Download HIGHLY REGULATED BRANDS MUST PLAY BY THE RULES

HIGHLY REGULATED BRANDS MUST PLAY BY THE RULES WHEN
CRAFTING MARKETING AND ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS, BUT THAT
DOESN’T MEAN THEY CAN’T HAVE FUN WHILE DOING SO
BY MATTHEW SCHWARTZ
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// ASSOCIATION OF NATIONAL ADVERTISERS
GETTY IMAGES/GAIAMOMENTS
T
he marketing team at Mike’s
Hard Lemonade was starting
to put together ideas for a
video to promote the brand’s
new Hard Watermelon Lemonade. Knowing the video
would run on digital media
outlets and social media channels during
the 2016 Memorial Day weekend, the
team wanted to infuse the message with
some summer fun — but it proceeded
with caution.
Mike’s Hard Lemonade contains alcohol, so the brand’s marketing and advertising must adhere to certain regulations
imposed by the Beer Institute, the trade
association of the American brewing
industry. Among the rules, spots for beer-­
related beverages cannot show over­
consumption and must depict talent that
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appears to be at least 25 years old. “You
have to know what’s off limits, what carries
some risk, and what’s a safe space to play
in,” says Diane Sayler, director of brand
experience at Mike’s Hard Lemonade.
“You look to find a surprising element, or
twist, in a situation.” The video spot for the
brand’s new flavor fit the bill.
Titled “Whack-A-Melon,” the ad stars
a diverse group of Millennial professionals
gathered in an office park, playing a game
of Whack-A-Mole — where the moles
have been replaced by watermelons. When
someone makes a direct hit, watermelon
bits spray the air, slow-mo, as the crowd
jumps for joy with bottles of the new Hard
Watermelon Lemonade in hand.
“We shot [the video] at the end of a
routine workday, when people are worried
about getting home,” Sayler says. “But
then we brought them to this moment,
where they can kick back, and get to after-­
work fun a little bit sooner, along with
some refreshment.”
Sayler stresses that Mike’s Hard Lemonade’s marketing executives are all very
well-versed on branding regulations. They
work closely with the company’s compliance team to ensure that all marketing collateral is above board, regulation-wise,
and no aspect of the creative has been left
to chance.
It’s a similar drill at LivWell Enlightened Health, which owns 14 marijuana
dispensaries throughout Colorado, where
pot is legal recreationally. Earlier this year,
for example, the marketing department
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// ASSOCIATION OF NATIONAL ADVERTISERS
created a print ad campaign for THC
Magazine, which caters to the hemp and
cannabis industries.
The ad, portraying a person mountain
biking through lush forest, originally included the text: “Riding the perfect trail is
exhilarating. When you’re done — hang
out with the trees a little longer. Enjoy responsibly.” (The bottom of the ad carries
price points for eighths and ounces of recreational marijuana sold at some of
LivWell’s dispensaries in Colorado.) However, when compliance officers saw the ad
they had marketing change the copy because the phrase “hang out with the trees a
little longer” could be read as encouraging
public consumption of mari­juana, which
is forbidden in any marketing or advertising of marijuana products in Colorado,
according to Matthew Givner, director of
marketing at LivWell.
The ad’s revised text reads, “There’s
nothing like the feeling of riding through
the trees. Except for maybe relaxing with
some of ours at home. Enjoy responsibly.”
Adding the words “some of ours at home”
was key to ensuring the ad
would pass regulatory muster. It’s a subtle alteration in
phrasing. But it helps to illustrate the creative challenges
highly regulated companies
face when developing branding and/or marketing campaigns, in which even the
slightest misstep can cost a
company precious credibility
with consumers (not to mention monetary fines).
“There are so many rules and regulations,” says Givner, who points to more
than 150 new or revised regulations for the
Colorado marijuana industry promulgated
in 2015. These rules, which are enforced
by the state’s departments of agriculture,
health, and revenue, include not being able
to refer to marijuana-­
infused edibles as
“candy” (because that appeals to children),
and new rules requiring a universal THC
symbol to appear on the packaging of edibles and the edibles themselves, which goes
into effect next month.
The rules and regulations are “pretty
black and white,” Givner says. “The penalties for violating any one of the rules
could be anything from a warning from
the Marijuana Enforcement Division to a
suspension or revocation of our licenses.”
EXTRA VIGILANT
Creating innovative marketing campaigns
is challenging enough. But it’s a bigger
challenge for highly regulated brands to
develop the creative and execute marketing campaigns without running afoul of
regulations. Here, marketers must be extremely cautious regarding precisely what
can be communicated, and how. That’s
why it’s vital that marketing execs work
closely with compliance to nip any potential problems in the bud, as in the case of
LivWell’s lifestyle ad campaign.
Depending on the business sector, such
as financial, health care, insurance, or
pharmaceuticals, brand managers confront a maze of federal and/or state regulations and even industry association
guidance as they start to build the creative
for marketing and advertising campaigns.
