Hi Marketing Wranglers,

This week, the marketing messes span industries but the stakes are the same: reputational risk, regulatory heat, and expensive mistakes. We’ve got Truist paying millions for robocalls gone wrong, New York Presbyterian under fire for $11K price hikes, biotech giants crashing under policy chaos, and Temu learning what happens when Amazon doesn’t want you to win.

It’s not just news, it’s a masterclass in what not to do. Let’s dig in.

📞 Robocall Disaster at Truist: $4.1 million down the drain for calling the wrong people

🏥 New York Presbyterian’s $11K C-Section Scandal: When contract clauses cost more than care

🧬 Biotech’s $10B Implosion: Why great science can’t survive policy chaos

🛒 Temu vs Amazon: What happens when your growth model gets deleted by the algorithm overlord

New Slack Community:
Thinking about how to use AI in marketing? We’re having that discussion in our community here.

Need marketing, compliance, or legal help? Visit the Warrant Directory for a curated list of experts we recommend.

Picture this: you're minding your own business when your phone buzzes with a robocall about someone else's bank account. Not yours. A complete stranger's. Welcome to Truist Bank's $4.1 million nightmare, where automated calls went spectacularly off-target, landing the financial giant in hot water with federal regulators.

Truist's calling system had one job: reach account holders with important messages. Instead, it became the digital equivalent of a mail carrier delivering your neighbor's bills to your doorstep, except with 6,000 wrong addresses and a price tag that could buy a small island. The Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA) doesn't mess around when it comes to unwanted robocalls, and at $1,500 per violation, the math gets ugly fast.

Here's where things get juicy. This wasn't just a technical glitch or a "server had a bad day" situation. Truist's system was calling random phone numbers with account information for people who had zero connection to those numbers. Imagine getting a robocall about "John Smith's overdue payment" when you've never met a John Smith in your life. That's not a bug, that's a feature nobody asked for.

While Truist was playing telephone tag with the wrong people, savvy marketers everywhere should be taking notes. Consent isn't just a legal checkbox, it's your shield against becoming the next cautionary tale. Every automated message, every marketing text, every "friendly reminder" needs rock-solid permission behind it. No permission? No problem, assuming you enjoy expensive lawsuits.

The settlement math is surprisingly generous: roughly $440 per affected phone number. Truist essentially paid premium prices for the privilege of annoying thousands of strangers. The best part? Recipients don't even need to file claims. The money finds them automatically, like a reverse robocall that actually delivers something people want.

Every marketing team should print this story and tape it above their automation dashboard. Modern marketing tools are incredibly powerful, but power without precision equals expensive mistakes. Before you hit "send" on that next campaign, ask yourself: do we actually know who we're contacting, and do they want to hear from us?

Because the difference between targeted marketing and digital harassment is often just a consent checkbox and some basic data hygiene. And as Truist learned the hard way, getting that wrong doesn't just cost money, it costs credibility.

More details on Top Class Actions.

New York Presbyterian just learned that being big doesn't mean you can bully. The healthcare giant is facing a class action lawsuit that reads like a masterclass in "how to abuse market power without saying you're abusing market power."

A union health plan covering 1,700 workers has accused NYP of essentially rigging the game, forcing insurers into contracts that make patients pay premium prices for procedures they could get elsewhere for thousands less.

Here's where it gets spicy: NYP was allegedly charging $41,000 for C-sections while Mount Sinai, practically next door, charged $30,000 for the same procedure. That's an $11,000 markup for what amounts to geographical convenience. But here's the kicker, NYP's contracts reportedly included "anti-steering" clauses that prevented insurers from telling patients about those cheaper alternatives. It's like being forced to shop at the luxury grocery store while someone hides the regular supermarket's address.

The lawsuit describes NYP's negotiation tactics as among the "most flagrantly anticompetitive" in the country. Translation: they allegedly strongarmed insurers into agreements that eliminated patient choice in the name of protecting their premium pricing. When you control access to prestigious medical care and have the negotiating power of a healthcare behemoth, apparently some executives thought they could dictate terms that would make Tony Soprano jealous.

The Cement and Concrete Workers DC Benefit Fund decided they'd had enough of paying luxury prices for standard care. Their lawsuit isn't just about money, it's about calling out a system where hospitals can use their reputation and size to essentially eliminate competition. When your members are paying inflated prices because their insurer can't legally tell them about cheaper options, that's not healthcare, that's extortion with a stethoscope.

