Effective Outreach Campaigns: WIPO's new tools at your fingertips

• Author: Fabio Weissert
• Position: Communications and Public Outreach Division

Big public relations outfits have a rough time at it. Budget rich IP offices have had soaring success stories as well as frustrating defeats. Small national offices beg for assistance in doing it. What is it?

The creation of effective intellectual property outreach campaigns. Just look back at a few issues of the WIPO Magazine. The U.S. advertising campaign aimed at stimulating young people to be inventive, which produced the award winning "Cat Magnet" commercial, was a big success, and so was Brazil's "Pirates Out!" counterfeiting campaign. But there was also the short life of Canada's "Captain Copyright". A campaign created by a public relations outfit for the Philippines ended up shelved. Marketing IP is not an easy job.

Depending on the IP outreach message, be it promoting innovation or use of the IP system, tackling counterfeiting, or targeting a key audience - young people, IP stakeholders, or SMEs - there will always be many diverse questions that will need answering:

* What do teenagers think about their ability to invent?

* Why do some SMEs not register their IP?

* What would deter consumers from buying counterfeit goods?

* What types of outreach initiatives to encourage innovation have been successful?

* Have any Spanish patent guides for inventors been made available?

* Which outreach tools are most often used in anti-piracy campaigns?

Database solutions

To help those involved in IP outreach activities find answers to these and other important questions, WIPO's Communication and Public Outreach Division has created two new databases complementing the WIPO Guide to Intellectual Property Outreach released in 2007. The first database contains studies relating to the awareness, attitudes and behaviour of different...