what makes us,us. · manifesto 23 care we have each other’s back we were founded to be the best...

StobbsIntangible Asset ManagementManifesto

What makes us,us.

Our manifesto

StobbsIntangible Asset ManagementManifesto 3

Table of contents

Before we start 04

Clarity 13 We are straight up

Care 23

We have each other’s back

Cultivate 29 We grow from strong roots

Crush 39 We deliver

FAQ 49



StobbsIntangible Asset ManagementManifesto4

Stobbs was founded by Julius in 2013 with a team of 18 people and is driven by these questions:

What if we view issues through the commercial rather than legal lens?

What if trademarking and IP were handled in a better way? By experts who are legally trained yet commercially driven.

What if we blended IP expertise with a knowledge of business, a passion for brands and a practical approach to problem solving?

What if we could achieve legal reassurance and competitive advantage with a down-to-earth approach that thrives in the grey but always speaks in black and white?

What if a top-end legal service didn’t break the bank?

Well, that’s where we come in…

Before we start…



This is a place where a holistic and strategic approach and an imaginative and practical application of law enables creativity and commercial success.

We want to become the world’s leading brand advisory company.

To achieve this, we can’t just focus on answering legal questions. We have an unrivalled breadth of expertise and we are continuing to innovate and grow where the only extremes are the limits of our client’s brands...

...so when our clients pick up the phone, they know they are reaching the expert.

Internal process

Trade marks

Copyright

Design

Enforce

Contracts

Monitor

Internal audit

Marketing/PR

External process

Brand guidelines/ control

Supply chain/ contracts/audit

Protection of rights

Trade Mark Attorney

Litigation/Solicitor

Online Brand Enforcement

Creative

Licensing

Physical Customs

Brand Intelligence

Valuation Consulting

Brand management Stobbs expertiseBefore we start…

StobbsIntangible Asset ManagementManifesto8 9


Practical approach to problem solving

Skills of a Trade Mark Attorney

Passion for brands

Skills of a Business Solicitor

Intimate knowledge of business

To become the world’s leading brand advisory company we need to redefine where we play. We call it:

Adjective and compound noun.

The legally minded and commercially driven approach to making the difficult to define impossible to steal.

Intangible Asset Management [in-tan-juh-buh l as-et man-ij-muh nt]



If you’ve ever worked with or within the law profession before, this is nothing like that.

Our differences make us special and also mean we can deliver for our clients in a way that other companies in our space cannot.

It can be disorientating, so we wrote this manual to break the ice, and to give you everything you need to survive and thrive whether you are on day one or day one thousand.

This won’t help with setting up email or getting access to systems, but it will help you to understand our values and how we make decisions as a company.

This belongs to you. Read it. Share it. Change it. Keep this alive by living it – it’s how we promote our company and it’s all our responsibility.

Keep it close as you swim into the deep water.

Shall we begin…

ClarityWe are straight up

CareWe have each other’s back

CultivateWe grow from strong roots

CrushWe deliver

Our four principles



ClarityWe are straight up

The best advice, commercially-led, with no agenda, no waffle, no jargon.



The best advice, bar none…

Quality is at the heart of everything we do. We hire great people, and support them with the best classroom and on-the-job training and development in the industry.

We will make a recommendation, with accompanying arguments – not provide laundry lists of options.

We recommend what clients need, not always what they ask for

Our advice is commercially led, and holistic and strategic too. We think beyond your issue-at-hand and consider the things that led to it and the downstream implications of it.

We make recommendations on the whole panorama, not just the portrait.

No nasty surprises

Everyone hates what seems like a straightforward question ending up in a large bill.

We explain what can be achieved in the available time/budget – we provide total clarity on the scope, timings and costs of each engagement up front.

And clients can rely on us to provide consistency of approach and advice.

We provide proactive communication on matter progress, issues management (and propose solutions to issues as they arise) and timing expectations.

We honour our commitments and under-promise, over-deliver and look to go above and beyond.

Clarity

17StobbsIntangible Asset ManagementManifesto


Clarity

As anyone going diamond shopping knows, clarity does not mean cheap

And the same thing applies with us.

We offer a commercially reasonable proposition for our clients and for us – we are comfortable discussing the value of the advice.

Our approach works for all different types of companies with different budgets that care about their brands.

We are flexible – we provide cost-effective fixed fees or retainers; we have a range of billing models according to what suits the client.

Fundamentally, if clients don’t know what they are getting themselves into, then we’ve got it wrong.



We think about the answers to the questions that clients haven’t thought of yet

We defined the Intangible Asset Management class because we recognised that it takes a breadth of disciplines to maximise the value of brands.

As the world of brands continues to change, we proactively develop our propositions to keep ahead of the game.

Clarity



Clarity

We are comfortable having honest conversations

Both with our clients and within our organisation, we know that we need tough love as well as love.

We aren’t afraid to speak our mind in a respectful and honest way, because we know that progress doesn’t come from spending weeks tiptoeing around each other.

These honest conversations extend to client billing and payments. Tighter control drives profit and increases our working capital – and lets us reinvest more quickly for growth.

