#general

I have one! DM me!

Thank you Alexie!

I'd love to see it too @Alexie Glover 🙂

Oh my, ours is a mess too, and currently everything is on spreadsheets. I’m interested to hear what others are doing as well.

@Wendi Wolfgram - right now ours is a field in Salesforce, but there's no governance on who's updating it! So that's the problem!

@Madeline Coke same exact problem here!

We’re working on this now (not just logo rights, but all kinds of advocacy). A lot of this language is built into our contracts by default, and customers can redline out or make adjustments based on their company policy. We’re working now on these being SF fields that get updated when a new contract is signed (new logo or renewal), so it’s easier to search.

@Alexie Glover curious to hear what you’re doing!

Hey @Madeline Coke - we tracked this in SFDC, and only the legal team and my team were allowed to make the updates. We'd track all of the "acts of reference" in Gainsight (and so did the CS rep if we didn't have visibility on it), and that got pushed into SFDC too.
We spent A LOT of time doing enablement with sales to educate them on how/when they could use (and couldn't use) logos, and I just generally became everyone's biggest pain in the butt when they weren't following the rules.
But yeah, you need governance and alignment for it to work, do you have someone who could support you in imposing said governance?

We created custom fields within a legal review section. And no, we had different scenarios: our standard clickwrap would allow us to use a customer logo/names as part of a wider list, without disclosing any commercial/use information.

Clickwrap = limited use

The field would also only be populated IF there has been a form of review, either from the clickwrap, review or reference activity

So in the field Logo Use, we had:
Yes / No / Limited / Unknown

And then in the justification field, we'd either have a link to the terms, the release, or what not (and the update was dated)

Means we could create reports for the sales teams, and our peers in the wider marketing department.

Maintaining this was part of our standard operating procedure, as well as legal.

It took a WHILE to get something going, and getting alignment with legal, but once it was up, what a blessing!

@Shannon Howard happy to share what my recommendations are!

In general, I recommend building some easily referenceable documentation that you can point everyone in the org to. Where this lives or what this looks like is unique from org to org. This documentation should outline what logo resources are available (ie. logo slides, logos on the website, etc.) and what appropriate use looks like for each of those resources. It should also include the process for requesting logos in a public feature (events, speaking engagements, media interviews, etc.) and how often the logos that appear on the resources are checked/vetted/refreshed.

For example: appropriate use of a logo slide is in a sales deck for a one to few meeting. Inappropriate use of a logo slide is for the backdrop of your CEO's keynote at a highly-attended industry conference (these logos should be individually vetted prior to this kind of presentation).

In terms of overall tracking for logo use, this is the classic marketing answer: it depends!

For folks who have a CMA database tool, your logo use information should be stored there at the account level and updated regularly to remove churned customers and make notes on any detractor accounts that are still customers and contractually permit use of their logo. For organizing this data from contract to the hands of the CMA function, there should be a process that is easy to follow, documented, and regularly referred to.

I do not generally recommend a checkbox with logo permissions on the account level in your CRM if it is publicly editable. It's all too common for CSMs or AEs to uncheck any marketing permissions if they feel their account is in a bad place or being overused. This leads to insane data integrity issues. What you would want to build instead is either an object that has set permissions for editing OR that is not editable at all. Unchecking generally happens when there is no documentation for how logo permissions function within the business. It's the job of the CMA function to educate the rest of the org that just because we have permission to use a logo doesn't mean we'll be plastering it everywhere forever (and if you are ... you aren't doing this right).

Happy to answer questions. This is a practice in always trying to achieve perfection so I'm continually refining my recommendations based on some of the crazy things we inevitably encounter. My playbook is for my clients but I'm happy to provide advice to the community.

I would LOVE to hear more. We currently have a Salesforce tick box which we never use. I reach out to customers directly to ask if we can use their logo and often they have to then go to their legal or comms teams (we're in fintech). Such a lengthy process!

@Charlotte Weiss - if its any consolation, it took us 5 years of trial and error, refining our processes and systems, and getting people onboard before we were able to operationalise anything consistently. Having someone partner with you in legal to make sure there is a baseline and process is vital, too, as it's often a case of accepting levels of risk. In terms of systems, it really has to be somewhere that doesn't require a lot of jumping through hoops + governance in place to get a source of truth. Happy to connect separately if helpful 🙂 (I think I know a few people in your team ;))

@Charlotte Weiss do you mean that there’s no marketing language in your MSA? Reaching out directly to clients to secure approvals is definitely not a scalable operation.