Ultimate Guide: Maximize Brand Protection, Growth, and Profit with Amazon Brand Registry

Unlock Your Brand’s Full Potential Utilizing Amazon Brand Tools, Data And Insights

With the rise of counterfeit goods and intellectual property infringements, brands must proactively protect their assets. Despite the perception that Amazon does little to protect brands, it is deeply committed to protecting brands on its platform.

It’s a significant task for Amazon, and they are continually improving their efforts. However, brands need to partner with Amazon to counter the rise of counterfeit goods and intellectual property infringements. This means brands must proactively protect their assets in partnership with Amazon. This is where Amazon Brand Services comes into play.

We will broadly cover Amazon's efforts to protect brand owners and deep-dive into the Amazon Brand Registry, its benefits, eligibility requirements, and how to leverage its features to safeguard your brand as a retailer on Amazon Seller Central or Vendor Central.

Amazon’s Brand Protection Efforts: A Comprehensive Overview

Amazon is committed to ensuring customers receive authentic products and a secure selling environment from businesses within the broader Amazon platform ecosystem. This applies to Amazon Seller Central and Amazon Vendor Central, which are global marketplaces.

Amazon has made substantial investments and innovative strategies to combat counterfeit products and fraud, reflecting this dedication to brand protection for Amazon marketplaces.

Amazon’s brand protection strategy focuses on four key areas:

Proactive Efforts to Protect the Store: Utilizing advanced machine learning and robust seller verification processes.
Tools for Brands: Offering powerful tools for rights owners to protect intellectual property.
Accountability for Bad Actors: Dismantling counterfeit organizations and holding bad actors accountable.
Customer Protection and Education: Educating consumers about the dangers of counterfeit products.

Robust Proactive Controls

Amazon’s proactive measures to protect its stores involve advanced technologies and continuous monitoring. These efforts have significantly decreased bad actor attempts to create new selling accounts, from 6 million in 2020 to 700,000 in 2023.

Key strategies include:

Seller Verification: Utilizing document forgery detection, image and video verification, and machine learning to confirm the authenticity of government-issued identity documents.
Continuous Monitoring: Scanning billions of product detail pages daily to detect and prevent the listing of counterfeit products.
AI and Machine Learning: Leveraging large language models and computer vision to identify and remove infringing listings.

Powerful Tools to Protect Brands

Amazon provides several tools and programs to help brands protect their intellectual property:

Brand Registry: A free service, the brand registry supports offering automated protections, the Report a Violation tool, and an Impact Dashboard to track infringing listings. Amazon also offers related Amazon brand registry benefits like brand dashboards and Amazon brand analytics.
Project Zero: Combines Amazon’s technology with brands’ knowledge to directly remove counterfeit listings and prevent counterfeits from reaching customers.
Amazon Transparency Program: A product serialization service that uses unique codes to verify product authenticity.
Intellectual Property Accelerator: Helps small businesses obtain intellectual property rights efficiently.
Amazon Patent Evaluation Express (APEX): Resolves patent infringement disputes quickly, typically within 30 days.

Holding Bad Actors Accountable

Amazon’s Counterfeit Crimes Unit (CCU) works globally to identify, seize, and dispose of counterfeit products, preventing them from harming customers. Since its launch in 2020, the CCU has pursued over 21,000 bad actors through litigation and criminal referrals.

Key efforts include:

Collaborations with Law Enforcement: Working with agencies worldwide to conduct raids and prosecutions, leading to numerous criminal convictions.
Public-Private Partnerships: Sharing information with customs and law enforcement to stop counterfeits at the border and dismantle counterfeit networks.

Protecting and educating Amazon customers

Amazon recognizes the importance of consumer education in combating counterfeits. Initiatives include:

Unreal Campaign Challenge: Partnering with the International Trademark Association to educate young consumers about the risks of counterfeit goods.
Global Awareness Campaigns: Collaborating with organizations worldwide to raise awareness through podcasts, social media campaigns, and educational workshops.

Amazon’s commitment to brand protection involves continuous innovation and collaboration with brands, law enforcement, and industry experts. Their approach ensures that customers receive authentic products and that the marketplace remains safe and trustworthy for buyers and sellers.

