Scope Creep Examples — SEO & marketing
Regulatory compliance review requested, outside the agency's actual expertise
The client asks the content team to confirm health-related blog claims are FDA compliant — a regulatory legal judgment, not a content task.
The content retainer covers SEO-optimized blog articles for a client selling a health-adjacent product, written from research the client provides. Before publishing a batch of articles that reference the product's health benefits, the client asks the writer to confirm the claims are FDA compliant — a regulatory legal determination about permissible marketing claims for the product category, well outside what a content writer is trained or authorized to assess.
Clause typically implicated
Clause typically implicated
Liability limitation clause→ — Usually excludes regulatory or legal compliance opinions from the agency's responsibility — worth confirming this agreement has that language before responding to a compliance question about specific health claims.
Suggested change-order wording
Suggested change-order wording (illustrative, not legal advice)
We can write from whatever claims you confirm are approved for use, but determining FDA compliance for health-related marketing claims is a regulatory legal question outside our expertise — we're not able to make that call responsibly. I'd recommend having your legal or regulatory team review and approve the specific claims before we finalize copy referencing them.
How this usually resolves
For a regulated category like health claims, it's worth holding firm on this one even under deadline pressure — publishing unapproved regulatory claims carries real legal exposure for the client (and reputational risk for the agency), so it's better to delay publishing than to guess.
Related reading