How Brand Protection Can Safeguard Your Business Reputation

In a world where deepfakes and counterfeit schemes are on the rise, is your business prepared to defend its brand from digital deception?

Recent headlines have highlighted a troubling trend involving celebrities like Jennifer Aniston, Taylor Swift, and Selena Gomez. These stars have been the subject of “deepfake” celebrity endorsement videos circulating on social media, deceiving unsuspecting consumers.

Aniston was falsely depicted as giving away expensive Apple MacBooks, while Swift and Gomez seemed to endorse Le Creuset cookware.

In an era dominated by AI, deepfakes, and rampant scams, protecting your business from these attacks might feel like an impossible challenge.

A common threat all businesses face is brand identity theft, an industry worth $11.36 billion. While brand hijacking isn’t a new concept, its scale is rapidly expanding with new tactics and sophisticated methods.

However, a strong brand protection strategy can be your best defense.

In this article, we explore how employer brands can implement strategies to safeguard their reputation, mitigate risks, and maintain consumer trust as they face these evolving threats.

What is Brand Protection?

So, what is brand protection?

Brand protection refers to the strategy, rules, and tools brands implement to prevent bad actors from abusing their brand.

Modern brand abuse manifests through various tactics, such as:

Creating fake or ‘look-alike’ products, domains, or websites
Misusing logos and assets online
Impersonating through email
Account highjacking tactics
Setting up fake social media accounts
Posting fake job ads to gather personal information
Spreading false information or rumors

While most of us know that fake products are a major problem for fashion and luxury brands, the issue is widespread across industries of all sizes.

Existing statistics reveal seizures of a wide array of counterfeit products, including breathing apparatuses, construction materials, and artificial grass. Counterfeiters employ aggressive strategies, seizing every opportunity to turn a profit.

In other words, business owners increasingly face threats from counterfeiting, impersonation attacks, and online piracy. However, as many have learned the hard way, ignoring these issues only exacerbates the problem.

According to Statista, U.S. businesses suffer the most from counterfeiting, and their seized counterfeit goods account for 24% of the global value.

Why is Brand Protection Important?

Employer branding statistics show that preserving the brand’s image is a priority for 60% of companies.

Whether you’re a small startup or a large enterprise, your reputation is key to attracting new customers, having loyal employees, and driving growth.

So, why is brand protection important?

Brand abuse, such as email impersonation and online logo misuse, can quickly erode trust and devalue a brand’s name and image.

For these reasons, statistics reveal that 77% of brands consider brand safety a high concern, with 85% having experienced trademark infringement.

Benefits of Brand Protection

Beyond preventing financial losses and reputational damage, brand protection also strengthens customer trust and loyalty.

Companies with effective brand protection strategies ensure that customers receive genuine products and a quality shopping experience, which distinguishes them from the competition.

On the other hand, if customers purchase look-alike or substandard products, their trust in the brand can be severely damaged. For example, 71% of UK consumers say they will stop buying from a company if their trust is compromised.

Therefore, maintaining a solid brand protection strategy safeguards revenue and secures long-term customer relationships and brand integrity.

Digital Brand Protection

Today, brand protection goes far beyond preventing the sale of fake physical goods.

It’s also about stopping digital attacks and ensuring your brand is used correctly online.

However, as companies expand their digital footprint, the associated risks increase.

Key Elements of Brand Protection

Given the vastness of the digital space, managing brand reputation manually can be incredibly time-consuming.

For these reasons, countering online fraud is a greater challenge than dealing with physical-world counterfeiting as it requires monitoring various promotional and distribution channels.

There are, however, several digital brand protection elements that businesses must employ to safeguard their online presence.

1) Trademark Registration and Enforcement

The simplest way to legally protect your brand is by registering its trademark and intellectual property.

Essentially, trademarks offer legal protection against unauthorized use of brand elements like logos, names, and slogans. Securing these rights helps deter competitors and counterfeiters from exploiting your brand identity.

For businesses operating globally, it’s recommended that they register trademarks in other countries where they do business or plan to expand. In addition, it’s crucial to actively monitor for potential infringements and act as needed.

2) Counterfeit Prevention

Counterfeit and pirated goods accounted for as much as 2.5% of global trade.

To put this into perspective, the market for counterfeit goods is worth more than Ireland’s entire economy.

Given the impact of this market, it’s clear why counterfeit prevention is a key element of any brand protection strategy.

To detect and prevent knockoffs, start by regularly monitoring your brand online using Google keyword searches and online marketplaces for suspicious activity, or use brand protection software.

