Name: The CMO and CCO Guide to Marketing Rule Compliance for Growth-Focused Teams
Uploaded: 2026-04-23T16:16:03.945Z
Duration: 1 h 12 s
Description: The CMO and CCO Guide to Marketing Rule Compliance for Growth-Focused Teams

Transcript for "The CMO and CCO Guide to Marketing Rule Compliance for Growth-Focused Teams": Hi, everyone. Welcome to today's webinar, the CMO and CCO Guide to Marketing Rule Compliance for Growth Focused Teams. I'm Allison Cooley. I'm the senior director of product marketing here at Comply, and I'm really excited to invite my guests here today. We have Wendy Werby, who's the chief market officer of Comply. She has grown and scaled marketing teams with very high velocity in marketing strategy, so she brings a really interesting perspective to the table today. And then we, of course, have Dorothy Padzemni, and she's our director of comprehensive consulting services. So I imagine if I were to go look over to the people in the webinar, there's probably a lot of Dorothy's clients here. So I'm sure that you're excited, and we probably see you in the comments. Dorothy is, of course, managing a big body of work with our consulting team. But in a past life, she was a CTO at a very high growth firm. And so today is a webinar. We've got slides, but we're really focused on making it a little bit more panel style, a little bit more conversational. So we won't be draining the slides, but we will be sending them out after the fact. So I'm just gonna get through a couple of housekeeping pieces. So we're doing introductions housekeeping. Dorothy's gonna do a refresher on the marketing pool. We are not gonna bore you with it all. I think most of the people here are informed on it. But if you're not, we'll send those materials out after the fact. And then we're gonna really get into compliance and marketing. So how do these two teams work together? How can they create synergies and scale and grow without getting each other's way and making sure that what's best for the firm is what's happening in the business? We're gonna get deep into marketing and AI. Right? It's everywhere. I it's very difficult to escape the AI conversation at this point, especially in financial services, especially within marketing. And then we're just gonna wrap things up. So we'll have a couple of poll questions during the webinar. We would love to read them out, but we might get a little distracted. We're gonna leverage those poll questions to create content after the event, so we'll be sending that out. And then a couple of just other housekeeping pieces is, as I said earlier, a recording of today's session will be available on demand. We'll also have the slides ready for you. I wanna kick things off, Wendy. I'll start with you. You know, I would love to hear we've talked talked about this a lot. Like, what is keeping chief CMOs up at night, especially in the age of AI while you're trying to build and scale teams, but do it in a responsible way. So paint the picture for us from that CMO lens of what's going on with marketing teams. Sure. There is a lot going on in marketing right now, especially in the age of eight of AI. All of the magic that AI can deliver, which is fantastic for marketers, is also creating a lot of challenges, particularly on the compliance side. We can distribute content, faster. We can create content faster. What that creates for us, though, is issues further, you know, kind of downstream on the compliance side and making sure that we are, you know, having those frameworks in place so that we can I wanna say we wanna be able to approve content faster? We wanna get it out there faster. But what keeps what keeps me up at night and probably most CMOs is how do we get things done faster, but how would how do we do it right? And how do we document what we're doing so that we can defend it that ever becomes an issue? And, Dorothy, I'm sure that you are getting so many questions from clients around AI, and I know we're particularly talking about marketing rule, but would love your thoughts as you advise other, chief compliance officers and compliance teams as we're entering, you know, just this force multiplier of AI content and AI workflows and things of that nature. Yeah. So I really from my perspective, I feel that AI can be an assistive tool, you know, to help with, you know, content creation or, workflows, anything like that to provide, like, a back office support. But the human piece is still very much a crucial component at the end of the day because, you know, AI doesn't pick up all components of the SCC marketing rule, and so you still have to have that human touch. I have firms right now that use AI to generate, you know, different graphics with context and to drive their content. And at the end of the day, I'm like, all of the consultants are still making corrections and amendments to these, proposed pieces. So I think that it can like I said, it can help, but not, you know, have total reliance on it. Yeah. And it's, you know, it's like the volume increases and the quality can increase, but the the downstream impact of that is more stuff. And, you know, I have reviewed what I would consider early on a lot of AI flop. Right? And so it's like, how do we prevent you know, how do we upscale our businesses because AI is new and prevent that AI flop that then can go into the hands of compliance. I'm excited to talk through some of those pieces today. But for our first poll question, which is probably something that everyone thinks about. Right? And so I'd love for the audience to weigh in here. If the SEC asks you how one of your recent marketing pieces was reviewed and approved, could you walk them through it step by step? And so please share your commentary here. It's so important to inform us as we and Dorothy and others are educating our clients of just what that looks like at your firm. I'm sure a lot of