How Digital Disruption is transforming the strategies for Brand Protection

Is your Brand-Protection strategy Future Proof

The Inevitable shift towards Digitalization changing the approach to Brand Protection

What do Desktop Video Communication and streaming platforms have in common? They, like many other brands have given in to the digital disruption and exploited its ecosystem to their advantage. Whether your brand wishes or not, the entire world is facing a high momentum in digitization like never before and the brand that wants to keep its distance will eventually fade.

Moreover, the evolution of businesses in the digital space, over the years, has acted as their driving force for innovation and expansion leading to enhanced customer connection and reputation.

But, is the transition to digital space while maintaining brand protection as smooth and easy as it sounds?

Certainly not!

It is the merger between sales, marketing and customer service in the digital space, causing a faster than expected customer buying pattern shift across business verticals, that leads to varied hurdles in brand protection such as counterfeits. After all, a digital platform is an open book with a multitude of security vulnerabilities and over-exposure of data.

Furthermore, digital evolution is changing the basic expectations to bring a radical transformation in how we perceive businesses and their safe presence. But what is vital to understand here is that the drive towards digital disruption occurs when varied business elements fall in synergy around it’s new scale of economy.

So, as vital digital disruption is to a business, whether small or big, brand protection must be on priority while making this massive shift to keep the business afloat and thriving.

Let’s find out how- 

Brand Protection Challenges A Snapshot of Digital Brand Threats

The new and existing business giants have leaped in the digital domain and pivoted to the greater need areas. However, brand protection remains to be a consistent challenge to save the revenue streams, make the business secure and offer safety against counterfeits

Let’s take a look at the obstacles that stand in the way of a robust brand reputation:

• Regulatory Compliance

The overwhelming list of compliances drown the companies in regulations, but following the regulatory framework still remains a persistent challenge. Moreover, even if the companies theoretically follow ‘all the rules, all the time’, the long-established notion that compliance is not fool-proof security haunts the rule-followers. The fact that regulations do not keep up with the threat of evolution over digital platforms, has contributed to this aspect greatly.

• Recall

Despite the recall index gaining a fashioned safety regulations across industries, product safety and quality related risk still remains one of the trickiest challenges for companies. Defective products not only pose a safety risk to the user but also cause significant financial and reputation loss to the brand. In the digital framework where product flow control is still a struggling phase especially for the food and pharmaceutical industry, recall programmes carry a broader risk to the brand.

• Counterfeiting

Counterfeiting has grown to be one of the gravest challenges for online brand protection, which witnessed an unprecedented surge in the 2019 global pandemic. This owes its share to the array of e-commerce channels even before the brand is officially registered. The rush to have an international e-market presence through digital marketing channels is mirrored by the surge in fraudsters replicating the products and piggybacking on the brand investment and reputation.

• Trademark Abuse

The impersonation or illegitimate misrepresentation of your brand through direct or indirect infringement is commonly referred to trademark abuse. It usually happens when a brand initially forgoes the trademark registration only to find later that the brand name is already registered by trademark squatters. This issue not only disrupts the safety of the public but brings with it legal and financial risks, undermining the brand supply chain and its reputation in the process.

With technology’s consistent expansion and transformation to the digital platform, the need for organizations to rely on brand protection has evolved significantly. As the web and applications grow in complexity, the digital disruptive technology powers the businesses and offers them the scope of growth.

Digital Brand Protection Solutions

A Consistent Brand Image across digital platforms is a tough nut to crack, but not impossible

Every digital business works on strategic data, which not only has become extensive with time but also complicated due to change in customer buying and their habits. This is where brand protection solutions fine-tune the capacious information to make businesses secure, respond faster and satisfy customers.

• Detection

Online brand protection services aim at finding infringements in the digital landscape. This step can incorporate identifying the counterfeit listings on ecommerce websites, finding an impersonating social media profile or a rogue website to detect the root cause and cause of brand protection threat.

• Validation

Further to detection, brand protection companies ensure that the products that are identified as infringements are truly infringements. It is an important step that requires online brand protection agencies to perform validation to ensure that while trying to enforce IP rights, legitimate companies are not penalized mistakenly.

• Enforcement

The practical step to impede IP infringements online starts with the enforcing stage where your brand protection service provider will remove infringing or counterfeiting products listed on the online marketplace. Besides this, they will also close the imitation account from social media or take down a rogue website.

• Reporting

Reporting is the last stage of a brand protection service that requires the agency to describe and report the actionable information. This detailed useful report enables the brand to be aware of the intellectual property availability in the digital platform. It further enhances the entire lifecycle of the brand protection process.

Netrika is your ideal partner to be the eyes and ears of the brand across markets, offline and online, with our brand protection solutions. Our multidisciplinary experts regularly carry out reviews and scan the online marketplaces to keep a close eye on possible fake products.