Does Your Competitor Still Have a Pulse?
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Is your competitor still ticking?
While glancing through recently filed trademarks, sometimes you’ll come across a trademark filing from your competitor who seems to have been dormant for awhile. Just seeing this indicates that they’re still alive and kicking (and have something in the works).
Of course, filing a trademark is not exactly a huge investment, and certainly some companies have filed a trademark and gone under shortly afterwards - but for the most part seeing a new filing indicates of a sign of life.
A sign you’d be wise to pick up on.
Trademark Filings & Brand Launches
At CI Sense, we often stress how trademark filings can give you insight into your competitor’s future plans and strategies. There is so much to be gleamed from what your competitor is filing.
For instance, here is an example of a timeline which shows how three trademark filings for a company predated any web mention or official launch.
In this case we also had the luxury of knowing ahead of time about a new slogan and Domain name (microsite) which made it clear what the company was going to push in their next marketing effort.
Had this been your competitor, having this information would have been far, far more beneficial than merely finding out about the new product launch. (Which would have meant, sadly: Game Over.)
Armed with the information above, you would be advised that something big was in the works, you’d have an idea of what that was and you’d be able to plan ahead, react, take action - and compete.
Snacks & Comfort Foods: Distilling Competitive Intelligence From Trademarks
Monitoring your competitors’ trademark filings each week alerts you to new activity, but having a summary of their filings from the past six months to a year presents a big picture. It shows you the overall direction that your competitors or industry is headed. When individual trademarks are presented in context over time, the results can be luminous. Even if the product or brand has already been
launched, having recent trademark portfolios at your finger tips is an excellent Competitive Intelligence resource.
Below is an example of three companies in the Food industry along with their filings (sorted by date) from the past 6 months. Here is what we can learn from this:
- Just a quick glance gives you a quick update of what they’ve been up to.
- Often, closely related products will have the same or similar Filing Date.
- Some of the non-food related trademarks have been highlight just to show some standouts apart from the main industry.
- Although this is a snap-shot of the past six months, some of these products have yet to be announced.
