AN OPEN LETTER TO BORIS SHESTOPALOV - COUNTRY MANAGER AVON SOUTH AFICA
Hi Boris, hope you dont mind me calling you that.
You dont know me, but I've contributed to the marketing of your organisation.
I would love to give you my Job Title or Company Name, but it wouldn't help!
You see, you wont find me in any supplier database!
You wont find a purchase order written out for services rendered, or concepts procured.
Why you may ask?
The reason is quite simple actually!
You stole our ideas!
One ideas actually, and then used them without our consent, or without paying us for them.
So let me take a step back and help paint this picture for you, Boris.
We are a creative brand activation agency - we make money from coming up with cool ideas, and selling them to large corporates. We do this around South Africa, and have clients around the world that acknowledge the value in our ideas, and often use our creative.
Unlike Avon though, the majority of our clients feel the irrepressible moral need to actually PAY US for these - a novel concept I know, but a principle we feel is quite important to the longevity and sustainability of our small operation.
So when we were approached, by one of your marketing team, to come up with some execution ideas for your sales conference. we spent a fair amount of time in our creative studios researching ideas, concepts and solutions. Thats what we do, Boris! Its how we make a living!
We presented these to your marketing team, and after a week or so received a polite "thanks but no thanks" e-mail, naturally meaning you had decided to use someone else. Now before this starts to sound like sour grapes Boris, lets be clear that we were perfectly happy with this decision and took the e-mail at face value to mean just that...you didn't like our ideas, and therefore didn't want to use us.
Now Boris, my mother always taught me as a perfect gentleman that No means No!
Apparently it carries a slightly different meaning in the Avon halls.
For future reference, an Avon No actually means "thanks for all of your intellectual property, do you mind if i use it all without your consent to make my job easier".
Thats a bit if a mouthful though, so we fully understand where the confusion must have crept in.
So guess what happened next Boris.
We OWN one of the companies that has the EXCLUSIVE rights to one of the ideas we presented.
And imagine our surprise, when out of the blue, another agency called that we have never dealt with before, looking to book the equipment and idea we had presented for an "Avon Conference".
Oops!
When we got all the details from them Boris, imagine our further surprise to find the brief was - well - pretty much exactly as the one we presented.
Oops again!
A Simple Idea!
An Effective Idea!
A Stolen Idea!
Its not a big deal in terms of Dollar Value, Boris, in fact some could argue I've wasted too much energy on this already. But you see I take a slightly different view.
The school of public opinion is pretty harsh on this principle Boris, as the case if Woolworths and Frankies Olde Style Softdrinks has recently proved.
And being passionate people working with a great portfolio of brands, we take it VERY personally when we invest time, money and energy on YOUR brands, to be lied to by Avon staff, and maliciously have our ideas stolen with scant regard for the professional, ethical or moral obligations of the creative process.
Anyway Boris, I hope the Sales Conference is a rousing success. I would be keen to see how many other ideas were presented by other companies that have been "borrowed" by your team.
Heres an idea Boris, maybe check on the other elements of todays conference, and where they came from. Im pretty sure if this happened to us there are others out there that also fell foul of the same theft of intellectual property.
And thats an idea you can have for free Boris!
I wouldn't expect you to pay for it anyway!
Why buck the system?
You dont know me, but I've contributed to the marketing of your organisation.
I would love to give you my Job Title or Company Name, but it wouldn't help!
You see, you wont find me in any supplier database!
You wont find a purchase order written out for services rendered, or concepts procured.
Why you may ask?
The reason is quite simple actually!
You stole our ideas!
One ideas actually, and then used them without our consent, or without paying us for them.
So let me take a step back and help paint this picture for you, Boris.
We are a creative brand activation agency - we make money from coming up with cool ideas, and selling them to large corporates. We do this around South Africa, and have clients around the world that acknowledge the value in our ideas, and often use our creative.
Unlike Avon though, the majority of our clients feel the irrepressible moral need to actually PAY US for these - a novel concept I know, but a principle we feel is quite important to the longevity and sustainability of our small operation.
So when we were approached, by one of your marketing team, to come up with some execution ideas for your sales conference. we spent a fair amount of time in our creative studios researching ideas, concepts and solutions. Thats what we do, Boris! Its how we make a living!
We presented these to your marketing team, and after a week or so received a polite "thanks but no thanks" e-mail, naturally meaning you had decided to use someone else. Now before this starts to sound like sour grapes Boris, lets be clear that we were perfectly happy with this decision and took the e-mail at face value to mean just that...you didn't like our ideas, and therefore didn't want to use us.
Now Boris, my mother always taught me as a perfect gentleman that No means No!
For future reference, an Avon No actually means "thanks for all of your intellectual property, do you mind if i use it all without your consent to make my job easier".
Thats a bit if a mouthful though, so we fully understand where the confusion must have crept in.
So guess what happened next Boris.
We OWN one of the companies that has the EXCLUSIVE rights to one of the ideas we presented.
And imagine our surprise, when out of the blue, another agency called that we have never dealt with before, looking to book the equipment and idea we had presented for an "Avon Conference".
Oops!
When we got all the details from them Boris, imagine our further surprise to find the brief was - well - pretty much exactly as the one we presented.
Oops again!
A Simple Idea!
An Effective Idea!
A Stolen Idea!
Its not a big deal in terms of Dollar Value, Boris, in fact some could argue I've wasted too much energy on this already. But you see I take a slightly different view.
The school of public opinion is pretty harsh on this principle Boris, as the case if Woolworths and Frankies Olde Style Softdrinks has recently proved.
And being passionate people working with a great portfolio of brands, we take it VERY personally when we invest time, money and energy on YOUR brands, to be lied to by Avon staff, and maliciously have our ideas stolen with scant regard for the professional, ethical or moral obligations of the creative process.
Anyway Boris, I hope the Sales Conference is a rousing success. I would be keen to see how many other ideas were presented by other companies that have been "borrowed" by your team.
Heres an idea Boris, maybe check on the other elements of todays conference, and where they came from. Im pretty sure if this happened to us there are others out there that also fell foul of the same theft of intellectual property.
And thats an idea you can have for free Boris!
I wouldn't expect you to pay for it anyway!
Why buck the system?
