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04/04/2011

The use of licensed characters in promotions was a mainstay of the industry for many years, but then collapsed. Recently, however, we’ve seen a resurgence of interest.Yes, there are some relatively straightforward ‘slap it on the pack’ promotions out there: but the best licensed promotions today are those where agencies get creative with the equity on offer. If done well, the licensed property itself benefits hugely from the exposure, while the brand gets to borrow some reflected glory to create a campaign that would not otherwise have been possible.

Last year, the 2010 Licensing Awards featured a category for ‘Best Use of a Licensed Property in a Marketing Communication’, and the top ten nominations demonstrated the high levels of creativity licensed promotions now deliver, covering an extremely diverse range of goods and services with some truly excellent executions.

I defy you not to laugh as Postman Pat takes large lumps out of Greendale with Jess squashed against the windscreen of his van, and all because he didn’t go to Specsavers!

The Silver and Gold award-winning campaigns both featured Wallace & Gromit, for N-Power and Kingsmill respectively. Both campaigns massively over-achieved against business objectives, which the promoters put down to the creative use of the well-loved duo.

Using Wallace & Gromit is always going to be a fairly safe bet, for the brand-owner, at least. It can be a much bigger decision for the property owner, however: by associating with a commercial brand, they run the risk of being accused of cynicism by the public, while there is also a danger that the property may lose credibility if the creative isn’t at least as good as the show itself. Other entrants also showed how using a licence is one of the most potent ways of giving a marketing or promotional campaign a real point of difference.

Asda fresh produce linked with the pre-school TV show ‘Lazy Town’, with a message that had obvious benefits for both partners, while really well executed promotions partnering Pizza Hut with the film Terminator Salvation and Peppa Pig with Muller Little Stars showed that even the simplest promotional mechanics can rise above the pack by the creative use of a licence.

I believe that the licensing industry is becoming a place where the promoter and their agency can feel a little more at home. For the licensor, there is a growing understanding of the value of the additional exposure a promotional campaign with a major brand can bring, above and beyond any fee for the use of the Intellectual Property.

I also think that property owners are prepared to be more flexible with how their characters are used – indeed, if this were not the case, then the Specsavers/Postman Pat campaign would never have been made, Windy Miller would never have sat down with a bowl of Quaker Oats and Paddington would never have spread Marmite on his toast instead of Marmalade.

On the other side of the table, brand owners and agencies are much more open and willing to have discussions about the creative use of characters and properties with rights owners who understand the benefits to them, and who are not looking for exorbitant fees.

Licensed properties can be excellent partners for brands, offering a great way to access a promoter’s existing target market or even break into a new market with a readymade set of creative resources.

by Mindi Chahal

Source: promomarketing.info

Brand Evaluation: Would You Invest in You?

In business, a brand is like a baby: Yours is never ugly. No matter what shape your brand is in, you put your blood, sweat, and tears into building it and, despite whatever shortcomings it may have, you’re proud of it. As you should be.

Still, it can be helpful to take a step back and try to evaluate the results of your branding efforts from an objective standpoint. There are a number of ways to do it, but I’ve found one in particular that can be very revealing. I need to warn you in advance, though—it may sting a bit. It requires you to set aside your biases and evaluate your brand through the cold, hard lens of an independent investment analyst.

It’s true that the financial sector has received a lot of criticism of late, in many ways deserved. Think about it—it’s an analyst’s job to pass judgment on which corporations’ stock investors should buy, sell, or hold, yet no analyst can ever know more about individual companies than those who are immersed in their operations day after day and year after year. No one knows more about my company and its prospects, for example, than I do, yet even I can’t predict where we’ll be in six months or two years.

That said, analysts do tend to concentrate on broad industry sectors, providing them a unique perch from which to view the goings-on therein, and their training and experience enable them to recognize patterns within companies and across industries that highly focused management teams may miss. Plus, they don’t have a dog in the hunt; all they’re trying to do is pick the winners and losers based on the available information.

There are a handful of crucial questions an analyst might ask to determine whether a company represents a good investment. Imagine for a moment that you are that analyst, and it’s your job to critically examine your company (or in this case your brand) and subsequently make a buy, sell, or hold recommendation. Answer the seven questions below on a scale from one (awful) to 10 (excellent) as objectively as you can. As you do, keep in mind that it’s a rare brand that excels in every area, and if one does, an intensely competitive business landscape will ensure that its advantages won’t last.

1. Is the brand in a growing sector? This is a measure of your industry as much as it is of your brand. Is it growing? Are economic, demographic, or cultural trends working in its favor, or are you witnessing steadily shrinking demand? Is this industry going to be healthy and growing—or for that matter even around—in two, five, or 10 years?

2. Is the brand making consistent share gains? Regardless of the industry in which you operate, if your brand is healthy you should be taking market share from your rivals, and doing so in a sustainable way (i.e., not by giving away the store). (See my previous column “How to Discount (If You Insist).”)

3. Does the brand have a dominant competitive position? Your industry may be growing, your share may be growing, but has your brand achieved a position of dominance? This doesn’t have to mean global dominance; if you serve a well-defined geography, for example, it may be enough that you’re dominant within it, even if there are bigger competitors across town, across the country, or across the world. If they can’t horn in on your customers, they may not be relevant.

4. Is the brand clearly differentiated? When prospects compare you to the competition, do clear differences arise or are you basically cut from the same cloth? This factor affects all of the other factors, which is why it’s so critical. One of my favorite pieces of marketing advice is, “Don’t be better. Be different.” If the people with whom you do business can’t clearly articulate your brand’s point of differentiation, an analyst certainly won’t be able to.

5. Are there high barriers to entry for competitors? The airline industry has extremely high barriers to entry; it takes a lot of money—to say nothing of the regulatory hurdles—to get a new airline off the ground (pun intended). But it costs very little to launch a catering business or consulting firm. True, depending on the specialty, the expertise required to launch either of the latter two could be considered a barrier to entry, but an objective analyst would ask some pretty tough questions about how high that barrier really is.

6. Does the brand generate outstanding margins? There are two ways to answer this question: in absolute terms and relative to your industry competitors. Margins, of course, don’t grow in a vacuum; if you’re clearly differentiated and operating in a thriving industry with high barriers to entry, you’re more likely to be able to maintain healthy margins than if you’re slugging it out in a commoditized, shrinking sector.

7. Is the brand creating strong cash flow? There’s a lot of pressure on public companies to fund shareholder dividends. Just because your company isn’t public doesn’t mean you shouldn’t feel the same pressure. Your investors (that would be you—and any others who have staked their hard-earned capital on you) deserve a regular dividend. That is, unless you choose to reinvest most or all of your profits in growing your brand. But you should be in a position where the option is yours.

Seven questions. Simple to ask; a bit more difficult to answer objectively. If your brand scores well on all seven, congratulations—you’ve got yourself a great investment. If not, don’t despair, because at least you now have an idea of where you should focus your efforts.

But don’t hesitate to get moving. Even if you have no intention to ever take your company public, the better your brand performs as an investment, the better off you—and everybody connected with it—will be.

by Steve McKee

Source: businessweek.com