By that peak news hour of 10 pm the following Saturday night, after five days of relentless criticism, the company reversed the new policy<\/a> and decided that you could, in fact, \u201clike\u201d Cheerios and still sue them.<\/p>\n As a consumer, I am all for clear, honest, relevant labeling, particularly for packaged food. Although I\u2019m not going to weigh in on whether the use of subjective terms such as \u201cnatural\u201d or \u201chealthy\u201d warrants class action lawsuits, I am far from alone in saying I wouldn\u2019t want my peanut-allergic kid to go into anaphylactic shock because a cookie was falsely labeled.<\/p>\n [do action=”info-box”]Q: How many lawyers does it take to write a product description? But as a content marketer, I can understand the litigious context in which General Mills acted. The costs that companies like General Mills incur in order to avoid litigation extend far beyond the courtrooms; they also extend into legal review of content production. The constant threat of litigation creates severe marketing challenges.<\/p>\n We\u2019ve worked with many companies that are under significant regulatory pressure to get their messaging right. One of our consumer packaged goods clients is an excellent case in point.<\/p>\n We were recently commissioned to produce catalog content for more than 1,500 of their products. This company had several versions of product-detail content that had been created over the years, including product descriptions, ingredients lists, warnings, and so on. It was our job to clean up the inconsistencies and produce canonical descriptions for each product.<\/p>\n We estimated this job would take four months. The actual content production would go fast, but gathering all the necessary content pieces and identifying inaccuracies would take time.<\/p>\n However, we are now six months into the project with no end in sight, and the project costs have more than doubled due to the extensive legal review processes and revisions the company\u2019s legal department has required. The challenges of jumping through their review processes are many, but here are a few of the bigger ones:<\/p>\n It\u2019s clear that this company\u2019s Gutenberg-era legal review needs to take a Google-era reality check. However, as content marketers, we must respect the challenges of operating a company in our country\u2019s litigious context and adjust our processes and expectations accordingly.<\/p>\n Later this week, I\u2019ll discuss several steps we can take to reduce the problems that lawyers and their risk-adverse practices can create.<\/p>\n Mark White is president and a founding member of content26. Continue this conversation with him on Twitter @mwhitec26<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" If you\u2019re a consumer of commercial food products, you probably didn\u2019t sympathize much with General Mills and its recent \u201cforced…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23290,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[789],"tags":[909],"yoast_head":"\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\n\t\n\t\n\t\n
\nA: Ten. One to write it, eight to revise it, and one to sue the lawyer once it’s published.[\/do]<\/p>\nCaught in the Crossfire: Content Loses during Legal Review<\/h2>\n
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