When it comes to mistakes, they happen – ‘fess up, bring a solution, learn from it, share the lesson, then shake it off and crack on.

We only have one persona…your own

How we are with clients is just how we are with each other – we are a team of personable, approachable, responsible, resilient, curious, generous, enthusiastic, kind, polite, fair, professional problem solvers.


CareWe have each other’s back

We were founded to be the best company to work for and we won’t stop striving until we get there.



We’re not interested in the self-interested

We act like humans, we talk like humans, and we think like humans. And we call out anyone who does otherwise.

We are ego-free, humble and professional whilst still being ourselves.

We want to treat you how you want to be treated.

At Stobbs, we are a person first and title second. Titles are a just a quick way for clients to understand our experience.

Humans aren’t resources

We care a lot about the people we work with.

We don’t have an HR department. New hires are interviewed by the people who will actually be working with them. This ensures that we’re hiring for the right team and the right reasons.

Care

We have each other’s back

We know that sometimes it can be difficult to work with others. At Stobbs, we get to know everyone. No one is just a Solicitor or an Attorney or in Support or Numbers. They are people with many dimensions. Understand who they are and it’ll be much easier.

We commit to respecting, recognising and valuing our differences – they make us stronger as a company.

We are part of a team, we want to make that team successful, but never overlook that the health and harmony of that team is fundamental to our work and part of our job.

If we see someone hurting, we help. Even better, if we recognise and anticipate difficult situations, we can diffuse the stress.



We meld

At Stobbs, we’re friends and coworkers. We believe that it’s much easier to work with someone once you get to know them on a personal level.

Meld means fusion, merge, blend, mingle, bond, join. All the things that we like to do so that we can get to know and understand each other better.

Summer/Christmas parties, Stobbs Cup, Book Club, Yoga and Running/Walking are some of our social rituals that become our favourite things about working at Stobbs.

They started because someone decided to. Start your own.

We say thanks

When you do need to go above and beyond, deliver fantastic work with crazy deadlines; When you are the glue that makes the team work; When you stepped up to support a colleague who needed it…

…we recognise it and thank you for it.

Because this is what it takes to make Stobbs great.

We trust you to find your own rhythm

Working to client agendas will require responsiveness, flexibility, commitment and hard work.

Sometimes you will need to decompress and we understand that and trust you to find the right balance.

There’s no reason to pretend you’re busy. You don’t need to worry about hitting the pool table at 10am. You don’t need to hide the video you’re watching if someone walks by your desk. No one is monitoring the websites you look at. We aren’t going to report you for taking a long lunch.

Contract with your team, respect their time and actively discover your most productive self.

Just do great work.

Care


With our people as with our clients, we look for long term relationships, not one-night-stands.

CultivateWe grow from strong roots



The more we understand, the more we can help

We are obsessed about understanding our client’s business, strategy and challenges. Without this, we cannot bring our strategic, holistic, commercially-led skillset to bear. Without this, we cannot hope to provide practical and commercial solutions.

We proactively seek out these opportunities to get close to our clients – for their advantage and for ours. E.g. client seminars, networking/training events, webinars (e.g. case sessions), secondments…

A client working with Stobbs should feel like we are an extension of the same team.

We want to create client heroes

We always work with our clients, not for them and definitely not against them. They need us, and we need them.

We care about our clients as companies and as individuals – they both matter to us.

We want them to feel that they are getting bespoke advice, specific to the issue and context (e.g. difference of tone for Brand Manager vs. Head of Legal).

We want to support them in their individual ambitions – with their development or with introductions.

We empathise with their pressures and stress and seek to bring solutions.

We think of ‘Harry at O2’ or ‘Ant at Upfield’ – like us, they are human beings trying to do great work.

Cultivate



We don’t go in for hierarchy

Traditional hierarchy forms a bottleneck, and doesn’t allow our team to grow how they, or we, want them to.

The whole idea just is not who we want to be. It may frustrate sometimes, but we fundamentally believe the juice is worth the squeeze.

We believe in expertise-based leadership and we share and learn from each other every day.

We work to have mentors and collaborators, not commanders. In other words, you may have a boss, but you shouldn’t get bossed around.

Those who speak up regardless of their experience level, not the bossy ones, are the ones who thrive.

Cultivate



Define yourown path

Leader IA Director

IA Manager

IA Executive

IA Trainee

Stobbs-qualified

Exam-qualified

Trainee

Our values

Developexpertise

IA P

aral

egal

IA S

upp

ort

Cultivate

For us to be world leading, we need you to be

We want you to be the best you can be, to push the boundaries of the IAM category and own our space.

We will help you get there

You have the responsibility for your own development.

To support you, we offer the best, most comprehensive training programme in the industry.

Combination of class-based, formal training from the best universities, case-study events and on-the-job learning builds a strong platform.

This support is carried on post-qualification to develop commercial and client-management capability to become “Stobbs Qualified”.

Clear progression to Stobbs-qualified is supported with 1-to-1 mentoring and a competency framework.

And we will help you go beyond

Post-Stobbs qualification, each person will be supported in shaping their own career direction where their interest takes them.



