How companies can perfect brand protection using alt data

One of the newest ways of performing brand protection includes leveraging consumer-generated external data. Learn how your company can become an early adopter, and benefit from a market advantage. 

In this article we will discuss:

• What is brand protection?
• Which alt data sets can be collected to help protect your brand?
• How early adopters will benefit 

What is brand protection?

Brand protection is the practice of protecting one’s 

• Intellectual Property (IP)
• Digital assets
• Reputation
• Patented merchandise 

and other replicable commodities and trademarks that can be compromised by malicious actors looking to capitalize on corporate assets. 

Which alt data sets can be collected in order to help protect a brand? 

Here are the top 3 external data sets being collected by companies looking to protect their brands image and assets:

One: Search trends 

Many companies are using the best practice of scanning major search engines on a regular basis in order to find brand mentions in search results as well as in terms of keywords. There is quite a bit of malicious activity which can transpire here, for example search result manipulation, domain cloning (including diverting traffic from your site) as well as taking advantage of brand name or product name misspellings in order to capture conversions. 

Two: eCommerce data

Copyright piracy and trademark squatting are two ways in which cybercriminals can sell fake merchandise under false branded pretenses. Collecting data on items that have similar product signifiers to your flagship line is a good example of an alt data set that can help you maintain royalty rights of all branded merchandise. 

Three: Social media scanning 

Many malicious actors resort to opening up fake social media accounts as a means of impersonating your brand identity. An effective way to prevent this is to scan social media platforms for all brand mentions, unofficial accounts, profiles, and pages so that your legal team can submit requests to have them banned and shut down. 

How early adopters will benefit 

Early adopters will benefit from implementing alt data into their brand protection strategy by being able to respond quicker to threats, minimizing net losses, and preserving brand image. 

For example, if a brand identifies counterfeit goods being sold the day a criminal party launches a copycat product illegally. The losses a company incurs from said occurrence could be drastically reduced. Once identified in real-time, the brand can approach the display platform and legal system in order to have immediate action taken against the infiltrating parties.  

In terms of brand image, alternative data is crucial as you can now identify what people are saying about you on social media, for example and take effective measure in response. 

Summing it up 

Whether you are doing brand protection in-house exclusively for one company or if you run a brand protection agency, alternative data will help you generate increased operational efficiency. I recommend having your data analysts and ‘C levels’ define which alternative data could potentially present your company with the most value. Once you have this down pat, define your target sites, and audiences and find a data collection network that suits your corporation’s needs.