Does your business have brands, packaging and trade marks in different styles?
Do they send different marketing messages, lacking integration?
Integration improves legal protection for brands, names, logos, tag lines and other ID. Here’s how.
Years ago I stumbled onto a solution, the concept of “brand architecture”.
This happened while doing legal research for a client with a portfolio of trade marks in different styles and sending different messages. It was a mess, little integration in design and hence lowering the level of legal protection.
!["trade-mark-registration2"]("/images/stories/lightbulb/trade-mark-registration2.gif")
On stumbling on “brand architecture” I prepared a report for my client. It helped it make decisions on which brands are worth registering as trade marks.This helped build an effective legal monopoly in names and ID for my client.
Over the years I’ve reworked my report into a slide show titled Brand Architecture: Moving Towards Brand Management. To explain “brand architecture” I’ve written this article: Not just trade mark registration.
I email it to new clients with similar problems, a mess of brands and ID lacking integration. The wake up moment for integration often arrives when a client has followed a flawed legal action and then turned to us as new advisers to provide professional guidance.
There are many, many types of brand mess. A common one is consumer product packaging that:
- Has the brand in an unexpected position, below the large lettering of the product descriptor
- Has no intellectual property notices asserting IP rights or ownership of the brand
- Has inconsistent use of the brand, sometimes in letters, sometimes a logo.
!["brand_architecture"]("/images/stories/lightbulb/brand_architecture.gif" "\"brand_architecture\"")
To fix this mess involves gathering the facts, assessing them and the proposing remedies.
In Brand Architecture: Moving Towards Brand Management, we state:
Good branding involves three considerations: management, design and legal. If any of the above elements are missing or inadequate, the individual and group brands may not reach their full potential. There are inter-connected legal, design and management considerations for its brands and brand elements.
Later on in the slide show we illustrate the concept applied to a wine label, see below.
!["brand_architecture_wine"]("/images/stories/lightbulb/brand_architecture_wine.gif" "\"brand_architecture_wine\"")
Summary
Is your lawyer or attorney is simply registering trade marks for you without additional advice?
The advice often needed is how to effectively integrate management, design and and marketing needs.
Do this well and you’ll strengthen your legal rights.
If you are not getting this then in our view you’re paying too much for purely legal services.
Contact us with any questions or requests.
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