Musings from Dennis #263. As IP owners and brand custodians, we all dream of a world without counterfeits. Yet, whether we like it or not, the presence of counterfeits is often a backhanded compliment - a signal of how culturally relevant and commercially desirable our characters have become. I’ve seen this play out repeatedly over the decades.
In the late
90s, for example, we struggled to find counterfeit Mickey apparel in Southeast
Asia. Instead, the market was flooded with fake Winnie the Pooh merchandise - unsurprising, given Pooh’s explosive popularity after the 1998 launch. At the
same time, our CP sales for Mickey and the classic characters were declining.
The absence of counterfeits was telling.
I still
remember a Malaysian Mickey apparel licensee who insisted his sales were
dropping because of rampant counterfeiting. He urged us to investigate Taman
Connaught Night Market in Cheras. As the person overseeing IP enforcement in
the region, I went down that very night. Not a single fake Mickey tee in sight - which, from a brand perspective, was a strong indicator to me on how hot or
not we were at that moment. (Thankfully, a few years later when Kirsten Dunst
appeared in a vintage Mickey tee during the 2002 Spider-Man press cycle - followed by a wave of celebrity sightings that included even Hong Kong's Maggie
Cheung, Mickey soon surged back into vogue.
Fast
forward to around 2010: I was pitching a Disney stationery deal to a Malaysian
prospect who proudly contrasted his other licensed local IP with ours. He
boasted that his principal’s enforcement actions were so strong that, three
years on, he saw zero counterfeits in the market, versus our "weak"
effort, he alleged. I gently replied that three years ago - when counterfeits
did exist - his sales were excellent, whereas now, despite the “clean” market,
his sales had slowed down significantly. He couldn’t disagree.
I take
counterfeiting seriously, and I have many stories of successful enforcement
actions to tell in future posts. But I also grudgingly admit that Oscar Wilde
wasn’t wrong when he said: “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that
mediocrity can pay to greatness.” Just think about affordable luxury fashion
brands like Coach and Longchamp in the days when there was no counterfeiting,
and now.
