For most of us, we could use some intellectual property advice as legal issues are just not our strong suit. Our brains just aren’t wired to work that way. Whether it’s clients, freelancers or employees – we want to believe the best of people. But it’s important that we understand the legal risks we face every day and how we can mitigate those risks with a little planning, preventative measures and common sense.
In this podcast, I have a great conversation with Sharon Toerek about all things legal from an agency’s perspective. We hit on a variety of topics including:
- Copyright laws and the misconceptions surrounding these laws
- How to protect yourself and your work when using freelancers
- How to implement a consistent legal process
- A checklist for agencies to internally audit themselves and find any current holes in their legal protection
Sharon is an intellectual and property law attorney and her national firm, Toerek Law, works with agencies all over the country, devoting time to helping creative professionals protect, enforce and monetize their creative assets. Sharon consults with clients on legal issues surrounding copywriting, content protection, licensing of creative content, trademark and brand protection, and more.
Sharon and I have worked together for years. I connect her to AMI agencies all the time because she’s not just a great attorney for big and small business law – she also understands our business and speaks our language. Best of all, there’s no legal jargon – I understand every word she’s saying!
To listen – you can visit the Build A Better Agency site (https://agencymanagementinstitute.com/sharon-toerek/) and grab either the iTunes or Stitcher files or just listen to it from the web.
If you’d rather just read the conversation, the transcript is below.
If you are going to take the risk of running an agency, shouldn’t you get the benefits, too? Welcome to Build a Better Agency. Where we show you how to build an agency that can scale and grow with better clients, invested employees, and best of all, more money to the bottom line. Bringing his 25 plus years of expertise as both an agency owner and agency consultant to you, please welcome your host, Drew McLellan.
Drew: Hey everybody, Drew McLellan here. Welcome to another episode of Build a Better Agency. One of the topics that always comes up when I’m working with agencies is around the whole issue of legal protection, especially as we embrace the idea of contract labor and freelancers and we are creating more intellectual property. And that is why I’m really excited about our guest today.
Sharon Toerek is an intellectual property and marketing law attorney. She has a firm that works with clients from all over the country, but is based in Cleveland, Ohio. And she devotes her legal practice at Toerek Law at helping creative professionals protect, enforce and monetize their creative assets.
She’s here this week to share her best intellectual property advice, as she works a lot with clients in the advertising, marketing and creative services industries and consults with them on legal issues all around copyrighting, content protection, licensing of creative content, trademark and brand protection matters. And also just agency’s service contracts, freelance contracts, social media issues and a plethora of things that today’s agency run into. She is very involved in our industry; she has been the former president of the Ad Fed (Advertising Federation) in Cleveland.
She also serves on the 4A’s legal consultant panel. Sharon and I have worked together for years. I often am referring her to AMI agencies because not only is she a great attorney, but she talks in normal language so you can understand what she’s saying and she understands our business. And for all of us I think that’s really vital. So Sharon, welcome to the podcast, I’m excited about our conversation today.
Sharon: Thanks Drew, I’m happy to join you today. I’m looking forward to our conversation, too. I appreciate you having me on the show.
Drew: Me too. So you know I suspect that your world is all about horror stories. That often times the phone rings when something is on fire. So, what are some of the biggest issues, that today’s agencies are banging their heads against, that trigger a phone call to you?
Sharon: Well, you know, I…it is funny. It is such a fast moving industry and honestly I’m dealing with the legal end of the business is not why most agency owners got into it. So, I would say that that probably creates some of the most frequently asked questions and issues that I see. But I think you can put them in a few buckets.
A lot of clients want to know and understand how they can better protect themselves in the contracting process with clients. And when they’re doing the business development work that they do to get their pipelines full, they want to understand better, especially the ones that are doing spec work, how to protect their ideation, their concepts, any spec they might to decide to produce in the pitch process. They want to make sure that they are well protected so that if they don’t end up getting the business, they still own the rights to the work that they’ve invested in creating. So that’s one area, sort of the pre-engagement protection of the agency.
Secondly is how to best create a contract that will protect them if something goes wrong in the relationship or that very clearly defines the responsibilities of the client in the agency.
