April 1, 2020
The new functions of the trademark
Like the characteristics of a product, the company brand can also determine the success of a company.
In saturated markets strategies are often price-related, and if low cost goods have to face numerous competitors, luxury products impact customers' growing expectations.
The above does not exclude that in addition to the product, even the corporate brand, so important for the success of the company, requires to be constantly managed. In fact, it can be considered as a glue between the corporate and marketing strategy, in a hierarchical criterion that changes and shuffles, especially in historical moments such as the one we are experiencing today, with the emergence of the Coronavirus. It is known that COVID-19 has suddenly impacted everyone's life, distorting our daily lives and our most natural behaviors, being close, handshaking, hugging each other.
Trademarks in the time of the Coronavirus
In this difficult context, corporate brands which can be classified as "top" brands due to their recognisability and diffusion, play a communicative role that can go beyond their natural operating market.
The secret of top brands, or even those companies with good entrepreneurial intuition, is to be found in the managerial skills to communicate clear and precise messages on what future decisions will be, not only the ordinary ones, but those new and disruptive not necessarily related to the usual business.
This has become clear in the recent marketing policy undertaken by Volkswagen on its most emblematic brand. In fact, in order to promote the simplest and most effective behavior to mitigate the spread of the virus, i.e. the distance between people, the Company has depicted its classic logo separating the V from the W, maintaining the two letters within the circle.
A briliant and simple message at the same time: "remember to respect the safety distance of 1 - 1.5 meters without compromising a minimum of intimacy"; a message the more effective the more popular is the brand.
The company brand can therefore rise to the maximum expression of entrepreneurial excellence, through a set of values as trust, consumers identification in the sign, consumers tastes and tendencies, but also emulation of behaviors that can be socially useful.
If brand management becomes so successful, its reputation grows and lasts over time. AUDI and MC DONALD'S also moved along the same Volkswagen lines, in addition other top brands have made industrial conversions into socially useful activities.
It is therefore clear that the functions of corporate brands have undergone continuous evolution over time, and new horizons have brought benefits from the point of view of their protection. So today, thanks to the constant recognition of exclusivity function of origin indication, we have other pillar functions, such as investments and marketing.
This evolution implies a constant updating of the property right also from the point of view of product and territorial extension, as well as continuous monitoring aimed at safeguarding these new markets against counterfeiters ready to play in advance.