{
  "id": "MSG-293",
  "slug": "msg-293",
  "title": "Verbal opt-in grants no relief on sample content",
  "statement": "Samples must carry the brand name and opt-out instructions even when consent was collected verbally rather than on a web form.",
  "rationale": "Collecting consent by phone changes what evidence you file, and nothing about what the messages have to say — but the belief that it does is widespread, because the agent already identified the business on the call and already said the customer could stop at any time. The recipient is a different person by the time the text arrives: hours later, looking at an unknown number, with none of the call in front of them. AWS states the requirement explicitly for exactly this reason, and it is the anti-exemption that stops an offline consent method quietly suppressing the two rules every message owes.",
  "layer": "MESSAGE_CONTENT",
  "layerSlug": "message-content",
  "object": "campaign.sample[]",
  "severity": "BLOCKING",
  "detectability": [
    "DETERMINISTIC"
  ],
  "failureClass": "RETRY_FIELD",
  "authorities": [
    "AWS"
  ],
  "codes": [
    {
      "provider": "AWS",
      "code": "SAMPLE_MESSAGE_MISMATCH",
      "remediable": true
    }
  ],
  "applicability": {
    "consentMethods": [
      "verbal_live",
      "verbal_ivr"
    ]
  },
  "applicabilityText": "Applies when consent was collected by live verbal and IVR.",
  "universal": false,
  "remediation": "Add the registered brand name to the start of every sample and \"Reply STOP to opt out\" to the end, exactly as a web-opt-in campaign would. Done when a sample read cold, with no memory of the call, still says who is texting and how to stop it.",
  "example": "Acme Coffee: your support ticket 4471 is now with a specialist. We will text an update within one business day. Reply STOP to opt out.",
  "pitfalls": [
    "Naming the brand in the verbal script does not discharge this — the script is consent evidence, the samples are message content, and reviewers check them separately."
  ],
  "notes": "Deliberately overlaps XBC-010 and MSG-SAMPLES-OPTOUT, which are universal and already require both elements. It exists as its own rule because the catalog records the anti-exemption separately: an author narrowing either of those to web surfaces would silently exempt verbal campaigns, and this rule is what would go red.",
  "phase": "approval",
  "automated": true,
  "url": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/message-content/msg-293/",
  "markdown": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/message-content/msg-293.md",
  "registry": "https://ekas.io/rules/10dlc/",
  "updated": "2026-07-25",
  "licence": "CC BY 4.0 — https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
}