Licensing & Trademark Protection

A member asked:

What is your position on licensing and protection of the Mensa trademark?

The pat answer is something along the lines of “Gosh, it's our most valuable asset and we should protect it at all costs." Obviously that’s not telling you anything.

We all joined MENSA. It looks like this:

Most of us take pride in belonging to MENSA. We’re not choosing to belong to “Smarties Together” club, or “I Scored High on an Internet Quiz” club. There is something about being able to say “I’m a member of MENSA” that makes us willing pay $63 a year for the privilege.  As it says on the Mensa Brand page ,

“The Mensa brand is our promise to our members and the public that items carrying our name and the stylized-M logo are of the highest quality and are synonymous with excellence in intelligence and life-long learning. Our brand is the heart of what Mensa is and who our members are."

It is a well-established belief, perhaps even a fact (not a marketing expert, sorry), that when a brand becomes generic, the original of it loses cachet and value and has to step up efforts to keep market shares. Imagine if there were twenty different “Mensas” you chose choose to join, Some imply that you scored in the top 2% on a real, respected IQ test and some just indicate that you scored in the top 10% on a cheesy Facebook quiz. One is obviously more impressive and more likely to provide you with connections to other genuinely smart people. How to know which is which? Mensa—the REAL Mensa— would have to spend more on advertising and less for other services that make Mensa fun to belong to.

The point of registering trademarks and copyrights is to keep the product from being misrepresented, misused, and diluted. Beyond pride, there is also actual income at stake. Companies pay AML for the ability to display our name or logo, or to publicly associate themselves with us. The greater Mensa’s “coolness,” the more other companies are willing to pay to cozy up to us.

Currently, our predicted licensing income is around $166K. Our budgeted Name and Logo expense is around $36K. If all goes according to plan, we will spend less to defend our marks than we will earn by licensing them.

But this is where it gets murky.

The Name & Logo team decides just how much effort and money to expend in pursuit of a name or logo misuse based on many factors, such as how wide spread the use is, how likely the confusion, how much it will cost, or how patient we can be with slower and cheaper tactics. I can’t go into details about how we make these decisions, since I don’t want to publish on the Web instructions about “how to take advantage of Mensa.” You’ll just have to trust me when I say that we review, discuss, and pursue nearly everything. Even that decade-old renegade URL (usmensa.org) is not being ignored, though to outsiders it might appear so (despite what the legal experts on the Yahoo lists think, that case is far more complex and potentially expensive than just plopping down a couple grand to file an ICANN complaint. Otherwise, I’m sure Dan—who has not only been on the N&L Committee nearly continuously since 2002, but chaired it in 2003-2005—would have dispatched it easily by now).

We try very hard to take calm, simple steps: monitoring trademarks submitted for registration and lodging protests when we spy one that we feel infringes on Mensa’s rights, reviewing products for sale on Café Press and Zazzle, filling out infringement notices with Yahoo and Facebook and ebay,  scooping up URLs when they come up for renewal, etc. Usually this works. Very, very rarely do we take aggressive legal action or initiate suits. But we will when we have to.

So, my personal position?  We gotta do what we gotta do, and that includes making sure our name and logo—our brand— remains unique and prestigious and that belonging to MENSA remains a source of pride for our members.

Campaign Web Site Launched

As most people know by now, I'm a candidate for First Vice Chair. As part of my efforts to share information with voters, I finally launched my very first, all-by-myself Web site!

Crawling out of the Hole Part 7

August 31, 2010:
    Assets: $4,107,513.150
    Liabilities: $5,805,550.50
    Net Assets: ($1,698,037.35)



December 31, 2010:
    Assets: $3,393,506.67
    Liabilities: $5,066,213.11
    Net Assets: ($1,672,706.44)


Hooray-- we're moving in the correct direction again! And the preliminary budget created by the Finance Committee last weekend ends in the black, even after earmarking the full $150K for equity restoration.

National Office Postal Machines

In reaction to an earlier post, Jared commented about the cost of the postal machine in the office and asked if we had considered alternatives such as stamps.com. Here is some information about that:

The lease and maintenance on the machines costs $21,300 for the year. It collates, folds letters (including multiple pages) stuffs the envelopes, and seals the seals. Last WEEK alone it processed 4,000 membership cards. The other machine applies the postage. It weighs, checks size, and meters the envelope, then prints the correct postage on each piece. Last year it processed over 84,000 pieces of mail. We did NOT use it for handling renewals, since that comprises more than 100,000 pieces, and necessitates a higher-capacity machine—which is one reason why we use a separate mail house for that. The machines are also used for all of the Foundation mailings. 

If we used something like stamps.com, we'd get postage... but that's it. So we are left to choose between spending the $21,300 on the machines or significantly more than that to hire (and train and insure) a staff to stuff, lick, and stamp envelopes every day.

I think sometimes, members don't grok the scale of operations at the office. Dig out the year-end stats from an AML Today and look at the number of phone calls and mailings the staff handle in a year. It's mind-boggling. 


And yes, these are the actual machines in question; I just happened to be in the office this past weekend, so I snapped the pictures.

Musing on Complaints about AMC Travel

People complain about AMC travel and point to that over and over as something to reduce in order to increase the black at the bottom of the budget.