In addition, conduct regular audits of your supply chain, invest in anti-counterfeit technologies like QR codes or RFID tags, and provide educational resources to help customers identify genuine products.

3) Online Brand Protection

In today’s digital world, managing your online reputation is essential. Companies must closely monitor social media, review sites, and other online channels to address customer concerns and feedback quickly.

Similarly, responding to questions and resolving issues openly and respectfully helps maintain a positive brand image.

4) Intellectual Property (IP) Rights

Registering your intellectual property is fundamental to any brand protection strategy. Companies can secure exclusive rights to their innovations and creative works through patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets.

In the event that you find someone infringing on your registered rights, you will have sound legal options to address the issue.

How to Protect Your Brand

Now, let’s shift our focus on how to protect your brand.

Without exception, registering your IP and trademarking is the foundation of any brand protection strategy.

While it’s obvious that your logo, product designs, and company name need to be protected, it’s easy to overlook more common assets like media content.

Photography, print ads, radio spots, videography, TV commercials, social media posts, and written content all contribute to your brand identity. “Brandjackers” can exploit these materials, so guarding your copyrights diligently is crucial.

However, registering your intangible assets isn’t enough for long-term security.

As your portfolio, marketing campaigns, and business locations evolve, so too must your brand protection strategy.

Brand Protection Strategy

As threats to your brand continue to change, staying informed about the latest methods to counter them is crucial.

Proactive Measures

Many companies fall into the trap of being reactive, waiting until a problem arises before acting. Instead, it’s vital to be proactive about brand protection.

Begin by identifying potential threats to your brand and outline the actions to be taken in each scenario. Establish guidelines and protocols for responding to threats so everyone knows their roles and responsibilities during an incident.

Businesses must also ensure a clear escalation path for reporting incidents internally and communicating externally with customers or partners who may be affected.

Legal and Regulatory Actions

When protecting your brand’s interests, litigation can be a powerful tool. Legal action can be a powerful deterrent against counterfeiters, infringers, and other malicious actors.

Collaborate closely with legal professionals to develop a comprehensive strategy that addresses potential threats and outlines clear steps for pursuing legal recourse.

Your legal brand protection strategy should include gathering evidence, filing lawsuits, and seeking injunctions or damages as appropriate.

Technology and Tools

With the rise of AI, creating fakes has become alarmingly easy.

Companies can stay ahead in the digital space by investing in various tools and solutions that can help automatically remove infringements on a large- scale and set up rules that instantly act against counterfeiters.

Aside from that, these technologies have the capabilities to:

Track the origin of products from suppliers and partners to identify compromises in the supply chain.
Automate online monitoring to uncover IP violations and identify the sources of online counterfeits.
Track online impersonations or mentions of your brand without your consent.

Cross-Functional Collaboration

It’s important to understand that brand protection can mean different things for organizations. For some, detecting copycats of their luxury products is the top priority, while online shops may focus on protecting digital assets from cyber threats.

On that note, not all brands face the same level of abuse and infringement, so businesses must customize their brand protection strategy to suit each brand’s specific needs and situations.

To ensure there is a unified understanding and comprehensive approach, companies must form a dedicated brand protection team with stakeholders from key areas, such as:

Legal & Regulatory
Research & Development
Product & Manufacturing
Marketing
Finance
Intellectual Property
Supply Chain & Logistics

Case Studies and Examples

Real-world examples highlight the effectiveness and importance of robust brand protection strategies.

Data has shown that investing in BI solutions can significantly reduce the incidence of counterfeits and fraudulent activities.

For example, Amazon invested over $1.2 billion in 2023 alone to combat counterfeit products and protect their customers and sellers. The investment included employing more than 15,000 people, from machine-learning scientists to expert investigators, dedicated to these efforts.

As a result, Amazon successfully blocked over 700,000 attempts by bad actors to create new selling accounts and seized more than 7 million counterfeit products worldwide.

Similarly, Johnson & Johnson’s Global Brand Protection program successfully dismantled a global counterfeiting network that had infiltrated medical device supply chains.

Their quick action, including civil enforcement and collaboration with international law enforcement, protected patients and upheld their brand’s integrity.

From these cases, we can learn that a proactive and multifaceted brand protection strategy ensures that brands maintain their reputation and trust in the marketplace.

In the end, protecting your brand is not just about preventing losses; it’s about securing your customers’ loyalty and confidence for the long term.

Written by Ivana Radevska

Senior Content Writer at Shortlister

Sources

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