Brand Protection Q&A: OTOTO Design Takes Aim at Brand Abuse
In today’s digital age, it’s more important than ever for businesses to protect their brands from abuse and misuse. Brand abuse can come in many forms, including trademark infringement, counterfeit products, and unauthorized use of a company’s intellectual property. All of these actions can harm a brand’s reputation and financial success.
This is why OTOTO Design, a brand known for creating artistic and functional home goods, goes on the offense against counterfeiters and arms itself with detection technology that can handle the complexity of modern brand abusers.
We took some time to catch up with Mike Cohen, Operations Manager for OTOTO, and hear about what they’ve been doing to combat counterfeiting and what tips they have for other vendors on the hunt for better brand protection.
Q: Tell us about OTOTO!
Mike: We are a home and kitchen gadget design company based in Tel Aviv.
Q: How do you all prepare for busy shopping seasons? Your products make for amazing gifts!
Mike: We make sure to prepare with two simple words; planning and diligence. We invest a great deal of hard work and time into ensuring that we are prepared and our customers have the most wonderful products available to gift to their loved ones.
Q: Where do your ideas/designs for new products come from?
Mike: Our ideas come from our fantastic group of internal designers and those we collaborate with.
Q: Your designs and products are so unique. How do you all protect yourselves from IP theft or infringement?
Mike: We work hard to ensure that our ideas are protected on a global level by registering them in the most important markets.
Q: What is your view/stance on the increasingly growing counterfeit industry? Has it hurt business in any way?
Mike: It is part in parcel of doing business in this industry. With the uniqueness our products bring, so too does the opportunity for those who want to try and take advantage of us. Thanks to the hard work and dedication of those we work with, we ensure that our business is protected.
Q: What are the biggest challenges you have faced in protecting OTOTO brands online? Can you share any best practices or tips for other brand owners?
Mike: The biggest challenge comes from the determination of those who wish to take advantage of us. Thankfully it is yet to match our own determination to protect our ideas. Our best tip to stay ahead of counterfeiters is to become an expert in their ticks and methodology.
Q: What can consumers look out for to make sure they are purchasing authentic OTOTO products?
Mike: The best things to look out for are often what may go unnoticed at first glance; misspellings, missing brand labels, promotional image quality, and of course, most importantly, checking that they are on our official selling pages on Amazon or our website.
Q: I am sure this is a difficult question to answer, but what is your favorite product you produce? What is your most popular?
Mike: We each have our own favorite, and as it happens my favorite is our brand-new product Pinot, which you can see now available on our Amazon store!
Strengthen your brand against brand abuse
Bad actors use social media, advertising, websites, and branding materials to appear legitimate while evading detection. With increased reliance on digital channels ever since the pandemic hit in 2020, and the flood of new users leveraging those channels, brands also play a significant role in protecting consumers. Legacy enforcement techniques against these scams may slow the fraudster but seldom disable the scam for any sustained period. Use the data in promotional channels to help identify the full scope of brand abuse targeting your loyal customers ahead of big shopping holidays.
Need to protect your brand across the modern digital universe?
Learn how we use advanced machine learning to link visible and non-visible digital markers, uncovering entire abuse networks and accelerating the review, triage, and prioritization of brand abuse.
Need to protect your brand across the modern digital universe?
Learn how we use advanced machine learning to link visible and non-visible digital markers, uncovering entire abuse networks and accelerating the review, triage, and prioritization of brand abuse.