Backdrop

Industry – The mobility industry has one of the most complex supply chains across the globe. All major countries have major local automotive brands, and mobility forms the spine of global transportation and trade.

Billions of miles of wear and tear create demand for high quality parts, and reliable, efficient logistics.

Mobility and automotive brands are significantly impacted by stoppage or breakdown due to part failures.

Consumer and employee safety is paramount in the automotive industry, driving requirements for highly reliable, high tolerance products. The mobility industry had significant regulatory oversight, and always carried the risk of damages and recalls.

Traditionally, the mobility industry has embraced automotive suppliers who provide parts to leading consumer brands, who then manufacture and export across the globe. While this helped de-risk and drive quality, this has facilitated supply chains that span across the globe, and an ecosystem of thousands of individual supplier brands who have to meet exacting requirements for parts.

The complex, global supply chain and thousands of individual parts, leave open the possibility of counterfeit infiltration.

The nature of the products in the automotive industry also meant that the failure of even smaller parts could result in catastrophic consequences. The cost or size of the part did not necessarily mean that the damage from a fake part would be proportionate. Customers often bought replacement parts based on the lowest cost, leaving them open to be cheated by unscrupulous providers with fake spare parts.

The law and order situation and regulatory support was uneven in different countries, and it was difficult to penetrate and distribute anti counterfeiting measures when the counterfeiters were entrenched in the local supply chain.

Legacy Solutions

The brand had already recognised the need to tackle the menace of counterfeit products.

All key functional verticals were engaged to fight counterfeit mobility products through a combination of deterrence, awareness and investigation.

• The product team was working on the labelling process to help identify fake products from
  genuine products. This was done through special label changes.
• The marketing team was working on increasing awareness among consumers, with a two pronged approach – warning them of the challenges of fake spark plugs, and highlighting the
  benefits of original products. Special collaterals were designed and propagated in key markets. The marketing team ran campaigns to highlight certified stores programs – through special promotions, exclusive events and programs.
• The legal team was working on investigations and evaluations, sending cease and desist warnings and conducting corporate action against well established companies.

The Mobility Product Chosen

The brand had hundreds of product types, and chose one of their most critical parts which had the highest rates of counterfeiting – Spark plugs.

The brand had already been attempting to propagate content collateral among consumers, warning them of fake spark plugs and how to try to differentiate between fake and genuine parts. The collaterals also promoted the benefits of buying originals.

The Solution

The brand teams reviewed dozens of legacy anti-counterfeit solution providers, and chose Ennoventure for its disruptive new approach. The core of the solution was Enncrypto – Ennoventure’s patent protected invisible anti-counterfeiting code. This solution was designed from the ground up to replace legacy anti-counterfeit solutions.

Why Ennoventure Was Chosen

The brand was looking for a solution that prevented counterfeiters from circumventing the anti-counterfeiting protections that were currently in place. It was also critical to drive adoption through an easy and intuitive user experience.

The brand had a global supply chain with multiple geographic, regulatory and cultural localization
factors. Any solution would also have to be easy to adopt and change from the previous legacy systems.

Ultimately Ennoventure’s solution was chosen as it fulfilled all the three critical criterion.

• Covert encryption
• Ennoventure’s invisible code meant that counterfeiters could not replicate what they could
  not see.

No Required Production/Process Changes

The invisible verification code was inserted into the automotive products (spark plugs) label creative, which meant that the printing process or material usage did not change. This meant that there was no process change in the production.

Ease of implementation

Ennoventure’s anti-counterfeit solution could be deployed across borders and without any changes to the factory production process or logistics. It was easy to transition from legacy brand protection solutions. This meant fast and easy deployment.

Implementation and Deployment

Ennoventure’s invisible brand protection code was added to the original artwork, which was then sent for printing as before. Once the label was printed with the invisible authentication code, any smartphone could be used to verify that the product was genuine.

