Aren’t they ripping off your tagline?

Will this vendor who is using my tagline in my community, use this opportunity to show their customer service or run over the small entrepreneur who is their target market?

My colleague, who is the president of another Washington State Organization, emailed me this online invitation below. They are using my tagline for their brand new seminar. My company is the Meeting Maximizer, Maximize Return On Event and  in my descriptions I also use Maximizing Return On Event.  This  does concern me, since we have the same audience.

It indeed appears this way, however, let’s give them a chance to excuse themselves before I jump to any conclusions. This concerns me, since this is my tagline, not just a name of webinar, and it sounds like they are selling the same service as me and they are marketing in my neighborhood.

As the president of the National Speakers Association of the Northwest  in Washington, I have received emails from Cvent too, but not this one.  The other webinar email I received, I did reply with my email signature and which has the Maximize Return On Event Phrase, which now happens to be their new campaign.

Cvent

Cvent which is a souped up, professional “evite” used to register people for events. They probably have added more bells and whistles to augment their registration service. However, they are marketing their service like a full service event planning/consultant service.

Being heavily involved with associations, I am familiar with them and they seem like a good company. When I was the program chair of International Special Event Society – ISES Seattle –  we got to the know Cvent.

Role as the Meeting Maximizer

It is my role to scout out great resources for producing meetings and to know about the under par resources too. When this situation came up, even though I was not pleased about it, it is a great opportunity to see how Cvent resolves this problem.

Here is a timeline:

• February 23, 2010 I received an email campaign targeting association presidents.  They are marketing “Increasing Meeting Effectiveness,” which is exactly what I do. Because I know them as primarily a registration outfit, I inquired.
• March 8, 2010 Six days after my inquiry, they replied regarding the webinar regarding meeting effectiveness. They have an aggressive email campaign promoting meeting effectiveness.
• March 23, 2010 My colleague, president of another organization emailed me the email flyer with my he received from Cvent with my tagline as the name of their webinar.
• March 23, 2010 Ten minutes later, I called Cvent to ask about their campaign and learn more about their business. From their marketing efforts, they seem to be selling meeting effectiveness in general, not just the registration piece.  When I asked about their seminar: MAXIMIZING RETURN ON EVENT she confirmed this is new webinar. I explained my concern with them using my tagline in my town and kindly asked if the would reconsider modifying the name, since they are doing multiple webinars anyway.The conversation changed and suddenly. She was part of the team, but now it would be challenging to get to the right person to talk to. But it was a friendly conversation and she was a great listener and said she would attempt to pass on the message to the right people.

What road will they choose? The high or low road?

I don’t know if they will contact me.  Since I am highly connected to and speak to many organizations and associations audience, I am hope they will contact me. I will be presenting to the WSAE – Washington Society of Association Executives and the Society of Government Meeting Professionals soon. Many of us organizations collaborate with each other and have most of these associations have national headquarters and chapters around the states.

Personally, I like to set up online social networks to help people share ideas. For the National Speakers Association Presidents, we share tools, ideas and vendors that will make our lives easier.

Since I am a representative of their target market, I would be pleased if they would discontinue the name after their go ahead with the seminar on April 1^st.  This would speak loudly of listening to their market and their customers.

I will add what happens next, as it happens. Maybe Cvent will comment here too and show us how client-centered they are.

Fingers crossed.

After I posted this blog what happened next?

• March 24, 2010 – Morning- The business development manager called me and left me a message in the morning. With my busy day I didn’t check my message until after I posted the blog.  He had left a message stating, thanks for the call, but he felt our businesses were very different and there shouldn’t be any confusion between our two companies. I was impressed to get a call back so quickly, especially from a company that is over 500 people.
• March 24, 2010 – Evening- He emailed me to followup and asked to have a conversation. He saw that I had blogged about my the situation. As an entrepreneur, I work around the clock 10-16 hours a day, but I don’t expect employees at big companies to work later hours. His email was written around 11pm. This says, either, I am threat, or they care about my concerns. Either way, I was flattered.
• March 25, 2010 – We had an exploratory conversation addressing both of our concerns. Neither one of us has the trademark (they used to) and we both want to continue using it. I was pleased to know they have been using “Return On Event” since 2002, because I was concerned they may have borrowed it from me. As a person who “Speaks Up For Justice” I didn’t want to sit quietly as a victim as a large company rolls over small peanuts. If they lifted my tagline, who else’s are they taking? Soooo, it was comforting to you they have a history with that portion of the tagline and did not steal it.

As I write this, I think of the law I fought for in 2003 Voyeurism Law in Washington State. “Why”you ask? Because the underdog, small entrepreneur, approaches the big companies who have lawyers and money and asks to be heard. Regarding lobbying for the voyeurism law, I didn’t know the system, but just needed to do what was right and to stand up. After many interviews, television shows, articles and communications, I was heard loud and clear across the world, spurring legislation protecting women and children. For those of you who don’t know the ”upskirt situation” or who aren’t entrepreneurs, this may seem like a strange parallel, but seeing my tagline associated with another company took me back to fighting for this law.

With this tagline situation, Cvent was accessible and listened. He didn’t intimidate me to attempt to make me feel powerless. Actually, he was trying to empower me. This was unexpected. We will both continue to use the tagline, but because he took the time to hear and address me, I “feel better.” Who knew there are companies over 500 people who listen to their customers? All of us entrepreneurs should be slightly inspired by this story. Score one for big business (however I know 500 is small). I believe he made a wise move, since I have a loud voice proportionaly to my 100 lbs.

The conclusion:

Cvent took the high road.  From this situation, I will guess that Cvent must have good customer service.

In the future, I will be evaluating meeting spaces as well as their customer service.