Protecting your brand involves your trade dress, slogans, and logo. Collectively we refer to this as your "brand", and we protect your brand with our Brand Protection process. We protect your brand through planning and foresight, including assessing marketplace competition and your future growth opportunities. Our Brand Assessment process involves assessing factors associated with your brand, such as the likelihood of confusion and its protectability. Read on to learn how The 7Ps are integral to Brand Protection!
My favorite professor in college was Dr. Feigenbaum. Unmistakable in the Health and Exercise Science department, he was full of simple wisdom and replete with high knowledge. Built like a Clydesdale, when he spoke, I listened.
I regularly use one of his favorite sayings, the “KISS” formula. More fancily known as Occam’s razor, the idea is to keep things simple. Another one of Dr. Feigenbaum’s favorites was “The 7Ps”. It goes like this: proper prior planning prevents piss poor performance, and that’s what this blog is all about.
HOW THE 7PS RELATE TO PROTECTING YOUR BRAND.
Your name is important. It is an identifier associated with your product or service. You want people aware of your business, and you want that awareness associated with good work. As an identifier, names evoke feelings, and business owners work hard to create a positive awareness of their business name. A positive awareness leads to more customers, revenue, and success. Simply put, achieving positive brand awareness is vital to the success of your business.
Often overlooked, misunderstood, or obscured in obviousness, your business name permeates practically all aspects of your business. The name of your business sets the stage for your intellectual property and corporate structure, which are foundational. There’s magnitude in the minutiae, and the implications of a name can be far reaching and costly.
There are two distinct components to establishing your business name as a positive identifier. The first is the creation of the positive awareness, as described above. The ongoing second component is protecting that name and the associated positive awareness. Remember, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery.
PLAN TO PROTECT, FROM THE START.
Intellectual property rights begin the moment you introduce your business into commerce. If you plan from the beginning, then you can protect from the beginning. Once your brand is established, you should expect – and not be surprised by - competitors encroaching upon your brand. We call this brand theft.
Brand theft occurs when competitors draw upon your positive brand awareness. New ideas are copycatted all the time. Casual observation supports this common phenomenon, and you can no doubt find multiple examples while on a quick drive around town. Brand theft is common. Copycatting happens… a lot.
Proper prior planning helps to prevent brand theft. At Morgan & Forb, our brand analysis includes researching the greater marketplace and specific competitors. We scrutinize implications associated with your business name, including the ability to protect your brand. It is difficult to build a brand and to create a positive association therewith. Once established, brands will be copycatted by competitors. It is imperative to plan from the beginning to protect your brand and to prevent brand theft. Proactiveness reduces or eliminates the damage caused by brand theft.
One aspect of our brand analysis is to assess saturation. Saturation relates to the commonality of names within certain industries or business type. The more common a name, the harder it is to protect. For example, a web search of “used cars” might reveal Carfax and CarMax, in immediate succession. They sound similar and even provide similar services. Overcoming commonality requires considerable advertising spend, which might be N/A to smaller businesses (not applicable). Advertising can be incredibly expensive, after all, and it can only accomplish so much. At the end of the day those two business examples still sound the same, and similarity begets confusion.
Confusion is the antithesis of branding. Recall, the goal of branding is to create – and maintain – a positive association with your brand and the consumer public. Positive brand association implicitly requires distinctiveness. Thus, distinctiveness, and not confusion, is the goal. Standing out from the crowd is the key to branding. You must establish and maintain a distinguished business brand. By my observation, the two most common failures in branding are (1) not planning for brand theft and (2) not analyzing the competitive marketplace. There are many different strategies and courses of action that we can implement to build and protect your brand and business. Give us a call to discuss!
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