people on this webinar have already been gotten an exam letter or things like that. So excited to see what comes out of that. But next, we're just gonna have Dorothy run through the marketing rule. So if you can take it from here, Dorothy. Yeah. So I won't bore you with all the intricate details. But at a high level, what the SEC did was basically modernize the rules and bring everything under one umbrella to reflect how firms actually market today. So they looked at the demand. There was a lot of demand, you know, pushing towards testimonials and endorsements and digital content, and they met you guys, in the middle, but they also introduced some more prescriptive requirements around performance, particularly around hypothetical performance given the higher risk of it, potentially being misleading. But the real takeaway isn't, I would say, just the structure. It's the standard behind it. And everything must be accurate, complete, and presented in a way that doesn't create a misleading impression for clients or investors at the end of the day. And then next, if you could just remind everyone those key requirements. I feel like there's something, you know, when we were preparing for this webinar, it's like you glaze over, you kind of remember, but just digging into them a little bit more. Yeah. So the definition of advertising is much broader now. This isn't just your traditional materials. It includes your social media, your websites, essentially, your one to many communications. You know, since we are in the business of disclosures, I would say with full disclosure here, it also could encompass some one to one communication if you were providing hypothetical performance that was not solicited. So there's that. Like I said, they added to, testimonials and endorsements where those are allowed now, which was a big shift, from the previous rule. But they did come with some clear conditions around those, being allowed. So you have to have disclosure. You have to, you know, say if it was if you provided compensation, and you have to ensure that there was there's firm oversight if you're going to utilize, those avenues. And then there's performance advertising and a major, focus for that, which has stricter expectations, especially when it comes to hypothetical performance, like I was kind of just saying, you know, making sure it's not misleading. There's also a strong emphasis on substantiation. So if you're going to claim something, you really need to be able to back that up. So put your money where your mouth is. If you're going to state that your firm has over seventy seven years of a period period, you need to be able to substantiate. Complex and compensation also need to be clearly disclosed, particularly when there's an incentive behind something that you are presenting. And importantly, firms are expected to have formal marketing policies and procedures in place. So this isn't ad hoc. It needs to be structured and controlled. Overall, this is about putting guardrails around the modern, modern marketing while still allowing firms to communicate with the public just in a way that's transparent and compliant. Yeah. And if I can just add one thing here, those endorsements, those third party endorsements and client testimonials from a CMO perspective, from a marketing perspective, those are gold. We love those. Right. Right. This was this was a huge change to this rule, and I I wanna caution folks, don't move away from those. Just make sure that, Dorothy, as you were saying, that governance, that framework, having that in place is really important. I think a lot of marketers have sort of gotten complacent with some claims that maybe they can't substantiate, and usually they're very kind of in those testimonial or endorsement type types of communication. So I think that's that's an interesting change that was made. But certainly for marketers, very impactful. I completely agree with that, Wendy. That nothing is better than a client testimonial, so it's just really about, one, not saying we aren't gonna do that because we're not gonna manage this rule. Right? Because a a really talented marketing team is going to want those client testimonials all day every day. And then it's two going about it the right way. So speaking about testimonials and endorsements, we got our one and only SEC risk alert at the end of last year, Dorothy, that came out specifically around this. So I'd love for you to kinda cover that for anyone who still has questions on it or hasn't heard it yet. Yeah. I mean, as you said, Allison, the the one and only. The fact that the SEC only issued one risk alert last year, and it was focused on marketing, and advertising, that simply tells you that it is still a top priority for the SEC. Even a few years in of establishing this rule, firms are continuing to struggle with getting this right, hence the risk alert. The s e c for the risk alert, the SEC zeroed in on testimonials, endorsements, third party ratings, areas that are widely used but high risk if not handled properly. So common issues around those were incomplete disclosures, improper use of ratings, and content that could be considered misleading. So from a compliance perspective, this reinforces is that that this isn't a set it and forget it rule. Oversight here is a crucial component. It also highlights the need for continued training and education, especially for marketing teams and compliance working with marketing teams using these tools regularly. And the bottom line is, you know, look. If you're using testimonials or ratings, the SEC is paying attention, and they expect you to get these details right. Mhmm. You know what's interesting to me oh, sorry, Linda. I'll just add to that. It's almost the risk alert. It's almost the road map. Right? Yeah. And you can tell exactly where the scrutiny is gonna be focused. So that that is if you use