Discussing successful online strategies and stakeholders with our new Digital Brand experts
Interview conducted October 2024
Please join us in offering a very warm welcome to Johanna Rafstedt Erikson, Sara Therner and Henning von Borcke, who each bring a new perspective and wealth of experience to our growing Digital Brand teams across Sweden and Norway. Although they hail from different backgrounds, they all agree that Domains and Online Brand Protection rarely get the attention it deserves, despite its integral role in maintaining brand identity and integrity.
Johanna started her career with a law firm, moving into a trademark attorney and client management role with an IP/tech firm shortly after completing her Masters in Law. Although IP had always been appealing, the opportunity to develop and drive client growth and transformation strategies was an exciting prospect, leading her to pursue the client management side of her role. This led to her position at Polestar, who at the time were an exciting scale-up in the Electric Vehicle space, where she helped direct the service process and strategy development of what would quickly become a global brand name. Throughout her time with the company, she managed multiple stakeholders across the globe, from suppliers to research partners, improving the customer experience for consumers and strengthening the in-house competence. She enjoyed working through Polestar’s journey from scale-up to its current position as a prominent EV innovator, but she missed the world of IP and Digital Brand, and, wanted to return to a position where she could help other brands to establish and grown their own digital identity.
For Johanna, digital brand and domains represents the intersection of legal, digital and technical, combining an understanding of traditional trademark legislation with current and emerging technology. She considers intellectual property as more or less mature in terms of what constitutes an IP right and how it can be protected, but digital brand is still very much an emerging area of expertise. An online presence often underpins a brand’s reputation and effective enforcement continues to evolve as infringers, and malicious actors, find new and unexpected ways to mislead consumers. Whether this means fake websites, counterfeit sales or fraudulent emails, it represents new and often exciting challenges and opportunities to learn, and that forms a key part of her advice in helping organisations to stay ahead through building a solid digital foundation
Sara started out in economics and finance, helping organisations she worked with to develop and implement efficient finance monitoring and forecasting tools, as well as overseeing budget and accounts processes as Financial Controller in both public and private organisations. From there she joined Arduino, an open-source hardware and software platform, first as a Program Manager and Business Lead before moving into intellectual property, where she worked with trademarks and licensing. It was here that she developed her IP and Digital Brand expertise, establishing systems that would underpin the open-source marketplace. The collaborative environment, working at the cross section between law firms, inventors and IP, put Sara as the Head of IP at the centre of a more accessible and better understood platform for open-source knowledge sharing, and its associated benefits for innovation.
Sara continues to be fascinated by the fact that no two days within IP are ever the same. While her career has taken her across multiple areas of different organisations, her work with IP and Digital Brand represents a constant stream of exciting challenges. Whether it is identifying the best way to approach a potential infringement, negotiating a cooperation or licensing agreement, or simply establishing the many different pieces of a successful portfolio, her experience in-house represents an opportunity to provide advice from a buyer’s perspective. Sara understands how digital brand services are used in practice and she is looking forward to leveraging that expertise and insight on behalf of our clients
Henning’s route into Digital Brand has primarily been focused around corporate domain name management, with leading positions in digital media agencies, start-ups and platform development. Henning was studying law when he realised the future was online. After an early stint at PwC in London he moved into online commerce, joining global fashion marketplace ASOS shortly after its founding and helping develop international partnerships. Nearly 10 years in corporate domain names followed, working within global domain name registry and internet infrastructure companies such as VeriSign, and then starting his own corporate domain name consultancy. Wanting to learn about complementary fields of digitalisation, he worked for digital media agencies such as iProspect, advising clients on digital advertising, analytics and SEO, overseeing the development of digital marketing solutions and product portfolios available to global brands. Leadership roles confirmed Henning’s belief in the power of teamwork and he spent the next few years building up the Norwegian presence of British technology leadership and executive recruitment firm Harvey Nash. He then co-founded and developed a SaaS global hiring platform, where he headed up global operations, and his most recent position before Zacco was in Private Equity as a Regional Managing Director overseeing operations in Northern Europe and CEE.
Henning has dedicated much of his career to IP, digital and branding, communicating their value to organisations. What sets corporate domain name management and digital branding apart is the unique opportunity to collectively engage with three distinct corporate stakeholders: legal, marketing, and IT. In Henning’s experience, domains represent a critical single point of failure and managing them successfully is crucial for corporate success. Helping corporations to grow their digital presence and brand, and to prevent external forces from undermining their efforts, continues to represent an interesting and exciting prospect.
Despite their different backgrounds, experience and expertise, our three new colleagues share a similar perspective on one of the biggest challenges facing domains; that so many companies still view it as an IT issue. All three agree that there is often a limited understanding of the potential consequences to both reputation and financial stability if an organisation’s domain is hijacked or fails for any reason. Domains are an excellent means of reaching consumers, but below the visible surface is often a system that underpins corporate digital infrastructure, such as internal networks and email. As such, the first step in discussions with clients is often to bring together relevant stakeholders from IT, from legal, from marketing, and ideally from C-level, to explore potential risks and their implications. It is also important to establish lines of communication between departments to ensure that domains are handled at group level, rather than limited to regions or business lines. Domains are business critical, and Digital Brand should be near the top of any organisation’s strategy if they have any online presence.
The biggest challenge facing Digital Brand teams today is lifting the topic, raising awareness and educating various stakeholders on the different pieces of a successful domain and digital brand strategy, and how they fit together. On joining Zacco, each of our new colleagues acknowledged the importance of IP360, and its early recognition of the fact the IP rights, Digital Brand, Domains and even cyber security, each form a separate but often complementary part of corporate growth. Each of them has a practical understanding of how digital assets are developed and leveraged, gained from both the consultancy and the client side of their respective businesses. They plan to bring that expertise and insight to Zacco’s own clients, supporting the ongoing development, protection, enforcement and monetisation of their digital presence, domain infrastructure and brand identity.
Welcome to Zacco Johanna, Sara and Henning, we wish you all the very best in your new roles.
For more information, or to learn how our team can help you to develop your own Digital Brand strategy, or how to align it with your IP and domain portfolio, you are welcome to reach out to one of our new colleagues directly.
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