Amazon Brand Protection Benchmarks and Results

It is not a perfect system, but it reflects an ongoing commitment to solving serious challenges for brand owners, large and small.

The following are key benchmarks of their efforts to date:

Investment and Workforce: Invested over $1.2 billion in brand protection in 2023. Employed over 15,000 people dedicated to protecting customers, brands, and stores from counterfeiting, fraud, and other abuses.
Proactive Controls: Stopped over 700,000 bad actor attempts to create new selling accounts in 2023, down from 6 million in 2020. Blocked more than 99% of suspected infringing listings before brands had to report them.
Infringement Notices: More than a 30% decrease in total valid notices of infringement submitted by brands since 2020.
Counterfeit Product Seizures: Identified, seized, and appropriately disposed of over 7 million counterfeit products worldwide in 2023.
Brand Registry: Over 25,000 brands empowered through Project Zero. Over 1.6 billion product units are enrolled in Transparency, which ensures authenticity through code scan verification.
Intellectual Property Accelerator: Helped over 15,000 brands obtain trademark protection, supporting businesses from 38 countries and 13 languages.
Patent Dispute Resolution: Amazon Patent Evaluation Express (APEX) cases are decided in an average of 30 days, significantly faster than the traditional U.S. patent lawsuit process.
Counterfeit Crimes Unit: Pursued more than 21,000 bad actors through litigation and criminal referrals since 2020.
Customer Protection: Launched campaigns and partnerships to educate consumers on the dangers of counterfeit goods, including the Unreal Campaign Challenge, reaching 177,000 global DECA members.

You can read Amazon’s 2023 Brand Protection Report for more detailed updates and insights.

What is Amazon Brand Registry?

The primary goal of the Brand Registry is to create a trusted shopping experience for customers while empowering brands to protect their rights.

Amazon Brand Registry is a global service designed to help brands protect their intellectual property on Amazon.

By enrolling in the Brand Registry, brands gain access to powerful tools that enable them to manage their brand representation, report intellectual property infringements, and proactively prevent counterfeit listings.

What is the point of the Amazon Brand Registry? The Benefits!

We encourage all brands selling on Amazon to enroll in the Brand Registry and fully use its features to safeguard their intellectual property. With the right tools and proactive measures, you can focus on growing your brand and confidently reaching more customers on Amazon.

Enrolling in the Amazon Brand Registry unlocks a wide range of benefits for brands like;

Proactive brand protection: Brand Registry provides automated protections that use machine learning to detect and prevent potential infringements before they impact your brand and customers.
Improved brand control: With Brand Registry, you have greater control over your brand’s product listings, ensuring accurate and consistent representation of your products.
Powerful search and reporting tools: The “Report a Violation” tool allows you to easily search for and report suspected intellectual property infringements across Amazon’s catalog.

Brand-Building Tools in Amazon’s Brand Registry

Enrolling in Amazon’s Brand Registry offers robust brand protection and unlocks a suite of powerful brand-building tools. These tools help brand owners manage, grow, and enhance their presence on Amazon.

Here are the vital brand-building tools available to brand owners:

