Marketing Issues

Companies and organizations use many different marketing channels to reach existing and potential customers, including email campaigns, online advertising, sweepstakes, and telemarketing. Marketing is heavily regulated at both the federal and state level, and compliance is a challenge for any company. Adding to the burden, new legislative and regulatory initiatives arise every day, and marketing has become interwoven with the privacy debate. In particular, there is a growing concern about the type of information collected from users and how it is used in targeted advertising and other marketing efforts. There is also concern over what many consumers feel is an invasion of privacy when they receive commercial email, telemarketing calls, and other commercial communications promoting goods and services. Failure to comply with these marketing laws and regulations has resulted in class action lawsuits, state Attorney General actions, and/or FTC or FCC enforcement actions, with all of the attendant costs in terms of legal fees, time, and negative media coverage.