Compounding matters is frustration that the Chinese government
has had little success curbing fakes, nor have marketers, which
tend to deal with counterfeiting defensively after a brand suffers
from a PR blow incident and lost market share. "In China, you end
up talking about counterfeiting all the time," said Jeff Bradley,
Leo Burnett's chief
operating officer for southern China, Hong Kong.
Mr. Bradley thinks that he has found a solution -- one that
circumvents government monitoring entirely, helps consumers and
Burnett clients and has the handy benefit of being a
non-advertising revenue generator for the agency.
Burnett teamed with Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, printing
experts in Heidelberg, Germany, to create the 1-TAG, an
anti-counterfeiting application that allows shoppers to validate
whether a product is legitimate. The high-security tag can be
applied to a product to serve as a signature authentication. Users
capture the product tag using a mobile phone camera and free
software that automatically decodes the security tag and displays
the information. Products can be verified and authenticated at
every stage of their manufacture and distribution, right through to
the consumer, who becomes the final authenticator of whatever they
are buying.
The 1-TAG label is applied to products during final
manufacturing stage, giving a brand owner full control over
information content and production numbers, with the added benefit
of avoiding production overruns. "This means that it is possible to
conduct supply-chain inspections and checks at every stage of
distribution to verify and authenticate a product with a cost
effective and flexible supply-chain tool for distribution and sales
staff, using a standard mobile phone," said Bernd Vosseler, the
technical specialist in brand-protection technologies responsible
for 1-TAG's R&D project.
The owner of the brand can also load data into the tag code,
such as a full description of the product, conformity guarantees,
the date of manufacture, the product expiration details and even
the market of destination, which can be a powerful tool in
addressing problems like product theft and diversion.
Burnett won't share details about the cost of the system, or
which marketers are taking place in its test program. But a likely
participant is Procter & Gamble Co., China's largest advertiser
and a main client of Burnett in Guangzhou. The agency did say the
program, which can be rolled out globally and work with almost any
product, is not limited to companies that work with Burnett, which
opens up a new revenue stream. "It's not proprietary to our
clients," said Mr. Bradley. "The more brands involved the
better."
Other anti-counterfeiting systems have hit the market over the
years, but they usually rely on unique identifier numbers consumers
need to key in and send to a central database. Confirmation can
take several minutes, and the system can be hacked by savvy
programmers uploading duplicate codes. "If two identical numbers
get entered, how do you know which one is real and which one is
fake? Hologram labels don't work either, counterfeiters can fake
those too," Mr. Bradley said. The 1-TAG system uses a "secret code
placed on the label. To hack this one, you'd have to have
incredible computing resources and super high-level security. Only
a government would have the resources to do it."
){kind=link}