Do you know who your customers are?

"I’m in house IP counsel", you say, or "I’m an exec interested in IP, I don’t have any customers."

Wrong and wrong again.

Your customers are the people you need to serve to get your job done and done well.  They include:

• the more senior people in your organisation
• the marketing team who want to sail close to the wind with their packaging and supporting materials
• the product development team and their innovation
• the finance team who want you to justify every IP expense
• the employees in your team wanting to know why they need to divert attention to IP as well
• and so on…

Here’s a nice example of what Not to do (this is where ‘mad’ in the title of this post becomes a play on words).

Banks don’t open until 9:30am. People wait patiently at the door or come and go forgetting momentarily the special opening time for banks.

Here’s what we’re waiting for.

Why do banks start late anyway?

Why do we put up with this? (I don’t bank with these guys – logo on the window) but I couldn’t resist the photo.

Imagine a bank that opened the doors as soon as the first customer appeared.

Oh and when I went in they still hadn’t changed the date over:

I asked one of the two guys what his golf handicap was (thinking that maybe he was hoping to turn pro and hence his devotion to the game). ‘Hopeless’ he said – ahh – just for fun then.

So thanks for that wait then, guys.