However, regulations don’t have to be
creative roadblocks. “The irony is that
marketing efforts can often be just as effective working in a controlled [legal] environment as when you try to push the
envelope,” says Joe Mason, CMO at
Allianz Worldwide Partners, which sells
tuition insurance and travel insurance
that is regulated at the state level. “We
don’t feel we are overly encumbered by
rules and regulations. Instead, we recognize the boundaries and do our best to
work within them to create compelling
marketing campaigns.”
Take the company’s “Easy Partner”
campaign, which debuted in 2015. The
B-to-B campaign, targeting thousands of
travel agents, ran in travel trade publications, such as Travel Agent Magazine and
Travel Weekly, as well as many online
properties targeting the travel industry.
One ad, titled “Easy as Sundae
Morning,” shows a beaming young
girl about to take a spoonful from a
heaping bowl of sprinkled ice cream.
“Enjoy the sweet taste of success with
AgentMax Online,” reads the copy,
which goes on to say, “AgentMax Online puts the award-winning power of
AgentMax in the palm of your hand.
You’ll love the added flexibility of selling
travel insurance anytime, anywhere on
your phone or tablet — making it easier to
reach your business goals.”
“We have very defined processes for all
of our marketing efforts, which include
frequent interactions with our legal and
compliance teams,” Mason says. “In the
case of the Easy Partner campaign, we
worked with them to showcase the benefits of Allianz, which included our AgentMax sales tool and educational materials
for prospective agents. Such a campaign
was very straightforward, whereby there
was a clean, clear value proposition to a
very specific audience.”
Indeed, for highly regulated companies,
half the marketing battle is not to get
bogged down on what’s acceptable in communications, be it the labeling attached to
products and/or services or casting a TV
commercial. It’s beneficial for marketers to
discuss the regulatory outlook “upstream,
rather than downstream” to avoid any unpleasant surprises once the campaign is in
full swing, says Jamie Moldafsky, CMO at
Wells Fargo. “It’s a philosophical conversation you have first, and then you work your
way through it.”
Moldafsky says that regulations help to
inform the bank’s overall marketing communications, including a series of branding ads running this year promoting the
bank’s security services. In one spot, for
example, two pals belly up to a juice bar
when one of the guys gets a text message
from Wells Fargo on his smartphone alerting him about suspicious account activity.
FOR HIGHLY
REGULATED
COMPANIES, HALF
THE MARKETING
BATTLE IS NOT
TO GET BOGGED
DOWN ON WHAT’S
ACCEPTABLE IN YOUR
COMMUNICATIONS.
His pal eggs him on to commence drinking, but it only takes a second for the first
fellow to send a text back confirming the
purchase in question before they resume
with their drinks.
“It was a desire to assure customers
that we have their security interests at
heart,” Moldafsky says. “We wanted to be
very respectful in how we show that to our
customers, not over-promise, and be very
transparent about it, and that made regulators very happy because this is a topic they
care very passionately about.”
INTEGRATED APPROACH
Despite ever-developing changes in marketing and the growing influence of social
media platforms, brand managers working for highly regulated companies need
to stick to the fundamentals.
“The same regulations apply to the
traditional marketing world — radio ads,
newspaper ads, direct mail — as to the
digital marketing space,” says C. Michael
Zabel, group VP of corporate communication at M&T Bank, a Buffalo, N.Y.–
based bank that owns more than 800
branches throughout the Northeast and
Mid-Atlantic regions. The bank is regulated by the Federal Reserve and the
Financial Industry Regulatory Authority,
among others. “What makes digital different is our customers increasingly expect a
certain amount of interactive experience,
which we can provide via online and social
media, but then there’s more room for
potential violations and less room to take
your time,” he says.
To get the word out
faster — but ensure it sticks
to the regulatory guardrails
— M&T Bank has been increasing the amount of information and content that
it pre-approves for online
marketing and advertising
purposes. The bank continues to bolster its traditional
marketing campaigns with
digital messaging, as well.
For instance, leading up to the bank’s
acquisition of Paramus, N.J.–based Hudson City Bancorp in late 2015, M&T deployed a microsite to supplement print,
TV, and radio spots promoting the transaction and how it benefits its new customers and prospects in the New Jersey
area. The microsite was promoted via
both M&T’s traditional and digital advertising and featured localized content
and videos of customer testimonials.
Jacqueline Kotek, partner and managing director at the integrated communications and marketing firm Peppercomm,
who works with several highly regulated
brands, including M&T Bank, says financial services companies understand there’s
a growing need to craft integrated marketing messages despite regulatory limitations.
“You’re starting to see [highly regulated]
companies moving toward a marketing
strategy that drives content across all channels,” she says.
Lincoln Financial Group (LFG), which
sells insurance and financial-related investment products and is regulated at the
federal and state levels, used omni­channel
marketing for its 2014 campaign plugging its employer-sponsored retirement
plan for Franciscan Missionaries of Our
Lady Health System (FMOLHS), a Baton
Rouge, La.–based hospital system with
13,000-plus employees.
