|
|
Congratulations to one of my client creative businesses, Sparkle Media on their successful projects in Australia !
The visual effects and animation company has recently worked in Australia with Oscar-winning actress Cate Blanchett and Joseph Fiennes, producing video footage for the multimedia theatrical performance Minutes of a Separation.
Sparkle Media also worked for Reebok whilst in Australia on an 'advanced fitness' website project.
It's a pleasure to work with creative entrepreneurs like Glenn Maguire and Andy Cooper, who are the company's directors.
Over the several months I have been involved in their business growth, I have been able to advise them on matters such marketing, intellectual property and enterprise development.
Sparke Director Glenn Maguire said:
"Since attending David's workshop and then engaging him as an adviser, Sparkle Media has gone from strength to strength. The company now operates on a global level, going head to head with world wide agencies - and beating them. We've never looked back and have a lot to thank David for."
Working internationally from their base in Liverpool, Sparkle has worked closely with creative industries support agency Merseyside ACME.
Westminster Council bought the copyright in the design of its iconic street signs (pictured).
This means that it can now generate income fom licensing this intellectual property to businesses.
The designs were created by Misha Black in 1967 and the copyright remained with the designer until his death, when it passed to his estate. Black's son then sold the copyright to Westminster Council in London for £50,000 GBP (100,000 USD).
The Council plans to charge licence fees to more than 100 companies that use the design on popular tourist souvenirs and other products.
Designers should follow Misha Black's example by retaining copyright when creating designs for clients, to make a profitable sale later - or to generate licensing income themselves.
Photo credit: DearCatastropheWaitress.
See related blogposts:
Protecting - and profiting from - your IP
Whose photos are on your website?
Let's follow George Lucas
Photographer Chiz Dakin (Peak Images) asked me to warn other photographers about the problem of 'copyright grabs'.
Chiz is concerned about the trend for businesses, particularly large corporations, to "grab copyright in any image they can get their hands on", as she puts it.
This practice is a hazard for photographers who don't carefully read the small print in contracts with clients.
It can also apply to competitions.
So the advice from Chiz is: make sure you read the small print to ensure you don't lose your intellectual property rights in your images!
See also:
Protecting - and profiting from - your IP
Whose photos are on your website?
Creative entrepreneurs often ask me how they can make money from their music or computer games when MP3 files and software is so easy to copy.
One answer is to use the fact that people copy your stuff to change a threat into an opportunity.
Banda Calypso's music is copied onto CDs and sold on street corners in Brazil. They don't get a cut of this income but they don't mind. In fact they supply theses street-sellers with master CDs to copy! And they organise things so that there is a plentiful supply of their music for sale in each town on the route of their tour, before they arrive to perform. They see this copying and selling as an advertising function and they don't have to pay these street-corner entrepreneurs. Their gigs are always full and they've made enough money to buy a private jet to take the band on tour.
Timothy Chan, one of the richest men in China used to get ripped off by copyright pirates. His computer game CDs were copied illegally and sold cheaply. He could have tried in vain to stop this. Or he could have let his business go bankrupt. Instead he changed his business to take advantage of the copying. He decided to make his money from online connection fees instead of CD sales. He changed the game so people had to play online and pay a very small fee per minute. The copied CDs spread like wildfire and so did his customer base. Every CD copied now helped his business.
Smart entrepreneurs see opportunities when others see only threats.
They change their business models to take advantage of changing technology, economics and social trends.
Madonna has recently terminated her contract with Warner Music after 25 years and signed a new contract with tour company Live Nation.
Now that digital music is so cheap, not to mention illegal downloads, Madonna recognises that her main income in future will be from performances and related products, not music sales. So she has changed her business model and Live Nation is a more appropriate partner than a traditional record label.
"The paradigm in the music business has shifted and as an artist and a businesswoman, I have to move with that shift," said Madonna.
Madonna's move illustrates that creativity is not just about being an artist. You can use creativity in business too, by rearranging your business to maximise income as technology and customers' behaviour changes.
As an artist and a businesswoman (a T-Shirt and a Suit), Madonna is a topical example of how creativity and business can be combined intelligently.
A friend of a friend of mine has just received an invoice for £7,000 from Getty Images for the unlicensed use of one of their photographs on his website. Ouch!
For a while now, the bigger picture agencies such as Getty, Jupiter Media and Corbis have been marking their copyright material with code numbers which can help them locate use of their images on websites. Corbis uses Digimarc software to encode the images then MarcSpider software trawls the web looking for them. They can then cross-reference use of their images with their licence agreements with users to identify unlicensed users. They then send out a demand for payment for the retrospective unlicensed use of their images. Other stories involve amounts of £2,000 and even £17,000 - enough to cripple a small business.
Whose images are on your own website? Are you sure you have the permission of the copyright owner to use those images on your website - and for that matter, in printed material and other media?
Some people seem to naively think that because it is technically easy to copy an image from a website, the legal position is also 'free and easy'. Not so!
So what should you do?
- Website owners are responsible for what's published on their websites and should ensure that all images are used with permission of the copyright owners.
