Laura’s Winning Ideas

Would it help if you could have proposal images and/or audio available to the customer at their convenience?

Below, you can watch a PowerPoint presentation I created for an SMPS meeting several years ago. I can restrict access to the folks whose email addresses I provide, or leave the file open to the public.

The service I’m using here is authorSTREAM. The service is free, so its a good thing to tuck away in your bookmarks.

I’m playing around with some new toys that might be ideal for a proposal. Sketchcast is a new service which allows you to make your own sketch with or without sound. It’s my favorite price: free!

I could see embedding links to several of these in a proposal. Almost like putting Easter Eggs in your document code.

If I were doing this for a real proposal, I’d do several things:

1. Get a graphic sketch board (as low as $50 at Amazon.com) rather than use my mouse to sketch.

2. Have one person sketching and another speaking. It was hard to draw and talk at the same time, but your experience may vary.

3. Use a headset. I was simply using the built-in speaker on my computer. The sound will be louder and clearer with a headset.

Play with it and see what you can do!

Here’s another company’s promo done on Sketchcast, with the founder’s 11 year old son narrating and explaining what his Dad’s company does.

Sometimes you have to wonder just what these executives are thinking when they cook up stupid stunts like this. . .

Adidas won a Trademark suit this week as covered in The Wall Street Journal here. (available for 7 days from this post, thereafter you’ll have to register in order to access the story)

It seems that Payless Shoe Stores purchased Adidas shoes, sent them to a Chinese manufacturer with instructions to copy but change the three strips to either two or four stripes. They sold approximately $400 million of these knock-offs.

The jury agreed with Adidas, that Payless had infringed the trademark of Adidas with the intention to benefit from knocking off the Adidas shoes. The award of $305 million drove down the stock price by over 16% with the news.

The formula for the award was as follows:

Actual damages = $31 million
Disgorged profits because the jury found willfulness in the defendant’s actions = $135 million
Punitive damages (equal to the disgorged profits) = $135 million
TOTAL VERDICT = $305 million (figures above were all approximate and added up to $305 million)

Payless says they plan to appeal, but they might want to rethink this strategy. The attorney for Adidas acknowledged that the verdict might be reduced on appeal, but it is possible it could be increased because the judge could add plaintiff’s attorney’s fees and may also triple the actual damages portion of the verdict. Add the plunge in stock price to the mix, and this was a very expensive stunt to pull.

Food for Thought

Copyrights and Trademarks are protected property. Next time someone delivers a nifty photo they found on the internet for a proposal, you might want to ask a few more questions before inserting it into your document. And don’t think a quick photoshop “editing” of an image makes it your own, it is merely proof of “willfulness” and expensive when discovered.

If you’ve heard me speak on the topic you know that photographs are exceptionally well protected by copyright law, so don’t think you’ll even get as much grace as the music industry has extended to folks caught downloading music files illegally. (which ain’t much grace if you’ve followed the news.)

A Duh! moment this week.

I’ve been waiting for several return calls from federal agency staff. Seems to be taking longer than expected. Then I reached one of my contacts and heard why she isn’t getting back to folks as quickly as usual. The President has ordered a freeze on DoD funds and is sabre rattling in Congress for funding approval.

What this means inside the agencies is that expendable contracts are being frozen, cancelled or delayed, and the attendant paperwork associated is being processed. Ergo, contract officers and other POCs may be underwater right now.

To top it off, Bush has threatened that he will begin laying off civilian DoD staff if the funding is not prompt. So, many are feeling a bit unnerved at the possibility that they will be laid off. So your POC may be a bit testy at the moment, and no small wonder why.

Hopefully this will resolve itself in the next few weeks.