Over the past 16 years working in the brand protection space, one pattern I have seen play out repeatedly and consistently: senior management of leading brands underestimating the impact of digital attacks on their brands, short-term revenues, long-term reputation and even immediate customer safety. Not because they are unaware of it or deliberately ignore it, but because they evaluate it in isolation. An impersonation case here, a few counterfeit listings there, a few negative reviews that seem manageable, or as one manager put it “the cost of doing business and being a well-known brand”. In isolation, each issue can’t stop the drive to protect your future. Each threat on its own does not appear critical.
The problem is not the individual incident, or even many incidents. It is the accumulation turning into a business avalanche, over time… Over time, these cases and signals compound. Customers encounter fakes and fraud repeatedly and trust becomes diluted. Marketplaces and search engines begin to associate your brand with noise instead of clarity. As AI powered algorithms become more advanced, they amplify and reinforce these signals at scale. At that point, this is no longer just a digital protection issue. It becomes a critical business problem.
Companies rarely lose ground because of a single event. They lose it gradually, as impersonations, infringements and unmanaged digital exposures are allowed to persist. By the time action is taken, perception has already shifted and once that happens, it is hard to recover.
This is why brand protection needs to be reframed, especially when speaking to corporate boardrooms.
The real issue is not activity, it is impact
One of the biggest challenges in our space is demonstrating a clear and complete Return On Investment (ROI) for brand protection strategies. It is difficult to quantify the full value of something that did not happen, whether that is a prevented fraud attempt, a protected customer or revenue that was not lost. Success means future attacks do not occur and therefore leave no visible trace. In that sense, it resembles the logic of the movie Minority Report, where the system is considered successful precisely because nothing happens. The difference, however, is that in brand protection, this absence of evidence often makes the value harder, not easier, to justify. As a result, brand protection is often treated as a cost center and evaluated through operational metrics such as takedown volumes, response times or cases resolved. These metrics often measure effort. They do not reflect impact.
There is some irony in this. Asking brand protection to justify its ROI assumes that the underlying risk is optional, while it is not. The absence of effective protection does not leave a company in a safe status quo – it leaves it increasingly exposed. That exposure alone should be sufficient justification for management to support comprehensive action, yet in most cases it is not. While ROI should be considered in a brand protection program, the more relevant question is not what protection costs, but what the absence of protection costs. Counterfeiters are not generating new demand, they are diverting revenue that was already yours. Brand protection is therefore also about recovering that revenue and market share. And it is the most efficient, lowest cost customer acquisition measures, bringing back customers who already intended to buy your product.
Protect your future against new threats
Unchecked impersonation, scams and counterfeits erode trust. According to many studies over the years, more than 80% of consumers say trust is the deciding factor in making purchasing decisions. Repeated poor experiences, whether from genuine products or counterfeits, shape lasting customer perception. Not all customers are affected in the same way. Some are misled through fraudulent ads or misleading listings and act on distorted information. Others, often younger and highly digital, knowingly engage with counterfeit offers, driven by price and easy accessibility.
In both cases, the outcome is the same: the distinction between genuine and fake becomes less clear, revenue is diverted and brand perception is diluted. This accumulates over time, sometimes slowly and often irreversibly by the time it becomes visible in the data. At more advanced stages, it directly affects growth, customer loyalty and ultimately the viability of the business itself.
This is why the discussion belongs at the highest level of strategic management. It is not about justifying spend, it is about safeguarding the conditions under which a company can continue to compete, grow and remain relevant over time.
Siloed approaches are part of the problem
Many organisations still manage domain management, digital risk protection and brand protection as separate functions. Internally, this may be convenient. Externally, it creates gaps. A phishing attack affects customer trust. A fake listing affects revenue. A compromised domain affects operations. These are not separate problems. They are different expressions of the same underlying problem and exposure.
Managing them in silos means the connections between them remain invisible. A surge in counterfeit listings correlates with a spike in social media ad campaigns. A domain abuse campaign may be part of a broader impersonation effort. Seen in isolation, each issue appears manageable. Seen together, they reveal a pattern that requires a fundamentally different response.