Next, I would say a lot of agencies, particularly those that do a lot of branding work, want to better understand how to be a resource for their clients on the whole due diligence process relating to clearing those brands. So that they make sure they don’t go down a path that’s unavailable to the client, which creates a lot of uncomfortable conversations and expense.
And then as you put it out too earlier, most agencies now are working with freelancers and independent contractors or in strategic alliance relationships with other firms. And how do you structure those relationships legally so that the rights to the work end up in the correct place and so that everybody understands the rules of the road? Those are three or four of the most frequently encountered, I think, that agency owners see from a legal perspective.
Drew: And my perception is that many of us get it wrong. In terms of, we think just because we made it, we own it. So, what are some of the big misperceptions around these legal issues that get agencies into hot water?
Sharon: I think the problem and the biggest misperception is that the copyright law in the United States is fundamentally illogical. When you look at it just from a commercial or a business perspective, you would presume I, the agency, create work for you, the client. You, the client, pay me for the work. You own the work. And everybody’s perfectly fine with that. And that’s not the way copyright law works, unfortunately. You have to document those transfers to those work rights in writing and it needs to be in a really well crafted…it doesn’t have to be a complicated contract, but there needs to be clear language.
And then secondly, most agencies would assume that they engage a freelancer or another strategic partner to help them do client fulfillment. That once they pay that freelancer or that other strategic alliance firm, let’s say it’s a videographer or let’s say it’s a mobile app developer, you would assume that you own that work once you have paid for it. And again, not the way the copyright law works. So where most…
Drew: So wait, hang on a second. So, who owns that work at that point?
Sharon: Whoever created it is who owns it. So unless you’ve got something in writing that spells it out, the freelancer still owns their work. And that’s even if you paid them for it. So, that’s an unpleasant position for the agency to be in and it’s uncomfortable for the client as well.
And it’s easy to work around with a few, drafted in advance, templates that you can have available for anytime you know you are going to work with a freelancer or an independent contractor or use the same one on multiple projects. Having a process in place to have a contract that says we’re going to own the rights to the work that you do, takes care of the problem. It’s just a detail that most agency owners move too quickly to address in a timely manner.
Drew: I can’t even imagine how huge a blow up that could be if you don’t have that buttoned down and all of a sudden the freelancer is reselling that work or doing something else with that work.
Sharon: Well, right, and that’s a problem. The other area of concern for a lot of agencies increasingly, particularly because it puts them in a bad spot with their client sometimes, is a freelancer who will go out there and use the work in their own personal portfolio without permission. And if they own it, they can do that, but perhaps that is not cool with the client to have their work displayed in this portfolio. And sometimes the freelancers may not be completely transparent about whether the client is their client or whether it’s the agency’s client. And that upsets a lot of agencies.
So again, having a good freelancer agreement spells out this whole issue, not only of owning the copyrights, but who has the rights for portfolio displays and when does permission need to be acquired. And it just makes the process…it puts the agency in a much stronger position both with the client and with the freelancer.
Drew: So, I’ve had several agency owners talk to me about the fact they have their undies in a bunch because a freelancer has…I know that’s a legal term that you probably use all the time. That a freelancer has, as you said, built a website, has the work they did for their client on there or lists their client on their list of clients. So, in other words it doesn’t say, “Agency ABC is my client and I did this work on behalf of Client ABC or Agency ABC,” but just puts the client and the client work, making it look like they have the client. And what I’m hearing you say is if you don’t have that work done in advance, they technically can certainly display the work because they own it. And you can argue perhaps that they are misrepresenting the client relationship, but they certainly can put the work on their own website.
Sharon: Right, you’re exactly right, that’s perfectly stated. It’s two separate issues, it’s sort of this whole representation to the world about who owns the client relationship. And sometimes you know where you’ve used a freelancer as an agency in sort of a ghost capacity, the client doesn’t even know this freelancer or that the freelancer is the one who contributed to the project and that’s by design. The agency doesn’t want them to know that. It’s two issues in one. Having a good, well crafted independent contractor agreement takes care of both of them. But at a minimum you want to make sure that if you haven’t got that agreement done upfront that you’ve got something in writing from the freelancer after the work is complete that assigns those work rights to you.
