OpSec Blog

A licensed product is only as valuable as the brand identity that backs it up.The laws of supply and demand mean that unlicensed use of a brand can severely damage sales. Counterfeits take sales away from legitimate licensed partners and increase supply, reducing the value of a product. Poorly made or dangerous knock offs also diminish a company’s image, lowering demand and further hurting sales and pricing.

We’ve put together a list of the top six ways that companies can protect their brand identity.

NFL fans warned about counterfeit Super Bowl merchandise

While counterfeiting is a problem all throughout the year, there are certain events that present a particular risk. Major sporting events like the Super Bowl routinely attract a lot of spending on tickets and merchandise, and wherever there is a lot of consumer spending, the counterfeiters aren't far behind.

In anticipation of the Super Bowl, we'll be taking an in-depth look at the counterfeiting that surrounds it and the extensive brand protection activities that help to protect the league, the teams and most importantly, the fans.

A common question that arises when brands consider initiating a brand protection licensing program is whether the brand is “big enough” to warrant the investment in those kinds of services. We work with many brands that were, at first, concerned with this very topic. Below we take a look at a few reasons why three brands chose to implement a brand protection program and their results.

A brand protection program provides licensing brands with two big advantages: anti-counterfeiting and royalty protection. Experience has taught us that typically a given brand is likely to be more concerned about one of these issues than the other, but both play a vital role in every licensing brand protection solution. These two components are like two sides of the same coin, and they support and benefit each other.

We just returned from the Licensing Expo in sunny Las Vegas. Held yearly, the Licensing Expo is a great opportunity not only to see colleagues and customers alike, but also see what’s new and exciting in the world of licensing across all industries. Here are a few great trends we saw:

What is a brand’s return on investment for its licensing program? In most cases, there are virtually no hard costs for the licensor: the brand merely grants authority to various licensees and associated vendors to execute on a licensing agreement, and the brand receives a percentage of the generated revenue in exchange. In other words, the brand achieves revenue after expending virtually no up-front costs. So, while the ROI can’t be quantified in normal terms, it’s clearly an attractive result even if the program generates only modest revenue..

I’ve always been a hardcore Baltimore-based sports fan, so you can imagine how thrilled I was when the Ravens played against the 49ers in this year’s Super Bowl. Yet, for all my excitement, I still cringed when I attended the game and could easily spot the difference between the officially sanctioned memorabilia and those items that weren’t.