🏷️ Trademark: how to make money from its use 📊

Everyone knows what a trademark is, but not everyone knows that the use of a trademark does not always occur at 100%. Some squeeze 5% out of a trademark, others 10%, others 50%. Very rarely 100% is squeezed out of a trademark, and almost always the maximum is squeezed out by the world market leaders. This is due to the fact that a trademark, like a coin, has a reverse side. For this reason, all 100% can be squeezed out only if you know about the reverse side.

The usual view is that a trademark is a specially registered designation, verbal, pictorial, combination or other, which serves to individualize the goods of legal entities or individual entrepreneurs. However, such a definition is the external, visible to all material side of a trademark.

A trademark also has a reverse side. Moreover, if the outer side only allows identifying the trademark, highlighting it against the background of other symbolic designations, then the reverse side allows revealing the mechanism of the trademark. It is clear that the reverse side of the trademark is its ideal part, its inner essence.

Everything starts with ideas, including a trademark. From the point of view of ideas, a trademark performs a certain role and a certain function. However, most specialists who work with trademarks have only a material understanding of a trademark. Non-specialists often do not understand why it is needed at all, because based on the material view, according to which a trademark allows identifying a product, its function and role are not visible.

According to the fair opinion of non-specialists, it is possible to identify a product in other ways. For example, by the appearance of the product, by the name of the manufacturer, by the model of the product. Accordingly, there is no need to bother yourself with spending time and money to register a trademark and also to ensure that no one uses it illegally.

As a result, using a trademark is an unaffordable luxury for some. They do without it, with all the negative consequences that entails for themselves. Among other things, they cannot create a strong brand and, accordingly, they cannot enjoy the benefits of a strong brand.

From a material point of view, the negative consequences are not visible, but they are very visible from an ideal point of view. From this point of view, the first negative consequence is that producers who do not use a trademark have to operate in the general market, i.e., in the market in which all other producers of the product operate, and not in their own market.

The biggest loss can happen when the market is simply intercepted by someone by registering a trademark. The basis of the common market is a certain common idea, which means it does not belong to anyone. It is good to work in such a market because you do not have to invest in developing the idea underlying the product, but at the same time it is bad because the low barrier to entry into the market attracts many players. When there are many players, but few objects for the game or, in other words, consumers, problems begin. The first of the problems is price reduction. In the common market, price reduction is the only instrument of competitive struggle.

However, not every manufacturer can withstand a price reduction and, accordingly, many soon become bankrupt. Another problem is that no one is engaged in ideas, because it is not interesting to engage in a common idea, which means that it quickly declines and the market gradually disappears. Using a trademark allows you to have your own market and not have the problems described above. Moreover, you need to have both a trademark and a brand, because the difference between a brand and a trademark is significant.

The second negative consequence is that a manufacturer can introduce a new idea and build a market for himself on its basis, but without registering a trademark he will not be able to protect it. As a result, other players will be able to enter this market as a general market and seize certain shares of it. But this is not the biggest loss. The biggest loss can happen when someone simply intercepts the market by registering a trademark corresponding to the idea that underlies it.

Effective use of a trademark

Thus, having avoided the problems associated with trademark registration, the manufacturer gets another problem – the need to generate a new idea, introduce it into the consciousness of potential buyers and create a product that fits this idea. The costs of all this are millions of times greater than the costs of trademark registration. Using a trademark allows you to guarantee protection of your personal market from competitors. This is the new world economy – without a trademark you are nobody and have no name.

Why is it so and not otherwise? Because a trademark is a word or several words, and from the point of view of an idea, any word is a container for an idea, a kind of cell where the idea lives. First, a word is introduced into a person's consciousness, a cell for the idea is created, and then it is filled with an idea, or in other words, the word is filled with meaning. Meaning is the idea. Through the impact on the word, through the activation of the cell, the activation of the idea introduced into a person occurs.

This fact is used to build a model of buyer behavior. An active idea motivates a person to buy a product or service with a corresponding trademark. Accordingly, a trademark is the key to an idea, because it is through it that the idea is managed. Thus, access to the idea, and therefore to the consumer, is gained by the one who gains access to the trademark.

Whoever has this key can control the content. Registering a trademark is nothing more than monopolizing access to an idea, and therefore monopolizing access to consumers in whom this idea is implemented. Accordingly, anyone who wants to gain monopolistic access to a certain group of consumers must have a registered trademark.

Another negative point that comes up when a trademark is not used is that without it there is no return on investment in advertising, marketing, branding and PR, or in other words, there is no return on investment in promoting an idea. Let's say if you invested $ 1 million in PR, which is one of the tools for promoting an idea, you will not directly return it if you do not have a trademark.

In this case, the money can be returned twice. It can be returned, but only if you sell the goods with the corresponding trademark at a price that takes into account the costs of promoting the idea, and this is an indirect method. If you have a trademark, then the costs can be returned directly. This is due to the fact that a trademark has a price and if you use it, then the money spent on promoting the idea can be returned directly at the expense of the trademark.

In this case, the money can be returned twice. The first time is for the growth of the brand, because the more you invest in promotion, the more expensive it is. The second time is due to the sale of goods with this brand. Accordingly, when using a brand, you can not only return the costs of promoting the idea, but also make a profit of 100% or more. A striking example of such a strategy is the marketing of Coca-Cola. This company is better than others at returning investments in this way.

For example, according to the 2013 Best Brands ranking, the Coca-Cola brand is worth $78 billion. The IBM brand is worth $113 billion, and the Microsoft brand is worth $70 billion. Accordingly, using a brand will allow each of the above companies to recoup the costs they incurred in promoting their ideas.

Coca-Cola will be able to return 78 billion US dollars, IBM will be able to return 113 billion US dollars, Microsoft will be able to return 70 billion US dollars. To do this, they will simply have to sell their trademarks. Based on this, we can conclude that companies that promote ideas but do not have registered trademarks lose huge amounts of money, at least in the amount that they invest in promoting the idea.