What Every Marketer Must Know About Risk and Liability

Compliance, corporate governance and recent legislation such as Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) are nothing new to corporate executives who run the risk of exorbitant fines and even jail time for failing to conform to recent mandates. But what's new is this: Accountability for corporate compliance and risk—areas that were once reserved for the upper echelons of an organization—is now making its way to the marketing department.

That's because marketing's sizeable budget and activities have an enormous impact on customers and shareholders alike.

Paradoxically, marketers—who's sole job is to ensure the proper communication of a company's position through external media and branding efforts—tend to do a poor job of articulating those messages internally, to peers in departments such as sales, manufacturing, R&D, regulatory, compliance and legal. As a result, the lack of streamlined internal communications between marketing and the rest of the organization creates severe compliance risks that can tarnish a company's reputation, destroy brands, and create severe legal implications and monetary risk.

Further complicating matters is the use of existing marketing automation solutions, because they exacerbate the situation faster than non-automated methods could.

To avoid the most common compliance risks arising from uncoordinated marketing activities, marketers need to first understand where their vulnerabilities lie before they can detect and eliminate such risks.

Areas of Compliance Problems

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Chetan Saiya is the founder, chairman and CEO of Assetlink. Contact him at Chetan.Saiya@assetlink.com.