Rachel is a Senior Associate whose practice focuses primarily on media and entertainment, digital, social media and consumer matters – both transactional and regulatory – across a range of sectors.
Rachel has a wide range of experience working with clients across the media and entertainment sector on their most high-value and strategic projects, including key players in TV and film, music, live entertainment, gaming, e-commerce, advertising and social media. This has included advising on content acquisition and distribution, production agreements, gaming investments, advertising and marketing arrangements (including sponsorship, influencer marketing and ad agency deals), e-commerce/digital agreements and social media arrangements.
As well as advising on the key contractual relationships in these areas, Rachel regularly advises on regulatory compliance, including in the context of:
- policies and procedures, complaint handling, new product launches, branding and marketing campaigns and data commercialisation (including advertising, consumer, broadcast, digital and data protection regulatory regimes); and
- new and emerging legislation and regulations (such as the Online Safety Act, AI regulations, the Media Bill and the Omnibus Directive).
Rachel continues to stay ahead of regulatory developments with several articles and thought leadership pieces in these areas featured on Practical Law, Lexology and Herbert Smith Freehills' Digital TMT and Sourcing notes.
Rachel has spent time on secondment at a number of clients, including:
- Reddit (lead counsel for UK and EMEA);
- Sky (in their distribution and partnerships legal team);
- Dentsu (in their global clients media buying team);
- BNP Paribas (in their IP and IT legal team); and
- UBS (in their technology legal team).
Experience & expertise
Selected matters
Advertising and marketing
- Reddit on its deals with agencies and advertisers, partnership and sponsorship deals (including its deal with ITV to be Love Island's 'Official Fan Partner' for series 8), influencer marketing campaigns, development of advertising policy and complaint handling
- Dentsu on various of its global high-value media planning and buying contracts with its clients, including a number of household name consumer brands and associated arrangements for individual marketing campaigns and digital advertising projects
- Black Equity Organisation on its submissions to Clearcast (the UK's approval agency for TV advertisements) in response to Clearcast's concern that BEO could be considered a political organisation for the purposes of linear TV advertising rules and therefore not permitted to advertise on linear TV
- a fashion brand on the environmental claims made in advertising its new jacket prior to launch in several European markets
- an airline on its agreement to participate in a program to market a branded credit card offered by a US-based bank, which allows customers to earn loyalty points using their credit cards and spend these with the airline and its group companies
- a major consumer sector client on its re-procurement of global media buying services
- a children's skincare company on product and environmental claims made on its product packaging
- sponsorship arrangements for the FIFA World Cup Qatar 2022
TV, film, music and live entertainment
- Sky on:
- the renewal of its strategic partnership with Virgin Media for carriage of Sky channels and content on Virgin Media's cable platforms
- the renewal of its partnership with BT in relation to the distribution of BT Sport via Sky platforms and the distribution of NOW on BT TV
- various of its channel partnership arrangements and content licensing arrangements
- a major Middle Eastern client on its production incentive arrangements in relation to a range of feature films, TV productions and photo shoots
- Reddit on its partnership deal with ITV to be Love Island's 'Official Fan Partner' for series 8
Gaming, digital and e-commerce
- a Chinese gaming company on its investment in a UK gaming studio as part of a series of funding rounds, which involved conducting due diligence on target company assets, including review of the gaming company's core gaming arrangements relating to provision of the software engine and associated systems
- Reddit on its compliance with the broad spectrum of regulation applicable to social media companies including data protection and online harms regulation
- an airline on its agreement to participate in a program to market a branded credit card offered by a US-based bank, which allows customers to earn loyalty points using their credit cards and spend these with the airline and its group companies
- a big 4 UK bank on the development of a new white labelled bank card-linked loyalty functionality for its consumer banking app and the associated agreement with the service provider
- Harrods on its e-commerce partnership with Farfetch
- a Chinese multinational e-commerce company on its supply contracts