I have one horror story in particular about having to chase down freelancers well after a project was complete to make sure that they assigned rights to work. In this case, work that turned into the actual new brand identity for the end client because the client was involved in a mergers and acquisition situation and they needed to button down all their intellectual property to complete the transaction. So, those are steps away that sometimes marketers don’t think about in the heat of getting the projects done. But it’s important for all kinds of reasons.
Drew: I know one of the other issues that you bump into a lot with clients is when they engage with a freelance population, the issue of originality of work. Can you give us your best intellectual property advice related to that?
Sharon: Well, I have seen a couple of agencies get burned by freelancers who either misappropriated imagery online, didn’t comply with the terms of stop licensing houses and incorporated imagery into finished products, and sort of either inadvertently or intentionally didn’t obtain the proper licenses. So we’ve seen that.
We have also had a very unique case where a freelancer actually misrepresented, just outright plagiarized brand identity work as his or her own, when in fact he or she had obtained elements of that brand right identity on logo inspiration websites. And that created a terrible spot for the agency to be in because it had to do the back channel work of making sure that it tracked down the original artists, acquired the rights to the art, and properly transferred those rights to it’s client.
And so you want to make sure that in your freelance relationships, the freelancer is making a written representation of originality and making a written representation that where they’ve incorporated third party elements. There’s nothing illegal about incorporating third party software code from mobile applications or photography, for example, to the finished product. You just need to acquire the proper licenses to do that. So, you want to make sure that where they are involved in harnessing all that third party creative or intellectual property that they are papering the licenses or ownership rights to use that stuff.
And so these are some of the hazards working with a virtual freelance workforce. As many conveniences as it enables and as flexible as it allows creative agencies to be, you can staff up and staff down and be somewhat elastic depending on your client demand. You do need these processes in place to make sure you are in a firm legal position. Now, whether these folks work for you or they are your employees, you don’t have the same issues because you automatically own the rights to the work that they do. When you are using freelancers you have to ask those questions, you know. Where did you get this stuff? Are you warranting it’s originality? And say so in writing.
Drew: So, all of that is sort of tied around the freelance issue. But I also think that a lot of agency owners leave themselves pretty exposed just in terms of traditional contracts and even though the agency of record contract is fewer and far between, you know, agencies are still putting together scope of work documents or project documents all the time. Where are we leaving ourselves exposed in that kind of space?
Sharon: Well, a couple of areas. I am pretty agnostic about whether an agency…I think, my personal view is every agency should have a master service agreement available. Even if you are not going to be in an AOR relationship, which is less and less the case. But you need to have the agreement at the ready for a couple reasons. First of all, to keep things moving quickly. And second of all, to put yourself in a better position to leverage the appropriate deal with your client. Because I can tell you the major areas where the agency’s contract and the client’s contract are going to be somewhat different and those are, again, the intellectual property ownership.
Your client’s contract template is going to say they own the work from the minute it’s created and you as an agency are going to want to make sure that you are not going to transfer the rights to that work until you’ve been paid. So that’s one key point to include in every contract you enter into with your client or if you choose to just put terms and conditions in your scope of work or your proposal. That’s one you want to make sure is included. Transferring the work doesn’t occur until you get paid.
Drew: So hang on a second. So transferring the work, what you’re saying is transferring the ownership of the work. So in other words, we design a logo or something for a client. We get it ready to go on Letterhead and Signage and their website or whatever. But technically, they don’t own it until we’ve been paid for it. Is that what you’re saying?
Sharon: Well, exactly. And you want to make sure they understand that that transfer is not occurring until you’ve been paid and if you default the signing the contract template that the client puts in front of you, it’s going to say, I promise you, that the client owns the work from the time it’s created. Which takes away your leverage to use the intellectual property rights, in the event that there is a payment problem or some other dispute with the contract. So that’s one key area.
The second key area, and this is more practical. It’s not at all based on intellectual property but that I see most agencies miss in their service contracts or their terms and conditions is, transferring the costs of collection onto the client. If the client is a slow pay, is a no pay, if you need to engage in a legal process in order to get paid for the work that you’ve done, you want language in your contract that says those costs are going to the responsibility of the client. And the reason that’s important is because if you need to escalate to legal process to seek action on that contract, you’re not going to be able to recover your costs. You are not going to be able to recover your interests, you are not going to be able to recover your attorney’s fees. In most jurisdictions, certainly in my home jurisdiction in Ohio. But in every other, just about, you won’t be able to get those costs back and so your margins shrink dramatically in addition to the fact that you are acting as a bank for your client. That’s a simple tweak to make to every agency contract. Make sure you’ve included those collection costs and that those are transferred onto the client as a liability.
