What Amazon Brand Registry Is, and Isn’t - Episode 235
INTERVIEW WITH ARMIN ALISPAHIC
DESCRIPTION
In today’s podcast, we are talking with a friend and colleague, Armin Alispahic, about Brand Registry. It’s a program that has been around for a long time but still causes confusion. Find out what this program does and doesn’t do, what the common misconceptions about it are, as well as how to make the most of it, if you’ve got the access.
Make sure you tune in to find out!
Armin is a Team Lead at Bobsled. He's been at the company for almost 6 years. Internally he’s known as Armin.com for his encyclopedic knowledge of Amazon. Over the years, he has gained great experience in working directly with Amazon representatives to support brands in scaling up on Amazon and achieving their goals.
“The rule is, really, don’t give your trademark and your ownership to anybody.”
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Brand Registry was created as a tool for brands to fight counterfeiting. Historically, Amazon had issues with counterfeit products; it still does, but not as much.
Brand Registry has evolved a lot since, introducing some features that give brands a competitive edge - content ownership, A+, storefront, Vine, brand analytics - 20 to 30 features that Amazon introduced over the years.
A lot of brands get confused about BR, assuming that it can help solve some of their compliance issues or distribution issues. These are the most common misconceptions of what BR can do:
Content ownership - being a brand owner doesn’t necessarily give you sole and full control of the content. Amazon uses the “content contribution” system that allows any seller of the listing to contribute to a listing. A brand will have a majority contribution, but pages can’t be “locked”.
Distributors can be considered by Amazon as the main content contributor if they created the listings.
Hybrid selling accounts, selling on both Vendor and Seller Central - sometimes content ownership sticks to the Vendor account and they get priority.
Reseller control - the platform is open for any seller who has legitimately acquired inventory to sell on Amazon. Brand Registry does not stop reselling.
Brand Gating - exclusive program for special brands; the brand may allow resellers, but doesn’t have to.
To be eligible for Brand Registry, brands need to have a registered trademark. In case you’re using the IP Accelerator program, it can also be a pending trademark. Using the IP Accelerator program, you get much faster access to Brand Registry, instead of waiting for 6 months to get the trademark approval.
There benefits of Brand Registry that brands often don’t take advantage of:
Brand Analytics - a powerful reporting tool that is available to brand owners for free. You can learn more about item comparison and alternate purchase behavior, as well as how cross-selling is working (which can help you innovate your catalog), but also who are the competitors who get the sale if you don’t.
Manage your reviews - a tool that shows reviews and allows you to contact the buyers, potentially resolving an issue. The success rate is hard to measure, but it’s generally a good practice.
Amazon Posts - Amazon’s attempt to go social, and it’s easy for brands that have a social media presence.
MYCE - reaching out to customers following you, email campaign within Amazon.
Armin is excited about the endless opportunities and potential innovations on Amazon.
Armin has changed his mind about Amazon’s attitude towards sharing data with brands, since over the years more and more data has been shared. An example of this are the new tools called Search Catalog and Search Query Performance that give insight into how your ASINs are performing and how customers are searching for your brand (Share of Voice - impressions, clicks, conversion rate, etc.)
Also, Amazon is now getting more data from brands: the Brand Referral Bonus and the Attribution program. Amazon is refunding some fees in exchange for data, trying to see search and conversion performance on other platforms in order to improve Amazon.
MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE
Connect with Kiri Masters
Learn more about Bobsled Marketing, an Acadia Company
Connect with Armin Alispahic
Register for the Retail Media Budget Allocation report and webinar