- Website designers should be aware of the issues and advise clients accordingly, to protect their clients - and contract with clients to protect themselves.
- Photographers, illustrators, designers who are owners of the copyright material should protect their position by taking a similar stance to the picture agencies (or working through a picture agency) in order to establish proper licensing agreements with website owners.
The excellent website 'Own It' (www.own-it.org) has more information about licensing as well as downloadable contracts.
---
Let me know what you think about all this - and tell me of other examples of licensed or unlicensed use of copyright images in websites and elsewhere.
TÉLO is the first public telephone especially designed for public transport vehicles. Using a card for payment, millions of people using public transport are already
using the phone on buses, trains and underground transport networks.
Founded in August 2004, by Paulo Lerner and André Averbug, Brazilian company PV Inova (Public Vehicular Innovations) invented the system and have registered a patent to protect their intellectual property, initially
in Brazil.
“Writing the patent was very time consuming, having lasted about six months”, said Leonardo Gadelha Sampaio, “we had the support of a patent lawyer for the writing of the patent itself, and of a respectable law-firm for the registration of it. We registered the patent in Brazil and internationally through the PCT”. The Patent Co-operation Treaty provides a standardised method of registering a patent, initially in the country of origin, and paves the way for easier registration of the same patent in 137 countries which have signed up to the Treaty. Despite the PCT, there is no such thing as an ‘international patent’ – a further separate registration is required for every additional member state.
Photo: Inova’s executive partners: Paulo Lerner (Technology), André Averbug (Planning) and Leonardo Gadelha Sampaio (Marketing).
In choosing further countries for patent registration, PV Inova will be targeting other countries with similar social profiles as Brazil, in Latin America, East Asia and Africa. In these countries, millions of people use public transport and rely on public communication networks rather than personal mobile phones. They will also register the patent in Europe and the USA for strategic purposes – to deter competition for as long as possible.
PV Inova has a social mission – to make communication accessible and affordable to the masses. They also have commercial objectives and recognise that these customers, though not wealthy as individuals, collectively have massive amounts of money to spend. The company has used socio-economic statistics combined with transportation data to analyse the Brazilian market. Instead of focusing on the wealthy elite, their income streams will come from the aggregated spending power of millions of ordinary people. This is a ‘base of the pyramid’ or ‘BoP’ strategy, selling services in high volume but at low prices.
Innovate in product design, Leonardo and his colleagues at PV Inova have used a novel combination of strategies to raise funds for their projects. Investors see the potential of the company and PV Inova has had two rounds of investment, firstly from a ‘business angel’, and later from an ‘investment club’ of seven smaller shareholders. 80% of shares are owned by the three executive partners, with the remaining 20% shared by 11 others. The company’s business plan forecasts an outstanding return on investment. PV Inova also plans to reinvest its profits in further technological developments, including digital TV.
Apart from the huge Brazilian public transportation market, growth will also come from international strategic partnerships with telecommunications companies, based on the provision of the service and the licensing of their intellectual property.
Download this post as an article. (PDF, 115KB)
Download article
Link to PV Inova website.
Please contact me with other examples of creative enterprises using interesting marketing strategies and intellectual property to develop their businesses.
"Ideas don't make you rich. The correct execution of ideas does."
So says Felix Dennis, poet, owner of Dennis Publishing, and one of the wealthiest self-made entrepreneurs in Britain.
I met him several years ago when he gave generously to support a project I helped with at the National Library for the Blind, though he didn't say this to me when we met. I just read it in his book 'How to Get Rich'.
I agree with him, totally. In my experience as a business adviser to creative people and businesses, there is certainly no shortage of great ideas. But making them happen is a totally different matter and it needs different skills and attitude. For an idea to make you rich it requires not only creativity (the T-Shirt) but also business acumen (the Suit).
For a start, you cannot 'own' an idea in a legal sense, through copyright, patent or any other intellectual property rights. It is only the expression or execution of the idea in a tangible form that can be owned. For example actually writing the novel, not just thinking up the plot, actually designing the invention after thinking up the concept, recording or writing down the tune in your head, etc.
After the idea becomes real in some sense it can then be protected through copyright, patents, design registration or a registered trade mark. That's necessary but not sufficient. Next comes a whole series of options, challenges and decisions about financing the enterprise, ownership, marketing, possibly manufacturing and distribution, and a lot of other business matters.
I've met plenty of people with good ideas, even with these ideas protected through copyright and patents, who have been unable to move things forward into a profitable business.
And I've met people who have said of a successful business "I thought of that myself, years before they did!".
Liz Pugh is the co-founder and producer of Walk the Plank, Britain's only touring theatre ship. She manages another creative enterprise which is very different from Dennis Publishing, but agrees with Felix's point about execution of ideas being the key.
"I often get people coming up to me saying 'we had the same idea years ago' and my retort to them is always 'Where's your theatre ship, then?!'
The difference between the wealthy creative entrepreneur and the 'ideas person' is their ability to (metaphorically) wear a suit as well as a t-shirt, or team up with people who are more experienced and skilled in these matters.
