There was a recent discussion on Copyblogger, about the importance of spreading the word when you have an idea. The point of the article basically was that instead of hoarding your great ideas in a file on your computer, you should share them with anyone who will listen to spread the word. An argument arose when I piped in that BEFORE you let anyone in on your idea (assuming it is in actuality, a great one) you should protect it with a patent application, a trademark, a copyright, or at least a nondisclosure agreement. It quickly became clear to me that that the distrust of lawyers is so strong in some people that they would rather risk making their ideas vulnerable to thieves out in the marketplace than trust a lawyer to protect them. I am going to put myself out on a limb here and jump on the lawyers bandwagon for a change and suggest that exposing your ideas without any protection is a dangerous road to travel. I know, I’ve been there.

I have a great deal of gratitude to and respect for several lawyers that I have had the pleasure to work with. In my previous business venture, which involved products with unique patentable features, trademarkable names and slogans, and numerous negotiations and contracts, our company would have been left extremely vulnerable had we had not protected the IP assets that we created. On more than one occasion, the legal protection that we had the wherewithal to put in place thwarted would-be thieves.

Intellectual property is a key asset that adds tremendous value to a company’s worth. Protecting it, therefore can be essential to a company’s success or failure. Here’s why:

Try getting backers to invest in your company if you don’t hold or own trademarks or patents on the products that you produce or on your business model. A business that holds intellectual property is a much more enticing investment proposition than a business that doesn’t hold any IP.

Try attempting to confront another company that is knocking off your idea without any IP ownership. There is nothing worse than having a unique idea, watching it being ripped off, and having no legal recourse to prevent or remedy it, because you neglected to protect it.

Try selling something that is not unique in the marketplace.The lack of proper IP protection also has the potential to devalue your brand in the consumer’s eye. Having a patentable idea which turns into a unique product is a lot easier to sell in the marketplace than something that offers no innovation. Holding a patent or trademark on something instantly adds value because it says that your product, business method, name, idea, or slogan was unique enough to achieve protection. Innovation sells.

Try pitching your idea to an existing business to invite collaboration or licensing. Most reputable businesses don’t want to hear your ideas unless they are protected for fear that they might already have something in their pipeline that is similar. Other not-so-reputable businesses are on the lookout for eager suckers who will unwittingly hand over their ideas. Invent it, protect it, then go talk to people. (A great movie on this subject is Flash of Genius)

I am a true believer and practitioner of the power of word of mouth marketing, creative collaboration and brainstorming, but I always proceed with caution before letting the cat out of the bag. I fear potential thievery in marketplace (and spiders) much more than I fear lawyers.

Domino’s Pizza has recently launched a new TV ad campaign which not only announces attempts to improve the quality of their pizzas, but incorporates the negative feedback from consumers about their product. Now, I know that transparency, listening to your customers, engaging with them and responding to their needs and complaints head on is the hip thing for big business to do in this age of social media interaction, but the fact that Domino’s Pizza tastes awful is not really a new revelation.

The thing that kills me here is that this piece was presumably shot in a test kitchen somewhere deep in the bowels of Domino’s corporate headquarters in Michigan. This kitchen is teeming with chefs in white garb scurrying around doing their important work of trying to make Domino’s pizza taste good. Is this test kitchen something new? Do these chefs not have taste buds? Have they never taken a bite of their own product? I find it ridiculous that Domino’s is presenting this bad food issue as a revelation. “Shocking,” as the head chef says. What I find shocking is that a trained chef is so shocked that people think their pizza tastes bad, and that they needed a focus group to figure that out. This campaign, instead of instilling confidence in their abilities, demonstrates just how clueless they are about food.

This company has been around since the late ’60s. It’s common knowledge on the street that Domino’s Pizza isn’t bought for its great taste. The reason people buy it in spite of its lackluster taste, is because it’s convenient, fast and cheap. That’s what they have established as the Domino’s brand. For years the message was all about the price and the speed at which your pizza would arrive at your door. There have been several traffic accidents with personal injury and death to drive that fact home. Domino’s has created a fast food pizza chain, not a gourmet pizza chain, and if the intent is to reinvent the brand now, then I think they have a nearly impossible challenge. It may be a little too late to try to convince consumers that Domino’s is anything more than a cheap greasy pizza that will be delivered to their homes quickly.

The irony here is that the premise of the campaign seems to be that consumers are supposed to feel good that Domino’s cares what they have to say, but if they made good pizza to begin with, then there would be no point to the campaign. Adding garlic and herbs to the sauce, earth shattering! Brushing the crust with olive oil, genius! Using aromatic cheese, innovative! Pizza is pretty basic: good dough, good sauce, good cheese, fresh toppings and some herbs = good pizza. This isn’t rocket science, just common sense: If you make food, then it should taste good.

The big lesson here for a business, whatever it is, should be that it should be the best it can be from the get go. Know what your mission is, know what your priorities and goals are and create your business model to achieve those goals, and yes, make sure your product is good. Understand the brand that you want to build, because once it’s built, it’s pretty difficult to change gears and turn it into something different. There is a learning curve when building brands and along the way adjustments need to be made, but there’s no excuse for waiting nearly 50 years to realize that your product stinks. If this truly was a concern for the brand, then action should have and would have been taken long ago. The priority for the brand clearly has always been low price and fast delivery.

Although some people seem to be lauding Domino’s for their new candid approach to quality control, they have not converted me. I don’t believe that the “chefs,” given their shock, have the ability to know the difference between good and bad, and I don’t understand why it took a food company so long to figure out that their food doesn’t taste good. Instead of creating confidence in the brand, it demonstrates their lack of understanding of their own market and their own products. It will be interesting to see if they can convert the masses on this one.

What to tweet or what not to tweet, the rules of behavior and usage for Twitter abound on the internet. Most humans desire some rules to live by, whether it’s through religion, government, family, workplace, or self imposed ethics, most people get a certain level of comfort from knowing the parameters within which they should or are expected to operate. The problem with trying to apply rules to Twitter use is that everyone is inventing their own rules as they go to suit their own needs. Like it or not, Twitter is like the old wild west and like those days, it is a bit of a free-for-all.

I started writing this post to express my opinion about such things as ghost tweeting, sponsored tweets and spammers. Then I thought about it a bit more and realized that I’d just be contributing to the already incredibly long list of posts about Twitter do’s and don’ts (this one I thought was particularly amusing). There are a myriad of ways to use or not use Twitter and a matching number of viewpoints about which is “right” and which is “wrong.”

There are people who use Twitter to write books one tweet at a time, people who use it to link to naked pictures of themselves, people who use it for customer service, for marketing, for shameless self promotion, for entertainment, enlightenment or inspiration, for posting affiliate links in the hope of making some cash, for posting random thoughts, or for posing as someone else. Whatever the use, whatever the motivation, no matter how many people scream “that’s wrong,” the same number will scream “says who?” When there are no rules, people will make them up as they go or some will not operate under any rules at all. So one of my resolutions for the new year is to try to stop being so irritated by those that are not using Twitter to my liking. I will simply do what they did in the wild west and in a blink of an eye I’ll take my gun out of its holster, aim, and fire directly at the block button.

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