A mysterious sabotage during a photoshoot. An immersive environment revealing the hidden costs of counterfeit products. A fashion show gone wrong in Madrid’s Plaza del Callao. These aren’t scenes from the newest thriller series. They were the three winning entries for ‘Challenge the Fake’, a Europe-wide educational initiative against counterfeiting that challenged university students to create anti-counterfeiting awareness campaigns for Generation Z.
For Amazon, the initiative reflects a broader belief: that consumer awareness strengthens protection for everyone, and that industry-wide challenges require collaboration to solve. Engaging the next generation on the real impact of counterfeiting — and working alongside organisations that share this commitment — is central to Amazon’s investment in anti-counterfeiting and to how we protect consumers and the brands they trust.
Engaging Gen Z
Gen Z holds distinct values, behaviours, and media habits that influence how they decide what to purchase. They are deeply embedded in digital culture, following influencers, engaging with brands on social media, and shaping trends through the content they share. That makes them uniquely positioned to influence their peers when it comes to counterfeiting.
They are also more likely to purchase counterfeit products than previous generations. According to the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), in 2019, 14% of people aged 15 to 24 across the European Union reported that they had intentionally bought a counterfeit product. By 2022, that figure had risen to 37%.
For Juna Shehu, director general at INDICAM, the answer lies in meeting this generation where they are. “Gen Z doesn’t want to be told what to do,” she said. “They want to be involved.”
It’s a view shared across the initiative’s collaborators. “Real opportunity and impactful campaigns can only come from the generations that we’re trying to reach,” said Diego Romero, EU & UK legal director and associate general counsel at Amazon.
Challenge the Fake: How anti-counterfeiting efforts are reaching Gen Z
That belief is at the heart of ‘Challenge the Fake’. In February 2024, Italy’s association for the protection of intellectual property, INDICAM, and Amazon launched the first edition of the initiative, organising a challenge for more than 600 students at H-FARM College in Italy. The students were asked to develop concepts for campaigns targeting their peers, changing how Gen Z perceives counterfeit goods and the value of intellectual property protection.
But the students didn’t venture out on their own. Along the way, they were supported through coaching and mentoring by INDICAM, Amazon, and SHADO (H-FARM’s media company). The goal: design an innovative, actionable, and compelling campaign.
The results demonstrated the initiative’s potential, and the collaborators brought ‘Challenge the Fake’ back together for a second edition, expanding to two more countries: Spain and the UK.
In this expanded edition, we joined forces with ACG, the UK’s Anti-Counterfeiting Group; and Andema, Spain’s brand protection association. Three European universities — University College London (UCL), Esade, and Bocconi University — hosted the challenge, which invited students between the ages of 18 and 24 to design innovative anti-counterfeiting campaigns that speak to their peers.
The students convened over six weeks, developing their projects with mentorship from professors, industry associations, Amazon, and SHADO. The work culminated in three separate national finals. In May 2026, the EUIPO hosted the European final at its headquarters in Alicante, inviting the three winning teams to present their campaigns and reflecting EUIPO’s public-awareness work on intellectual property and counterfeiting.
As EUIPO’s Deputy Executive Director, Andrea Di Carlo, told the students, “The future of intellectual property will be shaped by young minds like yours. This is why, today, I feel reasons to be optimistic. You are not simply recognising the problem — you are becoming part of the solution.”
In their own words
The students themselves put it best.
First: a belief in the power of their peers to drive change. As the winners from Bocconi University said, “We think Gen Z is the most polarised generation, but it is also the one that can change everything.”
They also recognised that the desire to change things must be paired with an understanding of what needs to change. “Having to distinguish between what’s real and what’s not, it’s also our responsibility to engage in this issue,” said the winning team from Esade.
The challenge changed how they think about what they buy, connecting their values to the products they choose. “Before I buy anything now,” one student from the UCL winning team noted, “I will look beyond the price, through the hidden costs of counterfeits. And this project has definitely changed my whole mindset when approaching shopping.”
The learning went both ways. Students gained real-world insight into the impact of counterfeiting, while industry representatives and Amazon gained a deeper understanding of how this generation thinks and communicates. “It’s about getting the messaging right,” said Chloe Long, director general at ACG. “We need to speak to young people to understand what resonates with them: what kind of messages do they want to hear? What are the kinds of channels that they trust now?”
Building trust across generations to prevent counterfeiting
Protecting authenticity isn’t the job of one generation alone. “‘Challenge the Fake’ is a perfect example of how brands, academic institutions, and public authorities can work together to raise awareness among young consumers about the dangers of counterfeit products, both for their safety and for the economy,” said Gerard Guiu Ribé, director general at Andema.
It would not have been possible without the close collaboration with ACG, Andema, and INDICAM. But its real power lies in the students who made it their own.
To learn more about Amazon’s counterfeit enforcement actions and programmes that protect customers from counterfeit products, visit our Anti-Counterfeiting page. For a broader look at how we create a trustworthy shopping experience, read our 2025 Trustworthy Shopping Experience Report.