those, that needs to be your priority. Yeah. And, you know, it's interesting. I think, you know, two years ago, if I remember correctly, at Comply Connect, we had an SEC speaker come in, and he talked a lot about, social media and fraud that's happening online with, you know, TikTok and all of these, you know, video based things where there's endorsements and testimonials. And so, you know, in this group, we're, like, the the ethical do gooders. Right? We're here to keep this rule upheld and do those things, but I can't help but look at this risk alert and not think about as I you know, in my personal life, scroll through TikTok and Instagram, seeing these things, and it gives me pause and a little bit of heartburn to think that there are, you know, you know, retail wealth investors and investors putting their money into things that are not substantiated, that are super fraudulent. So it's like, you know, this group here is ready to take it to the next step, but those bad actors that are just not gonna ever follow these rules that the SEC is looking for, it makes it all that more, prevalent. Right? Especially with AI where you can create these videos and of fake people doing fake endorsements. Like, I don't know. My head goes in a million different directions. So you know? And and no one here is trying to do that, but it is very interesting as we watch the social media kind of evolve even more. So let's dig into compliance and marketing. And, you know, here's our next poll question that Caroline on my team is gonna be kicking off, which is, you know, what is effective marketing and compliance review process look like when both teams are aligned and operating at speed? And so, Wendy, I would love for you as people kind of chime in to give your opinion on this. Sure. So I would say, first and foremost, speed at review is a signal of clarity upstream. So what I mean by that is, you know, speed on the review side is very important for marketing, but that starts at the very beginning. It doesn't start at, hey. Marketing created all this content. Here you go. Can you approve it? It's gotta be a process that is joined from the very beginning, from that content creation stage. Once you once you have that in place and that governance framework model, that shared risk model, you can actually see the speed happening on the marketing side. That that, from my perspective, is critical to get right very early in the process so that you can minimize a lot of the sort of informal, undocumented, approvals that may or may not be happening through those channels that that are not approved by the SEC. Those, you know yes. That's approved or through Slack or whatever. But but I would say it has to start very, very far upstream. Yeah. It's interesting you say that. So Caroline, I've mentioned before, who's, managing this webinar, came from State Street. So she has a lot of experience with working in marketing at a firm. Right? And so some of the things we were talking about is around bringing compliance in at the beginning. So when you're submitting and Wendy, you know this. We've worked together a long time. If I'm submitting something and it goes to legal and compliance, they don't know the whole story. And marketers are creative. We move fast. And and so when they're reviewing it without the context, it makes it harder for them. And so one of the best ways from my perspective is, you know, always bringing them along for the ride, you know, sharing that high level overview of the marketing strategy, the campaigns, and running the themes so that they have knowledge that makes it easier for them to review the goal, the purpose, not just kind of, like, a check the box activity. Right? And, Dorothy, we talked about this too, so I'd love your thought your experience. I know you worked, obviously, with as a CCO with a CMO, some of the the things that you guys would do there too. Yeah. So I quickly learned that, you know, you have to be collaborative. You know, the compliance officer doesn't want to be a bottleneck when it comes to marketing. And, you know, there's a shared understanding, I think, that needs to be established, upfront and some, you know, education around the marketing role with that marketing person that, you know, you're collaborating with. So I think that is going to reduce, you know, the amount of revisions. You know, oftentimes, I would get a piece, and then I would completely butcher it and send it back. And she's like, really? You know? But at the same token, it's like, I'm the gatekeeper. You know? So I think if there's that collaboration and shared understanding upfront, it's gonna result in fewer revisions, faster turnaround times, you know, minimize frustration on both ends. And, you know, it it will produce more efficiency around, you know, the a compliant content framework. Yeah. I agree. So our next slide is a little bit more of a a framework like we talked about. And, again, we don't wanna drain it, but it they're gonna be providing these assets of just kind of what marketing is doing, what compliance is doing. This slide is very tactical to me. It's not the strategic pieces. It's not that. But just definitely a blueprint for the teams to think through how those alignments work. So any big reactions as we look through this? I think I just wanna highlight here that compliance is just about setting guardrails. So clarifying what is an ad versus what's not and what rules kick in for the specific avenue that you're wanting to utilize. Making sure everything is transparent. There's right disclosures. The conflicts are addressed. Taking a closer look at your performance, to ensure it's presented fairly and not misleading, double checking your claims, making sure you can back those up, and putting a structure around that whole process. So reviews, approvals, and documentation are clear so you can just wash, rinse, and