Integrating the Code – Ennoventure’s patented invisible brand protection codes was added in a simple and fool-proof set of steps. New anti-counterfeiting codes could be deployed on product labels in just hours and days, making it possible to scale up rapidly.

Speed and reliability was important for the brand as it had thousands of product SKUs supplied by vendors across the globe. Ennoventure’s brand protection solution would massively decrease the turnaround time to deploy anti-counterfeiting measures, while decreasing error rates due to human error or logistics issues.

Increased Sustainability – The process also reduced material usage and wastage, which aligned with the sustainability goals for the brand, along with lower material and handling costs

Label Material Substrates — Post-Print Testing Support

The Ennoventure team also worked with the Client to test the printed labels on the final substrates, to ensure that the deployed labels worked as expected. This helped mitigate any potential errors when transferring the new creative label design to print production.

The materials used in this project were Fibreboard and Cardboard, and the print transfer technology was Flexo and Offset printing.

The existing labelling process involved a complex supply chain, and Ennoventure’s proactive support on testing helped deploy the new code-integrated labels flawlessly.

Combining Brand Protection
and Brand Engagement

The Enncrypto solution allowed for integrating brand engagement along with brand protection, increasing the impact of the customer engagement. This approach was built into Ennoventure’s anti-counterfeit product platform. The brand was able to use the platform to drive customer engagement and awareness.

Custom Landing Pages

The Enncrypto experience supported custom landing pages that enhanced the user experience. Once the customer verified the product using a smartphone scan, they were led to a landing page with product information. Ennoventure setup the custom pages for the brand to maximize the value from their customer interaction.

Dashboard customization

The Ennoventure customer success team interacted with the brand to customize the dashboard to highlight the data that aligned with their business objectives. This was a powerful way for the brand to showcase the results and effectiveness of the solution deployment across their organization.

Fighting Parallel Trade

The solution was deployed in a geographical zone with multiple adjacent countries with porous borders and loose oversight. This resulted in instances of parallel trade to circumvent local laws and inventory allocations. The Enncrypto solution’s geo-located landing pages also helped send data back on products being used in countries other than those they were originally intended for.

Data Storage, Backup

The Enncrypto solution is deployed on high performance, high bandwidth cloud servers with robust storage and retrieval solutions. These solutions capture and store the image files generated from user scans. The high resolution files are stored and backed up for future review or investigation.

Scan Performance

The powerful cloud solution also supports a minimum level of scan performance in terms of uploads from the smartphone and response times for authentication messages. Enncrypto comes with minimum cloud uptime guarantees across time zones.

Managed Brand Protection Analyst

Ennoventure also deployed skilled analytics specialists for data interpretation and ongoing inputs on the data generated from the customer’s brand authentication scans. The combination of a real- time data geo-enabled dashboard with human intervention resulted in efficient and impactful reporting.

The brand was able to migrate from their legacy solutions to Ennoventure’s brand protection solution without disrupting their supply chain, adding new processes or new CAPEX linked to material purchases or logistics.

The training required for employees or consumers was minimal, and the easy to use smartphone scanning method for authentication meant that there was no friction in adoption.

Ennoventure’s Enncrypto platform helped the brand to maximize their investment by driving customer engagement and awareness programs within the brand protection solution flow.

The data generated from the scans were funnelled into a powerful cloud based SaaS dashboard, allowing the brand to showcase the impact of the scans. This helped evangelize adoption and drive awareness of the power of the platform. Real-time data was instrumental in driving excitement among the stakeholders, as the could see the system play out in real time, and see tangible benefits from the anti-counterfeiting program.

The successful deployment of Ennoventure’s Enncrypto anti-counterfeit solutions platform convinced the brand to start bringing more SKUs into the new brand protection system.

Ultimately Ennoventure’s brand protection solution aligned perfectly with the brand’s vision of going green, and delivering peace of mind to their stakeholders, partners and end consumers.

It was a win-win-win scenario. Better for the bottom line, better for the environment and better for
the consumers.