“When we look at omnichannel it
means we have to think about different
regulations that apply across all channels
that apply to the company,” says Jamie
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Ohl, president of Retirement Plan Services
at LFG. “Our opportunity is to make the
message easy, simple to understand, and
aligned with regulations. As we do that, we
become more successful.”
In order to spur participation in the
plan among the hospital’s Millennial employees — many of whom were reluctant
to sign up — the campaign ran a video
contest featuring some of the hospital’s
workers answering questions about why
retirement is so important, with some of
the responses delivered in a humorous
vein. “We wanted to use a medium that
would really engage Millennials about a
subject they don’t typically engage in: retirement planning,” Ohl says.
More than 60 employees submitted
video clips, and more than 200 people
voted on their favorite ones. LFG’s marketing unit selected 11 of the videos and
worked with compliance officers to review the videos selected for the campaign
and make sure no content violated any
regulations.
The video was emailed to employees
and shown at the FMOLHS benefits fair.
In addition, LFG retirement consultants
on site at the hospital presented the video
via iPads to employees who had questions
about the retirement program.
The campaign, which was blended
with postcards displayed at the benefits fair
and in HR offices, provided solid returns.
When the five-month campaign ended in
December 2014 there was a 25 percent
spike among Millennial employees enrolled in FMOLHS’s LFG retirement
plan, according to Ohl.
“With the Franciscan Missionaries of
Our Lady Health System, our [marketing] team looked at the regulations that
exist as something that forced them to be
more thoughtful and creative about how
they could reach Millennials,” Ohl says.
“Marketing works closely with our compliance department through every step of
the process, to ensure that how we are
approaching the campaign is within the
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// ASSOCIATION OF NATIONAL ADVERTISERS
5 Takeaways for Marketing in
Highly Regulated Industries
1
Work closely with your compliance
department. Senior marketers should
consider the compliance department an
extension of marketing (and, ideally, vice
versa). Constant communication between
the two departments is vital to making
sure any branding efforts don’t run afoul
of regulations.
2
Follow the regulatory track. Having a
strong bond with compliance aside, the
onus is on senior marketers to stay attuned
to changes in the regulatory landscape and
be mindful of the delineations, which can
be subtle, in terms of what can be
communicated, how, and the language
therein.
3
Stay within your creative sandbox. When
creating branding campaigns marketers
need to know the regulatory boundaries and
what’s a safe place to play in.
4
Think long term. As they develop
creative and communicate via new
platforms, brand managers need to think
about how the regulatory landscape is
changing in relation to market forces.
5
Conduct competitive analysis. Gauging
what competitors are doing to get
their message out gives brand managers
a comfort level about accepted business
practices for highly regulated brands.
— M.S.
bounds of the regulatory framework that
exists.”
EMOTIONAL RESCUE
Messaging that is straightforward and easy
to absorb is crucial for CMOs and brand
managers working for highly regulated
companies. Giving the message an emotional core can also mitigate any regulatory
issues, particularly among B-to-B brands.
MSD Animal Health, a subsidiary of
Merck & Co., took an emotional path
when in 2015 the company introduced a
rebranding campaign for Bravecto, an
oral chew for dogs and a topical drop for
cats that protects from fleas and ticks for
up to 12 weeks (as opposed to monthly
protection by most similar products).
The previous branding campaign for
Bravecto took a functional approach to the
messaging and MSD Animal Health was
eager to switch creative gears. “I said to
my ad agency, ‘Go wild, and don’t think
about pharmaceuticals,’” says Karin Jager,
global marketing director at MSD Animal
Health, which is regulated by the Food
and Drug Administration. “Our goal with
Bravecto is to become the world’s preferred brand for flea and tick control in
dogs and cats,” Jager says. “To do this we
had to make sure to connect with different
audiences while delivering the same
brand message. Our audiences include
dog and cat parents, veterinarians, veterinary staff, pet shop owners, and staff, but
they all have one thing in common: they
love animals.”
The global campaign, “Expect the
Extraordinary,” features “extraordinary
moments” between people and their beloved animals. One banner ad, for instance, shows a bearded, tattooed biker
gazing into the eyes of a beautiful gray
kitty nestled on his shoulder. “Dare to
Provide the Extraordinary to Cats,”
reads the headline.
The campaign, which also includes
technical but easy-to-digest information
about the product, has been distributed
via direct mail to veterinarians throughout the world. Banner ads and signage
plugging the message have appeared at
various events catering to pet care.
Jager says giving the message an emotional core made developing the creative
easier. That helped the message travel well.
“We localize the touchpoints [to comply with regulations from different countries],” she adds, “but it’s the same message,
which is the strong feelings that people
have for their dogs and cats.” Perhaps
most important, the creative theme provided the marketing team with that
all-important comfort that the campaign
was regulatorily sound.