It also requires focus. It's a frustrating fact that we are capable of thinking up many more good ideas than we will ever have the time to implement. So we need to select from the many ideas the best one or two to concentrate on - and then focus on these at the expense of the rest. Saying No to the distraction of other good ideas is the price we must pay to achieve success.
This blog, website and my book 'T-Shirts and Suits: A Guide to the Business of Creativity' all offer ideas, information and help in turning your creative ideas into sustainable income streams.
The other day I advised a photographer to consider following George Lucas. I wasn't suggesting he became a film director, but simply that he negotiated with his client in a similar way to Lucas when he struck a deal with 20th Century Fox before directing Star Wars.
Lucas turned down a massive director's fee and instead asked for 40% of the merchandising rights to the Star Wars film and any sequels, plus a modest director's fee of $175,000. Over 30 years, the income from the merchandise has far exceeded the box office takings and he receives his 40% of this income stream. After six films and thousands of products, he's now worth around $3.6billion.
Nice one, George.
(Another example is the film director Robert Altman and his son Mike, who wrote the song for the film M*A*S*H.)
The photographer is negotiating a deal to shoot a series of images in connection with a major construction project. He could be a creative labourer and simply take a fee for the work. On the other hand, he could keep ownership of his intellectual property in the images and receive license fees for each use of the images in different circumstances - annual reports, advertising, exhibitions, etc. There is no guarantee that it will bring in more cash than a fee, of course. And it's unlikely to make him a billionaire. There is a business judgement to be made and there is a risk involved.
The crucial issue, though, is that it's a different way of thinking about building a business. It an entrepreneurial approach which is about creating long term income streams that continue to make money while you sleep, through licensing, rather than just taking a fee for your immediate labour.
Are you a true entrepreneur - or just a creative labourer?
This was the question posed in my article about the E-Myth.
Here's a true story. Robert Altman was paid a cool $70,000 (US dollars) for directing the 1970 hit movie M*A*S*H.
They needed a song for the movie so Robert Altman's 14 year old son, Mike Altman, co-wrote the song 'Suicide is Painless' with his friend Johnny Mandel.
Robert Altman sold his labour as a film director for a fee. Mike Altman didn't sell his copyright in the song. Instead, he kept ownership of the intellectual property he created and through licensing deals allowed the film-makers to use it. The song also became a hit separately, after it was used in the film. Over the years, Mike Altman made over a million dollars for co-writing the song. Much more than his father earned for directing the film!
The key to generating income in the long term - rather than being a creative labourer and working for wages - is to use our creativity to produce intellectual property that can generate income streams.
That's what George Lucas did.
It's a different approach and a different business model. It's about being a true Creative Entrepreneur rather than merely a creative labourer.
---
* Contact me about your experiences of generating income streams through licensing intellectual property.
Michael E Gerber, in his book on the E-Myth (E-myth Revisited) , points out that there is a fundamental difference between knowing a technical skill or trade (eg as a designer, mechanic, chef) and running a business based on that skill (a design agency, a workshop or a restaraunt). Many would-be entrepreneurs who break away from paid employment to set up their own businesses become trapped, not liberated. They end up working as a cog in a machine of their own making, rather than setting up a money-making machine that they are in control of. This is the Entrepreneur Myth. These people are workers, not true Entrepreneurs, according to Gerber.
Many people have a dream of building up a business so that they can eventually sell it and secure a significant financial reward, maybe for retirement or reinvestment. In order to be able to do this, however, the business must ultimately be independent of the ongoing labour of the owner. Many businesses become virtually worthless once the owner retires and therefore have no value to a potential buyer.
A true entrepreneur will work 'on' a business rather than 'in' it. In other words, they will set up money-generating business, which ultimately makes money for the owner without his/her direct involvement.
This is the difference between being a 'worker' (or labourer) on the one hand, or a true 'entrepreneur' on the other.
Even if you have your own creative business, are you in fact a 'creative labourer' - or a true entrepreneur? In short, the 'acid-test' question is this: have you set up a business which can generate income even when you sleep - or is your income totally dependent on your ongoing labour? In the creative industries, the key to building a business which generates income independent of your ongoing labour, is the management of intellectual property.
How do you protect your creative works?
And importantly - how do you generate income streams from your intellectual property?
Creative people are rightly concerned about being ripped off, so we need to know more about how to protect our works by understanding and using intellectual property rights (IPR) such as copyright, trade marks, patents and design rights.
The really clever thing, though, is not just to use IPR to protect ourselves, but also to use it more positively, to generate income stream by actually encouraging people to use our images, designs, writing etc - in return for fees through licensing.
So how can we find out more, without reading all the text books or becoming a lawyer?
Personally, I'm a great fan of the organisation 'Own It' (www.own-it.org) who publish lots of great information about IP, contracts etc etc.
Their seminars are recorded and published as podcasts and I recommend them highly.
Seminars you can download and listen to on your iPod include subjects such as:
- How to protect your work on the Internet
- Photographing other people's property
- How not to get ripped off in design
- Putting a value on your intellectual property
- and lots more
Link to Own-It Podcasts
Let me know of any other great resources and I''ll publicise them.
|
|
|
