how to screw up a licensing deal?

Top 10 Surefire ways to screw up a licensing deal:

1) heavy handed lawyers
2) poor chemistry
3) failure to have a strategy approved at the highest level
4) someone leaves the company
5) noone asked a retailer if they'd stock the product
6) someone gets ill
7) the company is sold
8) the brand goes into melt down
9) too many agents closing on the deal
10) slow approval process

anyone got any others?

the downside of risk / reward fee structures

The worst thing about earning a share of a deal that may or may not happen is when, at the cusp of signature, something goes wrong. In the case of two deals that have recently floundered, one fell apart when the other side's negotiator was put on 9 month's gardening leave, and the other has given up the ghost after the other side fell tragically ill.

As the man in the middle there's no greater feeling of powerlessness than watching one half of the puzzle dissolve into mush. From now on I resolve to only work with healthy people who can never be fired!

From hall 5 to hall 20 and back again

Yes, it's www.Springfair.com, where the world unites under one roof to celebrate another year of ranging and stock updating. The paradox is that we crave both variety and stability, which means that buyers have to look for something that is both recognisable and new.

Best part of Spring Fair: seeing mass innovation both good and bad

Worst part of Spring Fair: definitely the awful (and creepy) life-size, robot singing Santa Claus's - i have to tiptoe past them... brrrrrrr

If you're there on Monday and Tuesday then we probably have an appointment already!

fun with lawyers

Why do lawyers spend months sitting on a contract and then send it back with enough red ink for it to virtually unrecognisable. Do they honestly think this is conducive to reaching an agreement?

product of the year

Definitely one of the most succesful licensing programmes around is Product of the Year. This global organisation is instantly recognisable for its ability to generate cash out of brandowners' desires to win awards. At a ceremony that resembles the Oscars (think Air Freshener instead of Brad Pitt), P&G, Unilever, SC Johnson, Nestle and L'Oreal divide up the rights to use the red quadrangle on their products for another 12 months - paying a hefty £75k for the privilege.

This is textbook marketing judo as these branding collosi are thrown by a flyweight with leverage.

how much is your bottleneck?

A bottleneck in the wrong place can be lethal. If an artery clogs the heart can stop working and you die. So too in organisations - how much work is not even attempted because of the slow progress of existing projects. Inefficiency will kill opportunity every time mainly because, as humans, we lose interest if we're ignored.

With licensing, as with any project that requires continuous buy-in, it's all about striking while the iron is hot (or in most cases, luke warm). If the flow of deals is constrained by legal and administrative chin stroking, then there are deals that will either go stagnant or not be attempted purely because the box-tickers pens move slowly.

Many companies use administrative stagnation as a failsafe, protecting the company from bad ideas by creating obstacles so that only really persistent ideas survive. This creates a protectionist state where the idea-killers rule and the frustrated persistent entrepreneur moves on to the next project.

Effective management is about supporting the taking of calculated risks, not maintaining the status quo.

NPD and Viagra!

Never throw away R&D, even if it flops. “Remember, Viagra was a cardiac drug that failed,” notes Julie Hennessy, clinical professor of marketing at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. “But for some reason, people didn’t want to return their samples.”

let's get one thing straight

Well, 2008 certainly opens up a whole new set of rhyming opportunities.... great, straight, fate, mate... but mostly the year opens with a refreshing sense of foreboding rather than the usual optimism. With an American credit crunch, threatening to wipe millions of dollars off anything that moves, there's a sense that the current economic climate is distinctly stormy. What a great name though, the credit crunch... a fabulously doom-laden moniker.

In tough times, brands tend to polarise around either mass or luxury, which is going to make things difficult for products clinging to the magnetic middle and offering 'massclusivity.' More, no doubt much more, on this in the weeks to come

greetings of the season

Well another year passes by and it ends on a strong note... I only have promises and intuition to base this on but 2008 feels like it's going to be a strong contender for year of the year.

