Controlling Creative (Part 3 of 3)

I’m frequently asked, “How can you keep people from stealing your ideas?”

Answer: I can’t. In fact, I don’t even try, figuring that creativity and originality are muscles—what doesn’t get regularly used (by the habitual plagiarist) will become flaccid over time, but you can’t let those negatives keep you from striving to be creative and original, or from producing your ideas.

This is the last of three client examples that come to mind when talking about controlling creative.

Finally, there was Rich Chey, an Atlanta restaurant entrepeneur who wanted to start a chain of noodle shops where diners could choose from diverse mix of noodle and rice dishes from differing parts of Asia, with wait staff that could advise them fluently on the way each dish was prepared.

I’d already done a logo for him—Highland Bagel, formerly in Virginia-Highland—and was impressed by his blend of openness and practicality. It did not surprise me to learn he had an MBA from Wharton, where relational skills are a premium.

Once I was on his team, he trusted me, showed me his business plan, walked me around the restaurant site so I’d experience it as future patrons would, welcomed me into his home where he and I studied colors from Chinese watercolor scrolls so I could get a sense of his druthers, while my daughter, then a little kid, played catch with his wife. 

And here’s the thing about Rich: when I was developing the Doc Chey’s Noodle House logo, he never had me sign a non-disclosure form (it’s automatic with me and my clients that I work non-disclosure anyway). He gave me notes on each idea, but he never micro-managed me. Years later, whenever he staged a mock service to test new menu ideas, he’d invite me as part of the Doc Chey community.

It did not surprise me that Doc Chey’s had community dining tables, participated in charity events; that they welcomed walk-up, dressed-down patrons from the neighborhood, whose small children are always kindly accommodated; or when he and his partner came up with the additional “Peace/Love/Noodles” idea for the T-shirts.

And he always referred to the final logo as our logo.