INTA 2013: Unreal Campaign steps up in Dallas

Members of the International Trademark Association’s (INTA) anti-counterfeiting committee today heard the latest on the association’s Unreal Campaign, which aims to educate teenagers about the perils of counterfeiting and piracy.

Candice Li, INTA’s external relations manager for anti-counterfeiting, looked at the initiative’s progress in the year since it launched at the association’s conference in Washington, DC.

Since then, more than 80 INTA member volunteers have reached nearly 300 schoolchildren in 40 different US cities. And in Dallas on Tuesday, three local high schools will send students to an engagement session with INTA experts to further expand the reach of the program.

So far, the initiative has been mostly confined to the US, but, as Li said, “from now until the end of the year we will look into how we can expand the campaign internationally.”

“The most important thing,” she said, “Is that we don’t just want to translate materials but we want it to be adapted to the audience.”

So far the campaign has seen volunteers from law firm and in house spread the message in school, including Melody Schlottle from Exxon Mobil and Dolores DiBella from the NFL.

Industry sponsors are supporting it too, with 20th Century Fox, Wellpoint and fashion brand Gucci on board.

To date, INTA’s campaign website at www.unrealcampaign.com has received more than 1700 visits, while the member-targeted equivalent at www.inta.org/unrealcampaign has been visited by more than 2300 people.

Social media campaigns on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest have also helped to raise awareness, and the hope is that the knowledge garnered from the US campaign will arm the association when spreading its message further afield.