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Your company has spent a lot of time and effort creating its brand and shaping how it is viewed by the world.  Company Name.  Logo.  Icon.  Colors.  Fonts.  Slogan.  Tag Line.  Motto.  Trademarks.  Service Marks.  Copyrights.  Voice.  Ads.  Domain.  Website.  Blog.  Podcast.  Trade Show Presence.  Social Media pages.  Brand Guide.  Advertorials.  Influencers.  The brand’s profile has been brought to bear with the utmost intentionality.  Tremendous energy went into guiding how the brand was perceived and received.  Slowly but surely, the brand’s name recognition grew, and its reputation polished.  Perhaps it has even developed brand loyalty… or even – dare we say it – brand love.  In short, the brand has taken on a life of its own.

For business owners, leaders, marketers and sales staff, instead of relaxing and thinking that part is done, that’s just the beginning.  Now comes the real battle: protecting the brand.  It’s a never-ending fight to keep the brand from being attacked, used, abused, or even erased.  For manufacturers with iconic brands, it’s time to keep counterfeit products from entering the market.  For online retailers, it’s time to prevent online accounts from impersonating the brand and misleading customers.  For companies that use their website to transact business, upload and download files, or manage accounts, it’s time to guard the company’s domain and email from being used in ways that were not and would not ever be authorized.  For businesses with intellectual property – such as brand trademarks, service marks, copyrights and patents, it is time to scour the nether regions of the world for instances of infringement.  And all companies need to protect the brand from cyber-attacks.  In short, once you build a brand, you have to protect it or it will have been all for nothing.

‍What is Brand Protection?

Let’s examine the risks brands and IPs can face, and why it is vital to protect brands from threats.  Just what does a modern brand protection strategy even look like?  Brand protection is the practice of ensuring the company’s intellectual property (IP) and brand identity are safe from any kind of unauthorized use.  Specifically, the definition of brand protection encompasses a series of actions designed to secure your brand’s distinctive elements — company name, icons, product names, packaging, intellectual property, and more — against infringement, counterfeiting, and misrepresentation, both in physical and digital spaces. Key objectives would include securing revenue from being appropriated by counterfeiters and impersonators, keeping a brand or product’s uniqueness from being watered down or washed away, upholding the company’s reputation, and ensuring that customers receive the genuine experience expected from the brand.  In short, it’s a process of building a fortress around the way the company is perceived and received in the world.  After all, in an age where information spreads instantly and imitators have a huge financial incentive to rip off a company’s assets, protecting the brand has never been more critical. Implementing effective brand protection strategies not only preserves the company’s competitive edge but also builds trust and loyalty with customers.  It’s the equivalent of putting in a multi-faceted security system to protect the family jewels.

‍Why Is Brand Protection Important?

Early and consistent brand protection is not just a legal necessity; it’s a strategic and financial business imperative that underscores the incredible importance of brand in a crowded marketplace.  In the noisy din of the marketplace, as competitors vie for consumer attention, safeguarding a brand’s identity ensures customers are able to confidently recognize and choose a specific company’s offerings over pretenders and bogus alternatives. 

Brand protection matters because it:

• protects revenue.  First and foremost, a company is in business to make a profit.  Revenue matters.  Forgers, unauthorized sellers, imitators and wanna-bees divert sales.  They directly impact the bottom line. Brand protection safeguards revenue streams by preventing such losses.
  
  
• supports business growth.  A protected brand provides a solid foundation for expansion into new markets and product lines. Investors and partners are more likely to engage with businesses that have secured their brand’s identity and own their intellectual property.  KFC’s strong brand protection – name, logo, recipe, mascot, pattern –has allowed the company to expand into major markets like China.  There are more than 30k KFCs in the world, but 26,000 KFC restaurants are located outside of the United States, in over 150 countries and territories. The majority of KFC’s global growth is happening in China, where they have over 10,000 locations. 
  
  
• maintains the brand’s value.  Protecting your IP prevents dilution of your brand, ensuring it remains unique and valuable. A strong brand differentiates you from competitors and adds significant value to your business.
  
  
• builds customer trust.  Ensuring that customers receive genuine products enhances satisfaction and loyalty.  Substandard imitations or knock-offs can harm a brand’s reputation and erodes trust.  Case in point.  French brand Hermès invests millions of dollars a year in advertising and protecting the Birkin bag brand both online and offline.  This includes advertising the Birkin trademark and its unique design, known as trade dress. Hermès also emphasizes the brand’s exclusivity and mystique, which is part of their protection strategy.  (More about BIRKIN when we look at brand counterfeiting next week.)
  
  
• keeps Intellectual Property (IP) rights intact.   Filing to protect IP rights and enforcing those protections is key.  Infringements that generate no response weaken legal rights over time. IP rights that aren’t enforced may become more challenging to assert in the future, potentially leading to loss of exclusivity.  It’s not unlike ownership of real estate that — if encroached upon for decades without challenge – can be legally lost through adverse possession. 

To clarify what IP or Intellectual Property rights consist of, here is a quick review.

