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Top Insights on Developing Your Digital Brand Protection Strategy

Digital brand protection is essential to safeguarding your brand. Today more than ever keeping one step ahead in business is crucial to an enterprises success. Whether you’re a scaling SMB or a large multinational corporation, the same principles apply across the board; in order for your business to not only survive, but thrive in todays digital world  you must implement a digital brand protection strategy. Many trademark and business owners are unaware of the daily threats and risks facing their brands’ online.  By developing a brand protection strategy, you not only safeguard your brand, you potentially increase your global reach, enhance your brand awareness and boost your bottom line.

Implementing a brand protection is more important now than ever. Consider the following steps:

1. Revise, Reform and Develop Your Domain Name Portfolio. Strengthen Your Brands Visibility and Online Presence.

The internet was once dominated by a small number of universal top level domains (TLD’s) like .com, .org, .net. Today the ability to register a compelling .com has diminished. With ICANN’s  introduction of thousands of new gTLD’s (generic top level domains) since 2013, there now exists boundless opportunities for enterprises to develop their global reach. Digital brands can now get really creative in developing their domain name portfolio. The new domain name system presents great benefits to businesses allowing for improved SEO, targeted and personalised marketing potential as well as growing prospective client bases. Consulting with domain name specialists to devise your domain name portfolio strategy will be of immense value to your business.

2. Consider Defensive Registrations. Save on Legal Costs.

Unfortunately there is no lotus without mud. The opportunities inherent in the new domain name system also come with a potential increase in cyber-squatting/domain squatting. Opportunistic cyber-squatters set out to purchase, sell and profit from popular domain names. Your brand name could be next if you are not proactive and vigilant. dotNice recommend defensively registering new domain names in markets you currently operate in and also prospective markets that you hope to one day expand into.

3. Familiarise yourself with the URS & UDRP.

This should be a last resort. Filing disputes with the Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution policy with ICANN can be a long, tedious and costly process. By taking preventative measures like defensive gTLD registrations you may save your business potentially huge litigation costs. Consulting with experienced intellectual property specialists is an essential to avoiding such litigation. Expert legal advisers can provide strategic insights on how to recover domain names from counterfeiters.

4. Consider Developing Your IDN portfolio. Expand Your Global Reach.

Introducing internationalised domain names (IDN’s) to your existing portfolio allows you to reach your target market in their native language. By incorporating IDN’s you automatically increase your  global reach.

5. Integrate Trademark Monitoring & Surveillance Technology. Stay One Step Ahead.

Brand awareness is everything in today’s digital world. Protecting your brand involves continuous online monitoring of trademark abuses. Utilising technologies that notify you of trademark abuses or even defamatory comments on social media related to your brand will prove indispensable in maintaining your brand identity.

6.Enforce Your Brand Guideline Policy. Cultivate Compliance in Your Company

The internet is all-seeing, all-hearing and all-knowing. What is said once can be remembered forever. Employing a clear compliance policy to employees, partners and affiliates is essential. Continuous surveillance of digital channels using advanced technologies will give you insights on the conversation surrounding your brand. 

7. Ensure Your DNS is Up to Scratch. 

Ensure  you have 100% uptime service level agreements with your DNS service provider to guarantee that your site is consistently available on quality servers. Even intermittent issues with DNS servers can desperately damage your brand through stalling web traffic. Such issues will negatively impact on your bottom line.

dotNice – Experts in Digital Brand Protection Strategy.

There has been much talk over the last few years of the importance of digital marketing, how to create online marketing strategies, how to grow your online client base and following, how to build a brand’s online presence and how to conduct customer service via digital channels like twitter and Facebook. However there is very little conversation on the topic of how such brands’ can be protected once they have been established online. Businesses allocate massive marketing budgets to drive their digital presence. It would naturally make sense to safeguard your brand after so much capital has been invested. Some of the topics we shall be discussing over the coming weeks and months will cover the preventative measures your business can take to avoid such risks as brand reputation, revenue loss and of course legal litigation.