This case is healthcare's equivalent of pulling back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz. Anti-steering clauses aren't exactly dinner table conversation, but they're quietly inflating healthcare costs across the country. When hospitals can contractually prevent price shopping, patients lose twice: they pay more and they don't even know they're being overcharged. It's financial manipulation disguised as medical necessity.

For healthcare marketers, this lawsuit is a flashing neon warning sign. All those campaigns about "putting patients first" and "transparent care" ring pretty hollow when your organization is simultaneously working to hide pricing alternatives from those same patients. In an era where hospital price transparency is legally mandated, getting caught manipulating access to competitive pricing is like marketing yourself as honest while picking customers' pockets.

The Justice Department has been here before. In 2018, they settled a similar case against a North Carolina hospital system for identical practices. The pattern is clear: regulators are tired of hospitals using their market position to eliminate fair competition. For healthcare systems still playing these games, the message is simple: adapt or face expensive legal consequences.

Modern healthcare marketing isn't just about promoting services, it's about proving your organization deserves trust in an industry where patients are increasingly skeptical of hidden costs and limited choices. New York-Presbyterian's lawsuit is a reminder that reputation is built on actions, not advertising, and market manipulation eventually comes with a very public price tag.

Check out Reuters for more details.

Temu burst onto the American scene like a discount store fever dream, flooding social media with ads for $2 phone cases and $5 kitchen gadgets that somehow (maybe) didn't explode on arrival.

The Chinese-owned platform was living the ecommerce equivalent of the American Dream: ship cheap goods duty-free, undercut everyone on price, and watch the money roll in. Then reality hit like a freight train carrying a "Made in America" sticker.

The Trump administration's elimination of the de minimis exemption didn't just change trade policy, it nuked Temu's entire business model from orbit. Suddenly, those $3 bluetooth speakers needed to pay import duties, and Temu's magical profit margins evaporated faster than a puddle in Death Valley. The company scrambled to pivot to U.S. suppliers, which is like switching from a Ferrari to a shopping cart mid-race.

Here's where the story gets deliciously sinister. Temu discovered that building an Amazon competitor in America is like trying to open a lemonade stand next to Coca-Cola's headquarters. Sellers told Temu they literally couldn't offer lower prices without Amazon throwing a corporate tantrum. Amazon's retaliation toolkit reads like a mob boss's playbook: disappear your product from the Buy Box, slash your prices and charge you the difference, or simply make your listing vanish into the digital ether.

The Temu situation exposes something genuinely frightening about modern ecommerce: Amazon doesn't just compete with other platforms, it controls them. When one company can dictate pricing across the entire marketplace through fear and economic coercion, we've moved beyond competition into something that looks suspiciously like digital feudalism. Sellers aren't merchants anymore, they're serfs paying tribute to the algorithm overlord.

Faced with an impossible pricing situation, Temu did what any rational company would do: they panicked and stopped advertising entirely. After spending $1.4 billion on Meta ads in one year (yes, billion with a B), they suddenly went dark. The result was predictably catastrophic: a 54% drop in monthly active users between March and July. It turns out that when your entire user acquisition strategy depends on sponsored content, going silent is basically business suicide.

Temu found itself in a legal and strategic nightmare where success became impossible by design. They control seller prices on their platform, but if those prices undercut Amazon, sellers face punishment. It's like being told to win a race while being contractually obligated to let your competitor cross the finish line first. The entire situation raises questions about whether Amazon's grip on third-party sellers has crossed the line into anti-competitive territory.

Desperate times call for desperate measures, and Temu's reported pivot to off-price inventory, returns, and overstock goods sounds like their last hope. Instead of competing directly with Amazon's main catalog, they're essentially trying to become the digital equivalent of a discount bin. It's not glamorous, but when you're drowning, even a life preserver made of returned pool floats starts looking attractive.

For anyone still believing that great products and smart marketing can overcome platform monopolies, Temu's story is a cold splash of reality. In modern ecommerce, your success isn't determined by what customers want or how clever your campaigns are. It's determined by whether the platform gods decide to smile upon you or crush you like a bug.

Temu's American adventure proves that explosive growth without platform independence is just borrowed time with interest. When your entire business model depends on the goodwill of a competitor who has every incentive to destroy you, you're not building a business, you're building a very expensive house of cards in a hurricane zone.

The real question isn't whether Temu can survive Amazon's dominance, but whether any company can build a sustainable ecommerce business in America without Amazon's permission. And right now, the answer looks increasingly like "probably not."

Read more on Financial Times.

💬 We’re launching a community for Marketing, Compliance, and Legal teams to stay up to date on regulatory changes—and help each other navigate them.

→ Join the community here.