Branded 1

branded | Holograms otherwise of the participating teams. the Football World Cup, rugby World Cup and Cricket World Cup are prime examples of this as opposed to ‘evergreen’ (ongoing) programmes and events like the Fa and the Us sporting leagues. Closer to home, the sheer complexity of supplying a myriad of different licensees with a number of different manufacturing locations poses significant challenges not normally encountered in conventional supply contracts. as an example, the 2006 FIFa World Cup involved 170 licensees and the delivery of labels and hangtags to 400 different locations worldwide. the 2004 olympics, meanwhile, involved 19 licensees and two international sponsors, between them producing 35 categories of products with 4,000 different item references, each or which was protected by one of eight different types of authentication label or tag and sold though 12,000 different retail outlets the only way for the supplier to deal with such uncertainties and complexities is to ensure that his manufacturing and delivery systems are very nimble. Ideally, the label and tags should be produced on demand so that inventory levels are kept to a minimum. other licensees are doing the same thing and might be manufacturing anywhere in the world. they expect delivery of the labelling within 24-48 hours maximum so freight costs can run extremely high unless there are local stockpiles. a further frustrating aspect impacting directly on production cost is run length. the dream of every manufacturer is long runs of few sKUs. Unfortunately, the wide variety of merchandise dictates the need for labels of various sizes plus a tag. Wily licensees will often request the smallest size label on the grounds that it must be cheaper and major sponsors might request a tag customized to their own design. Woe betide the supplier who attempts to argue with a licensee who is also contributing several million dollars in sponsorship to the event under consideration! the successful supplier may also be required by the licensor to service licensees in their own language and currency. both of these can be onerous constraints, particularly as label and tag supply can begin two years before the event requiring some position to be taken on exchange rates. Successful applications However, all this should not detract from the fundamental impact holography has had on thwarting the counterfeit trade surrounding some of world sport’s biggest set piece occasions. In addition to the olympics and FIFa World Cup, on both sides of the atlantic and around the world we have seen some great examples of hologram innovation in to ensure the bona fide sports merchandise stands out from the fake. one of the biggest and most glamorous sports on the planet, Formula one motor racing, uses holography to protect its treasured brand identity, with many of the top racing teams now featuring security holograms to protect their official merchandising from the counterfeiting. there’s little surprise to learn that it was in the Us - and in the major sporting leagues – where the sports merchandising industry we see today really took off at the beginning of the 1990s. as a self-adhesive label or as a printed label with self-adhesive stripe or patch. In the early days, the application of these was relatively crude, with little thought paid to the overall aesthetics of the finished product – although this is now changing, and the integration of the hologram with the printed label is becoming more apparent. a good example is the new holographic label produced for Mlb merchandise. this features a raised stitch-like feature printed to register over the hologram that simulates the stitching on regulation Mlb baseballs. this integration has always been the case in europe, where the hologram has traditionally been applied as hot stamping foil. this in itself is generally considered to be more secure, as well as enabling greater visual assimilation with the rest of the label. today, all the major Us leagues have embraced holography to varying degrees to protect reputation, brand image and, importantly, revenue streams. the big four: american football (nFl), baseball (Mlb), basketball (nba) and hockey (nHl) all have successful licensed product protection programmes to monitor royalty income while a number of the smaller leagues, such as soccer, have followed suit. the nFl leads revenue values with an annual income in excess of $2.5 billion. the american Football superbowl Final alone is one of the biggest annual sporting events in north america, with a global audience and generating hundreds of millions of dollars in spin-off sales and promotions. so it’s no wonder that the game’s administrators have moved to thwart the increasingly sophisticated counterfeiters keen to capitalise on this lucrative market with the introduction of licensed merchandise featuring serialised holograms as the key authentication device in track and trace programmes. Technical variations although merchandising programmes follow a similar pattern, there are variations in the form that the labels and hangtags take and in the technology deployed. In the Us, for example, the hologram is supplied mainly In virtually all cases, the visual security of the hologram is complemented by a range of additional security features, both overt and covert, providing different layers or levels of security for different groups to authenticate (eg the public, retailers, the licensors, law enforcers). the most extreme case of this was the hangtags for the beijing olympics – where the holographic security, in the form of a windowed thread, was just one of many features (such as watermark, intaglio print and latent image and security fibres) that are more commonly used to protect currency. since China is a major source of counterfeit products, and since the tags were produced by China banknote Printing and Minting Corporation, this level of sophistication was not, perhaps, surprising. It remains to be seen whether this sets a trend for future security labels for sporting merchandise. Whatever form the holograms takes, unquestionably, security labelling and tagging systems that use them have become established as an iconic symbol of authenticity, and have proved their worth for over many years in safeguarding several billion dollars worth of merchandise and brand reputation – something that you can’t put a price on. the future certainly looks bright for this flexible, versatile and cost effective technology. Issued on behalf of the IHMa by Mitchell Halton Watson ltd. For further details contact andy bruce on +44 (0) 191 233 1300 or email andy@mhwpr.co.uk 8 branded | www.brandedmagazine.com http://www.brandedmagazine.com

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