlenecks. Typically this was that the volume of content for legal to review was large whereas the actual legal query was relatively straightforward. Legal was peer reviewing too much! We needed a way to enable marketing to categorise their query so they could find fast answers from a bank of FAQs.

  • Categorise Next I categorised the range of requests into sub-categories. Examples included:

    > form content checks for correct disclaimers around privacy

    > talent consent for use of images, videography and voice clips to use in campaigns

    > compliance checks of copy against fair trading act standards

    > assessment of source content for comparative marketing claims

  • FAQ Creation Working with the communications and marketing team, I created a Marketing Compliance Standard to create single source of legal guidance for the busy marketing team. This was user led and instead of words, legal included images, examples and visual infographics to communicate legal concepts.

  • Launch I launched the standard via a series of workshops at which I worked through real legal queries with the lawyer and the marketing team to apply the standard. This ‘show and tell’ approach ensured the marketing team had the buy-in to the resource. It was also a great way to test that the legal resource supplied the guidance needed.

I adopted a ‘user led’ approach that ensured the marketing team influenced the way legal presented their guidance.

The Results

  • The legal team has been using the Tuatahi Marketing Legal Standard for more than 3 years successfully

  • Marketing campaigns are compliant with access to on-demand legal guidance instantly

  • Legal Risk is managed with examples, guided flowcharts and clear triggers to escalate to legal

  • New campaign collateral can be developed in a compliant format from the start

What Tuatahi First Fibre Says

  • I feel much more confident with the campaign development in the knowledge I have a 'go to guide'. Sian was easy to understand in the workshops and made the process enjoyable.

    Natasha, Marketing Team
    Tuatahi First Fibre (formerly Ultrafast Fibre Limited)

  • The legal standard is the first of many. Now we have a blueprint to create more content to bring efficiency to our legal services team.

    Hiramai, Chief Legal and Regulatory Officer
    Tuatahi First Fibre (formerly Ultrafast Fibre Limited)

  • I was lucky to start my role at Tuatahi with a suite of legal standards that got me up and running in a short space of time. It was a such a game-changer: I haven't worked anywhere with such supportive resources before.

    Chelsie, Senior Legal Counsel
    Tuatahi First Fibre (formerly Ultrafast Fibre Limited)

TAKE A LOOK

Legal Standards are hosted on the team intranet page designed by Sian to be easy to navigate and host ‘on-demand’ legal resources

The marketing team gave feedback that a guided tutorial would be a valuable resource for them. Sian developed, recorded and hosted a range of tutorials that are used at Tuatahi to onboard new marketing personnel in legal compliance.