Legal Question in Business Law in Florida

Yes, you need written permission. No, you cannot get permission from a customer service representative or in the form of an email. The corporation (an entity) owns the images, and only a person who has the authority to bind the corporation can grant you a license (permission); this person would be an Officer of the corporation. In my experience, the corp's General Counsel is often the Secretary of the corp and thus has the authority to sign legal documents for the corp. Additionally, the writing will be a license agreement, and the corp probably has various templates on file to use should they decide to grant you a license to use their images.

So, you need to get in touch with the corporation's legal department or licensing department, if they have one. Be prepared to explain WHY they should let you use their images and know the terms under which you are requesting to use them (for how long, scope of distribution, and how much you are willing to pay). Be prepared for them to say HELL NO, because many large companies WILL NOT license their images except for multi-million dollar deals.

One last thing - it would be best to have an attorney do this for you.