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Smart Tips for Turning Creative Ideas into Multiple Income Streams
Crazy concepts like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and SpongeBob SquarePants produce income from multiple products and media because their creators were smart about how they leveraged their creations. Ninja Turtle characters generate revenue from publishing, clothing, movies and games. The creators of the Ninja Turtles have generated revenue from multiple business models, and their concept has evolved over many years. It was critical to their long-term success that they didn’t take the “first offer” and sign away their rights. The creators of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Peter Laird and Kevin Eastman, came up with the idea in 1983 while hysterically silly, brought on by a combination of poverty and boredom. They thought the funniest possible idea for a superhero would be a turtle, bearing numchuks. The “teenage” and “mutant” aspects of their unlikely new heroes came soon after. They took the only $1200 they could raise (through a tax refund and a generous uncle) and printed their own first edition of the comic, leading ultimately to their own publishing company. Marvel Comics approached them in 1986 after they’d published four issues. Marvel’s deal was a boilerplate offer they easily refused. A 1987 deal, which paired toy licensing (to Playmates Toys) with television shows, brought massive and prolonged popularity to the Turtles. The teenaged turtles have been through several waves of popularity in the past twenty years. They began as a dark cartoon aimed at adults, morphed into a brighter daytime show for children, subsided for a while from public view, and have reemerged more closely akin to their original incarnation, and the licensing revenue stream rolls on. SpongeBob SquarePants evolved from Stephen Hillenberg’s cartoon experience as he envisioned a charmingly innocent talking sponge (and his friends) on a television screen, rather than inside a comic book. He quickly sold his idea—and himself as a producer—to Nickelodeon. Hillenberg’s unique background in marine biology, art, and commercial animation produced the quirky, endearingly innocent kitchen sponge on legs. He also had a unique vision of a guileless character, in contrast to the worldly-wise animated Simpson family. If you have a SpongeBob fan in your family, you know that you can buy a SpongeBob ANYTHING: toy, lunchbox, air freshener, cereal, or inflatable chair. Nickelodeon has allowed no grass to grow under the licensing rights it bought from Hillenberg. As a result, SpongeBob will continue earning far more money for the company that owns him than for his creator. To maximize the revenue from a “hit” character, a multi-pronged strategy is needed to protect the intellectual property (IP): Copyright protection for the way the author expressed him/herself (for example, sketches, and anything in writing). Trademark protection for the name and logo. Registering the trademark in multiple categories covers a broad spectrum of potential spin-off products. You can check online at the www.uspto.gov and see that parent company Viacom registered the trademark for SpongeBob in innumerous categories, protecting its rights to the clothing, toys, games, etc.
The more effectively the IP (creative work) is protected, the better the chances for favorable licensing terms and multiple streams of income. For more information, check out my presentation located at http://www.smartfast.com/protecting_from_copycats.html -- the “IP Matrix” (on page 4 of the presentation) is a handy reference for the range of IP protections and how you go about implementing them. Jean D. Sifleet, Esq., CPA 120 South Meadow Road eNews
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