Your organization’s brand is a valuable, strategic asset which defines the identity of your company and its offerings. Brand image serves as a guideline for how your customers and prospects will view and interact with your organization. While many organizations understand the importance of brand image, not all understand how to build and sustain it by smartly using intellectual property assets. Here are some of the ways to use intellectual property assets to build brand image and benefits the organization:

Marketing Messaging

One of the clearest benefits intellectual property can bring to brand image is the ability to use it within marketing messaging. For example, patents allow your organization to market its products using messaging like “the first,” “the best,” or “the only” to position your offerings apart from competitors. Geographical indications can also add value to brand image by boosting perceived quality (i.e. Bordeaux wine or Valencia oranges).

Improved Customer Selection

Today’s consumer is more educated than ever. A brand supported by intellectual property assets can help your offering win over competitive offerings by giving consumers confidence that your product is their best option. An intellectual property portfolio can also give consumers insight into the company’s direction and help consumers to associate personal values to brand values. For example, if an organization’s patent portfolio is heavily invested in social innovations, it could be more appealing to a customer which shares the same values.

Competitive Advantage

Intellectual property assets also give your brand competitive advantage and protection. Imagine a low quality competitor infringes on your product and a consumer purchases it thinking they were purchasing your brand’s offering. The bad experience they receive with the competitor’s product can damage that customer’s perception of your brand. Especially in today’s highly competitive marketplace, it’s critical to protect valuable brand assets with intellectual property to prevent infringement and misperceptions.   

Innovation & Product Development

A strong brand can bring an organization higher market power. With this market power, the organization can actually grow revenue and capital to invest in further research & development to develop new product offerings, or innovation efforts, like building an internal innovation culture.

Global & Online Recognition

Today’s organizations need to compete in a much broader marketplace than in the past. As a result, brands need to take into account their global and online presence, in order to build recognition across the expanded customer base. This new expansive marketplace increases the need for intellectual property protection and forces organizations to consider filing for assets in other markets or protecting online assets, like domain names.

While building and sustaining brand image is important for all organizations, it is absolutely critical for scaling organizations. As scaling companies secure their first intellectual property rights, understanding the best way to leverage it strategically for brand image and more is an important lesson to learn.  This free ebook outlines four ways that scaling companies can leverage their intellectual property for success.