Anti-countering: Strengthening Brand Reputation |
Posted: May 11, 2020 |
Starting and growing your own business is one big thing.Each of us would agree with the fact that starting a business is not an overnight task! Right from the point of ideation, conceptualization, fulfilling compliances for set-up, and actually bringing that idea to life; there are a plethora of activities and nitty-gritties that a business requires to be fulfilled beyond all the hard-work. The course of running the business vests on other aspects like manufacturing, quality, sales, delivery, customer satisfaction, growth and many others. Further, for any business to prosper, attracting new customers, and staying competitive in the market, brand reputation plays a huge role as one relies upon it. Pains are an inevitable part of business, but to cushion it to minimum; businesses have always indulged in branding activities that help create its unique identity and demarcate its offering from others in multiple aspects. Of late, due to growing duplicity and increased counterfeiting, reputed brands face an increased threat of business de-growth due to qualitative depletion, counterfeiting and many other malpractices by the fraudsters. Counterfeiting is a global menace faced by almost all popular brands. From medicines, watch, your favourite candy, pen drives to foreign liquor, anything to everything that one uses might be a cheap duplicate of the original product. The World Health Organisation (WHO) in year 2018 had estimated that one-third of all medicines sold worldwide are illegitimate. Fake drugs have even killed lives! In a layman’s language, a counterfeited item is a perfect look-alike of the original branded product but with far inferior qualitative attributes. It poses a grave threat for the brand, and hence they do everything to protect their products from being duplicated and prevent business and consumer interests. To prevent brands from external threats brand, it is essential to adopt robust brand protection measures. Every business needs to protect its brand in the same style as it preserves its valuable assets, and failure to do so can result in high magnitude of losses. Brand protection involves the use of packaging, packaging components and other technologies to dissuade misuse of brand and safeguard products from unlawful activities such as counterfeiting, duplicity, and also tarnishing of business image. Packaging can play a huge role in brand protection. It can incorporate authentication features embedded in the latest technologies provided by packaging manufacturers for retailers and consumers to differentiate between original and the knock off. Holograms have been the most common brand certification since many decades. Holograms came to brand owners rescue around 70 years ago and since then there have been changes based on various aspects, such as requirement of even more robust holography, cost factors and tailored requirements across various brands. The supremacy of brand protection can lend a helping hand in exceeding the sophistication of criminal types. In the present times, methods for brand protection may include serialization, RFID or similar technologies, overt methods like optically variable devices, i.e. holograms or hologram sticker printing and covert techniques like taggants, special UV inks and genetic markers. One example can be the use of authentication applied to flexible films. The erstwhile used holograms are today among the most ineffective security solutions available, and in fact they may even serve as an invitation to counterfeit because of an interesting dilemma. To make matters worse, holograms are not immune to this problem even if layered with another technology such as a serialized QR codes or NFC chips. Due to the redundancy of old holograms and also because of rising simulations and counterfeit threats, the need for more strengthened protective anti-counterfeiting measures was realized. Owing to the spotlight on brand protection technologies, the scope for anti-counterfeiting packaging has recently witnessed an impeccable growth. Flexible packaging companies like UFlex that offer other flexpack solutions like packaging films, inks, adhesive, rotogravure cylinders etc are also offering primary and secondary pack features to address counterfeiting solutions through the supply chain. Their set of anti-counterfeiting solutions stem from decades of experience backed up with unparalleled research and development expertise. Here are some of the anti-counterfeiting solutions provided by UFlex:
The Anti-counterfeit market is huge and growing at a rapid pace. According to a study by Markets and Markets, anti-counterfeit packaging market size will grow to USD 182.2 billion by 2023. The main reason for its growth is the tug-of-war between fraudsters and brand owners to reduce counterfeiting and boost brand loyalty.
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