Imagine you've built a brand that stands for quality and innovation. Customers trust your products and are willing to pay a premium for them. But you are faced with a darker truth – counterfeit versions of your products are flooding the market. Looting profits, risking your reputation and customer lives. The solution? A holistic approach to brand protection, creating a watertight defence for strengthening anti-counterfeiting and safeguarding your brand's value.
The Multifaceted Threat of Counterfeiting
Counterfeiting isn't just about cheap knock-offs anymore. It is a $4 trillion market, that is ever-growing and even more troublesome.
- Exact Copies or First Copies: Near-perfect replicas of your product, often made with inferior materials and lacking safety features, infringing your Trademark and IP rights.
- Grey Market Goods: These are legitimate products diverted from authorized channels and sold at a lower price, impacting your brand control and profitability.
- Online brand impersonation: The rise of online marketplaces and social media has further amplified the counterfeiting problem. Counterfeiters can easily set up shop online, reaching a global audience with minimal effort.
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Introducing the Brand Protection 360 Solutions
A brand isn’t just product-oriented anymore, they are customer-focused. It is important to protect and ensure a smooth transition between everything that improves a customer’s interest. This leads to leaving behind the old single-faceted approach of just protecting the product from tampering. To protect your brand in 2024, you need to safeguard your brand's 3 dimensions, your products, supply chain and online presence.
1. Product Security
Your product is your identity and safeguarding them should be your utmost priority. Product security encompasses the measures taken to ensure the authenticity, integrity, and safety of your products throughout their lifecycle against counterfeit components or malicious tampering.
Here's how product security can improve your ROI
But how do you strengthen the product security?
The ability to protect your product lies with you and your customers. Yes, they are your first line of defence, enabling them to authenticate the product they purchase in the market helps your brand to prevent the flow of counterfeits in the market. Consider incorporating physical or digital authentication features into your products. This could include tamper-evident seals, unique serial numbers, embedded security chips, and a user-friendly mobile authentication application that helps users navigate through the process easily.
This is where Certify by Acviss plays the bigger role.
Certify by Acviss: The Digital Shield for Your Products
Certify empowers your customers to be the first line of defence against counterfeits. The anti-counterfeit solution provides unique, non-cloneable security codes embedded within your products. Customers can easily verify the product authenticity of their purchase using the dedicated mobile application. This not only builds trust and confidence in your brand but also deters counterfeiters, knowing their products will be easily exposed.
Integration into Existing System
- Multiple Code Integration Options: Certify offers flexibility in integrating the security labels into your products. You can embed them directly onto the product packaging, include them on a separate authenticity card or even print them on invisible micro-labels. This adaptability ensures seamless integration regardless of your product type.
- User-Friendly Verification Process: Verifying a product's authenticity is simple and convenient. Customers can download the app and scan the label using their smartphone camera. The system then instantly verifies the code's authenticity and provides detailed product information, such as manufacturing date and location.
Why Certify is beneficial for your brand
- Certify fosters trust and confidence in your brand. Customers gain peace of mind knowing they're purchasing genuine products, leading to higher satisfaction and brand loyalty.
- Counterfeits often lead to customer dissatisfaction and returns. Certify helps eliminate this issue by ensuring customers receive authentic products. This translates to significant cost savings for your business.
- They actively combat counterfeiters by demonstrating your commitment to product quality and customer protection. This strengthens your brand reputation and fosters positive brand perception.
How Certify Stands Apart in the Competition
- Customization Options: Certify allows you to customize the security codes with your brand logo or other unique identifiers, further enhancing brand recognition and security.
- Data Analytics: Valuable data insights into customer verification behaviour can be gained through Certify. This data can help you track verification rates, identify regions with higher counterfeit activity, and refine your brand protection strategy accordingly.
- Marketing Integration: verification can be leveraged as a marketing opportunity. By integrating the Certify app with your brand's social media channels or loyalty programs, you can create a more engaging brand experience for your customers.
2. Supply Chain Track and Trace
Protecting your supply chain is a great way to prevent any tampering that can happen during its life cycle. Tracking and Tracing is the comprehensive process of monitoring and documenting the movement of goods throughout the supply chain – from raw materials to finished products delivered to the customer using product serialisation and technology. This involves capturing and recording data at each critical stage, such as:
- Origin of materials
- Manufacturing location and processes
- Storage facilities
- Transportation details
- Distribution channels
In 2024, it is necessary to have a powerful tool for ensuring the integrity of your supply chain and safeguarding your brand reputation. A solution integrating blockchain technology empowers you to proactively combat counterfeiting and build trust with your customers.
Origin: Blockchain-Powered Supply Chain Tracking
In layman's terms, blockchain acts like a shared record book, where every transaction (movement of your product) is recorded chronologically and securely. This makes it virtually impossible to alter or tamper with the data, ensuring the authenticity and integrity of your products.
Origin utilizes blockchain technology for brands to achieve top-level supply chain visibility. Providing complete transparency over your product's journey, from the raw materials stage to reaching your customer's doorstep.
Implementing Origin into Your Supply Chain
Origin integrates seamlessly with your existing supply chain management systems like SAP and Microsoft Dynamics 365. Data points such as product identification information, location and timestamp are securely recorded on the blockchain at each critical stage in the supply chain. This could include raw material sourcing, manufacturing processes, quality control checks and product distribution.
