A prince from foes, but 'tis his fort of friends.
This week we heard from Cambridge Consultants, P&G, and Prooftag about the technologies helping consumers confirm that they have really bought the brand they wanted to pay for.
Counterfeits now extend well beyond luxury goods like Swiss watches or French wine, especially in fast growing markets with many sources of production like China where low margin products like milk formula or laundry soap are counterfeited, or the internet where counterfeiters can distribute directly to consumers avoiding the stock checks that pick up fakes in retailers. Counterfeiters are well organized and draw on global networks of contract manufacturers, who may commit few crimes in supplying components. Very few controls are in place. In contrast with the 100% controls on euro bank notes which allow authorities to confidently state how many are fake, less than 1% of consumer goods are controlled.
Fortunately, consumers themselves are increasingly connected directly to brand owners. The internet gives more information and power to consumers, even exploiting smart phone cameras to recognise barcodes instore and comparison shop on the move, but it also allows brand owners to continue to build community with users. P&G cited their downloads of cricket videos to Indian video phones on purchasing a legitimate pack of Gillette razors as a good example of rewarding consumers for buying a genuine product. By analogy, while the business case for CCTV in supermarkets to control "shrinkage" (e.g. theft by consumers or staff) was poor 20 years ago, the same CCTV equipment used to monitor footfall and improve customer flows shows a payback in 6 weeks for supermarkets today. Consumers who are more loyal and provide better feedback to the brands represent an even bigger opportunity than the poorly quantified losses from counterfeiting.
Many of the audience are already involved in labelling, packaging or design of consumer products: 42 Technology, Cambridge Consultants, Domino, Ingenia, Linx, Nano e-Print, PA, Paribus, P&G, Prooftag, RedBite, Scienta, Smart Holograms, TTP, Unilever, Xaar, and the Universities of Anglia Ruskin and Cambridge amongst others. The discussion was pretty intense - for a more detailed breakdown of some of the consumer products issues, see Cambridge Consultants own blog. Many have solutions for the Fast Moving Consumer Goods companies present, and it was also good to hear of potential collaborations between complementary technologies for image recognition or special inks. Cambridge has already made it's mark with inkjet technology: there is clearly a lot more to do for consumers and brands now.
Impressive blog! -Arron
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