A Testimonial Needs Permission, Context, and an Expiry Date

A customer praises a campaign in a private email. Marketing shortens the sentence, adds their company logo, pairs it with a later revenue number, and runs it in paid ads two years after the customer changed roles. Every individual edit feels small; together they create a claim the customer never approved.

Create a source record with the original wording, speaker, relationship, date, context, result period, evidence, compensation or incentive, and proposed use. Verify factual claims before designing the card. A testimonial can describe a person’s experience; it does not replace substantiation for objective performance claims.

Send the final words, visual, placement context, named channels, paid usage, markets, duration, and withdrawal contact. Separate permission to quote from permission to use a logo or portrait. Do not bury perpetual paid-media rights in a casual release sent after the customer has already helped.

Provide a no-pressure way to decline. Power and commercial relationships matter: a customer negotiating renewal or a worker endorsing an employer may not feel free to say no. Qualified legal review should adapt the process to contracts and jurisdictions.

FTC endorsement guidance focuses on truthful experience, substantiation, and material connections that could affect the weight people give an endorsement. Place a clear disclosure near the proof. “Results not typical” does not automatically cure an ad that implies the shown outcome is generally expected.

State the period, measured system, starting condition, role of the service, and limits where the result is material. Do not pair a general compliment with an unrelated metric because the layout makes the association look convenient.

Maintain an asset register containing source, owner, approved version, permissions, evidence, channels, disclosure, publication locations, expiry, review date, and withdrawal status. Trigger review when a role, employer, logo, product, result, contract, or incentive changes.

Make video captions accurate, provide a transcript, describe informative portraits appropriately, and avoid decorative text inside images. When permission is withdrawn or evidence no longer supports the implication, remove the asset from pages, decks, ads, CMS entries, and scheduled campaigns—not just the original file.