Amazon brand store: Provide a customizable Amazon storefront that allows brands to create a unique and immersive shopping experience for customers across the Amazon marketplace. You can customize the layout, images, and content to reflect your brand’s identity in your Amazon store. Create multi-page storefronts within your store to showcase different product categories or seasonal promotions. You can also create an enhanced shopping experience to offer a curated shopping journey with rich multimedia content, videos, and interactive elements.
Amazon Advertising Sponsored Brands: Customizable Sponsored Brand campaigns appear prominent on Amazon’s search results pages. You get increased brand visibility with ads featuring your logo, a custom headline, and multiple products. You can target Sponsored Brand ads to reach relevant audiences with keyword-targeted ads that drive traffic to your Brand Store or a specific product page. You can access new performance metrics and detailed analytics data to track ad performance and optimize campaigns for better results.
Amazon Attribution: You can measure the impact of your off-Amazon marketing efforts on sales and conversions. Gain insights into which channels and tactics drive the best results.
Amazon Posts: Share your brand story, product news, and lifestyle content with shoppers through curated feeds.
Brand Analytics: A powerful tool that provides valuable insights into customer behavior and market trends. Get access to customer Search Terms to analyze what customers are searching for and identify high-performing keywords. Access a Market Basket Analysis to understand which products are frequently purchased together to inform cross-selling and bundling strategies. Also, get access to Demographic data to gain insights into the demographic profile of your customers, including age, gender, and location. Also, see Amazon Brand Insights.
Amazon A+ Content: Allows brands to enhance their product detail pages with rich multimedia content. Get enhanced descriptions with high-quality images, comparison charts, and narrative text to highlight product features and benefits. Execute robust brand storytelling by sharing your brand’s story and values to create a deeper connection with customers. Drive results with improved conversion rates by providing customers with detailed and engaging content that can help drive purchase decisions.
Amazon Live: It enables brands to engage with customers through live streaming. Brands can connect with customers, answer questions, and demonstrate products. They can also partner with influencers to reach a wider audience and boost brand visibility. Products can be linked directly within the live stream for a seamless shopping experience.
Amazon Vine Program: This program allows brands to receive reviews from trusted reviewers. Get early product reviews from top reviewers to build credibility and trust. High-quality reviews can help improve product ranking and visibility on Amazon.
Enhanced Brand Content (EBC): Enables brands to add rich content to their product descriptions. Get features like visual storytelling for images, infographics, and enhanced text to tell your product’s story. You also get SEO benefits like improved product discoverability with keyword-rich content.
Brand Follow Feature: The Brand Follow feature allows shoppers to engage with brands by following them on Amazon, leading to higher customer retention and increased sales. Shoppers can follow their favorite brands and receive updates on new releases, deals, and trending products. Shoppers who follow a brand spend 2.3 times more and purchase 1.8 times more frequently than non-followers. Followed brands’ products and content receive elevated placements, making it easier for loyal customers to find them.

Case Studies: Real-World Success with Amazon’s Brand Protection Tools

Amazon’s brand protection tools have helped numerous registered brands safeguard their intellectual property and build strong customer relationships. Here are some success stories:

New Republic

Overview: New Republic sells refined men’s footwear and accessories, incorporating unexpected twists on memorable classics at affordable prices.
Success: By leveraging Amazon’s brand protection tools, New Republic has effectively protected its brand name and products from counterfeiters, ensuring customers receive only authentic items.

Freshly Picked

Overview: Freshly Picked offers high-end shoes and accessories for babies, children, and moms, designed to make life more fun, colorful, and easier.
Success: Utilizing Amazon’s IP Accelerator and Brand Registry, Freshly Picked has secured its intellectual property, allowing the brand to focus on growth and customer satisfaction.

Hope & Henry

Overview: Hope & Henry produces beautiful, high-quality, affordable clothing using organic cotton, sharing profits with the men and women who sew their products.
Success: With Amazon’s Project Zero and Transparency programs, Hope & Henry has maintained the integrity of its supply chain and ensured that customers receive genuine products.

Eligibility Requirements for Amazon Brand Registry

To be eligible for Amazon Brand Registry, your brand must meet the following criteria:

Registered Trademark: You must have an active registered trademark for your brand. The trademark can be a wordmark, design mark, or image-based mark.
Trademark Registration Number: You must provide the trademark registration number issued by your country’s trademark office.
Brand Logo: A clear image of your brand’s logo is required during the enrollment process.
Government ID: You may need to provide a valid government-issued ID for verification purposes.

How to Enroll in Amazon Brand Registry

Enrolling in Amazon Brand Registry is a straightforward process that involves the following steps:

Sign in to your Amazon account: Use your existing Seller Central or Vendor Central account to sign in. You’ll need to create an account if you don’t have one.
Provide your brand information: Enter your name, trademark registration number, and other relevant details.
Verify your identity: Amazon may require you to verify your identity using a government-issued ID or other verification methods.
Complete the enrollment process: Review and submit your application. Once approved, you’ll access the full Brand Registry tools and features suite.