repeat, basically. And we lost Wendy, but we're gonna keep going. She's got a little bit of an Internet issue because she's traveling right now. But let's get into this while she, resumes and joins us back. Where do you see our next poll question is where do you see firms struggling the most when trying to improve marketing reviews, process design, technology, or coordination between teams. So this is going into the poll question. I'm excited to see what people are coming, you know, back with. But any comments here from from you, Dorothy or Wendy? I think from a compliance perspective, sometimes, there's not a complete understanding of the marketing rule, and I think that can hinder the collaboration with the marketing department because you're trying to educate them, but maybe you're not totally educated yourself. Right? So I think that also plays into a struggle, but also, you know, collaboration. You know, how do you collaborate with the marketing team that wants to move at a fast pace and on your end, you're worried about risk. So, you know, trying to meet in the middle of the road there as well. Yeah. And I would say it's that speed issue. Right? It's that desire for marketing to wanna move very, very quickly without a full appreciation of the marketing rule. I think that acceptable use policy, sitting down the two teams and creating that acceptable use sort of that, universal one or two page document that kind of outlines here here's what both sides are most interested in. Here are the priorities for both. And then figuring out, Dorothy, you said a little bit earlier, where do you meet in the middle? How do you meet in the middle? And I'm gonna tell you, most marketers say, I don't I don't need an a plus in compliance. Right? I just don't want to get, you know, an f in it. And the the compliance leaders are saying, hey. We're really proud of compliance, and we don't wanna get audited. Right? So we don't want we need to be exam ready. So where where is that sweet spot where you can meet in the middle? And I think the firms that do it really well are the ones that sit down and create that shared acceptable use risk tolerance policy early on. I agree, Wendy. Communication on that is just huge to me. Right. I mean and, you know, one of the things and and we'll talk through these slides because it's got a lot of good rich content on the next couple of slides. But, you know, we talked about speed and control, the time to market, the risk mitigation, the style of systems and data. Right? So you might be using, you know, product management tools for the marketing content to design process. Right? And then it might go into a compliance tool for the review and stuff. Like, technology is everywhere, and there's plenty of resources to be able to use. But one of the things that, you know, and I love is the continuing education piece. Right? And so it's like how can the compliance team help educate the marketing team early on and training and work with you whether it's HR or, you know, a company like Comply that helps with continuing education of making sure that they feel comfortable and confident, that the vocabulary and the words and everything that goes into these pieces are accurate are good. Because, Wendy, you know, we've we manage teams in marketing, and part of that is part of just marketing is feeling comfortable and confident that what you put on paper is good enough to go on a billboard or in advertising or in a commercial. So there's already that kind of imposter syndrome. Not saying it's with everyone, but it is in marketing that is this right. And then to have it go through a review of experts is a little intimidating, especially for junior level marketers. So wanna hear your thoughts on that. Because as a manager of people reviewing all that, it's hard to then go up and down. Right? It is. It is. And I think the hardest part for marketers marketers are creative. They're out of the box thinkers. And very often, the concern becomes, hey. If I've gotta put it through legal or compliance, my creativity is going to be diluted. Right? My my message is going to become undifferentiated, and I'm gonna lose sort of that that marketing possess that I'm really trying to build as a marketer. And I think there are, you know, that and that is a real challenge. Right? Anytime you put anything through legal, they're gonna strip everything out of it without and and they're your first level of defense defensibility. Right? They wanna know, hey. What do you have that says that we can say this? Which is great. But to your point, I think, educating the team very early on, I think I I was just thinking this as you were saying it. I think all CMOs or all CCOs, either one can initiate it, take each other to lunch, sit down, have a conversation, and then figure out do a lunch and learn with your teams. Because teams will fall in line, and and for marketers, they just have to think a little bit differently. Right? Just they just maybe think a little bit differently about how they're gonna market something, and it's really an opportunity also. Right? How can I and it's not, you know, how can I side step this? But it's more, okay. I understand what the guardrails are. And every every marketer I know loves the challenge too. Right? So and how can I build this within those guardrails and still stand out and still get my message across? Yeah. It's funny. So I was sharing with Dorothy the other day, you know, and you know this. We've known each other for forever. But I left I went to a company and and we owned a bunch of restaurants and and nightclubs and things like that. It was very you know, I was young and I decided to go do something fun, I thought. And, we had a a bunch of restaurant locations in Louisville, Kentucky, and they have this rule where you can't advertise free alcohol. And so I would get all these submissions for