Philips Lighting West Africa on Thursday launched a counterfeit campaign to discourage consumers from buying fake and cheap products.

Dubbed: “Buy Original” the campaign is to protect consumers, create awareness about counterfeit products on the Ghanaian market.

The campaign aims to educate consumers on how to identify an original Philip products from a counterfeit one.

Mrs Chioma Iwuchukwu, the General Manager, Philips Consumer Lifestyle, speaking at the launch of the campaign, said it would highlight the existence of counterfeit products in the country and equally empower consumers.

She said promoters of counterfeit products mislead the public in order to make money.

She said to tackle the challenge, the company was launching the campaign to introduce consumers to key features of the products to enable them to identify the original from the counterfeit.

Mrs Iwuchukwu said management was collaborating with regulators, security authorities and the media in the fight against counterfeit products on the market.

She said Philips internal research indicated that the best performing products in high demand usually fall prey to counterfeit.

“For all Philips consumer appliances and Philips AVENT baby products, the company is introducing a hologram sticker on packaging for consumers to identify the authentic products,” she added.

Mrs Iwuchukwu said the issue of counterfeit products had serious repercussions for consumers’ health and safety.

Mr Felix Darko, the General Manager, Philips Lighting West Africa, said the company had introduced an innovative hologram security stickers for lamps and is providing a unique 16-digit validation code for all its lighting products.

He said consumers would have to SMS the 16-digit number on the security label to 3110 to authenticate whether their Philips Lamps are original.

He said the campaign was also to inform stakeholders on the dangers of fake products, since counterfeit lighting products presents real risk to consumers.