October 27, 2020: The Department of Intellectual Property (DoIP) in collaboration with the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) is organizing a virtual training on strengthening the branding strategy of OGOP products with the officials of the Queen’s Project Office involved in co-ordinating the OGOP project.

The training commenced from October 27 and will conclude on December 17, 2020. It will be an intensive training program encompassing both theoretical and practical sessions with special assignments and interactions. The training will be conducted by international experts on Branding and Intellectual Property Rights.

Opening the virtual training, Mr. Kinley T Wangchuk, Director General, DoIP thanked the WIPO officials and the international experts for planning and making arrangements to  conduct this specialized training on branding strategy for the officials of the Queen’s Project Office. In the address, he noted the rich variety of local products now available under OGOP and how branding was an important element for both advertising and in increasing the significance and intrinsic value of these niche products both locally and internationally. This training would therefore, provide the participants with the necessary branding skills thereby enabling them to apply the specialist branding strategies in the products and thus improve the competitive edge of the products.

“Its not what you look at that matters, its what you see.”- Henry David Thoreau

Thoreau in this quote points out the difference between the senses and perception and what we “look” at and what we “see,” but at a simplistic and superficial level, what we see is what we look at, and therefore, brands and packaging are singularly important for making your products stand-out and therefore, for attracting consumer choices and preferences.

The participants will be introduced to the various subject matters of branding viz. the Branding Mastery Pyramid: The Path to Industry and Thought, Brand Mapping Strategy, Brand Management and Brand Alignment, Development of Graphic Products and so on.

The training is organised within the ambit of the EIE-BD (Enabling Innovation Environment to Strengthen Business Competitiveness through Brands and Designs) project signed between the DoIP and the WIPO in 2019. The objective of the project is to empower the national stakeholders to increase their business competitiveness through the effective use of the intellectual property (IP) system in particular, through the use of effective brands and designs.