Those are just two quick top tips I see that are missing from most contractual relationships that I see. You know, a lot of agencies tell me that they don’t like the formality of a master service agreement. I understand that and I think that’s okay, actually. I think you can put together a well crafted set of legal terms and conditions that can be added on as an exhibit to or incorporated very easily into your standard work orders, purchase orders, proposals, scope of work documents, whatever the agency likes to use or call them. You just create a legal section to that document.
The key is consistency. If you are using multiple within your team, whether it’s the account coordinators, account directors, account executives, if different people are holding responsibilities in this area for getting the documentation done, those documents are going to look very different and there’s not going to appear to be any consistency in the agency’s process. So have a consistent set of forms. If you can, centralize the process within your agency of contracting with clients. Maintain those documents in an easy to find place. This is 101 stuff, but the problem is, agencies get so busy with the actual execution of the work or the with the actual excitement of business development that these details get missed. And a lot of times they are not a problem because things go swimmingly, but when they are a problem, you are going to want to know that you’ve got solid documentation on your side.
Drew: I also think it doesn’t happen because agency owners don’t know what to do. And are a little afraid to ask and are a little afraid of the $300 an hour talk to the lawyer thing. So I want to just stop for a second and make sure that the listeners know there are a couple of resources that you’ve put together that help agency owners sort of understand this. And again, one of the things that I appreciate about you as an attorney is you don’t talk like one. You talk like we talk and so we can actually understand what you’re saying without a lot of theretofore’s and whereas’s and, you know.
So I just want to…this will be in the show notes as well, listeners, but a couple additional intellectual property advice resources for you. Go to legalandcreative.com. That’s sort of Sharon’s home site where she has a lot of free content around these issues and kind of some best practices. And if you go to agencylegalprotection.com, again, there are all kinds of free resources that you can download or look at.
But Sharon has also built a product to help all of us do all of this better, but at a price point that doesn’t make you cry. So Sharon can you tell us a little bit about your product. I know that it’s relatively new, but just give us a little idea of what we’ll find at agencylegalprotection.com and then I want to go back because I have more questions.
Sharon: Yeah, no, I appreciate that. We’ve finally decided that as a result of sort of the most frequently asked questions that we’ve received from our agency owner clients, that there was sort of a common set of issues. And so what we’ve done is create a legal tool kit for marketing agencies. It’s called “The Legal and Creative Agency Protection System” and it does just that. It gives you all the tools in one place to help agencies with issues related to client contracts, related to their freelance contracts and relationships, related to brand protection and trademarked issues for branding agencies. There are content marketing and social media legal compliance policies. So what it is, it is some learning material and then what most agencies care about is the second part of the product, which is the actual tool kit.
There are model contracts in there. There are model templates for processes, for policies, all in one package so that it gives every agency sort of that baseline kit of resources that can be customized as you might need to do depending on your own process. But we did it because just of the reason you cited. Agencies owners are afraid of a la carte legal costs. I was getting a lot of requests about where they could find these templates online. And so we decided to create a place where they could do that.
And also I think solves the problem of what to do every time you get a new relationship with a client or a freelancer. Are we reinventing the wheel every single time? Where’s that document that we used last time? Where is the template? Now they are all in one place, centralized, easy to find, quick to use. And it’s for those agencies who want to take a more self-directed approach for whatever reason, because they don’t have the right team in place from a legal perspective yet or because they just prefer to take a more self-directed approach.
Drew: But this is not so self-directed that they are going to make mistakes. This is at least, legally sanctioned self direction.
Sharon: Yeah, I mean this is…I do have to say in the interest of the ethical rules that govern us lawyers, look, laws will vary in every state related to contracts. What this is, is a set of vetted materials that we’ve created based on our experience working in multiple jurisdictions with advertising agencies. You are not going to find stuff in the tool kit related to employment contracts. For example, you won’t find an employee manual. You won’t find a model office lease. It’s not a small business or a business owner’s tool kit per se. It is really slanted towards the issues that marketing agencies, creative agencies, design firms, encounter on a day to day basis. And adapted based upon the practices that I use in my own work with the agencies.
