Katherine Tuominen And Darren Discuss Navigating Marketing Compliance And Regulation

Katherine Tuominen joins Darren to discuss the often misunderstood landscape of marketing compliance and the stark realities of navigating regulation across different channels and regions. They explore where the compliance line actually sits, revealing that it is frequently drawn by platforms, retailers, and professional bodies rather than just the regulator, and examine the challenges of taking the same product into two different markets. A supplement claim that clears US rules under DSHEA often meets a very different test under the TGA, explaining why a single set of global assets rarely survives the crossing.

The conversation delves into the structural flaws of the agency pitch process, which frequently selects for winning ideas that a regulated client cannot legally use, leaving clients to discover the reality only after the contract is signed. Katherine explains the cost of the "safe version" of copy and why poorly converting, legal-proofed text is usually a briefing failure—where constraints arrive at the approval stage instead of the brief—rather than a compliance tax. They also discuss the true value of a properly written testimonial under FTC and therapeutic goods advertising rules, the liability brands carry for claims improvised by influencers, and the high cost of assuming a client's legal team has checked the work.

Finally, they address the strategic impact of vertical exclusivity when an agency will only hold a single brand in a category, the speed problem of telehealth scaling faster than its own regulation, and the emerging risks of the AI layer. With answer engines repeating a brand's most frequently stated claims rather than its best-evidenced ones, Katherine highlights how this creates live risks for regulated categories and builds the business case for funding slower, heavily evidenced claims.

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For more episodes of TrinityP3’s Managing Marketing podcast, visit https://www.trinityp3.com/managing-marketing-podcasts/

Recorded on RiversideFM and edited, mixed and managed by JML Audio with thanks to Jared Lattouf.