and I know it's like buy one get one free, And they kept the managers kept sending it in different variations of the free alcohol. So it'd be like, two for one. Can I do this? And it would backlog me. And I'm I had to finally call them, and I was like, listen. It's all born from the same concept, which is we cannot advertise alcohol in this location for free. So it just always cracks me up because it's not related to regulatory compliance that I'm sure people in the comments are kind of laughing of. There's probably those few terms or that one person that's just not getting it that is trying to get that message across, and you're like, no. No. No. No. The message is denied upfront. Right? And so bringing them I love the idea of having that lunch together, and they're like, and there's a lot of women in marketing, and there's a lot of women in compliance. So I can't think of a better lunch to have, right, to get to know each other and learn. So I'm talking a lot. Dorothy, I'd love your thoughts as we kind of work through this. Well, that was kind of my upfront experience as a CCO with the marketing team. It, you know, it was my first time kind of stepping in that CCO role. And like you said, like, marketing is creative, and they want everything to be vibrant and eye catching. And, you know, I was kind of, like I don't wanna say her enemy at the time, but it was like, you know, not to run everything through you, and this is gonna get demolished. So if I would've if I could look back and, you know, say something that I would do differently, it would establish that relationship upfront of, like, we're partners, we're, you know, we can be friends, and we can do this together hand in hand versus, this is frustrating. I don't know how I'm gonna do my job, and I'm look. I'm having to flag the same things over and over. This is time consuming for me. So I think just establishing, you know, training and boundaries and rules upfront is is so good. I think that's a great idea. Well and I think also, you know, building that relationship is super important. Allison and I worked together at an email marketing software company, and we avoided compliance. Like, we never we did not wanna get a call. We did not want them getting wind of anything that we were doing. But there are there are real impacts, right, that marketing is unaware of. And, you know, it's a it it was a different industry, but there are real impacts to your deliverability reputation. Right? That if you run a foul of those, you know, compliance rules, you know, and unbeknownst to kind of us because we're we don't live that that world. So I agree with you. Building that relationship and, and it can be a really positive collaborative relationship like you started off the conversation saying. Yeah. I mean, both groups want to grow the firm in an ethical and responsible and really great way. I think that, like, it just makes a lot of sense for the two to come together because there's that shared desire. Right? Right. So Oh, I might be echoing. Bear with me if I'm not Alright. Getting into turning marketing review into a scalable system. So I know that these groups the three of us love scale. Right? We do not wanna be in a manual process. We do not wanna reinvent the wheel. That whole thing I shared earlier about the, you know, buy one, get one free, like, we gotta put put an end to that. So, Dorothy, can you walk us through some of these strategies as from a CCO compliance team perspective? Yeah. I think setting up a clear process between the two teams is, you know, ideal here and crucial. So, you know, what needs to be reviewed by client, compliance? And most oftentimes, my answer would be everything, just because I want eyes on anything going out just so I can protect and mitigate risk. Right? So I think, you know, there's that. And then also, you know, where are we going to communicate? Like, on what platform? What technology piece comes in? Do we all have centralized location, to govern these pieces and communicate back and forth? And from a compliance perspective, you know, is it documenting the initial, proposed piece, any comments, who approved it after? So there's that documentation piece as well. You know, my RA or, comply for RA sorry. Rebranded. Comply for RA. It houses marketing reviews. So a marketing, individual can submit something, for compliance to review. There's notes that they can take. When I was with my previous firm, I was introduced to Monday board, and I thought that was phenomenal and a great way to, you know, centralize the reviews and, documentation. So just a couple of ideas that I found helpful or if they're helpful. Yeah. I mean, we use Monday. It's a fantastic tool. Not this is not a endorsement or test or whatever you would call. I'm not gonna pay for that. But it is really fantastic because it does keep that stuff streamlined. And I know Wendy's a big fan of it because she knows at any point where all the balls are in the air. So it does help clean that. You know, I had dinner the other night with a few clients, and I was hearing this one client kind of explain how they're leveraging AI. And I thought it was really cool. So the people thought, you know, Right. PPT that, that Wendy, do you mind muting yourself? I can get my echo? Okay. Thanks. The GPT and so they have their marketing team running copy through that that derisks it a bit that they can play with, and then they go ahead and submit it. And it's starting to reduce the friction and give them more confidence. And I was sharing back with them that, you know, we've created in our marketing team a regulatory fact checker GPTs, just the basic name for it. And our marketing team loves it because they are not bombarding our consultants that need to be focused on our clients with questions around, did I get this rule right or did I say this? They can go through, make sure that the