Make it, so they can’t fake it!
Anti-counterfeit packaging, digital packaging, digital id’s
A $323 Billion industry of counterfeit products has been growing and eating into the market share of original Brands! This has been a well-known fact since years, however the problem has only gotten worse with time. In the battle of fake vs original, fake products are copied so well that even brands are sometimes unable to differentiate on first look. In such cases, consumers are mere victims realizing the problem after the purchase and often times losing faith in the brand instead of realizing the problem with purchase.
This is a major loss to the brand in terms of brand goodwill and loyalty but also the revenue. Companies can easily quantify this loss by accessing the sales in market against the production across the sales channels. Once the number is established, the % revenue lost can be estimated as a target to improve, which will have a huge impact on existing profits.
What have brands done to tackle counterfeiting?
Complex physical solutions such as modification of packaging, applying holograms or tamper evident labels to protect from adulteration or packaging reuse have been widely used as an anti-counterfeit solution. However, these solutions are failing as the counterfeiters can easily copy the physical solutions with ease and flood the market with fake products within months or days of the original product launch.
Many organizations also fail to address the issue through sales and marketing perspective and limit the same to their legal department. Ideally marketing and legal departments should have a joint ownership over brand protection and be a part of the key responsibility areas.
To develop a successful brand protection program for your organization, let’s begin by first listing down the problem, scale of the problem, areas it is prominent and the supply chain network where and how it lacks along with consumer education.
Once you have a complete understanding of the problem, a strategy can be made to attack the problem in stages to give the best result. Anti counterfeit packaging also known as Intelligent Packaging is one of the best ways for many industries to implement solutions that can help the product to be differentiated from other products. The best use of such smart packaging is usually with a physical and digital element in combination which allows consumers to authenticate the product without relying on the platform through which the purchase was made.
Many brands have already started to invest in active and intelligent packaging for the purpose of consumer engagement and track and trace of products within the supply chain. However, this technology also gives brands an opportunity to give products digital id’s which can interact with the consumer’s mobile phone to authenticate the product.
Many companies use alphanumeric codes for this purpose which is embedded on the product under a scratch surface or in the form of 2D code’s. The consumer has to go to the brand website and check the authenticity of the product. This is however not the best way to use the smart packaging solution as a copy can be created of the alphanumeric or numeric code and the website will not be able to differentiate an original from the copy or a reused packaging.
Improvement on such technology is now been introduced for the brand to take advantage. A covert option of a one-time kill digital ID can be printed on the product. This anti counterfeit packaging solution solves the problem in multiple folds:-
1) Eliminates the possibility of multiple copies which can be created by the counterfeiter.
2) Reuse of the original packaging can easily be detected and reported as suspicious product.
3) Crowd sourcing of information related to the product is made available through easy report options post scanning.
4) Can locate the area scan and through analytics present hotspots for the problem.
Similarly, companies can also use overt options along with cutting technology around Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to make the product smart. Using the complex algorithm programmed on the backend the digital ID can detect the authenticity of the product. This is a more advance security layer that gives the brand benefits of the one-time kill code and more like being used for brand engagement in combination with anti-counterfeit packaging.
Similar to such digital IDs, brands can also opt for NFC and RFID technology to bring the packaging to life. Alcoholic beverages have adopted similar tags for the bottle caps replacing the label seals as a part of their digital packaging solutions.
Although making a product secure with the design and the digital packaging is the best way to implement an anti counterfeit solution, it becomes of no use if the consumer is not educated about the same. Therefore, with every advancement towards anti counterfeit packaging made by brand, a consumer education initiative should also be taken up by the brand. A good strategy to tackle the problem will prioritize, implement, monitor and enforce action against the detected problem areas.
A long-term holistic anti-counterfeiting strategy will help brand owners to reclaim the revenue they deserve while protecting their hard-earned reputation along with the lost market share.
Sepio Products is a market leader in introducing technology for anti-counterfeit, brand engagement and supply chain traceability. You can connect with them by simply emailing at hello@sepioproducts.com.
