What Makes a Character Brand Licensable?

It is quite effortless to consider that character design and style alone determines the accomplishment and failure of a character brand and how a lot of licensing and merchandising bargains it can garner. In actuality, the incredibly initial criteria for merchandising possibilities is mass exposure prior to something else. Licensing agents and manufacturing businesses are frequently opposed to taking on properties that appear good but do not have mass exposure.

Presuming we have accomplished recognition for a particular character brand (for instance Dandy the Lion), we have won 70% of the battle with the licensing individuals. They would have been convinced that Dandy the Lion is worth licensing. These are quite our initial clients. We require them to consider Dandy the Lion is worth licensing prior to they will take it to marketplace.

The subsequent hurdle we have to cross would be the finish customers - our secondary clients. They are the ones who determine the longevity of our brand and the genuine customers who will convince the licensing business individuals that Dandy the Lion is worth licensing and worth continuing to license. Their buying rhythm, energy and frequency will determine how long much more W&W goods can continued to be licensed.

Today, there are quite a few categories of products on the marketplace as far as character brands are concerned.

Just to name a couple of:

- plush toys
- wooden toys
- stationery
- kids put on
- storybooks and activity books
- boardgames
- video games
- electronic toys
- animation goods
- product endorsements
- eg. breakfast cereal, snacks, infant meals and so on
- shop ideas and franchises
- and much more

Pretty couple of character brands have been capable to clinch a licensing deal for every single single category listed up here - with the exception of possibly some of Disney's prime characters and Sanrio's Hello Kitty, and this was maybe due to their personal investments. It is practically not possible to hope to have licenses for each and every single category even if you are a best brand. Apart from luck and obtaining appropriate partners, there is also the brand positioning element to assume. This is due to the fact that not every single character brand is appropriate to be licensed for each category. It all boils down to brand popularity and identity.

For instance, The Simpsons is quite renowned and popular but would it ever be licensed for an educational product? I doubt so. Parents would not associate anything like The Simpsons to be educational, unless it was licensed creatively to give a twist to the educational aspect.

With the above establishment of licensing and merchandising on a broad factor, I would nowadays like to go over briefly how to determine if a character can and will be licensed from two perspectives - the business perspective and the visual perspective.

1. How to determine if a character brand is distinctive adequate for merchandising from a business viewpoint?

Any character brand will be distinctive and desirable sufficient for the licensing individuals to license as long as it has accomplished adequate exposure. I would like to use Mr. Bean as an instance here. Mr. Bean does not appear nice. In fact in my opinion he's downright ugly! But he has accomplished sufficient exposure about the globe for the licensing people today to choose him up and plaster his cartoon double on all sorts of goods. The exact same can be stated for so lots of other character brands discovered on the marketplace currently.

two. How to determine if a character brand is distinctive adequate for merchandising from a visual perspective?

As said above, it will be tough to produce a character design and style that can match just about every just about every single category due to the fact that there are brand positioning problems to assume. Nevertheless it is pretty doable on the merit of character design and style alone to make a design and style that will match most categories. On the other hand, I would like to mention that character styles only generate up the foundation of the licensed products. A lot much more depends on how the producers use the styles with their solutions. This goes into the brand assurance and product integrity techniques which a licensor will have to implement to make certain the integrity of the character brands.

This write-up was written by Aldric Chang - a creative businessman who is active in music composing and production, net marketing and advertising, casual games production, animation production, cartoon production and character licensing. His 3d animation studio - Mediafreaks - is focused on generating higher-finish animation perform for documentary makers, advertising homes and cartoon animated series - with projects ranging from the animation of dinosaurs to the visualization of all-natural disasters and anything as chic as 3d jewelry animations or as intricate as 3d healthcare animation.