Navigating Legal Landmines

Future Commerce Podcast: eCommerce, DTC and Retail Strategy

Any business comes with risks, and there are many legal issues around advertising that can become major if a brand doesn’t have arms around what those are and how to avoid them. From differing terms of agreement to the variety of laws per state, there is a good deal to navigate, and it takes an expert to wade through. How do you realistically have a thriving enterprise or a business with these kinds of encumbrances? Listen now to our conversation with Robert Freund and his take on this changing environment and how it affects all of us!

Applying Old Laws to New Situations

• {00:08:05} The rules of disclosure, that were never really clear before, are undergoing scrutiny and clarification from the FTC for situations such as an influencer receiving product and then creating content about it and other examples that can really determine strategy
• {00:13:22} “The FTC's rule is that the disclosure has to be clear and conspicuous, which effectively means your audience can't miss it.” - Robert
• {00:16:45} “These old laws and rulings that are not effectively law become a tangled web that we have woven because of the heavy commercialization of the way that content has emerged.” - Phillip
• {00:18:21} “There's always that sort of lag time between what the law says, what courts tell us the law means and what marketers are out there doing.” - Robert
• {00:25:08} Legal problems, whether legitimate or not, have always been a part of running a business, but the time frame for encountering a legal problem is business is much shorter now
• {00:30:58} As advertisers get more creative and competitors get more daring, there will continue to be more pushback from the FTC and more lawsuits filed against business owners that can even look back as much as three or four years, so it’s important to not fall prey to using those tactics to justify staying competitive
• {00:38:05} Legal entanglements and risk associated with them influence the way businesses are built and also where they are being built now, which actually changes the way we think about global commerce and global eCommerce, and that’s not necessarily a good thing
• {00:49:58} “As you go to try and do something more and further that stands out, of course, the top influencers are pushing legal boundaries. That's probably how they got there in the first place.” - Brian

Associated Links:

• Learn more about Robert Freund
• Find out more about The Visions Summit at RICE 2023 and make plans to meet us there!
• Have you checked out our YouTube channel yet?
• Subscribe to Insiders and The Senses to read more of what we are witnessing in the commerce world!
• Listen to our other episodes of Future Commerce

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