Match, gap and build a brand hierarchy with an IP audit 

Connecting trademarks and brands can enable IP owners to identify ways to save costs and build value. Maartje Broekmans explains how to match trademark and brand portfolios, assess gaps in protection and build a brand hierarchy with an IP audit.

A strong brand identity is crucial for success in the dynamic business landscape. This involves not only creating compelling logos and marketing strategies but also safeguarding trademarks and brands that embody the essence of a company’s offerings. Trademark audits play a pivotal role in this process by comprehensively evaluating a company’s IP assets to ensure they are adequately protected and aligned with strategic objectives.  

In addition, an IP audit can help establish a clear brand hierarchy, which is essential for managing multiple trademarks within a portfolio effectively. This hierarchical structure organises trademarks and brands based on their relationship to each other, distinguishing between parent brands, sub-brands, and product brands. By delineating these relationships, organisations can streamline their marketing efforts, enhance brand coherence and optimise brand equity across various market segments. 

• Heart 
  Your brand may be your most valuable asset. While intangible, it is the driver of everything you do. It represents what you stand for and what you value, and it showcases your promise to your customers. Your brand raises certain expectations and as simple as ‘brand’ sounds, it encompasses your valuable reputation. If the brand is also your company’s name, it alludes to your company’s culture, and how your employees work together and the vision they share. In fact, your brand is the heart of everything you do. 
• Core 
  Your trademark sits at the core of that brand. It makes the intangible, soft aspect of the brand concrete and strong. Registering a trademark provides an exclusive right to use the brand in your market, the opportunity to take action against copies, and the ability to sell, transfer or license your brand rights to a third party – all making a positive impact on your company’s results.   

Why and how to undertake a trademark audit 

For brands to remain strong, it’s important to ensure your trademark portfolio is up-to-date and aligned with your business goals and strategy. The best way to achieve this is via a periodic audit of your trademark portfolio.

The information you will need for your audit (apart from the portfolio itself) includes your business strategy; your company’s risk appetite; and information about your customers, production facilities, suppliers and competitors, as well as infringers. Important stakeholders include colleagues working on strategy, brand, marketing, product development and legal.  

The purpose of the audit is to ensure all brands that are in use and important for your company’s future are registered as trademarks, as well as a leanness and meanness of your portfolio that fits with your company’s risk appetite.  

Companies often assume that an audit will lead to more trademark registrations. In many cases, however, audits identify irrelevant trademarks that could be allowed to lapse. In all cases, they will deliver a trademark portfolio that is in sync with your company’s strategy, goals and risk appetite, and that is cost- and time-efficient. The clearer your portfolio, the stronger and more valuable your brands will be. 

Typical triggers for an audit include: 

• Ad hoc identified omissions in trademark portfolios, which can highlight the need for a strategic approach to cleaning and building your portfolio in a smart, reliable way, and 
• (Upcoming) mergers and acquisitions, which typically lead to a diligent exploration of what is in place, what is no longer needed and what is still missing.  

In this way, undertaking an audit means taking an active role in ensuring your trademarks support your business via a pragmatic “match and gap” analysis of the situation reflected by the trademark registers and the real, relevant, world in which you operate every day. 

Establishing a hierarchy for trademarks and brands 

Reviewing your brand hierarchy can be both a trigger for and a result of an audit. Over time, a once-clear brand strategy can become blurred.  

Were you initially intending to be a House of Brands (think: Proctor & Gamble – a company name with product names that stand on their own feet and are in naming not related to the company brand or each other). Or, on the other side of the spectrum, did you plan to be a Branded House (think: FedEx: company name and products are all very much linked to each other).  

There are hybrid models in-between, known as ‘endorsed brands’ and ‘sub-brands’. In this approach, the sub-brand is linked to the parent brand, e.g. ‘Courtyard by Marriott’, and it is supported and promoted by the parent brand ‘Marriott’. Another example of a hybrid, sub-brand approach can be seen with Coca-Cola, where ‘Coca-Cola Zero Sugar’ and ‘Coca-Cola Vanilla’ are sub-brands reflecting different consumer preferences both still leaning on Coca-Cola’s powerful reputation.  

Each brand strategy has its own advantages and disadvantages – and affects your trademark portfolio. Often, a strategic review of a trademark portfolio shows different brand strategies have been applied over time. Re-enforcing your brand strategy, or clearly selecting your new brand strategy going forward, will be your lighthouse for every upcoming new brand request. Having a clear brand strategy will typically save your company time and money, as the starting point and ‘messy middle’ of review rounds of new brands are gated by your brand strategy.  

Making the link between your products and your brands and documenting how they correlate should be part of setting your brand strategy. Ideally, this should include documenting the role of each (key) brand, the products that can be marketed with each brand, the brand’s validation or positioning, its pricing, promotion and advertising guidance and placement. Clarity on these aspects helps in product development, in maintaining a clear brand strategy and in constructing a supportive and efficient trademark portfolio. 

Managing new brand requests 

Another benefit of a periodic audit of your portfolio of trademarks and brands is a clear overview of what you already have. This overview comes in very handy when there’s a request to develop or register a new brand. With a quick check, you can identify if the new product should indeed be branded with a new name, or if the product actually fits with an existing brand and its role, related products etc., as specified in the brand hierarchy part of your audit.  

In addition to what you already own, criteria such as the foreseen duration of the brand, the marketing budget dedicated to the new brand-to-be and expected sales revenue will help you fine-tune the process of new name requests. For example, Novagraaf often supports clients to create a decision tree as part of our trademark audit service. Such decision trees help brand owners identify quickly if new name requests should be allowed or if the new product/initiative should be branded with an existing trademark. This would help you every time you receive a new name request, saving time and ensuring consistency in your approach.  

--> If you need help creating new brand names, we work closely with dedicated name creation partners, such as Globrands in the Netherlands. 

--> If you need help managing the brand name proposal process, we can also provide support via Equinox Brand Proposal, a dedicated tool provided by Questel.  

Key takeaways  

To ensure success in your trademark audit and brand hierarchy projects keep in mind the following: 

• Effective IP audits require organisations to combine multiple types of expertise. 
• By joining forces, your stakeholders can assist you in building a valuable brand. 
• This brand should be supported by a cost- and time-efficient trademark portfolio that is also suited for your company’s growth. 

As an expert in IP auditing, Novagraaf supports organisations worldwide to assess, cleanse and inform corporate strategies for portfolios of trademarks and brands. To find out more about our trademark auditing processes or capabilities, download our white paper on trademark audit best practices, speak to your Novagraaf attorney or contact us below. 

Maartje Broekmans is a Managing Consultant at Novagraaf in Amsterdam.