April 5, 2020
Maximising revenue when on-line is all you have
Maximising revenue when on-line is all you have

Introduction

Effective brand protection strategies online are even more important now than ever - with the world’s retail now all on-line, how can you realise your demand?

Counterfeiting

One of the truisms of enforcing brand protection in retail is that, “if you don’t think you have a counterfeiting issue, you just haven’t noticed it yet”. With the economic consequences of Covid-19 playing out globally, you can be sure that counterfeiters in China, South Korea, Russia, Turkey and everywhere else are gearing up to exploit the volume of on-line commerce. Sadly, the range of scams already in the news about Covid-19 is a stark reminder about the ambition and relentless nature of these negative agents.

Don’t just slash costs – act to maximise margin right now

These are unprecedented times, and the automatic reaction is to slash operating spend. But remember that the objective is to maximise profit and minimise losses – so any opportunity to raise revenue at high return-on-investment must be seized upon.

By stemming the losses via online marketplaces, social media, websites and domains, companies can realise immediate up-ticks in revenue. That’s why many companies have turned to online content monitoring platforms like Mark Monitor, Incopro, Yellow, Brandshield, Pointer, Red Points and Snap Dragon among others.

The issue is:

Just subscribing to an online content monitoring platform will not give you impact you need

It’s not like buying an iPhone and it being everything you need - ready out-of-the-box:

·         You need to pick the right one – they have their strengths and weaknesses, and they all have a range of packages and prices.

·         They will have limitations in terms of its function, technical nature, costs of scaling and how to represent the strategy of the brand.

·         Whilst the platforms can remove infringements at scale, they cannot prevent infringements reappearing at scale

You need an accompanying set of capabilities

Capability

Issue

Legal oversight

Traditional law firms cannot support this – high volume work spirals costs

Agility and responsiveness

In-house team would be too overloaded to stay on top of infringements.

Technology-led investigations

Need to recognise these leads and have the capability to capitalise on them. Otherwise enforcement will be poorly directed and ineffectual.

Multi-staged escalation (warnings to litigation)

All decisions informed by commercial requirements. Are the returns worth the effort?


This isn’t impossible – we can support you right now

At Stobbs, we’ve combined the breadth of functions and knowledge of technology into a service to deliver a tangible impact right now:

                     Expertise across platforms to help choose the best (combination of) technologies for the specific brand(s)

                     Process that manages the volume and complexity and saves time from in-house team, run by people who fundamentally understand the brand objectives

o    Managing high-volume infringements at low / fixed costs - "bespoke standardisation"

o    Identify root-cause infringers and stop at source – in-house investigations team (desktop and on-the-ground investigation, grey and dark web cybercrime)

o    Prioritisation of important issues and range of standard and bespoke escalation options to really get to the heart of issues

o    With a managed budget - based on agreed strategy

 

Stage 1 – Do you need it? Identifying the opportunity for online brand enforcement

We’ll give you a free appraisal on the current health of your on-line revenue stream –


What is the scale of the issue?

What steps we would recommend

Cost options for addressing this and therefore RoI of the interventions


At that point, you’ll have all the information to make the choice.

Stage 2 – Optimising your current OBE programme

If you already subscribing to one of the software platforms:

·         Have you got sufficient resource in-house to manage this given the increased importance of the channel and the focus it requires?

·         Do you need analysis of your current on-line brand enforcement programme to go beyond the immediate takedowns and create holistic solutions to strategise attacking the sheer volume of infringements and address the underlying issues?

If the answer to either of these are yes, we’re here to support you.

Online brand enforcement as a profit centre?

Doing this activity right could create opportunities to generate revenue from your online brand enforcement issues. For example, damages-based agreement (DBAs) can effectively fund UK litigation. Similarly,  U.S. Anti-Cybersquatting Consumer Protection Act (ACPA) actions can be cost neutral and even deliver income from counterfeiters without needing significant investment to pursue a claim.

Talk to Rich (richard.ferguson@iamstobbs.com) about maximising revenue from establishing or optimising your current online brand enforcement programme.

 

 

Tags
Online Brand Enforcement /  Fashion /  Food & Drink /  Publishing /  Travel /  Telecoms /  Advertising /  Sport /  Anti-Counterfeiting /  Beauty /  Toys /  Pharma

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