Drew: Okay, great. So listeners, I highly encourage you to go check that out. But let’s get back to our conversation around how agencies are sort of conducting themselves. So yeah, I get that everybody is busy and yes, you’re right, the legal stuff is not why everybody got into the business, but what do you think got in the way of agencies doing this well.
Sharon: I think those are the big reasons. It is not sexy, you know? This is the kind…
Drew: We do like sexy in the agency business, you’re right, yeah.
Sharon: Right, you know? It’s an industry based on sizzle and this is not the sizzly part of what you do and so I think that’s a big part of it. I also think that most agencies are comprised of folks who wear many hats in their work. You know, gone are the days for most small to midsize independent agencies where you’ve got a new business person who does only new business and then an account executive who only handles account management.
A lot of times these days, team members are wearing multiple hats. And because they are doing that, no process gets put in place that gets followed consistently from client to client, job to job, relationship to relationship. So I think that’s a big part of the problem. It’s very diffused, right? There are different people running different projects and are engaged in different aspects of the business. Not necessarily all talking to one another either because there’s not a process for them to do that or because they are busy trying to make hay for the agency. So I think that’s a big part of it, is lack of consistency due to people wearing multiple hats coupled with the very fast pace of the particular industry that you are in.
And I think that part of it is fear, too, of having to pick up that phone and start that meter running. Because you don’t want to pay for legal counsel to learn the particulars of the industry on your dime. Because there are some unusual things about this industry that don’t occur in other service industries. The whole issue of sequential liability, for example, if you run media buys or you run third-party purchases through the agency and charge that up with a slight administrative fee. We’re seeing less and less of that these days, but there are still a lot of agencies out there who are handling those third-party buys. How do you handle that? What are the liability issues around non-payment for that stuff? So they are fearful for the expense of getting legal review conducted or starting from scratch every time a new legal issue arises.
And then part of it is, there is not a lot of time spent around education around the legal issues. A lot of these issues are a surprise to many people who are in the industry. They don’t spend a lot of time thinking about them, particularly, the ones that don’t seem commercially reasonable like the way the copyright law can work. I get a lot of questions around trademark and branding. There are misperceptions really around how you adequately clear a potential trademark. What are the things you can start to do yourself? And then when do you need to escalate to get some legal help to make sure that that brand is going to be secure for the client? That’s sort of a menagerie based on experience of the legal stuff, it can be so challenging for agency owners.
Drew: I think the other one that you were too kind to mention is ignorance. I think a lot of the times agency owners don’t know better. Because you just assume that…sort of it is a mix of ignorance and naivety I think. We go into every client relationship thinking that they are going to be the best client ever and that it’s going to be great forever. And we don’t anticipate where there is going to be trouble. And B, I think a lot of time agency owners, you know most of them grew up in the agency business and they are really good at the agency side but they probably have never taken a law course or certainly have not thought about business law as it relates to them. So they just don’t really know how or where to protect themselves to the extent that they need to.
Sharon: Right. And I think that the industry has just changed so rapidly, even in the last five years. I have been working with clients in this industry for close to 15. I have seen so much dramatic change in the last five years. Part of it is, our industry is now hugely populated with millennials and they are digital natives so a lot of this stuff is just completely foreign to them. The idea that they might have to ask somebody for permission to use something they found on the internet is just crazy to them because that’s just not how they were raised. And then the industry is just faster paced than it used to be. The hardest cases for me sometimes, are the agency owners who have been in the business for 20 years.
I have a case right now, it is an agency that’s been around for a very long time. A great small agency. They have never had a payment issue with a client. They have been completely blessed, I can say that about almost none of my clients. And so they’ve never really used formal contracts and it’s never been a problem until it was a problem. And now unfortunately, they are in litigation with one of their clients over payment for services. It has been a huge smack in the face for this small agency because it is just something that never occurred to them. They never have to deal with. I know there are other stories out there like that of agencies that are longstanding and have liked the handshake style of doing business. And unfortunately, our business works at faster paces these days. And those certain formalities that were okay before, aren’t now. And so that’s a hard conversation sometimes to have with an agency owner for me as a legal advisor.