Advantages of having Origin in your supply chain:
- Increased Transparency
Origin provides remarkable transparency across your entire supply chain. You gain real-time insights into the movement of your products, allowing you to identify potential bottlenecks, optimize logistics and ensure efficient operations. - Improved Tamper Detection
Any attempt to alter or manipulate the data on the blockchain will be readily apparent. This empowers you to identify potential tampering points within your supply chain and take swift action to prevent counterfeit products from entering the market. - Faster Response to Counterfeiting
With real-time data on product movement, you can quickly react to suspicious activity. Origin helps you pinpoint the exact location where tampering might have occurred, allowing you to collaborate with relevant authorities and shut down counterfeiting operations efficiently.
Why Origin Stands Above Competition:
- Scalability: Origin is a scalable solution that can adapt to the size and complexity of your supply chain. Whether you're a small business or a large multinational corporation, Origin can accommodate your needs.
- Easy Integration with Existing Systems: Origin is designed to integrate seamlessly with your existing ERP be it SAP or Dynamics 365 and WMS software, minimizing disruption to your current workflows.
- Sustainability Tracking: Origin can be utilised to track sustainable practices within your supply chain. By recording data on ethically sourced materials and eco-friendly manufacturing processes, you can demonstrate your commitment to sustainability and differentiate your brand in the marketplace.
3. Online Brand Monitoring
Not just your product and supply chain, but in 2024, protecting your digital presence is as crucial as your physical store. Counterfeiters can easily create fake websites, social media accounts and online listings to promote and sell their illicit products. Impersonation and phishing scams are the most common online fraud practices today.
Online brand protection is the process of systematically tracking online mentions of your brand, products, and competitors. There are different types of online brand monitoring:
- Search Engine Monitoring
- Social Media Monitoring
- Online marketplace monitoring
- Review and Rating Monitoring
But to secure your brand in the entirety of cyberspace, you need a brand protection solution founded in cutting-edge technology.
Truviss: AI-Driven Online Brand Protection Solution
Truviss utilizes the power of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning to monitor your brand's online presence constantly. It scans domains, apps, social media platforms and online marketplaces to identify and remove fake listings, counterfeit marketing campaigns and any content that damages your brand reputation.
Think of Truviss as a tireless brand sentinel, patrolling the digital world 24/7 to protect your brand from online threats.
Truviss's Multifaceted Approach
Truviss employs a comprehensive strategy to safeguard your brand online.
- Domain and App Scanning
Truviss continuously scan and take down websites and apps that infringe on your brand identity. This includes identifying websites with names that closely resemble your brand name or utilize variations of your trademarks. It detects counterfeit apps that mimic your legitimate app's functionality or attempt to trick users into downloading malware. - Social Media Monitoring
Truviss keeps a watchful eye on social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. It identifies and flags posts, comments, and discussions that promote counterfeit products using your brand name or imagery. This allows you to take swift action to remove such content and minimize the reach of counterfeiters. - Online Marketplace Scrutiny
Truviss scans major online marketplaces like Amazon and eBay to identify and remove fake listings of your products. It utilizes AI algorithms to detect suspicious listings based on factors like pricing inconsistencies, inaccurate product descriptions, and seller history. - Brand Reputation Monitoring
Truviss analyses online sentiment to identify any negative brand mentions or discussions related to counterfeiting. This allows you to address customer concerns promptly and proactively manage your brand reputation.
Learn how Amazon’s Transparency program failed to meet expectations.
How AI and Machine Learning Powers Truviss
Advanced Pattern Recognition: Truviss's AI algorithms are trained to identify 500+ data points and anomalies that might indicate counterfeit activity. This includes recognizing subtle variations in brand logos, detecting suspicious product descriptions and filtering out irrelevant online chatter. As Truviss gathers more data, its ability to detect counterfeit activity becomes increasingly sophisticated.
Automated Content Removal: Truviss can be configured to automatically flag and remove suspicious online content. This streamlines the process of removing counterfeit listings and allows you to react swiftly to potential threats.
How does Truviss impact your brand in the long run?
Actively monitoring the digital landscape helps you identify and remove counterfeit products before they reach potential customers.
- Truviss allows you to proactively manage your brand reputation online. By removing negative content and addressing customer concerns promptly, you can protect your brand image and maintain customer trust.
- Counterfeit products can significantly impact your sales. Truviss helps you remove counterfeit listings and redirect customers to legitimate channels, leading to increased sales and revenue.
- Truviss provides valuable data and insights into online counterfeiting trends. This information can be used to refine your brand protection strategy and focus your efforts on areas with the highest risk of counterfeiting activity.
How Truviss Stands Apart in the Competition
- Customization Options: Truviss can be customized to meet your specific brand protection needs. You can define the types of online content you want to monitor and the level of automation for content removal.
- Global Brand Protection: Truviss offers global brand protection by monitoring various online platforms and languages. This is crucial for brands operating in international markets.
- Integration with Other Solutions: Truviss can be seamlessly integrated with Certify and Origin to create a holistic brand protection ecosystem. This allows you to share data and gain a comprehensive view of your brand protection efforts across all channels.
A Stronger Together Approach
The true power of Brand Protection 360 lies in the seamless integration of these three solutions. Combining them creates an unassailable barrier preventing any unauthorised interventions. How?
- Certify equips customers with the tools to verify product authenticity.
- Origin provides real-time insights into the supply chain, enabling proactive identification of potential counterfeiting attempts.
- Truviss safeguards your brand online, removing fake listings and protecting your brand image.
Relying on a single solution leaves vulnerabilities. Safeguarding the three dimensions of your brand using a 360 brand protection solution offers a layered defence, making it significantly harder for counterfeiters to succeed.
Want to learn more on safeguarding your product, brand and online space, get in touch with us or book a demo today. Acviss has protected over 2 billion products globally and served 80+ brands scaling different industries and businesses. Join us to secure your standing in the market and amplify your brand and trust among your customers.
