#general

I have to agree with your legal team and I have found that including a clause/s, vague or specific, in contracts is counter productive for advocacy relations, both internal and external.

Interesting. I believe that if the language is friendly and professional it would help advocacy relations to begin. I was thinking something like this... Customer agrees to consider participating in advocacy activities upon mutual agreement, such as case studies, testimonials, joint press releases, speaking engagements, or reference calls. Any such activity will be coordinated in advance and subject to Customer's written approval. Customer grants [Company Name] the right to use Customer's name and logo in customer lists, presentations, and website. Any usage will be in accordance with Customer's brand guidelines and will not imply endorsement. Any other use outside of customer lists and the website will require Customer's written approval.... I agree, that most of the time, these will get redlined out, but advocacy asks are not the only items to get redlined out, so I don't agree that this ask is a main reason for delaying the deal. I could be wrong. Is this language offending or vague to hurt the beginning of advocacy relationship? Interested to know what others think.

Totally get the intention, But since “agrees to consider” isn’t binding, it doesn’t really help with planning advocacy, and without any timeline, it’s not something that is easy to trigger or act on in the future.

From what I've seen including something like this as part of your onboarding / CSM flow can be more effective.

@ absolutely agree. I’m going with adding our ask during Onboarding. I do agree there will be better traction with engagement and relationship building. Thanks for sharing your thoughts!

Another approach I've seen work is where you say that commensurate on time successful product onboarding they commit to x (x is an explicit ask such as permission to use their logo on the website and in specific promotional materials for the product they purchased). And then further acts of named advocacy such as quotes, case studies or videos are separate ask that goes through the CSM based upon reaching certain adoption milestones. Until the customer has received perceived value it's tough to get a commitment unless you commit to something demonstrating value to them.

This is what's in our contracts. Customers have the option to redline:

1. Intellum Standard Publicity Clause – Accepted by majority of clients (estimated to be 75%):
Publicity. Neither Party may make any press releases, public announcements or similar public disclosure relating to this Agreement or its subject matter, including promotional or marketing material, without the consent of the other Party. Any such press release, public announcement or similar public disclosure will be coordinated with and approved by the other Party before release. Notwithstanding the foregoing, at any time after Client's launch of the Software Solutions, Intellum may begin referencing Client as a customer of Intellum in online and printed sales materials including usage of Client's logo. Intellum agrees to abide by Client's logo usage guidelines. Client has the right to revoke such reference and logo usage if Intellum conducts itself in a way that could cause brand damage to Client.
2. Intellum Standard Publicity Clause – Typical modification requested by clients as shown below (estimated to be 15%):
DELETION OF THE FOLLOWING STANDARD LANGUAGE:
“Notwithstanding the foregoing, at any time after Client's launch of the Software Solutions, Intellum may begin referencing Client as a customer of Intellum in online and printed sales materials including usage of Client's logo. Intellum agrees to abide by Client's logo usage guidelines. Client has the right to revoke such reference and logo usage if Intellum conducts itself in a way that could cause brand damage to Client.”
OR REPLACED WITH
"Any use of client name and logo requires express written approval by client"
3. Non Standard Publicity Clause - Client requests deletion of Intellum clause (estimated to be 5 %).
COMPLETE PROHIBITION BY CLIENT OF AN PRESS RELEASE AND PUBLICITY RIGHTS.

These are good @Shannon Howard and very interesting to see the % of acceptance on each of these. They’re very similar clauses to what I’ve seen used as well. Thanks for sharing!

You’re welcome!

I do not have access to these documents anymore, but what we had was something in the lines of: "You agree for your name and logo to be included within a public facing list of customers, without predominance of your name and without any details on contractual details or use-cases." as a standard.
We had about 80% of our contracts on these - and when we'd engage them in specific programs of work then we'd make sure we'd have the right legalese around it (use cases, etc.)