Drew: You know, you mentioned something that I want to dig into a little bit. The whole idea of having millennials on staff. I know for a lot of agency owners, they are really struggling with how their employees behave online and how that reflects upon the agency. And I suspect you get some questions around what can they and can’t they require, in terms of access to an employee’s Facebook account, for example, or what people can and can’t say in social media. Are there some rules around that, that agency owners should know?
Sharon: Yeah, I am really glad you asked that because it can be a very sticky situation. First of all, you want to make sure that the employee is always checking in with the agency whenever they are mentioning anything related…if they want to promote clients or client work there are disclosures that have to happen around that. So you want to have a process in place where they understand they need to ask you for permission and they understand the policies that the FTC requires regarding disclosures whenever they are mentioning work done for a client on social media. So that’s first of all.
Second of all, in your social media policy as an agency, and you should have one, you really want a zero tolerance policy on posting stuff that is disparaging to a fellow employee, the agency, or a client. Now it is free speech to, on a personal platform, express one’s opinion. But that doesn’t mean that you need to allow an agency employee to say stuff that is going to put the agency in jeopardy with it’s clients and customers, so that’s second.
And then to your specific question on, what can your agency owner do, look at, know? Obviously anything that is publicly posted on a social media platform of one of your employees is free game. The private stuff, the things that they have restricted only to their connections, their friends, that is not stuff that you are going to be able to have access to see if they don’t want you to see it. You can’t require an employee to give you any passwords to their personal accounts.
Where this can be challenging, in addition to just the whole PR disaster that can occur when they are mishandling or misbehaving on social, is who owns the contact, for example, on a LinkedIn database? If you have an employee who’s an account generation role. If they are a new business or account coordinators or whatever they are and they are linked to, on social media, employees of your client, for example, there is changing case law and multiple jurisdictions about this, but where the law pretty much stands is that if you require them to use these platforms to perform the roles of their job you may have some rights to obtain the contact information that’s in their databases. Otherwise though, if they are just organically linking to people, connecting to people, they own those contacts. You don’t. So just understand that going in.
It can be a double edged sword, you want them to be fluent in and use social media well, but you want them to understand the rules of the road just to know personal conduct. And then if they are managing social channels for a client, they need to be really well schooled in what the FTC requires in terms of transparency, disclosures, how to adequately let the public know when you are endorsing, when you are giving a testimonial, and everything else the FTC requires around the use of social.
Drew: It’s a complicated world right now, I think. And I think a lot of agency owners are scratching their head because they don’t know where the boundaries are. So that’s helpful, thank you.
Sharon: Yeah.
Drew: So what advice, either intellectual property advice or any other type of legal advice, would you give agency owners in terms of next steps? I really like…I’m all about books that give us actionable items. We were just at a BOLO conference together and I like the speakers that give actionable items to do. Theory is fine, but I want people to be able to do something. So one of my goals with this podcast is to really give people something they can do right now, as soon as they are done listening to be better than they were before they started listening.
So what are some sort of self-help tips that you can give agency owners around these legal issues? And what should they be doing right now to make sure that they are adequately protected? And if they are not, what do they do about it?
Sharon: Well, I do have several suggestions in this regard and most of them are low or no cost. The first is, you want to have a point person in your agency for legal matters and issues. A person who is charged with either learning as much as they can about the legal issues in the business or being the central clearing house, if you will, in the agency for managing legal contracts with clients, with freelancers, trademark, due diligence. It can be more than one person if you want to divide the role. The point is, have a centralized person or department to deal with this stuff.
Secondly, take some time and do an internal audit of the legal processes you currently are using as an agency. You might have stuff in place already and perhaps it is working well for you. There is, on the agencylegalprotection.com website, a free downloadable checklist that you can use to take a look at all the legal silos of your agency to see how you are doing. It’s a list of things to think about and that you should have in place and maybe you grade really well in some areas and maybe you need some help in others. So take a look at that.
If the place you want to start is looking at client contracts or your new business process, if you go to the same site there is a separate downloadable checklist that you can use to look at the current contract that the agency uses for it’s clients. And it also has got a section that deals with what are the issues and landmines that you need to look at if the client presents its contract form to you. So, take a look at your contracting process, that’s a great first place to start. If you’ve got a lot of work to do as a result of that legal audit, you probably want to start with the contract process fist and the second checklist can help you do that.
