Exploiting Your Agency’s Intellectual Property

• When you run an agency, you spend your time using creativity to help clients grow their businesses.
• This creativity can build value for you, and the odds are that you actually own more “intellectual inventory” than you realise.
• We’ll be talking to IP expert Erica Wolfe-Murray about all the things you might own without even realising it.

“Imagine your IP and assets, all this good stuff you have in your business, as ingredients in your store cupboard. You might normally use those ingredients to make a lasagne, when you could also be using the same ingredients to make something completely different.”

Erica Wolfe-Murray, managing director of Lola Media, helps companies squeeze every drop of juice out of their intellectual property lemons.

“Most agencies are largely building other people’s businesses – their clients. But the IP system and laws are actually there to protect creators and help them earn revenue from their creations. Agencies should be using this system to build their businesses too.”

“I identify what’s in an agency or studio’s store cupboard and help them mix things up to make something they can sell,” she says. “In other words, I audit the assets they already own to repurpose them in new, imaginative ways.”

“I help them identify their copyright, understand what trademarks they own (or could own) and suggest additional trademark registrations, if there’s a commercial reason to do so,” she says. “Most agencies aren’t very good at that.”

Erica points to a specific example of gathering information on a client’s sector.

“Though the client will own the information allied to the business, it’s the agency that owns the information that’s been gathered,” she explains. “You can do all sorts with that information, whether it’s issuing reports about the sector to help win business, selling those reports, or even running sector-specific masterclasses.”

The list is endless in just this one scenario, and it’s all down to identifying exactly what you can take advantage of when assessing your agency’s intellectual property.

Join us as we talk through exactly how to exploit these areas with Erica – you might be sitting on a creative goldmine.