Most branding activities can be identified as primarily either "making your brand distinctive and well known" or "filling your brand with positive values".
In the first category we put things like name, design, imagery.
In the second, things like messaging, imagery (yes, again), ambassadors and cooperations.
There's much more, of course, but you get the drift.
The importance of trust
One factor in the second category that we rarely pay much attention to, is Trust.
Maybe because it could sound a bit old fashioned. Unlike being savage, which admittedly sounds more fun.
Still, without trust you might doubt that the product or service will actually deliver on your expectations. On promises made.
Without trust, customers start to hesitate. Decision processes extend. Preparedness to pay a premium erodes. Profitability declines, market share is reduced, opportunities open up for the competition. It's a slow slide into oblivion. Maybe not always that slow, even. A road to mediocrity.
Poor quality, poor service and poor treatment are perhaps the most common causes of erosion of trust. But not the only ones.
Trust and counterfeiting
Counterfeiting is another trust-killer, although less talked about.
Through the very nature of counterfeiting, buyers are lead to believe that they actually buy a genuine product, of your making. But, in reality, it's a sub-standard copy. As they believe it to be genuine, who will they blame when it fails?
"When counterfeits fail, who you gonna blame?
Brand owners!"
The poor quality of counterfeits will erode trust in your quality, in your brand. Not the counterfeiters.
What's your response?
"But counterfeiting hits everyone", you might object. Correct, but as in so much else in life, it's not as much about what hits you, as how you react to it.
Let's imagine two competing brands which both get hit by counterfeiters.
🅰️ Brand A responds forcefully, takes counter measures, hunt down the counterfeiters and take them to court.
🅱️ Brand B is lax, content with the profits they still make from the stuff they sell and ignore the dent in their market made by counterfeiters.
Which brand will counterfeiters focus on?
Do you want to be brand B in the long run?
We're pretty sure that you can name several brands, especially in fashion probably, that seem to be favourite targets of counterfeiters. Do you trust them as much as their competitors?
Being uncertain of the authenticity of a brand, what does that do to the likelihood of you buying their products? Does it make you hesitate? Which brand will you look at first? Will you gladly pay as much? If you buy their product, how will you feel afterwards? Confident and happy? Or a slight nagging feeling of doubt?
THAT is why we think it's imperative for ambitious brands to use product authentication.
Image by Arand on iStock