Most people agree that:
• The AMC needs to meet face to face now and then.
• We need officers from different parts of the country.
• AMC meetings should be in different places so more members have opportunities to attend.
• AMC officers need to eat and sleep.
• Volunteering should not be limited to only those rich enough to afford it.

I do think there are ways to reduce AMC meeting costs, and I would support a few of the obvious suggestions such as having fewer AMC members and choosing locations that are overall cheaper to get to for most AMC members. 


Please don't take this post as just another defensive whine. What I'm really wondering about is if there is some psychological or social phenomenon at play because the travel is an expenditure members can see with their own eyes.

The lease on the copier and postal machines in the office are more than twice the price of an AMC meeting. Credit card fees I've already mentioned. Running an election in which only 11% of the membership participates costs nearly three times what an AMC meeting costs. Postage for mailing things to Local Groups is close to equal the cost of an AMC meeting, as is the cost of insurance for Groups.

There are perks and inequities to many volunteer jobs. Editors and Webmasters get awards for their work; LocSecs and Membership officers do not. RG Chairs get comped rooms; regular attendees do not. MindGames Chief Judges get dinners paid; regular judges do not. Some proctors get paid for their efforts; some don't. RVCs have funding to attend gatherings; Development officers and Secretaries do not.

Yes, AMC members get to travel, sleep in hotels, and eat nice meals while other members do not. It comprises about 1% of the annual budget. There is no denying that fact. Is the zeal for reducing that particular area of expenditure, while never mentioning other larger line items, at all motivated by some dog-in-a-manger human emotion?

Musing on Funding

Some members feel that more dues money should go to Local Groups and less to the "National." After all, the Mensa experience is at the local level, so that is where we should focus our resources. That is very true, for some members in some Local Groups. But not all. Recently there was this exchange in a thread not the AML Forums (names changed):

Eager New Member:
I looked at the website for my local group... I do not have high hopes lol. I think the last time anyone touched it was in October. Under the meetings heading, it says, "Our next regular meeting will be Thursday, November 4th." The last event scheduled was a testing day on January 30th, so maybe they'll be putting up a new calendar soon...? Ah well, no big deal.

Helpful Seasoned Member:
What is your local group? The website might be a tad out of date, but you should get a newsletter every month listing events for that month.

ENM:
It's the MidState Mensa. Hmm, I just checked for the newsletter for my local group on the AML Local Group Newsletters page, and it came back "no records returned," even for "Show All." Am I doing something wrong?

HSM:
Probably not. Groups aren't required to post their newsletters, so it is possible they have chosen not to.

ENM:
 That's a tad disappointing.... Forums it is, then!

Even if we tripled the funding for this Local Group, the Website would remain out of date and the newsletter unavailable to members wanting to get involved. This is why we spread the money around between support for LG-provided services and services provided at the national level. So ALL members get something for their dues money, even if they decide to live near a Local Group whose volunteers do less for their members.

Budgeting Process

As I continue to work my way through the draft budget binder in preparation for this weekend's Finance Committee meeting, here's another little bit I can share now:

In addition to detailed (and I mean detailed down to the cost of the envelope used to send the new membership card) information about all areas of income and expenses, we also get copies of articles about trends in banking fees, investment environments and advice, salary comparisons in the area and nationwide, changes in IRS 1099 requirements, and concrete plans and goals for each National Office department.

My point is that the budgeting development process is anything but "look at last year and add 5%."

If I Were Tsar of Mensa

While sipping morning coffee and nagging kids to get ready for school, I was surfing a bit— using Flipboard on my iPad.  And I ran across a link to this article "The Daily vs. Flipboard".


Fascinating, and what really caught my eye and fired my imagination was:

... the future of the newspaper is about increased personalization, interactivity, social features, more choice of niche content. It's no longer about serving up a selection of middle-of-the-road fare every day and hoping that satisfies a large chunk of the newspaper-reading population (which is of course in decline, too).

This got me thinking about the Bulletin. I hear from members who want less Mensa politics and more fun reading. I know of members who want fewer book reviews and more details about how much AMC members' dinners cost. There are members who want puzzles and art, members who want content for children, and members who want high-level debates. There are members who want descriptions of gatherings and members who want biographies of other members.

If I were Tsar of Mensa, I'd find a way to let each member identify and bundle the content he wants. Imagine the Bulletin as a Flipboardesque publication! Or, even better, if we could somehow expand the concept to the Mensa experience in general!

Budget Factoid

So I'm all comfy on my sofa under a faux fur blanket, watching the snow fall and going over the first draft of the proposed 2011-2012 budget and scribbling notes and questions.

And at the same time, there is angry accusatory discussion about AMC travel expenses on both the LocSec elist and the Yahoo groups. Here's and interesting budget factoid that should but probably won't put things into a different perspective:

The cost of banking and credit card fees for AML is higher than for four meetings' worth of AMC travel, lodging, and meals.



- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

AMC's Luxury Junkets

I have been reading on the Yahoo groups complaints bout how the AMC members eat fancy expensive dinners and stay in 5-star luxury hotels. This motivated me to dig out an old blog post on this topic.

By the way, the room rate at the Hyatt  where I'll be staying for the Finance Committee meeting is $89 a night. Meals are generally continental breakfast at hotel, some sort of boxed lunch at the office, and a hearty good dinner at a restaurant.