What’s Your Brand Worth?
How to give it the protection it deserves
How much does your brand contribute to bottom line revenue? If your firm falls victim to an identity theft scam, do you know what it might cost you?
While most firms actively protect against disasters that can destroy buildings, equipment, and people, they often fail to put a dollar figure on their brand. Or what happens to them if that brand is tarnished.
This could be a significant mistake, of course, because buildings can be rebuilt much more easily than reputations. Companies often fail to invest in brand protection for the following two reasons:
- Brands are intangible, which can make it difficult to assign a specific value to them
- Internet threats move fast and change often, which can hamper an organization’s efforts to protect itself from disaster
Today’s online threats to your brand can take many forms:
- Phishing or mirror sites
- Traffic diversion schemes
- Hijacked domains
- Weblinking infractions
- Social media-based smear campaigns
- Counterfeit product sales
This list evolves rapidly, but the bottom line is clear: Your corporate reputation could be irreversibly damaged if you fail to respond. Identity thieves could compromise your customers’ confidential data. Domain hijackers could redirect traffic toward illegal sites – and subsequently siphon away revenue and destroy the trust you’ve worked so hard to build. Malware attacks could compromise legislative compliance efforts.
Whatever form an attack takes, it could leave your bottom line in tatters. A damaged brand could drive customers away and threaten the company’s future. Worse, the accelerated nature of Internet-based threats makes companies increasingly vulnerable because by the time they’ve built a trained staff of Internet protection experts, even more insidious threats will have evolved.
But protecting your brand isn’t an impossible task. In today’s business landscape, investment in brand protection is a must.
Consumer products giant Procter & Gamble, which spent more on advertising in 2007 than any other American company, learned the value of brand protection the hard way. After rumours began circulating in the 1980s that its logo was a Satanic symbol, the company sued any person or company that attempted to perpetuate this urban myth. After years of proactively managing this ongoing threat to its brand, it changed its logo.
In doing so, P&G illustrated a truth that has roots in pre-Internet marketing, and remains even more relevant today: Companies that own threatened brands cannot afford to ignore reality. The Internet’s ability to accelerate and broaden all channels of communication between companies and stakeholders makes protective measures essential.
In future articles in this series, we’ll more closely examine the specifics of Internet brand protection. For now, take the time to calculate the value of your brand, and the impact on the company if it is criminally compromised. |
