Category Legal update

January 12, 2014,  Consumer behaviour, Essential Law for Marketers, Legal update, News, Social marketing practice  No comments

One of the most engaging and powerful aspects of B2C and B2B customer marketing and communications is prize promotions, competitions, promotions and incentives.

And they are also some of the most difficult things to get right, requiring an understanding of a complex web of competition, data protection, and media laws and regulations as discussed in Essential Law for Marketers.

However, given the appetite of regulators to want to tighten data protection across a number of areas including sales and marketing practices, the use of prize promotions, competitions, promotions and incentives as a way of lead generation is the latest to fall victim of new controls.

As I discussed a ...

December 31, 2013,  Essential Law for Marketers, Guru in a Bottle, Legal update, Marketing practice, News, Sales practice  No comments

UK-based companies will face a major shake-up in how they conduct consumer sales and marketing activities over the next 12-months in the wake of a raft of new laws and regulations emanating from the UK and European Union (EU). The following is a quick guide to some of these key legal and regulatory changes and more guidance is available in Essential Law for Marketers (2^nd edition).

Direct marketing and e-commerce practices

A radical shake up in this area is already underway as the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has signalled a number of important changes that effectively erode the reliance by marketers on an ‘opt-out’ as a strategy for driving direct marketing (DM)...

December 28, 2013,  Consumer behaviour, Essential Law for Marketers, Guru in a Bottle, Legal update, News, Sales practice  No comments

Indian consumers could soon be shopping in hypermarkets partly owned and managed by Western retailers as a result of the relaxation in Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) regulations see a surge of business interest and investment from European brand owners in 2014.

For example, it’s just been announced that British supermarket chain Tesco is the first international retailer to have its plan to invest USD 10m (GBP 67m) approved by India’s Commerce and Trade Ministry. The deal paves the way for Tesco in partnership with a Tata subsidiary to open multi-brand stores across India by taking a 50% stake in Trent Hypermarkets, which in turn operates Star Bazaar stores in the sta...

December 14, 2013,  Essential Law for Marketers, Legal update, News  3 comments

Many marketers are ill-prepared for the impact of a raft of new regulations that will severely curtail their direct marketing (DM) activities in 2014.

Recently, the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office signalled changes that marketers must implement NOW within business to consumer (B2C) marketing in order to stay within the law and these include:

• where consent is obtained from the customer to receive DM, separate opt-in consent must also be gathered in order to send DM messages on each and every other marketing channel;
• a higher burden of proof of customer consent is now required to be shown by marketers, irrespective of whether the marketing channel is telephone, mo...

July 7, 2013,  Essential Law for Marketers, Guru in a Bottle, Legal update  No comments

INTRODUCTION

Ever since the furore over the UK phone hacking scandal in 2011 engulfed the owners of News International as well as politicians of all political parties, the Government and law enforcement officers, the issue of privacy and electronic communications has become a national obsession.

The public revulsion that followed the disclosure of the hacking of private phone messages of murder and terrorist victims and war widows didn’t just rip apart the UK’s biggest selling Sunday newspaper the News of the World but also raised serious questions about the legal safeguards in place to protect an individual’s right to privacy whilst at the same time protecting freedom of...