No Lame Names (FREE) talk in Fort Collins

Refresh NoCo Power Lunches begin in March

Thursday, March 11th, 12 Noon to 1pm
Art Lab Fort Collins, 239 Linden St. (next to Cozzola’s Pizza)

Grab Your Brown Bag Lunch and join your marketing, design, and web friends for an informative yet entertaining lunch learning session:

Kevin Houchin, Creative Business Lawyer, presents the first in this series:

No Lame Names.

Help yourself and your clients create brands for their companies, products, or services that will be both MARKETABLE and PROTECTABLE.

Before going to law school Kevin was a graphic designer. He wasn’t one of those people who would just buy a Mac and some software from Adobe and then call himself a designer.He spent 4 years at a top university and have a BFA in Graphic Design. He started his career in the design department of a Fortune 500 company and then built an Art Department in a small advertising agency. He built his own design studio, worked as Vice President of Marketing and Internet for a retail software company, and finally provided large-scale branding and communications consulting for colleges and universities all across the United States.

Kevin has designed dozens of logos and branding systems and supervised the design and implementation of dozens more.

The hardest part of those jobs: lame names.

This session walks you through the discussions Kevin has had with his clients. If you attend the session and then follow the steps in his FREE ebook (available free at www.houchinlaw.com – just input your email address) you will understand how to help yourself and your clients create brands for their companies, products, or services that will be both MARKETABLE and PROTECTABLE. It’s not easy. It can be frustrating, but the right name is the hub of your brand and few businesses or products will succeed in today’s market without a great name.

A Laugh is Worth a Buck.

As most of you know, my client InfoMedia created the most talked-about iPhone App ever – iFart. Earlier this year my client received a letter demanding $50,000 or they would sue InfoMedia over InfoMedia using the common phrase “Pull My Finger” in some of the marketing and public relations materials InfoMedia used to promote iFart. We decided that instead of paying the $50K for the bogus demand, we would file an action in Federal Court here in Colorado and ask a judge to rule that InfoMedia’s use was NOT a trademark infringement as suggested by the Pull My Finger folks. It caused a _ _ _ _ storm of public relations activity including mentions on NPR, CNN, and many other major media outlets.

Last night it was featured on The Daily Show.

What does all this prove? It proves that a laugh is worth at least a buck. iFart Mobile sells for $0.99 on the App Store. I don’t know the exact sales numbers, but I’m betting over 500,000 people have purchased the app by now.

A LAUGH IS WORTH A BUCK.

It also shows that when you become wildly successful with a creative endeavor, there is going to be something that comes along to complicate the success. In this case it was a competitor. It seems like there is always some price for success.

Here’s the segment: (evidently I’m not a “Real” lawyer… )  🙂

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Mon – Thurs 11p / 10c
iFeud
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show
Full Episodes
Political Humor Joke of the Day

Brand Protection Council Membership

I want to tell you about BPCouncil (www.bpcouncil.com) a great new international organization I have recently joined and highly recommend that you check out.  They have already provided great value to me both directly and through referrals.

bplogo

BPCouncil is a dynamic international virtual community of brand protection and IP professionals. You can connect with brand owners, IP lawyers, brand protection technology providers, customs officials and other IP professionals from around the globe.

On www.BPCouncil.com you can find a wide variety of helpful resources, networking tools, in-depth news stories and more. There are also opportunities to promote your organization through speaking engagements, contributing content for the website/newsletter, discounted banner ads for members and an active job board and more. So far BPCouncil has distributed my ebook and I can’t wait to submit more material to them.

Join now and get a 15% discount off corporate membership. Be sure to write “Kevin Houchin” in the referral code space.

If you have any questions, Sarah Hein of the Member Services team will be happy to provide you with further information at SarahH@bpcouncil.com or +41-22-735-40-65.

I look forward to your becoming a part of the BPCouncil community.

This really is worth your time and money. I hope you take advantage of this offer.

TM & Copyright for Creative People – Free Webinar

I’ve been asked a few times over the last few days to repost the links to the copyright and trademark webinars I did for Morgan James Publishing back in January.  These programs are tailored to the needs of authors, but the concpets and laws are the same for anyone in creative business.

Here are the links:

Trademark & Branding

Copyright

Feel free to forward these links to any of your friends who might need the information.

If you would like me to do a similar session tailored to your group – give me a call at 970-493-1070 or drop me an email and we’ll work something out.

Trademarks on Facebook

If you own some trademarks, be sure to fill out this form on Facebook to make sure nobody else registers your mark as their Facebook Username (Vanity URL).

http://www.facebook.com/help/contact.php?show_form=username_rights

Thanks to Mari Smith for including this link in this post.