So I’d say, have a point person, audit yourself to see where you are now and figure out how you’re going to start a triage or prioritize the work that should be done. And do some team training to make sure the process that’s adopted in the agency, even if you’re only adopting one at a time, is consistent, that everybody understands it, and it can be easily repeated by the people in the agency who need to do so. I find, honestly, Drew, that this where most agencies just fall down on the job. These are the things that make it easier, cheaper, and faster to do in the long run for your agency. It’s simply having these baseline processes in place. This basic set of documents and templates that can help people get things done quickly and some common education among your team members. Some of them might not even know where to spot theses issues, so at least helping them know where the issues might be and who to go to for help when they occur.
Drew: I think a lot of times agencies get into hot water because somebody in the shop just doesn’t know better and sort of accidentally wades into dangerous waters either with no documentation or bad documentation and really puts the agency at huge risk.
Sharon: Right. And the other thing I would say too is that…and this probably is a result of my coming to this industry with an intellectual property law background but this is my position. Agencies are not in the service business. Agencies are in the intellectual property and intellectual capital creation business. I don’t care whether you are a digital agency or whether you’re a design agency. You are crafting massive amounts of intellectual property every day. It could creative, it could be technical, it could be strategic. Whatever it is, that’s your lifeblood. That is your currency as an agency.
So when you look at it through that lens, you realize how much leverage you have as an agency because of that massive amount of intellectual capital that you create. And you probably don’t see it that way. You probably see it as inventory or you probably see it as hours sold because it takes time to create this stuff. When you start looking at yourself as an IP owner, it makes some of these other issues easier to put into context and it sort of raises the priority profile of them, if you will.
Drew: Yeah. I’ve been in the business about 30 years now, which is hard to say out loud, but it’s just so much more complicated today on every level and certainly the legal levels and the risks and the exposure that we have. That social media and all our employees being out there tweeting and on Facebook and LinkedIn and everywhere else they are at, it’s just staggering and oftentimes I think agencies get into trouble just because they don’t know better. This has been awesome. Thank you very much. Hopefully this gave everybody some new tools.
Again guys, legalandcreative.com and agencylegalprotection.com, two great resources for you to go to. All kinds of free content. Be sure you check out Sharon’s product. I’ve seen it and it’s brilliant and it is easy to use. It will save you potentially hundreds of thousands of dollars. If those are holes that you need to plug, it’s a great way to do it.
Sharon I know you are super busy helping clients and traversing the country spreading the good word of legal protection, so I appreciate you carving out the time to be with us today and on behalf of the many AMI agencies that I know you have helped, thank you very much for being there and being a great resource and always being ready to answer our questions. You are a good friend to the industry. Thank you.
Sharon: Drew, thank you so much. It has been an honor, really, to be on your show and also to meet so many of your colleagues in the industry as well. I’m a huge admirer of you personally and of the work that AMI does to help its members be better agencies. It’s crucial. I wish we had a similar group in my industry. I know I have said that to you before but I’m saying it publicly now, the model you put in place for agency owners to help each other is just terrific. I appreciate you having me on your podcast and I hope this has been helpful to your listeners.
Drew: I have no doubt that it has and I’m sure you’ll see a spike in traffic as everyone goes, “Oh crap I’ve got to do that.”
Sharon: I’m here if you need me.
Drew: Thanks for your time today, I appreciate it.
Sharon: Thanks Drew.
Drew: For those of you who want to track Sharon down and get even more intellectual property advice, here are a couple ways to find her. On Twitter, she is @sharontoerek. And Toerek Spelled T-O-E-R-E-K. And if you want to e-mail her, it is simply [email protected] and that’s all spelled out. So legalandcreative.com, and I know that she would love to hear from you. So thanks again for listening and we will catch you next week.
That’s all for this episode of Build a Better Agency. Be sure to visit agencymanagementinstitute.com to learn more about our workshops and other ways we serve small to mid-sized agencies. While you’re there, sign up for our e-newsletter, grab our free e-book, and checkout the blog. Growing a bigger, better agency that makes more money, attracts bigger clients, and doesn’t consume your life is possible, here on Build a Better Agency.
