5 Best Practices to Navigate Creative Compliance
A Practical Guide for In-House Video Teams in Regulated Industries
Having to navigate compliance rules while working on a project can make you feel like your hands are tied creatively. When compliance plays editor, art director, and head of brand, you might wonder why we even get to call ourselves 'creative' teams.
How to Navigate Creative Compliance
At Lightswitch, we’ve delivered thousands of videos in compliance-heavy spaces, including more than 1,000 agent-focused pieces for a national insurance provider, ongoing projects with multi-national financial institutions like UBS, and powerhouse legal firms like Perkins Coie.
We’ve learned you can still make great work, you just have to figure out how to minimize the pain. As soon as you get ahead of the common compliance pitfalls, the process becomes a lot less frustrating. When the process is less frustrating, your team moves faster, builds stronger relationships with the actual stakeholders, and creates real value for the business (and has more fun doing it).
Keep reading to learn 5 of our best practices.
1. Bring Compliance in Early
This one may seem obvious - but it still gets missed. One of the easiest ways to reduce headaches later is to involve compliance professionals early in the creative process. Not to slow things down, but to gather a clear list of "absolutely nots" from the start. These early insights help creative teams develop guides for every stakeholder, from sales to production to post.
If it’s a long-term relationship or project, we recommend meeting with compliance twice a year to stay up to date as policies and expectations evolve.
Although early collaboration is great, it doesn’t mean you’re co-writing the script with legal. Their role here is to help define the guardrails so your team can focus on creativity within a known set of constraints.
This early alignment also sets the foundation for the next phase: establishing example videos and templates. When compliance has already weighed in, you can build scalable frameworks that reduce guesswork and speed up approvals down the line.
2. Create Reusable, Pre-Approved Frameworks
If your team produces the same types of videos over and over - such as testimonials or product explainers - don’t start from scratch every time. Build a library of compliance-friendly video templates, complete with sample scripts, on-screen disclosures, and visual do’s and don’ts. Pre-approved frameworks reduce ambiguity, speed up approvals, and give your team room to focus on the storytelling.
We recommend tailoring assets to specific use cases:
On-Camera Talent: A "how to prep" video helps individuals being filmed understand what to expect. Keep it friendly, short, and focused on helping them look and sound their best within compliance constraints. This is your first line of defense to nip things in the bud.
On-Site Crews: Visual guides can include example frames, proper logo placement, and required shot types. When everyone on set is aligned on the “perfect” outcome, there’s less guesswork (and less room for error).
Editors: If templates aren’t available, cheat sheets should cover typography rules (like kerning), lower third placement, approved transitions, and motion graphic dos and don’ts. This makes it easier for editors to stay consistent while moving fast.
These resources don’t just improve compliance. They reduce revisions, align creative intent, and give every contributor - from camera operator to copywriter - the tools they need to hit the mark.
3. Train Up Front. Then Provide Cheat Sheets.
Your editors, producers, and on-site crews don’t need to be regulatory experts, but they do need clear, repeatable guidance. A brief upfront training on the most common compliance issues is a great start, but it only works if that knowledge sticks.
At Lightswitch, we supplement that training with practical tools. For on-site crews, we create standardized briefs that flag any compliance-sensitive elements they need to watch out for. For post-production, our editors have cheat sheets right next to them (often taped to their monitor!) outlining brand dos and don’ts, disclosure requirements, and restricted phrases.
This approach helps our team members spot potential red flags before they ever hit the review cycle. We aren't concerned about memorizing regulations (and not every client has the same requirements), but having these "cheat sheets" allows us to embed compliance into the daily rhythm of production.
Hot Tip: Train Your Clients, Too
Training shouldn’t stop at your internal team. Your clients and stakeholders need guidance just as much. We’ve found success by building simple, intuitive order-entry pages that agents use to request a shoot. These forms include process details, turnaround expectations, and clearly stated compliance limitations. The forms are required for submission, ensuring everyone is aligned from the jump.
The key is to give just enough information to guide behavior without overwhelming non-creatives or non-specialists. Clear documentation helps agents, marketers, and other stakeholders play their part in a compliant process—without slowing things down.
4. Keep the Pre and Post-Production Team Consistent Whenever Possible
Consistency is key - especially when it comes to compliance. At Lightswitch, while we often contract local crews for on-site shoots, we always keep pre-production and post-production in-house with our full-time staff. This approach allows our team to build deep familiarity with the client’s brand standards, compliance requirements, and personal preferences.
When the same team is involved across multiple projects, they know what to look out fo - and what to avoid. They’re faster, more accurate, and more aligned with your goals. That kind of institutional knowledge is hard to outsource, and it’s one of the best ways to reduce compliance issues before they even come up.
5. Use a Consistent Review Workflow
Compliance reviews can stall when feedback comes in late, vague, or contradictory. Use a structured review system with clearly defined roles, review deadlines, and centralized tools for giving feedback. Platforms that allow timestamped comments on video drafts can be especially helpful.
(We call this "keeping receipts.")
Our Real-World Example:
When we worked with a national insurance provider, our review workflow included three clearly defined stages:
Brand Review: The first draft went to the corporate brand team to ensure tone, messaging, and visual style were on point. Thanks to our experience with similar projects, we were often able to get through this stage with no revisions.
Compliance Review: Next, compliance gave it a look. Their changes were usually minimal—one or two small tweaks—and because we had built guardrails early, this step rarely derailed momentum.
Agent Review: Finally, the video went to the agent featured in the content. By this point, the product was already polished and aligned with brand and legal requirements, so agent feedback was usually just a quick confirmation. We also set their expectations up front so they knew they couldn’t request things like CGI explosions or virtual facelifts.
By building these three checkpoints into our standard timeline - and doing the foundational work early - we found that often only one round of review included substantial changes.
The takeaway? Predictable processes reduce friction. The more clearly you define each stage, the smoother (and faster) your projects will move.
Great Process Creates Great Work
Creative teams shouldn’t have to choose between making something compliant and creating work they’re proud of. With proactive planning, mutual respect, and clear systems, you can do both.
At Lightswitch, we say it all the time: Great process creates great work. It’s true across the board, but it’s especially true in compliance-heavy industries.
We’ve worked inside some of the most highly regulated sectors, and still helped in-house teams produce effective, on-brand video content. These best practices aren’t just to CYA - they’re what unlock creative momentum, reduce rework, and give you space to focus on what matters.