A key area of discussion over the next few months will focus on Domain Portfolio Management. Over the past year major developments and changes have rocked the world of domain names with ICANN , (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) releasing some 1,500 new domain names.
For instance, the music industry has just introduced .band as a new domain name available to online vendors. For yoga enthusiasts and teachers, the domain name .yoga was recently released; A plethora of new and unique domain names including .organic, .buzz, .beer even .wtf have recently been added to the domain name reservoir. This development can present great opportunities for brands endeavouring to expand and grow their online presence. It will allow enterprises to further develop targeted personalised marketing campaigns to new prospective clients and existing client bases. Needless to say, such transformations in the global domain registerary also possess threats to existing businesses. Opportunistic domain squatters may pre-emptively purchase a number of domain names that they imagine would hold equitable value to global brands. The news that Ashton Kutcher recently purchased a number of domain names for his baby daughter before she was even born, highlights the growing importance of reserving a domain name and also the growing awareness of online intellectual property. Brands must immediately consider how their domains are being managed, if at all!

Opportunities for cybersquatters are rapidly diminishing, because most businesses now know that securing domain names is a high priority. This has been happening many years and global brands are only now waking up to the extent of this problem. Companies that have won back their names from alleged cybersquatters following rulings from WIPO include Christian Dior, Nike, Deutsche Bank and Microsoft. Brands need to be aware of not only their current markets but also their potential markets. They need to protect themselves in both prospective future markets in addition to existing markets they currently operate in. Staying one step ahead is of critical importance.

Another issue our blog will discuss over the coming months is the problem of
Typo-squatting. Typo-squatting is similar to cybersquatting and is based on the probability that a certain number of Internet users will mis-spell or incorrectly type the name of a Web site (or actually its URL) when surfing the Web. For example, a common misspelling or a foreign language spelling. Back in 2006 to 2008, there existed an typo-squatted variant of Google listed as ‘goggle.com’. Landing on this fraudulent website would automatically cause the domain to download computer viruses and other destructive software including the dreaded antispyware program SpySheriff.

Another potential problem facing online brands is Phishing. Phishing involves opportunistic cybercriminals installing malicious software or stealing personal information off of your computer. Like fishing, cybercriminals essentially ‘Phish’ for important data through creating fraudulent email messages, websites, and phone calls. A highly publicised instance of this occurred in 2008 when an online fraudster claimed to be the renowned actress Scarlett Johansson and set up a fake competition whereby she ‘offered herself’ in a threesome with two of the competition winners. The object of the online imposter was to harvest email addresses of the unknowing competition participants.

Another fast evolving form of cyber-crime is brand jacking. Brand-jacking is a particular form of cyber crime whereby someone assumes the online identity of a person or brand with the intention of stealing the organisation or persons brand equity. An example of this happened to US Republican Sarah Palin and US President Barack Obama whereby falsified Facebook pages were created to damage their online presence. Furthermore, in 2006 a fake advert for a Starbucks Frappuccino was devised by an anonymous brand jacker who sought to damage the brands reputation. The objective was to highlight the contrast between consumption and poverty. Such parodies can ultimately destroy a brands equity as social media facilitates the rapid and viral dissemination of such fraudulent material.

In many cases the examples quoted above could be avoided if certain steps had been taken to carefully and thoroughly protect the brands listed. It often occurs that SMB’s and large corporations find themselves having to take costly legal action to fix what originally was a preventable problem. Enormous costs can be incurred if enterprises fail to implement and revise their digital brand protection strategy. In the year 2000, global brand Kodak won back its rights to kodak.ru after a long, tedious litigation process lasting a year and involving some twenty lawsuits. A further example of this occurred when multinational corporation Verizon won a $33 Million dollar lawsuit retrieving it’s domain name myverizonwireless.com from domain-quatters. These global brands had the financial means to pursue such costly litigation, many scaling brands establishing their online presence and scaling their business would not have such capital available.

Whether you’re an SMB or a large multinational, whether you work in the Tech industry or the entertainment industry, the same principles apply. Being prepared is key to guarantee your brands online presence and digital footprint is safeguarded.

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