Who do you share your ideas with?
It was 2007. I had just started using Facebook and received an invite to Gmail from Vinny Lingham, whom I wanted to help by contributing to the Sekamo local custom search engine. I then happened upon the website for The Pavilion, a shopping mall here in Durban. The website was horrible. It lacked clear direction as far as UX is concerned and it was just cluttered and ugly. (I even had an incognito meeting with the sales guy for the company who developed the website to find out how they operate)
I then found the person in charge of marketing for The Pavilion and pitched her a website make-over, stating in no uncertain terms why I believe a make-over is necessary and what I would do to improve on the existing website. She was fully in agreement in me, however she was on the verge of leaving office to take a position elsewhere and would be replaced in days to come. I then waited and as soon as her replacement, Zenobia Ismail, took office I dropped her an email with the same pitch containing full details of how I believe the mall could harness their daily foot traffic and turn it into a branded community with content, technology, social networking and multimedia. Zenobia too was in agreement and had me know that a website make-over was definitely on the cards. She assured me that she would get back to me as soon as they are ready. I received an email from a junior functionary a few months later with some forms I had to complete to be part of.. wait for it.. wait for it.. a TENDER for the contract to develop the shopping centre website. And the greatest part of all is that I got this email 2 days before the closing date.
Needless to say my agency, which was a one man show at the time – did not get the tender. Having only 2 days to prepare documents amidst servicing existing clients was a rather tall order at the time. But that was miniscule when compared with the fact that I had already shared with these people exactly what they lacked and what should be done to improve. In fact I gave them a spec for sourcing and commissioning a web development agency.
So that was my first expensive lesson in sharing your ideas with functionaries in the corporate space before you have a contract in place. Just 3 years prior I had logged a suggestion on the MTN website for a voucher I tentatively called “Tenbux”. It would be a lower denomination that would sell virtually via USSD and a loose network of vendors. The idea was implemented in 2005 without a shred of credit coming my way, but didn’t last long because the people that implemented it were also just petty functionaries with no foresight on insight. But the lesson here is that we have to be very careful who we share our ideas with. People will jack your intellectual property and pass it off as their own. Only the long run will tell how much vision they really have, but by then that ship would have sailed for you already.
So watch yourself.
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Arthur Charles Van Wyk is the CEO of Fluence New Marketing, a digital ad agency based in Durban, South Africa. He is also a brand evangelist, speaker, digital marketing consultant and impassioned spokesperson for internet-enabled marketing. 
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