Connecting your Amazon’s Brand Registry service with your account is a critical part of Seller Central and Vendor Central strategy. Enrolling your brand in Amazon’s Brand Registry provides product detail page display authority, allows you to submit additional brand content like A+ Content and Brand Stories and grants you access to valuable Brand Analytics and Dashboard reporting that contains unique insights about your brand and how consumers are engaging with your products on Amazon.com.
This article will detail steps that you may need to take to ensure that your Brand Registration is set up correctly and that your products and account are receiving the benefits granted by Brand Registry. We will discuss both how to diagnose and resolve these issues.
Enrolling Your Trademark in Brand Registry
The first step to utilizing the Brand Registry Program is to enroll your Brand’s Trademark in Amazon Brand Services. Brand Services provides a list of answers to Frequently asked questions about Brand Registration. To register your brand you’ll need an active Trademark issued by the US Patent and Trademark Office. When you are entering the brand name in your brand registration application, be sure that the submitted brand name exactly matches the brand name listed on the trademark. Spelling, capitalization and spacing all need to match. If your trademark is in Application or Under Examination status, you can still begin this process but you may not receive all benefits initially. If you are an active Seller or Vendor on Amazon.com you’ll want to use the admin email on your Seller Central or Vendor Central account to submit the brand registration. The email/username is used to link the brand registration to your Seller Central or Vendor Central account. After your Brand Registration application is approved your Brand Registry should automatically connect to your Seller Central or Vendor Central account and your products should automatically be enrolled. However, both account level or ASIN (product level) enrollment issues may occur. Next, we will discuss how to diagnose and resolve those issues.
Account Level Brand Registry Enrollment Issues
You can determine if there is a possible issue with brand registry connection to your account if you are unable to submit A+ Content or Brand Stories to your branded products, unable to build a Storefront, or if you do not have visibility to the “Brands” drop-down in Seller Central (shown below).
If you are experiencing issues accessing the Brands drop-down or submitting brand content, first check user permissions to ensure that your username has been granted access to view and edit those permissions. It’s possible that the account is correctly connected to Brand Registry but permissions just need to be updated.
If you’ve submitted your brand registration with an email aside from the admin email on your Seller or Vendor Central Accounts, your brand registration may not correctly link to your selling account and your products. It’s possible that even if you used the correct email for Brand Registry enrollment you may still need to take the action below to successfully link your Seller or Vendor Account to Brand Registry.
In the case that Brand Registry enrollment was done with an incorrect username, you will need to add the email that was used for the Brand Registry application to your selling account as an admin user. Then you need to log into your Brand Services using the email used to submit the Brand Registry application and contact Brand Services/Registry customer support. In your support case request that the Brand Registry for your enrolled brand is connected to your selling account. Key information to provide in the request includes the selling account name, the merchant token for Seller Central accounts (which can be found in settings > account info > business info), and the admin email on the selling account.
ASIN or Product Level Brand Registry Enrollment Issues
You can determine if there is a possible issue with ASIN brand registry connection a few different ways. If you are unable to submit A+ Content or a Brand Story to your ASIN that may indicate that the product is not correctly enrolled in your brand registry. If the ASIN’s information does not appear in Brand Analytics or Brand Dashboard reporting that can also indicate an ASIN enrollment issue. Also if you are opening casework for an ASIN with Brand Services or Seller Central support and they are not recognizing your brand registration that could also signal an issue. This additional step of ASIN enrollment in Brand Registry is sometimes called “Brand Stamping”.
The first thing that should be reviewed in this situation is the product’s branding. The brand name attribute is what links your product or ASIN to your brand registry. If the product has a brand name displaying that is different than the brand name you have brand registered, that ASIN will not be enrolled in your Brand Registry.
It is critical that the brand name exactly matches the trademarked used for registration. Spelling, capitalization and spacing is considered for determining the match. If branding on the ASIN is inaccurate, the branding will either need to be corrected or the product will need to be relaunched with a new ASIN offer using the correct branding.
If the branding on the ASIN is correct and matches brand registry, but the issues described above are still occurring you may need to take additional action to enroll the ASIN in Brand Registry and have it “Brand Stamped”. The first step to do this is to submit a full update for the ASIN using an inventory file in Seller Central or an NIS template in Vendor Central. This full update should push through the brand name attribute as a new value and enroll the product in your Brand Registry.
If you submit the full update and you are still seeing indication the product is not correctly enrolled in Brand Registry, the next step will be to open a case with Brand Registry/Services support and request that the ASIN be enrolled or “Brand Stamped”. In the case request be sure to communicate that you are the primary administrator on the Brand Registry. Also describe the indication that you’ve seen that leads you to believe that the product is not correctly Brand Stamped or enrolled in Brand Registry. If possible provide a screenshot as evidence. Finally attach the inventory file processing report that you used to push through the full update described in the previous paragraph. If this processing report is not included in the case request Brand Registry support will recommend the full update as the next action that you should take to resolve the issue. Once you open the case, continue to coordinate with Brand Registry support and reopen casework if needed.
Goat Consulting helps brands fully utilize the capabilities of Brand Registry to reduce risk and improve performance of their business on Amazon.com. If you are having issues using or connecting your Brand Registration, or if you want to get more out of your Brand Registry click the “Contact Us” button below.