Category: Commercial Brand Protection

Protect Your Customer. Protect Your Brand.

 

 

For the brand manager, packaging designer or packaging engineer, there are many factors to consider when designing new artwork, graphics and security for product packaging. Incorporating higher security features into product packaging for brand protection is becoming more of a priority for many companies because of the ongoing threat of counterfeiting.

However, it is challenging to mix effective brand protection, great branding and regulatory needs into one design.

This article offers insights on how to navigate these challenges while maintaining the packaging appearance.

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Counterfeiters threaten $1 billion pipeline of medicine

Counterfeit copies of a major pharmaceutical brand were discovered in the US market with no security measures in place to allow patients or inspectors to easily identify counterfeit goods. How did they react?

As a brand owner, can you relate to the challenge of quickly authenticating product before a dangerous situation impacts your customers? That’s what one brand owner faced when counterfeit copies of a major pharmaceutical brand were discovered in the U.S. market.

Read this case study to learn more about how one company reacted when there were no security measures in place to allow patients, healthcare professionals and law enforcement agencies to readily distinguish authentic from counterfeit medicines. With quick thinking and the right Authentix solutions in place, both patient welfare and the manufacturer’s reputation were protected.

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Counterfeiters threaten $1 billion pipeline of medicine.

You are your company’s brand protection manager. Counterfeit copies of one of your major pharmaceutical brands turn up in the U.S. market. You have no security measures in place to allow patients or inspectors to tell the real stuff from the fake. Consequently, $1 billion worth of your product, already in the distribution pipeline, can’t be sold—at least not until you come up with some method of allowing patients and retailers to verify that your medicine is actually authentic.

Patient safety, your company’s hard-earned reputation not to mention $1 billion in sales are all under severe threat. Time to send out a SOS.

This is exactly the situation one of our customers found themselves in. And when they came to us for help, Authentix answered the call. Our customer desperately needed a way to instantly authenticate medicines in the field. No problem, we said.

We immediately jumped into action. The customer’s product was repackaged to include a variety of authentication features that could be identified by patients and inspectors, both in the field and in the laboratory. These included:

• Overt, color-shifting inks can be readily distinguished by patients.
• Covert, machine-readable inks can be detected in the field by inspection staff with appropriate readers.
• Forensic markers can only be detected under laboratory analysis.

A happy ending

The Authentix solution to our customer’s counterfeiting problem provided a secure means of instantly identifying authentic from counterfeit medicines. The benefits were immediate and significant:

• $1 billion worth of product frozen within the supply chain was released for sale
• The expense of a full product recall was averted
• The customer was able to mitigate the risk of potential lawsuits
• And, our customer’s brand protection manager instantly became the organization’s authentication “superhero.”

Most importantly, confidence in the brand was restored among physicians, pharmacists and patients.

Every superhero needs a partner.

What would Batman be without Robin? The Green Hornet without Kato? Not much, if you ask us. If you want to be your company’s authentication superhero, contact us today. In true superhero style, Authentix is the partner with the innovative solution to boost your authentication powers!

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Brand protection solution to eliminate the diversion of products from legitimate distribution channels

The Challenge

A large, global hair care manufacturer produces category-leading brands with high consumer loyalty and demand. Their products are marketed through exclusive, professional beauty care channels via a complex supply chain with diverse manufacturing systems and multiple distribution outlets.

All of these elements make their products high-value targets for counterfeiters, organized theft rings, and gray market wholesalers. In fact, the manufacturer found they were being negatively impacted by diversion of its products from legitimate distribution channels into gray or retail markets. This situation was creating dissatisfied customers and weakening their market promotional efforts.

The Need

Clearly, the manufacturer needed an anti-diversion authentication solution that would help them maintain brand equity. It was imperative that the solution include the ability to authenticate product and verify its “product genealogy” throughout its life cycle. They also needed the ability to track product throughout their entire supply chain and make sure the right product was always delivered to the right location.

The Solution

The global hair care manufacturer turned to Authentix to implement an authentication solution of serialization and a track-and-trace system that identified product diversion in the brand’s distribution channels. The Authentix solution utilized multiple covert authentication features that allow item-level serialization, full product trace-ability from manufacturing to retail, as well as provisions to track repackaged products. In addition, the track-and-trace system was seamlessly integrated into manufacturing process controls for all of the manufacturer’s 13 production lines.

Itemized serialization was accomplished for over 165 million products, enabling full trace-ability from manufacturing to retail.

The Outcome

• • • Successfully identified channel leaks within a complex distribution chain of over 2,500 channel partners and 15 distributors
    • Over 300 million units have been marked since the Authentix solution was implemented
    • 47 percent reduction in product diversion
    • Consequently, product sales increased by $77 million

Contact us if your company is struggling with lost revenue due to illicit activity throughout your supply chain.

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Violation of Licensing Agreement Revealed with In-Product Brand Protection Program

The Issue

An agricultural chemical manufacturer suspected that one of its formulators was in violation of a licensing agreement, substituting a generic active ingredient for the licensed component. The formulator also appeared to be diverting the end-product for sale in a region outside of its licensed territory where it had a higher value.

The Solution

The manufacturer turned to Authentix for a solution to ensure the use of their component in the formulator’s end-product. Authentix worked with the manufacturer to incorporate US FDA-compliant in-product markers into the licensed component, ensuring that the markers could endure the harsh synthesis process, become homogenous and remain stable, while not impacting the active ingredient. By adding markers to all of the licensed component, a test of the suspect formulator’s end-product that showed low concentration or no marker presence would indicate that the formulator was replacing the licensed active ingredient with a generic product.

The markers are detectable in the field using a simple qualitative (yes / no) test kit, backed up with a quantitative laboratory test. The layered marker program allows wide-spread and quick field screening, with suspect samples sent to a centralized laboratory for validation and to provide support for corrective action. The manufacturer’s personnel were trained to use the test kits and perform the laboratory analysis, allowing them to monitor the formulator’s end-product for compliance with the licensing agreement.

The Outcome

The agricultural chemical manufacturer determined conclusively that the formulator was in violation of its licensing agreement by testing for and not finding the Authentix markers in the end-product. Field tests were confirmed by precise laboratory testing, delivering proof that enabled enforcement action to be taken.

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Addressing Counterfeiting and Adulteration Increases Sales by 25%

 

The Issue

Authentix implemented a program in South America to help address a spirits counterfeiting issue. With annual production of over 60 million bottles of various spirits (approx. 50 million liters), this market provided the largest single source of state government revenue—over $150M in previous years.

 

The Solution

To solve the issue, the program used a combination of in-product, on-package marking and distribution channel monitoring. For authentication purposes on packaging, an overt feature was added as tamper evidence for consumers and a covert feature was added for official retail inspectors via handheld field verification readers and test kits. In addition, covert features were incorporated into the spirit itself for field verification and forensic lab verification.

 

The Outcome

• • Within the first year of the program, 75
    million liters of spirits had been protected (approx. 100 million bottles).
  • More than 1300 inspectors in 28 states had inspected over 300 retail outlets.
  • Of these, 10% were found to contain counterfeits and 5 retail outlets were investigated resulting in arrests.
  • The brand owner experienced a 25% increase in sales over the same time period.

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