• Trademarks and Servicemarks protect the name of the business, as well as its products and services. Logos, slogans, phrases, even colors, sounds, and other elements can all potentially be protected by trademarks.  They exist to distinguish a specific company’s goods or services and inform consumers of who is behind the products they see. Marks are essential for establishing a brand identity and ensuring that customers can identify products or services in the market. In short, if there’s an element that helps to identify something uniquely of a particular company, a trademark is there to help.
  
  
  • Copyright is designed to protect original creative works from being stolen or appropriated without the creator’s permission. Copyright protection helps preserve the uniqueness of your creative content, preventing others from copying or distributing it without permission.  Most commonly, copyright benefits creatives and ensures their work is legally theirs. Books, music, artwork, photography, architectural designs, computer software, and many more creations can be protected by copyright. 
  
  
  
  • Patents are aimed at protecting inventions—be they the creations of individuals or businesses. Most patents filed are either utility patents, which protect new inventions, or design patents, which focus on new ornamental designs. 
  
  
  • Trade Secrets protects confidential business information that provides a competitive edge, such as formulas, recipes, or customer lists.  Think of Kentucky Fried Chicken’s 11 herbs and spices recipe.  It’s confidential information that provides KFC a competitive advantage.  It’s not generally known to the public.  KFC employs reasonable efforts to maintain its secrecy. KFC goes to great lengths to safeguard the recipe’s confidentiality, including storing the original handwritten copy in a secure vault at its headquarters. They also utilize a unique blending system where different companies prepare portions of the spice blend separately, ensuring that no single company or individual has access to the entire formula.

• ‍avoids legal issues.  Proactively protecting your brand beforehand reduces the risk of costly legal disputes over IP infringements after the fact. It also strengthens your position if litigation becomes necessary.
  
  
• reduces Customer Service challenges.  If brand is not protected, a company spends time addressing complaints about competitors’ products, increasing the workload of the customer service team.  This diverts attention from actions that might grow the business or improve customer relations. 

Integrating brand protection into the company’s business strategy safeguards assets and supports sustainable business growth far into the future.

‍Types of Risks a Brand Can Face

To defend a brand effectively against threats, you first need to understand all the potential threats. Here is a short explanation of some common risks.

Threat 1 – Counterfeiting – Unauthorized replication and sale of products by a fraudster can lead to significant revenue loss and damage a brand’s reputation. Counterfeit goods are often of inferior quality, which can result in customer dissatisfaction and harm the brand’s image and value. 

Just consider what would happen if U.S. currency were allowed to be replicated and used as real money?  The value of the dollar would plummet.  That is why the printing of money is highly controlled, and counterfeiters are hunted down by the US Secret Service.  Brand is a company’s currency.  Fraudulent versions should never be tolerated.

Threat 2 – Marketplaces – Online platforms are convenient venues for counterfeiters and unauthorized sellers, especially ones that exist overseas.  The vast number of listings and sellers makes it challenging to monitor and control unauthorized use of a specific brand. 

Threat 3 – Social Media Impersonation – Fake social media accounts pretending to be a particular brand can mislead customers, spread false information, and damage trust. These impersonators may engage in scams or inappropriate communication that reflects poorly on the brand.

Threat 4 – Impersonating Websites – Lookalike websites designed to mimic a brand’s official site can deceive customers or steal their information. These sites can be used for phishing attacks or selling counterfeit or alternative products, eroding customer confidence and harming the brand’s reputation.

Threat 5 – Domain Abuse – Unauthorized use or registration of domain names similar to a successful brand can confuse customers and divert traffic. This includes practices like cybersquatting and typo-squatting, where individuals register domain names with bad-faith intent to profit from a successful brand’s trademark or servicemark.  Domain abuse can lead to loss of web traffic and potentially expose customers to fraud.

Threat 6 – Phishing Scams – Fraudulent communications that appear to come from a specific brand aims to trick customers into revealing sensitive information. Phishing scams can lead to financial loss for customers and damage the brand’s credibility, even when the successful brand was not involved at all and did nothing wrong.

Threat 7 – Copyright Infringement – Unauthorized use of a brand’s original content—such as images, text, or videos—affects the brand’s uniqueness and can mislead customers. It can also diminish the perceived value of its Intellectual Property.

Threat 8 – Brand Genericization – Genericization occurs when a brand’s products become indistinguishable from generic alternatives, leading to a loss of brand identity and value.  Newcomers in the market will want to use a well established brand’s name if that’s how the product is best known. 

Threat 9 – AI Abuse: The rise of harmful AI-generated content that contains misinformation, deepfakes, and inappropriate content.  This can cause significant damage to brand integrity and reputation. 

By understanding these risks, any company can take targeted actions to mitigate them and protect the brand’s integrity.  Next week, we’ll start a series taking a deeper diver into each of the different brand threats, how they manifest and what the most successful brands are doing to protect against such threats, including creating an in-house Brand Protection Plan.  Stay tuned.

Quote of the Week
“Your brand is the single most important investment you can make in your business.”
Steve Forbes

© 2025, Keren Peters-Atkinson. All rights reserved.