rules and regulations and then the things that are in the content that they're writing, whether it's a social media post or a blog post, are accurate. And then it's way easier review period from someone internally that can bless that as good and solid. So any other comments from the other side? Yeah. Yeah. I won't. Sorry. I was so excited to jump in here. I do think that's a really important part of this scale piece. I think that, AI can reduce some of that really heavy lifting at the top, but to the point Darcy, Dorothy made a little bit earlier, you need that human. Right? But it's gonna take take a lot of the bulk out of the top part of it by using AI to kind of, hey. Let's let's at least get rid of the obvious areas of concern. But then, Dorothy, to your point, having that it makes it a whole lot easier for a human to be able to look through it knowing that it's going to be more probably more correct than not. And but there will be nuances within each one. I do think I will keep coming back to scalable systems are created by having those guardrails in place. You know, if your team is asking at the end of the day, you know, is this okay, you know, not sure before they're sending it over, your guardrails aren't strict enough. You wanna reduce the number of times your teams are asking those questions before they're passing them over. That speed of review is going to happen when you have, you know, that those guardrails in place and those processes in place and where it's embedded from the very beginning. So it's that embedding it from the beginning piece and not waiting until the very end where it then always somehow becomes a scramble. And then a people wanna defend their point of view, and then that's where all of the lack of documentation happens as well. You know, as you describe all of this, I'm just thinking to myself, it's kind of beneficial in a lot of ways to work in a regulated industry of marketing because it requires you to have a really strong process. And, you know, marketing teams and other businesses, things can get loosey goosey, balls can drop. Like, this almost keeps the marketing team very honest to a calendar, a campaign strategy, something that's way built out in advance. So I almost know that we're talking through it, look at it as a blessing to have the accountability of having to have other layers approve things because it it forces your team and keeps your marketing team accountable for getting ahead of things because no marketer, like, hair on fire. We need to get this out the door moments. And so when you've got that engine running and that moment does happen where someone's speaking under them or a client needs a testimonial or a testimonial coming out, whatever it may be, you can then dedicate time to that because you've got that resource allocation pretty pretty leveled out. Right? Yeah. And, actually, that's a really good point too because as you were saying that, I was thinking you also have a second level of credibility. Right? Built from the two of the claims that you're making, the testimonials that you have out there, the endorsements. It's you know that if you have to defend it, that that sort of oversight and accountability and having to do that as that level of credibility. Because like you said, there's so much noise and in many other industries, people just throw adjectives around like they're going out of style. It's leading this, top that, best this, global that. You know, every marketer is looking for every single adjective possible without having to defend their use of that term. But, you know, in this industry where you actually have to defend it, that level of credibility that you're getting from that is actually kind of a nice long tail benefit. Mhmm. Absolutely. Alright. Let's see what's on our next slide because it escapes. So getting into con creation and execution. So we've talked about this a lot. I don't think we need to drain this slide. And as I said, we'll share this out. But, yeah, the single system of record, the risk based review models, the continuous model monitoring and testing, Comply has tools for that. There's plenty of tools out outside of Comply in different areas of business. But, you know, going back to that, it's really, really about that framework and and defining that process. So let's jump back into AI since it is everywhere in the ether. What role should AI realistically play in financial marketing today? Where does human judgment still need to lead? So this is for the audience. You know, I think that's what's really interesting and I've I've run most of our webinars here, so I have the benefit of seeing a lot of the comments and the poll data and the reactions from people is, you know, when we first started talking about this last year, it was really around just copy. Right? And now it's AI workflows and form a d d part and form and policy and procedure disclosures and all of these different things of how AI tools are coming in. So really interested to see how this poll question shakes out, in the comment section. And then as I say that, I don't know who wants to answer first, but I'm really excited to talk through this with you ladies. Yeah. I mean, I'm happy to to give my perspective on where I see AI really, the role AI playing on the marketing side and sort of where that dovetails, with the the compliance piece of it. You know, as as any good marketer will tell you, AI should play a really aggressive role in content drafting, personalization, distribution planning, and ideation. So what we see with AI, and I mentioned this a little bit earlier, it's really solved the output constraint that used to limit marketing teams. But what it can't do, and Dorothy has weighed on this weighed in on this a couple of times, it can't assess whether a claim is substantiated or whether disclosure is required. Those require judgment. Those requires