Legal & Compliance for Marketers
Not legal advice, orientation. Advertising truthfulness, global privacy law, accessibility, influencer disclosure, contracts, and intellectual property: the legal terrain every marketer touches, explained well enough to know when to loop in a lawyer.
Start here. No prior knowledge needed.
Marketing Law 101: What Every Marketer Must Know
An orientation map to the legal areas every marketer touches, advertising truthfulness, data privacy, IP, contracts, and consumer protection, so you know when to loop in a lawyer before a campaign goes out.
5 minCAN-SPAM Compliance: The Rules Every Email Marketer Must Follow
Learn the eight CAN-SPAM rules the FTC enforces, why 'unsubscribe' is not optional, and how a single bad send can cost over $53,000.
5 minTCPA and SMS Marketing: Consent Rules That Carry Real Fines
How the Telephone Consumer Protection Act governs marketing texts, why 'just add a checkbox' is not enough, and what the 2025 opt-out changes mean for your SMS program.
5 minSweepstakes and Contest Law: The Rules for Running a Legal Giveaway
Learn the difference between a sweepstakes, a contest, and an illegal lottery, and what your official rules and entry mechanics must include to stay compliant.
5 minWhy Buying Email Lists Will Wreck Your Marketing Program
Purchased, rented, and co-registered email lists are technically legal in narrow cases but practically a fast track to fines, blocklists, and a dead sending domain.
6 minTrademark Clearance: Vetting a Campaign Name Before You Launch
How to run a basic trademark clearance search before locking in a campaign name, tagline, or product name, and when the search results mean you need a lawyer.
4 minBuild on the fundamentals.
FTC Advertising Law: Truth-in-Advertising and Substantiation
How the FTC's truth-in-advertising rules actually work, what real substantiation requires before you make a claim, and what recent enforcement actions reveal about where marketers get caught.
5 minGlobal Privacy Law for Marketers: GDPR, CCPA, and Beyond Email
How GDPR and the growing US state privacy law patchwork apply to ad targeting, tracking, and CDPs, not just your email list.
7 minWebsite Accessibility (ADA/WCAG) for Marketers
Why an inaccessible website is a real legal risk in 2026, the WCAG basics marketers actually control, and practical fixes for owned pages and campaigns.
6 minInfluencer and Endorsement Disclosure Law
What counts as a 'material connection' under FTC rules, how to write disclosure language that actually holds up, and why the brand gets sued even when the influencer is the one who forgot.
5 minContract Basics for Marketers: Vendor, Agency, and Creator Agreements
The clauses in a marketing contract that actually determine who owns the work, who pays if a campaign goes wrong, and why 'we'll sort it out later' is how disputes start.
5 minIntellectual Property for Marketers: Copyright, Trademark, Fair Use
The IP landscape every marketer navigates daily, image and music licensing, fair use, and where AI-generated content stands legally, explained without the legalese.
6 minCookie Consent and Tracking Law: GDPR, ePrivacy, and the Cookie Banner
How cookie banners, consent management platforms, and first vs third-party tracking actually satisfy GDPR and ePrivacy, and what happens when they do not.
5 minDark Patterns: The FTC's Crackdown on Deceptive UX
How the FTC treats manipulative checkout, cancellation, and consent flows as illegal deception, and what marketers need to change before the next $2.5 billion settlement.
5 minCOPPA: Marketing to Kids Under 13 Without Getting Sued
What triggers the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act, how verifiable parental consent actually works, and what Amazon, Epic Games, and TikTok learned the hard way.
5 minNative Advertising Disclosure: When 'Sponsored Content' Needs a Label
How the FTC's '.com Disclosures' guidance treats brand-published native ads and advertorials, and why 'Sponsored' has to look and read like an ad, not editorial content.
5 minDrip Pricing and Junk Fees: What the FTC's All-In Pricing Rule Requires
The FTC's 2024/2025 rule forcing hotels, ticketing platforms, and subscriptions to show total price upfront, and why the related click-to-cancel rule got vacated in court.
4 minAI-Generated Marketing Content and the FTC: Reviews, Deepfakes, and Disclosure
How the FTC's fake reviews rule, impersonation enforcement, and shifting 2025/2026 AI policy affect AI-generated testimonials, ad creative, and marketing copy.
4 minThe Legal Rules Behind Loyalty Points and Referral Rewards
Loyalty points and 'give $10, get $10' referral rewards both carry real legal obligations, from unclaimed-property law to FTC endorsement disclosure rules.
5 minHealth and Supplement Marketing Claims: What You Can Legally Say
Health, wellness, and supplement marketing sits under a dual FTC/FDA jurisdiction, and unsubstantiated claims made by influencers can still land the brand in trouble.
4 minMarketing's Role in Data Breach Response
What marketing and comms specifically own when a data breach happens, and why the notification letter can matter as much as the patch.
4 minThe 2026 US State Privacy Law Patchwork
Twenty US states now have comprehensive privacy laws in effect, and no two are identical, here's how to build one compliance program that satisfies all of them.
4 minThe Legal Risk Hiding in Your UGC Campaign
Why reposting customer photos and running contests requires real rights clearance, not just a hashtag, and what happens when brands skip it.
4 minNaming a Competitor in Your Ads: What's Actually Legal
The Lanham Act standard for comparative advertising, what makes a 'better than' claim defensible, and real lawsuits over competitor comparisons.
5 minUnsubscribe Mechanics: What the Law Actually Requires
The real technical requirements CAN-SPAM, GDPR, and CASL impose on the unsubscribe process, and the common violations companies commit without realizing it.
5 minInternational Marketing Compliance Beyond Privacy Law
Running campaigns in the EU, UK, and Canada means more than GDPR, advertising standards bodies, language rules, and consumer protection law all change what you can say.
5 minAI Training Data, Copyright, and What Marketers Should Watch
AI-generated marketing assets carry real, unresolved copyright risk, here's what the current litigation means for marketers and how to think about indemnification and provenance.
5 minTactics for experienced marketers.