How does your agency ensure brand guidelines are consistently applied across all creative outputs?

In order to ensure full compliance, both our Head of Design and also the leading Account Management team member have to sign off on any work before leaves the agency. We pride ourselves on our team becoming an extension of your brand team and constantly growing and holding brand IP and information. We want to be brand custodians that are pushing visually but adhering to all guidelines and rules consistently across all project work.  It is important to note upfront that the key success here really comes down the induction process when onboarding - the more details the better.

Please provide an example where your creative recommendation was adapted or reworked due to compliance concerns — how did you manage the risk while retaining impact

One of the most regulated and restrictive industries is the tobacco industry and we have worked with Imperial Brands since starting the agency. As Australia is known as a 'Dark Market' every idea, regardless of how creative or complex, must be approved by their corporate and legal (CLA) team due to the penalties that could be implemented.  For the past 2 years we have run their activation at the Metcash Expo in the Gold Coast and our work is a great example of where the brand / marketing client gets very excited but the final executional result can end up being very corporate and 'safe' - the case study highlights the original response activation renders vs actual final result / execution that went ahead.  In essence, we now work very closely with the CLA team and ensure they are involved at initial briefing stage and communicate clear guardrails to make the process much more efficient and align to all approvals within the business.

If developing digital creative, how do you ensure compliance with privacy law and consumer data protection?

When developing digital creative we ensure both privacy law and all consumer data protection is covered by integrating privacy by design into our work and execution. Such as obtaining informed consent, age gating, using encryption and ensuring all privacy policies are available and transparent to access. We also conduct regular auditing to check ongoing compliance.

What processes do you follow to ensure compliance with advertising codes and industry regulations (e.g., ABAC in alcohol marketing, AANA code of ethics, retailer-specific creative guidelines)?

Internally here at AU all our employees are trained across our clients legal compliance and risk standards and inducted / educated across industry standard regulatory codes and bodies etc. We determine for each of our clients which are the relevant industry codes and ensure all team members are trained and educated and these key guidelines are captured in all training and onboarding documents and policies. We always involve our clients legal and compliance teams early on in the process (if we feel an idea is ‘high risk’ or ‘controversial’) and ensure that all campaign key assets are reviewed and approved by internal bodies and going through external regulatory approvals if required. Ongoing monitoring and review from senior team members to ensure compliance across approvals and the process in all campaign work. 

We have access to an ABAC compliant checker - a custom tool that has been developed to ensure we adhere to ABAC regulations. This custom tool verifies and advises whether content that has been developed by our creative teams are ABAC compliant. The tool flags words or phrases that may not be ABAC compliant and provides suggestions on how to improve. This provides us another checkpoint in the creative process to ensure compliance and minimise risk.