Amazon Brand Registry currently accepts trademarks issued by government trademark offices in the following countries and regions:

United States
Brazil
Canada
Mexico
Australia
India
Japan
France
Germany
Italy
Turkey
Singapore
Spain
Saudi Arabia
United Kingdom
Egypt
Sweden
Poland
Benelux
European Union (EUIPO)
United Arab Emirates

If your trademark is registered with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), please submit the corresponding trademark number assigned by the national trademark office, as it may differ from that assigned by WIPO.

For trademarks registered by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), please select EUIPO as your trademark registrar in your application.

Please note that Brand Registry is not affiliated with any of these offices, so do not contact them for information about Brand Registry.

Strategic Account Services: Personalized Support for Brand Owners

Amazon’s Strategic Account Services (SAS) provides brand owners with dedicated support to help scale their business, reach new customers, and increase sales. Here are the key benefits:

Personalized Insights and Recommendations: SAS offers tailored strategies for critical areas such as fulfillment, account health, conversion growth, merchandising, and global expansion.
Operational Support: Assistance with listing creation, catalog optimization, and A+ content recommendations.
Programs, Deals, and Early Access: Access the latest seller offerings, beta programs, and deal opportunities with tailored guidance on the best options.
Issue Assistance: A dedicated team of specialists to help manage and resolve issues efficiently, minimizing business interruptions.

Amazon Brand Analytics Report Data Automation

Openbridge allows Amazon Sellers, Vendors, Advertisers, Agencies, and others to streamline the data management process by automating Amazon Brand Analytics API.

Automation eliminates manual download wrangling, ensuring up-to-date and accurate brand data straight from Amazon APIs. With data stored in a unified data warehouse like Amazon Redshift, Amazon Redshift Spectrum, Google BigQuery, Snowflake, Azure Data Lake, and Amazon Athena, you can combine different Amazon brand, retail, and ads data into one 360 view, which makes it easier to gain a more holistic brand performance across the business.

Your team can then leverage best-in-class analytics and business tools like Google Data Studio, Tableau, Microsoft Power BI, Looker, or Amazon Quicksight to create a brand dashboard that combines data across Amazon FBA, Amazon Advertising, Vendor Central, and many more.

>> Sign up for a 30-day free trial of our Brand Analytics Amazon Insights Report automation.<<

Frequently Asked Questions

Amazon Brand Registry Cost?

Enrolling in the Brand Registry on Amazon is free. However, you may need to factor in the costs of obtaining a registered trademark if you don’t already have one.

The Amazon Brand Registry cost of trademark registration varies depending on your country and the type of trademark you’re applying for.

Amazon Brand Registry Without Trademark?

While having a registered trademark is a key requirement for enrolling in Brand Registry Amazon, there are still steps you can take to protect your brand even without a trademark:

As a brand owner, use Amazon’s intellectual property reporting tools to report any suspected infringements, such as a product listing, and call out the Amazon standard identification number (ASIN).
Leverage Amazon’s transparency program to authenticate your products using unique serialized codes.
Consider applying for a trademark to become eligible for the Brand Registry.

If I meet Amazon brand registry requirements, how long does the Amazon Brand Registry process take?

The time it takes to get approved for Brand Registry Amazon varies, but it typically ranges from 2 to 10 days. The approval process involves verifying your trademark information and meeting all eligibility requirements. Once approved, you can access the full Brand Registry tools and features suite.

Can You Sell on Amazon Without Brand Registry?

Yes, you can sell on Amazon without the Brand Registry. Many sellers do not have a Brand Registry, particularly those just starting or selling unbranded products. However, enrolling in the Brand Registry provides additional tools and protections that can help you safeguard your brand and create a better customer experience.

Can You Sell Private Label on Amazon?

Yes, you can sell private-label products on Amazon. The private label refers to products manufactured by a third party but sold under the retailer’s name. Many Amazon sellers use private labels to build their brand presence. Enrolling in the Brand Registry can provide additional benefits and protections for your private label brand.

External Resources:

Ultimate Guide: Maximize Brand Protection, Growth, and Profit with Amazon Brand Registry was originally published in Openbridge on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

from Openbridge - Medium https://ift.tt/Sh52FCW
via Openbridge

Amazon Vendor Central