human judgment, and AI does not have that. AI has a lot of confidence, but it it cannot actually provide that judgment. So, humans must review anything before it touches the channel. So you can have AI build the draft, but you need you must, must, must have those humans reviewing it before it goes anywhere. So, you know, in short, I would say AI is exceptional at production, but it has no ability to assess whether what it produced is something your firm can actually stand behind and defend. So I agree 100%. Yeah. I mean, I just remember early on with AI, it was making up case studies. And I'm like, where on god's green earth did you come up with this? Where did you find that? This is not true. So it does give me a little bit of heartburn, and and that's really about prompting. Right? And so, you know, prompt engineering is a webinar in and of itself, but, you know, being able to prompt it, being able to put the guardrails in AI, whether your firm is leveraging an enterprise version of Cloud or ChatGPT or Gemini, Propexy, whatever it may be, or if you're using AI, generative AI, and maybe, like, you know, your marketing automation system or your a content creation tool or whatever it may be. That that was that little, you know, making things up can land compliance teams and marketing teams in hot water if that isn't controlled with the AI tool. It really struggles oh, sorry. I'll just No. Don't let me go. From my perspective, AI also really struggles with subjective words. Even though you say, like, don't use subjective words, it still struggles with that. And so, I mean, I would say a lot of the pieces that I've gotten, I have to go in and strip up subjective language, you know, and just some of the most simple components. So I would just say, like, it's good for to draft you know, help you draft content because we see it all the time, but, you know, you still need the human touch for sure before anything gets through the gates. Yeah. I mean, Wendy and I have this conversation because both of us are writers by heart about the AI sentence structure and the tells. So you always it it doesn't it's not just the MDash in ChatGPT or the colon and Claude. It's the, it's not this, it's that, but that. And it's like the second you start to realize these sentence structure patterns and, you know, anyone who's got questions in the comments, I'm happy to give you my my instructions where I'm like, if I see the sentence structure one more time. And you liked it at first because it is, like, you know, poppy and, like, crisp, but then you see it everywhere. And I'm like, AI. AI. AI. Yeah. It is it is very easy to identify. That's for sure. Yeah. And then again, I would say opportunity for marketers to really stand out is to create that differentiated differentiated voice because there are so many tells with AI. And it is you see it everywhere. Right? You see it on LinkedIn. You see it in marketing materials. You see it in other written documents. And it is sort of, it's becoming kind of, like, that slop language. So I do see an opportunity for marketers to just really rethink. You know, take it for the drafting for this, you know, the the the output that you can get, but really use it as an opportunity to personalize it and then do it within the guardrails that you're already working with your CCO on. I actually think that for for marketers, there's a lot of opportunity in here to do that creative work that they really love to do, you know, without sort of advocating all responsibility to AI, which we can't do anyway. Well, it's so funny you say that, Wendy, because, you know, every brand wants their perfect tone of voice guide and their perfect scent like and we've worked at places that have had wonderful, you know, brand guides. But this actually forced to comply to come up with a tone of voice guide. And and and and you you think, oh, of course, Allison, you should have that. Not when you're in the weeds all day every day in the meetings creating. Like, it it the force multiplier of AI gave us the chance to step back and strategically think about what our tone of voice is, how we wanna come across, the types of terms we're using. So it is exciting exciting to experience the, you know, people who wanna do the whole thing. 100%. Awesome. Mostly we don't look at the whole list before we before we Yep. We Yep. We're constantly getting ahead of ourselves. So we covered all of this. And then right? This is we've covered the two, governing AI use and marketing and marketing and things of that nature, you know, extending marketing control rules, you know, all of these different things. I think one thing I'd love Dorothy to touch on is the capture documentation and version history from that compliance perspective. Any any thoughts or comments that you've got there? Yeah. I mean, really, the SEC wants to see or state for that matter. They wanna see the beginning to the end. So they wanna see what was the first piece like, what was the first draft, where did this content kind of, you know, derived from? So you you need to tell a story. You know, compliance officers, like, let's go back to the beginning of the webinar, and it was like, you know, if the SEC came in today, basically, like, could you demonstrate your process for them? So I think this kind of intertwines with that essentially is, you know, if you're going to use AI, first of all, how do you govern it? Do you have a policy around it? But then, also, can you tell the story of where you started from where you ended up and where you landed. And then, also, it shows the supervision from a CCO standpoint of, okay. This is where we started, but this is where we ended. This was all the revisions, you know, that took place to ensure that it was accurate to send out, and we felt comfortable with it. So Yeah. And I mean, with the SEC and FINRA having AI for the first time explicitly