Protect Your Brand
In our last post in this series, we learned how to build your brand using Amazon Brand Registry. Now it’s time to learn how to protect the brand you worked so hard to build. Amazon helps your company’s brand protection with Amazon Brand Registry by utilizing these three strategies:
- Accurate listings
- Proactive brand protection
- Report violations
Accurate Listings
Amazon Brand Registry provides brands with multi-layered account verification that protects sellers and their brands from possible false sellers. Amazon offers brands who are part of the Amazon Brand Registry access to their team of experts and the machine learning technology they built to review the identity of possible Amazon sellers. Here are some of the items possible sellers must provide during the screening process:
- Government-issued ID
- Location
- Taxpayer information
- Banking and credit card information
- Further information about their identity and more
The Amazon experts and machine learning technology review and run the information listed above against other third-party resources (listed below) to verify that the information provided is accurate and correct:
- Government records
- Taxpayer identification numbers
- Tax authority records
Amazon’s team takes it one step further by facilitating live video interviews with possible sellers to verify that they match their government-issued IDs. Amazon’s team reviews all the information to see if the potential new seller is a risk to other current Amazon sellers.
If that wasn’t enough, in 2021, Amazon Brand Registry started to require all sellers to display their seller contact to all of its stores worldwide. This information provides another level of transparency for all customers and helps give credibility to sellers.
After a seller passes through the multi-layered account verification process and is allowed to sell in the Amazon store, Amazon continues to monitor their account and behaviors for new risks. This process exists to make it easier for brands who utilize the Amazon Brand Registry program to protect their brand proactively.
Proactive Brand Protection
Protecting your brand isn’t something that stops after Amazon completes its verification process — that is only the beginning. With Amazon’s Brand Registry program, they proactively help brands against any suspected infringement or inaccurate content from reaching their product detail pages or brand stores. Helping prevent infringement or erroneous information from being posted on your brand pages improves the credibility of your brand while improving customer service.
Transparency
Amazon Brand Registry uses Transparency, a product serialization service that provides authenticity checks on items to verify they are not counterfeit before leaving the Amazon facility. To participate in the Transparency program, a brand must be enrolled in the Amazon Brand Registry program. Amazon manages this process by assigning each item with a one-of-a-kind 2D code. Before an item leaves the facility, Amazon scans the 2D code, verifying that the contents in the box are the authentic, correct items. If the product fails the transparency test, it is set aside for further inspection. The Transparency program offers customers brand credibility and helps ensure that consumers can safely purchase your brand’s products.
Project Zero
In addition to using Transparency, the Amazon Brand Registry program also uses Project Zero to empower brands to identify potential fakes of their brands. With Project Zero, brands have the ability to remove listings from their stores. Having self-service counterfeit removal makes it much easier for brands to help automations catch fake listings in the future. Like Transparency, Project Zero also uses product serialization to confirm the authenticity of the product being sold on Amazon.
IP Accelerator
The third tool in brand protection that helps Transparency and Project Zero succeed is Amazon’s IP Accelerator. Amazon’s IP Accelerator provides brands with trusted IP resources for trademark registration services. Brands who choose to use IP Accelerator have access to brand protection and brand-building features in Amazon’s stores to grow their brand stores before officially becoming trademark registered.
Each of these tools can be game-changing for many brands on Amazon, but to be eligible to use any of the tools listed above, your brand must be part of the Amazon Brand Registry.
Report Violations
In 2020, Amazon made a significant push to hold counterfeiters accountable by establishing the Amazon Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU). The CCU works with brands, law enforcement, and customers worldwide to stop counterfeiters and hold them accountable for their actions. The CCU works with brands to learn about the brand’s intellectual property and products. They can detect, investigate, and identify counterfeit targets worldwide through programs like Amazon Brand Registry. But these counterfeiters don’t get off easy. Amazon CCU turns these brands and individuals over to law enforcement, after which the true brands can pursue the right to seize all counterfeit products. Finally, the CCU destroys the counterfeits network by going after their whole operation and taking down each link one by one.
Protecting your brand creates a form of transparency and a level of trust between your brand and the consumer. Credibility and trust are two things that are very difficult to build, and they can both shatter in an instant. Don’t waste your hard work, and be sure to protect your brand proactively. Join us for the next part of our Amazon Brand Registry series, and we’ll share how building your brand and protecting your brand works using Amazon Brand Analytics.
Need more help? See some ways we can assist you with brand management.
