The need to maintain brand integrity is a point of high priority for companies that are worth their salt; the activities of counterfeiters have devastating effects on consumer perception of a brand as well as the company’s bottom-line, thus the pressing need for companies to be able to easily identify and put a stop to sub-standard imitations of their products.
Below are five proven ways for businesses of all sizes to protect their brand and prevent the counterfeits of their products from proliferating and thriving on the market.
Global IP Protection
In order to prevent unauthorized parties from manufacturing lookalikes of your products, you would have to as a matter of necessity file to secure a patent, copyright or trademarks – furthermore, you must ensure that these are not only registered in your primary jurisdiction of operation, but also in markets or countries where there is high likelihood of your products being counterfeited.
Use Technology
Technology has made the monitoring and tracing of counterfeiting activities possible; it is therefore counterintuitive to not make use of it. You should adopt the use of distinctive features or packages which can be easily detected with a special device, this would make it extremely difficult for counterfeiters to try to create imitations of your products successfully.
The anti-counterfeit technology industry has over the years arisen strongly even as counterfeiters have been determined to keep their circle of evil going; the incentives for making use of technology to fight back against counterfeiters are numerous, there is therefore absolutely no reason to pass on it.
Create Mechanisms to Monitor Your Market
It would be imperative at certain points to physically go after counterfeiters, and to do this, you would have to put effective monitoring mechanisms in place. Some recent anti-counterfeit technologies are equipped with GPS features, thus helping you to track the location of your products’ counterfeiting activities and making a decisive move to apprehend the perpetrators.
Make it Easy for Your Customers to Verify Product’s Authenticity
The customer is the most important factor in the counterfeiting equation; Beyond the value of your brand diminishing in the eyes of the consumer, the lives of your customers could also be at stake here, therefore an active fight against counterfeits is not one to be taken for granted.
You should create an open channel for customers who identify fake or sub-standard imitations of your products to easily make a report. You should also consistently make efforts to publicly inform and educate your customers on things to look out for so that they can detect the counterfeits of your products and make reports accordingly.
Use Cypheme’s AI Anti-Counterfeit Technology
The artificial intelligence (AI) powered anti-counterfeit solution provided by Cypheme has over the years proven to be the best out there for companies. Its flagship tamper-proof noise print labels which can be affixed on a product, or its package is increasingly being regarded by many as a global mark of trust and authenticity. Not only does the use of the Cypheme Noise Print label inure to increased value for brands, it also helps consumers to easily detect the authenticity of a product simply with the use of their smartphone cameras.
Noise print labels are infused with specialized chemicals which create unique fingerprint for each label such that it cannot be successfully copied or duplicated without it being detected as fake by the Cypheme authentication system. As such, if counterfeiters try to make copies of the labels, the use of the smartphone camera would make this apparent to a buyer just within seconds, since the verification process is being run on the robust proprietary AI mechanism that Cypheme has developed.
In conclusion, counterfeiters are not taking a break, as such as a product owner, you should not take the war against counterfeiting for granted. The anti-counterfeit fight should be right in the centre of your processes in order to ensure the survival of your enterprise.
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