What Does a Brand Protection Manager Do at Wish?

The Brand Protection Team at Wish works tirelessly to help both merchants and users experience a trusted platform that’s free of counterfeit products or infringing product listings. To get a better understanding about Wish’s efforts to address these problematic listings, Delia Mitchell, Wish’s Editorial Manager, recently sat down with David Macias, Brand Protection Program Manager, to learn more about his role, challenges, exciting aspects of the job, and professional growth.

Delia: Why did you choose Wish to continue your career?
David: I joined Wish in February 2020. I had heard a lot about Wish and recognized it as a great e-commerce platform that was on the rise. I wanted to be a part of the company since it was scaling rapidly, and I wanted to grow my career.

Delia: What is your prior experience and how did it prepare you for your role here?
David: I previously worked at tech companies under user operations and site integrity operations teams. This experience has prepared me significantly to work with the Brand Protection team here at Wish. I decided to apply for my current role because it correlated with my past working experience, and I personally really enjoyed enforcing policy and keeping bad actors away from platforms. I’m very grateful that I got hired, and now I work with one of the most incredible teams at Wish, the Brand Protection team.

Delia: What are your overall roles and responsibilities?
David: I have several responsibilities that include the following:

• Managing and overseeing the Brand Partner Program. Wish’s Brand Partner Program is a dedicated program that gives brands and rights holders specialized access to a portal to easily monitor Wish merchants’ use of their brands, use customized tools to identify and review infringing products, and track historic takedown requests. Over 2,000 brands participate in this program.
• Working with the appropriate engineering and product management stakeholders to enhance our Brand Partner program portal, tools, and processes.
• Overseeing Brand Protection merchant dispute process and ensuring merchants have the necessary tools and information to dispute Infractions.
• Utilizing internal tools to report bugs and anomalies for queues and portals.

Delia: What are you most proud of so far during your time at the company?
David: My main accomplishment was managing one of the biggest company initiatives relating to upgrading our Brand Partner Program. This project required me to team up with Product Management and Engineers to revamp our brand partner reporting process to create a better user experience for brand and/or rights owners. My task was to communicate to the engineering team about Brand Partner feedback and issues they were experiencing through various CRM portals and emails, as well as host weekly syncs to ensure we were meeting our goals on time.

As a result, a new portal for our Brand Partners program was built. This new portal resulted in a better experience for our brand partner users as it streamlined the search and report IP violations, the ability to enforce multiple brands per account, access to historical takedowns, and much more.

Delia: What is the biggest challenge of your job?
David: The Brand Protection team maintains Wish’s strict policy against intellectual property violations. The biggest challenge of the job would be battling counterfeits and other infringing activity without engagement from the brand or rights owners. We encourage brand and rights owners to partner with us so we can tackle these issues collaboratively to help maintain a trusted and safe platform.

Delia: What excites you about being part of the brand protection team?
David: I believe strongly that brand owners have the right to protect their intellectual property. Being on this team allows me to work with our Brand Partners to ensure that their products are safe from being infringed on. As a huge bonus, the Brand Protection team is led by a great group of leaders that inspire me to further my career within this team.

Delia: How do you continue to learn and develop your skills at Wish
David: I think it’s essential to continue learning as much as possible because business is constantly evolving. I try to pick up on as many new projects as possible to expand the scope of my skillset. I would say that the most significant leverage Wish provides employees with is the many initiatives that come with many projects, because you can just jump into one and develop new skill sets from there.

Delia: Why do you think someone should join Wish?
David: I think Wish is a great place to work as I have been able to grow within the company. I have been able to develop my career as well as gain new skills during my time here. The company culture is great as well! Everyone is kind and collaborative, so you’ll never feel alone or lost on a project. We also have regular outings, so we’re able to bond as a team as well.

Delia: What are some skills your team looks for when making hiring decisions for your department?
David: Some of the skills we look for are attention to detail, flexibility in working independently and cross-functionally, hungry for learning, and great communication skills. We are hiring! Check out our open positions here.