Protecting the future of a brand requires addressing this exposure as a whole, not in parts.
How Intelligence and investigations protect your future
If protection is treated as a sequence of incidents, it will remain reactive. What changes the equation is intelligence and investigation into clusters identified by advanced technologies that consistently connect datapoints.
Understanding patterns, connecting signals and identifying how threats are organised allows companies to move beyond individual cases. Investigation adds another layer by uncovering the networks behind repeated abuse and enabling more effective and lasting disruption.
This is the difference between brand protection activity and a proactive brand protection strategy put into action. Without intelligence, you respond to what has already happened. With intelligence, you identify clusters, anticipate vectors and systematically reduce exposure. The difference is not only efficiency, but durability of results.
The shift no one talks about: algorithms making buying decisions
At the same time, decision making online is changing: customers still matter, but increasingly they are guided by systems. Search engines, marketplaces and recommendation algorithms determine what is visible, what is trusted and what is bought. These systems have no concept of brand loyalty when you’re trying to protect your future. Instead, they rely on signals.
If your digital environment is filled with counterfeit listings, inconsistent messaging, fraudulent offers or negative reviews, those signals are captured and amplified. It does not matter whether the source is internal, third party or malicious. The effect is cumulative and the data will harvest the digital presence of your brand.
A customer searching for your product may encounter misleading offers before reaching you. Marketplaces may rank infringing products higher because they generate more engagement, even if that engagement is artificial. Recommendation engines may begin associating your brand with negative patterns. Once those associations are established, they are difficult to reverse. Over time, this shapes perception in ways that traditional metrics do not fully capture. By the time the impact appears in performance data, meaningful ground has already been lost. Online cleanliness is therefore not cosmetic. It directly affects visibility, trust and conversion. For many organisations, current investment levels do not reflect this reality.
From protection to enablement
Seen from this perspective, brand protection is not only about reducing risk. It is about securing revenue and enabling growth.
A controlled digital environment supports trust, protects revenue streams and creates the conditions for expansion into new markets, channels and categories without rebuilding what should already be stable.
Protection becomes a foundation, not a reaction. “Protect your future” reflects this shift. It moves the discussion away from activity and towards outcomes that determine whether a company can grow or whether that growth will be undermined over time.
Beyond the brand: the role in a sustainable Internet
There is also a broader dimension: in many jurisdictions, online enforcement of digital crime is limited. As a result, maintaining order in digital spaces increasingly falls to those who operate within them.
Counterfeiting alone already accounts for nearly 6 percent of EU imports. Add to this other online fraud, phishing or other forms of digital abuse. If 6 percent of physical goods were being stolen daily in the offline world, the response would be immediate and visible. You would see headlines in tabloids and police on the streets fighting the crime. Online, this level of crime is largely tolerated with little international coverage or national policing. In many countries, law enforcement has not yet adapted to the scale and complexity of organized digital crime.
As a result, brands team up with specialised partners like EBRAND and are effectively taking on a role that extends beyond just their own interests. Brand protection, digital risk protection and domain management contribute to the integrity of the Internet as a commercial and social environment. Unchecked abuse reduces trust in the Internet as a place for people to meet and do business. Over time, this will undermine the viability of digital space for businesses and consumers alike. In this sense, protecting brands also means helping to maintain a functioning digital economy and protecting online freedoms with cornerstones like net neutrality.
Protect your future
More and more, a company’s existence will depend on its digital presence. The question is whether that foundation is actively maintained or gradually eroding. If protection is ignored and reactive, risk accumulates. It translates into lost trust, lost revenue and reduced competitiveness. These effects develop gradually and are often ignored until the pattern becomes clear.
If protection is proactive and intelligence-led, it creates a strong position that is built to grow in the future. Not just the ability to respond to incidents, but to reduce their frequency and impact over time. That resilience determines whether a company can grow, adapt, and compete in an increasingly complex and fast environment.
“Protect your future” is not just a slogan at EBRAND. It reflects the work we do every day and a focus I have followed for the past 16 years – and that will continue to guide our work going forward.