stated, right, in these priorities for 2026, I would imagine marketing review is is going to be, you know, similar to opt channel sweep. Right, Dorothy? It was like, same rule, but we're looking at it from a very different angle. And so I think all three of us in this call are you know, as we as we talk to clients and we prepare them for annual reviews and and exams and things of that nature, really making sure that things are tight around AI as, you know, the SEC goes in and starts to really explore this from a way different lens than they have in the past. And I would I would add to that, agree with all of this. And just keep in mind, right, the SCC can't see intent. You know, states and s they can't see intent. They can only see what you can reconstruct. So all of these, you know, sort of shadow processes that AI can lead to, those are some of the challenges people need to be aware of. Because it I think one of the biggest risks with AI is it is going to, result in some of this shadow process happening, which, you know, you you can't use in an exam and you can't use that to show, that you're documenting every step in the workflow or that you're documenting every, version that you've had. So keep that in mind. Like, the SCC doesn't they don't care that you have good intent. They wanna see that it was documented and that you can prove it. Right. And it goes back to the heart of the rule. Right? We don't wanna mislead investors. We don't wanna mislead these are people's livelihoods. This is their retirement. This is their kids' future. This is generational wealth. This is, you know, your entire, you know, work worth, you know, as you invest it. And, you know, we see bad headlines. We see things that are happening in the news. And so it's just really, really critical that and I know that we're in a good room of people who believe that that we never forget that we're we're really acting in the best interest of the investors, the clients, and the market. Right? I mean, I think my favorite thing about working in this industry is that the way that CCOs and compliance teams view themselves, like, the words that they use to describe themselves. Right? Ethical. Right? You know, stewards, you know, different things. I was talking to a woman at, a dinner the other night, and she was explaining that she came from operations and had gone into compliance. And and her mentor had her take a personality test and is trying to to convince her to be the designated CCO, and she was feeling a little apprehensive about it. But, you know, that's kind of the way these teams operate. It's the ethical. It's the smart. It's the you know, knows how to look at something objectively. And then so why, you know, making sure that we're just keeping everyone protected and and advert and also, like, advertising your firm to get those people to grow their wealth. Right? You want them growing your wealth with them. You wanna be, you know, the firm that climate that people are coming to. I think that's a great point that you just made around the the level of responsibility that CCOs have within their organization. And when you stop to think about, I asked you know, when I first started here at Comply, I said, hey. When when a CCO or somebody in compliance or a head of when they go home and tell their kids, this is why I love my job or this is this is what I'm super proud of about my job, I said, what, you know, what would the most likely answer be? And I asked I asked her how to product, David Bliss this, and he said, you know, I think they would tell you I am very proud that I am enabling the financial systems to operate with integrity. And, you know, for maybe for a market and stuff, but it's it's, hey. I I am the reason why the financial system works because when I do my part, when all of us do our part, and it's your point, Allison, it's that, you know, that couple that's retiring in a couple years. It's that family that's trying to buy a home. It's, you know, the the kid whose, whose parents are trying to send them to college. These are these are all really big milestone events that are super impactful. And when you see who's really sitting at the intersection of, you know, making sure that people believe and have have faith that that system is going to function properly, it really does come down to, you know, your chief compliance officers, your heads of compliance, every single person who works on a compliance team has that responsibility. And, you know, to some degree, a lot of exposure too. And they are I think they are, you know, incredibly proud that, hey. These systems work because I'm doing my part. I I agree, Wendy. I think on the same token, you know, definitely proud, but also, you know, causes them to lose a little bit of sleep at night. So I think there's that that even trade off. Right? More responsibility to mitigate risk that's, you know, it's gonna be impactful. Alright. Y'all, this is just this is flown by. Thank you both. Wendy, if you can mute yourself, and thank you all, for our connectivity issues. You know, we're doing our best. The Internet will be the Internet, but thank you for joining. Dorothy, Wendy, thank you so much for being part of this. I'm really excited to go through all the comments that everyone's been pouring in. I'm excited for Dorothy to connect with her clients afterwards. If you need anything, I'll probably get to you before you get to me, but we'll be sending these materials out. We'll be creating more materials. I think one of the biggest things is, you know, if you didn't invite your marketing team to this event, we'll make sure you get a copy to send it to them because we want them to feel like, you know, they get they can learn from a lot of this as well. And I'm excited for the next one. So thank you both, and thank you everyone else. Thank you. This was a lot of amazing work. Thank you. Bye. Bye.