This story was co-authored by Anna Balkrishna.
The PR director was excited to post her first infographic to the company’s Twitter and Facebook feeds. She’d hired a terrific artist to create a vertically scrolling illustration of the unique challenges faced by families whose children have special needs. She wanted to run it during the Paralympics, which were a month away. So she sent it through for legal and compliance review… and waited.
Three months later, the infographic was approved as-is, with no changes. There was, however, one odd, vexing requirement: Compliance declared it could not be displayed on the web as an image file. It had to be featured as a letter-sized PDF. Users would have to download the PDF in order to see the infographic, which had to be spread over two separate pages. The reasoning? In its original form, the legal disclaimer would not be seen by readers who didn’t scroll to the bottom of the tall infographic. When downloaded and printed, however, the legal reviewer felt confident they could say the disclaimer was delivered to the reader.
These kinds of stories make us want to cry.
“Two decades into the Internet era, most companies continue to operate as paper-first organizations.”
Let’s get this out of the way first: It’s too easy, and too unfair, to just blame the legal department when things like this happen. A three-month infographic approval process is just one symptom of the larger challenge organizations face when it comes to producing content at the speed of digital. Despite spending millions of dollars on technology, few established companies have significantly changed their organizational structures or business processes to take best advantage of those investments. More than two decades into the internet era, most companies continue to operate as paper-first organizations.
Transitioning to enterprise-wide content strategies and transforming into brand publishers is not going to happen overnight, but there are a few ways to improve the speed and quality of the legal and compliance review process that we’ve found invaluable at Huge:
