What is Brand Abuse?
Every company has their own assets which is deemed very valuable. It may include your actual equipment, stock inventories, client lists, portfolios, and the brand itself. Just because the brand itself is an untactile asset that it becomes unprofitable. Take for example large companies such as Samsung, McDonalds and Walmart. These companies make a lot of money from their brand alone.
But with the advent of technology and the rise of its usage these past several years, commerce and businesses are now capitalizing on the digital bandwagon. However, a new kind of threat is also on the rise today, and it is online brand abuse.
Brand Abuse, Explained
Brand abuse is something that includes all kinds of suspicious or malicious activity, with the goal of exploiting or damaging a brand using any kind of method. Brand abuses are being done because some wants to earn some benefits out of it or to just give a dent to the reputation of a brand. Methods of brand abuse includes:
- Counterfeits
Counterfeiting is one of the most widespread kinds of brand abuse, wherein physical products are being cloned, made with reduced quality, and are usually sold at much cheaper prices compared to the genuine ones.
- concealed content
It is the use of proprietary brands or names of products on meta descriptions, tags, hidden texts and keywords of a website for them to gain an increased web visitor as they pose to be an alternative of a certain genuine product through real search results.
- Brandjacking
Formed as a portmanteau of the words brand and hijack, brandjacking is technically character assassination being done on brands. It is damaging the reputation of a certain brand so that customers would transfer to another product.
Bad effects of brand abuse
There are two effects of brand abuse. First, if the brand abuse is done for a competitor to steal sales and customers, then it can cause a significant loss in sales and revenues. And the second one is, if the brand abuse is done just to damage the reputation of a certain brand, then the trust of the customers on that certain brand will decrease significantly.
How to protect yourself from brand abuse?
Brand abuse is a serious matter that needs to be handled by a professional IT security firm. Fraudwatch International can protect your brand from certain abuses to protect your brand from being affected by reputation and financial damages.
