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What is the best way to approach the holder of the trademarked term "SAT" to request authorization to use this term in my Google Ads?

My website acedittestacademy.com sells one main product: a live online course in SAT prep. I cannot advertise effectively on Google ads without using the term "SAT" in my ad headlines. But since the term "SAT" is trademarked, Google Adwords will not run my ads until the owner of this trademark fills out a 3rd-party authorization form giving me permission to use this term in my ads.

As far as I can tell, my main competitors in this market HAVE successfully gotten permission to use this term. (When I search "online SAT classes" in Google, paid ads from my competitors which use this term appear.)

Google Ads has given me the name and email address of the person who holds the rights to this term. I could, theoretically, just write her an email out of the blue saying, "Hey, I sell lessons on the SAT, please authorize me to use your trademark!" or some such simple message. However, this is a high-importance issue to my business, and I want to get it right. What is the correct way to approach the holder of the trademark in order to request that she fill out Google's 3rd party authorization form?

For the record, I run a very small business, and the competitors I have researched are big fish. I'm not sure how that will bear upon the process of requesting and receiving authorization.

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2 answers

Richard,

There are ways to get very close to trademarked brand names in Google marketing without official permissions, this is very common practice as many companies try to steal their competitors potential customers through ads that are strikingly similar. I believe Google, like most of big tech, care just enough about this issue to avoid lawsuits but not a fraction more. They make big bucks on ads so why be overly harsh in their approval process?

However, let's put that idea aside for the time being and try to do this through official channels.

I agree that doing some manner of research before contacting the brand owner makes sense, you want to speak the same language and ensure your request is taken seriously.

I spent just a few minutes on this and found a few resources: i) Some background reading on who the brand owner is, and what their interests are: https://about.collegeboard.org/doing-business https://patch.com/new-jersey/newbrunswick/bp--the-college-board-a-very-profitable-nonprofit

As with any proposal you want to make sure it's win win, and the more you know about your counterparts interest the better you can ensure that. Are you helping them market their brand name? Do you need to meet certain minimum standards to be a credible "partner" to them?

ii) The brand owner offers memberships, and in fact make their membership directory public. Do check this directory to see if some of your competitors pop up here: https://membership.collegeboard.org/join https://forms.collegeboard.org/membershipdirectory/s/

Should that be the case you're most likely dealing with some sort of "official provider" licensing fee in order to use their brand name. Wouldn't be surprised if that was the case. Good news at least then is that there is an official process to get the approval, bad news is the money ;)

iii) Also review your competitor sites for any mention of being official providers or similar such.

iv) Finally, call their membership number on the link above. You can ask some general probing (potentially silly) questions to their customer service rep, avoid leaving a paper trail and likely walk away with a name/contact for the decision maker on brand usage.

So short term, continue running your ads with smaller tweaks using close synonyms that at a glance (that's all your ad gets anyway) appear just as official as anything else.

Meanwhile do some more research spending a few hours reading up on how this seems to work. My personal guess, given the size of business & organization the brand owner has, is that they are used to dealing with requests such as yours and can tell you straight away what it takes to get it.

Best of luck, Jacob

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Hello, I wanted to add a point of view, because I got interested in this post. At this current moment, I am also studying marketing and further research. Maybe you can address google in order to solve this dilemma. In my particular case, I asked for help to https://essayelites.com/marketing-plan-assistance/ place I was recommended by my friend and I got a fast solution for my marketing plan.

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