3 Steps Towards Brand Protection

Brand abuse is a growing problem affecting brands globally. Even after implementing numerous policies and laws, brands still encounter counterfeits, patent theft, rogue websites, and much more, which impacts the brand image and eats into its market share and profits. This problem gets bigger when such brands are associated with pharmaceuticals and consumable goods, which leads to not only wrongful lawsuits but also to possible health damage to end consumers.

To tackle such malicious practices in the market, brand protection is an area where companies have started to pay attention and invest significant dollars to develop anti-counterfeiting solutions.

All the steps taken by companies have typically been focused on distinctive packaging’s such as design change, indicative labels, and monitoring supply chain processes. However, malefactors are always two steps ahead of such brand protection measures and can bring similar visual changes to make the brand abuse difficult to detect.

This is not just limited to in-house changes, but brands have also tried time and again to eliminate the root cause of the problem by taking strict action on culprits. To do this, brands struggle to identify the source of and area flooded with counterfeits. Brands solely depend on whistle-blower or consumer reports for counterfeit data which is very rare to come by and hard to prove

To overcome anti-counterfeiting issues and protect your brand for the future, the following are the three steps which should be implemented immediately: –

Authenticate or Product Validation:

Product authentication has been a rage amongst consumers as they are aware of the existence of counterfeit products and have actively looked for ways by which they can have surety about their purchase. YouTube will bring you videos right from authenticating a dollar note to spotting a fake iPhone.

Brands are aware of the conscious efforts made by consumers and should make efforts to implement an easy to authenticate strategy using an anti-counterfeit solution that cannot be replicated by culprits. This can be done by giving products digital identities and linking them to a secure cloud network. Such digital identities can be a part of intelligent packaging solutions or NFC labels.

As a part of anti-counterfeit packaging, the brand makes each unit of a product capable of communicating with the end customer. Even if a counterfeiter manages to make copies of this digital identity, due to its one-time use nature, the solution will still identify the copy as a suspicious product.

Communicating With Consumers:

Application of an anti-counterfeit packaging solution works best when consumers are aware of such technology being used and how to save oneself from any false purchases. Consumer education is therefore critical and something that brands must take the onus to do.

To do this, brands can run ads for awareness, and all marketing activities to promote the new technology. Intelligent packaging can be enabled by putting smart QR codes on the packaging. Once a consumer scans the packaging, the brand can get automated user-reported data on the location and extent of counterfeit products in real-time. In addition, the smart QR code can also be used by brands to incentivize consumers to scan the code not only to gain product authenticity but also to run loyalty programs and marketing campaigns to drive customer engagement. It is high time brands build a true engagement model where packaging itself can be used by the consumer to communicate back to the brand and vice versa.

Data on every consumer scan (without personal information like cell phone number or name) is collated on the cloud platform – this data is the foundation for brands to now generate insight in order to make better business decisions. For example, the data can help a brand to build a database based on consumer location, shopping behaviour, etc. and use this data to accordingly adjust their marketing budgets, plans, and strategies. This is a huge opportunity for any brand to use insights generated from Smart QR code scans to their benefit and further engage in cross-selling, upselling, and retargeting consumers. This also allows customers most importantly to authenticate the product and also engage with the brand and is a vital step towards brand loyalty.

Distribution Channel Monitoring:

Leakages and pilferage in the supply chain are where brands should ideally focus their efforts as these are the points where the counterfeit products enter the value chain. This means to track and trace products from the point of raw material to its journey beyond the factory to dispatch needs to be tracked. The traditional dependency on manual reporting of such events has been disappointing due to the inaccuracy and involvement of insiders in these illicit activities itself.

Intelligent packaging implementation would eliminate the dependency from people to a digitized supply chain where complete visibility is offered into the supply chain to the brand at the click of a button. It has the capability to track and trace each unit of the product within the value chain and generate accurate and detailed reports regarding goods movement and corresponding data to identify suppliers and distributors where possible pilferage occurs. This would also give brands an opportunity to identify vendors with a bad supply pattern and make such information available to consumers to build brand trust.

These 3 steps towards brand protection are easy to implement and use along with low investment and minimum changes to your current operations processes. Further, the business insights that the data from Smart Packaging generates provides a high return on investment by solving your anti-counterfeit problems.

To gain access to this technology along with a more detailed understanding of the use and application, you can connect with Sepio Products Private Limited. This India-based company has made its mark globally to bring anti-counterfeit solutions, brand engagement options, and track and trace solutions via the use of smart packaging under one umbrella for their clients to explore the best use case.

You can connect with Sepio products at [email protected] and start taking steps towards brand protection.