The brand protection landscape is changing. Long gone are the days when domain management was a company’s biggest worry. Now brands have to think about a plethora of different online protection challenges including piracy, counterfeiting, wider brand abuse and even cyber threats.
While the growing threats to brands may seem daunting, it’s important to remember how far we’ve come and what we have achieved already. To celebrate these successes, we hosted our inaugural Brand Protection Awards at the MarkMonitor Forum in Boise. The awards are a new initiative, designed to recognise customers who have shown leadership and excellence in their approach to brand protection, domain management and anti-piracy.
During the event at Stueckle Sky Center at Boise State University, we celebrated those companies that have demonstrated, and continue to show, a commitment to brand protection and safeguarding both themselves and their customers. Categories spanned a variety of elements across the brand protection sphere – from piracy, to domains, to innovation and collaboration – with submissions entered by both industry peers or self-nomination.
Given that this was the first year we hosted the awards, both the volume and quality of entries was extremely high. This not only made the judging process very hard but is a testament to the great strides that are being made across the industry to improve brand protection.
However, while the competition was tough, unfortunately there could only be one winner per category. The full list of award winners can be found below:
- Brand Protection Trailblazer Award — Michael Hecht from The Lego Group
- Domain Trailblazer Award — Dave Harrison and Ken Brussel from Curtiss-Wright
- Piracy Trailblazer Award — Jake Snyder from HBO
- Brand Protection Evangelist Award — Cindi Kipers from Kingston Technology Corporation
- Industry Evangelist Award — Andy Forsythe from Nissan
- Domain Best Practices Award — Carolyn Mitchell from Amazon
- The Innovation Award — Yoshiharu Kobori from Toray
- MarkMonitor Advocate Award — Matthew Winterroth and Lauren Dienes-Middlen from WWE
- Industry Participation Award — Bradley Silver from Warner Media
- Collaboration Award — Chris Hagstrom from L Brands
We would like to extend our congratulations to all award winners, and recognition to all those who entered but may not have received an award.
The MarkMonitor Forum is our two-day annual industry event that seeks to encourage collaboration, inspire innovation and facilitate the sharing of best practice on tackling brand protection challenges. It has been running for many years in one guise or another, so it’s great that we’re still able to evolve and expand the event.
For the full list of awards and those that were shortlisted, check out our Forum website.