No cliques, no secrets

We are competitive externally by being supportive, sharing and collaborative internally.

It’s like having an internal market for quality -where we all strive to do great work, and to share with our colleagues about how it can be done and how we can improve.

For our clients, they get better advice, across a greater breadth, with faster delivery and more value.

For us, we learn more, across a greater range; We get better and more consistent, we get more operationally effective.

It’s a virtuous circle gift that keeps giving…

…all the way to achieving our mission

Cultivate


We can take our clients where no one else can.

CrushWe deliver



We crush it because…

…the more successful we are, the more clients we can serve with a greater range of offerings.

The sweet spot

The win-win where we offer better, more cost effective, better value solutions whilst being successful ourselves.

The secret sauce

Is that we never stop driving improvements in how we work – maximising our efficiency and effectiveness.

Crush



Making heroes takes heroes

To make heroes of our clients, we need to work to their agenda and get the job done. Which means working smart (first) and hard (second). This isn’t a 9am-5pm company.

[See ‘find your own rhythm’ in the Care section].

Half done is not done

Sometimes we need to prioritise jobs. We process jobs in parallel but give each task dedicated focus.

We take responsibility for the whole job, get it done, then we go again.

Our responsibility is to...

1. We do it 2. We check it 3. We send it 4. We invoice it 5. Only now it’s done. We achieve closure.

We move on…

Pay it forward into the goodwill bank

Work karma is real – if you need help, it will always be available, but if you’ve already helped someone, then it will be given much more readily.

Always best to have some kudos in the bank before you need to make a withdrawal.

We own the problem

This is a busy place, and you’ll often be on your own to figure things out. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, but don’t rely on others to hold your hand.

We’re a team of resilient, positive, problem solvers who are cheerful in the face of adversity, so if something isn’t right, fix it.

Crush



The strength of the wolf is in the pack, the strength of the pack is in the wolf

Our functional expertise means we can bring a greater breadth of knowledge to bear with our clients – strengthening our relationships. The strength of the wolf is the pack.

Our tribe team structure is comprised of multi-disciplinary teams so that the right person can do the right thing whilst knowing the context and where it fits in the matter. We expect everyone to step up and own their part of it. The strength of the pack is in the wolf.

We are proud to have the best pack and the strongest wolves. Be sure to make the most of them, and encourage your clients to meet them too.

Crush



AdviceBrand intelligence

Search

Protect (TM, Design)

Valuation

Enforce

TMDispute

Contract

LicencingOnline BrandEnforcement

TMMonitor

We give you a map so you can take clients where no one else can

We receive questions across the full range of capabilities and offerings.

Being strategic and holistic means getting to the root of the question, challenging and validating the underlying issues and recognising all the implications.

Then we can advise across the whole issue, creating a true, integrated solution; and maximising impact by implementing across the full range of disciplines.

Each question is unique, so we will give you a map, teach you how to read it, you can navigate your clients through their own journeys.

CrushBroadening our offering from initial client access questions


FAQYou’ve got questions? We’ve got answers.

50 51StobbsIntangible Asset ManagementManifesto


Our teams are small by design

Every decision about how to structure a company has some upsides and some downsides. When you encounter something that’s a little frustrating about how we work, remember that it’s likely the result of something else about this place that you love.

Our work squads are big enough to be autonomous, but small enough to be agile. Each squad is a similar scale to the first Stobbs squads when we began in 2013.

We’re a two-office company

We are a Cambridge-based company, but our London office gives us advantages of client-access, ease of commute and access to Meat Liquor next door.

Two offices, but Stobbs is a one-company company. Like a good cake recipe, sure to mix it up from time to time to ensure consistency.

FAQ

We all sit together

At some companies, they make you go to a different floor (or building) to talk to someone outside of your team. We hate that. And it’s why we have an open floor plan.

You’re surrounded by smart people from every discipline. Talk to them. Learn from them.

Please try not to over-formalise communication – there’s no need to send an email to the person sitting one row away. We don’t want a 70 person office to feel like 700.

Take care of the space

We love our Cambridge and London offices, with their oxblood Chesterfields and industrial vibe. For many of us they are a second home, and we should take care of it accordingly.

StobbsIntangible Asset ManagementManifesto52StobbsIntangible Asset ManagementManifesto

The kitchen

The kitchen is stocked with plates, bowls, mugs, snacks, drinks, condiments, and fruit.

We have a weekly shopping order – so add your brain-food order to it. If you order toilet rolls, we start asking questions.

Anything not labelled for personal use is fair game. Feel free to use any of the items available, just be respectful of the team and remember to put dirty dishes in the dishwasher.

How to use the dishwasher

1. Open it. 2. Insert item in a way that makes sense. 3. Close it. 4. ...No, wait. That’s it.

We can be a quiet bunch

Let’s not forget that we’re millennial-rich here, and many of us are stuck nose-deep in cases or systems or are simply quiet folks.

Once someone’s settled in and working, they often don’t break their gaze to greet you as you pass by. They’re not being rude, they’re just plugged in.

If all else fails

Just work hard and be nice to people. The rest will sort itself out.

FAQ

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