Best wishes to everyone and happy shopping

ingredients of a great brand licensing consultancy

15% advertising agency
10% design agency
15% sales team
10% retail sales team
5% law firm
10% brand consultancy
5% strategic consultancy
5% accountancy firm
25% licensing agency

a long term waiting game

Waiting to finalise an agency agreement is a test of nerve. Whilst the work has been done and the business case is proven, there's always time for the lawyers to make a mess of things. Better to hang the 'gone fishing' sign on the door and wait until someone notices you're not there than go mad jumping up and down with impatience. From now on, there's going to be an unappointed fee and an appointed fee, and you can guess which one will be higher.

call centre website loop

When websites stop working they refer you to the call centre they replaced which start with a telephone message referring you to the website... does this just happen in order to upset me?

from the internet to the smarternet

So, i'm trying to buy a train ticket from Paddington to Bracknell and the consumer experience is kind of bleuch. There's no help line any more because they want me to use their on-line system, but the on-line system is kind of rubbish. It's slow, i can buy but i have to enter my details, remember login, push the buttons and what am i, some kind of administrator? Sure, the internet means i don't have to talk to anyone who might be inefficient, but what if i'm busy, do i have to pay someone to do this for me?

Given the fact that updating a website is expensive, i can see the case for a smart piece of software that stores all my online requests and carries them out for me - i'd like to say to my computer - book me a theatre ticket next Thursday and have it come back to me with availability and booking times so that all i have to do is make the decision. Basically i want the internet to be more and more like a concierge service rather than something where i have to do all the work.... and i can see that being the future because more and more purchasing is coming online and whilst there might be some excitement left for the huge swathe of late adopters, the rest of us are bored watching little blue circles rotate and questioning the speed of broadband.

My experience with software generally is that anything that works is pushed to the limit and anything that doesn't is seen as redundant and abused. There's zero consumer satisfaction. So why not develop a user interface that does the searching and purchasing for you from a local level... you could even charge participating services a fee for the privilege - in fact with affiliate marketing, the business model already exists....

Watch your PC - i would expect it to be ready to take vague orders within about 6 months....

another great quote

Was re-reading Strategic Brand Management by Jean Noel-Kapferer - favourite quote so far:

“the order in which intermediate extensions are made affects consumer reaction to the final extension.”

old and new media

When you look at websites like lastfm.com which allows sharing of opinions and the ability to load a playlist that is increasingly personalised, it’s clear that music and indeed all media is becoming ‘pull’ rather than ‘push’.

At the moment we can segment our media choices by choosing a channel that reflects our demographic and lifestyle. However, given the wide range of choices and pre-recorded media, it’s often hard to know what to watch / listen to. The next generation will be amazed that we turn on the radio / television and listen to whatever is on at the time, rather than something that is specifically personalised just for us.

This need for personalisation is leading to the development of pre-personalised content. Amazon and lastfm.com’s content offer you a – ‘people who liked that, also like this’ model but how long will it be before media adopts the same model as products, matching the content to the usage occasion so that digital music becomes the very real personalised soundtrack to your life.

I can see banner advertisements being used to sell music download and other media very shortly.

preview of latest article

Whose brand is it anyway?
How the struggle for control of innovation can cause brand-damaging extensions

Before retailer consolidation and media fragmentation, manufacturers had the luxury of launching a new brand when they wanted to test an innovation. With the cost of launching new brands now virtually prohibitive, innovations are constantly being incorporated into ever-extending Superbrands. Whilst some brand extensions are brand-positive and others brand-negative, not extending is no longer an option. To protect their core revenue streams and expand into new markets, companies must ensure manufacturing and brand management teams work together to produce new products that enhance the brand, rather than simply trading on the brand’s reputation.

The core ingredients for successful brand extensions are generally agreed to be 'Fit' and 'Leverage' - fit being the appropriateness of the new category and leverage being the brand values applied to the new product[1]. In some cases though, the branding is the leverage. Some of the easiest brand extension opportunities can create successful brand extensions that trade solely on the brand, leading to the gradual (and in some cases sudden) degradation of the entire brand.

Brand extensions can be manufacturing-led: incorporating new features and inventions and adding them to the brand’s product range, or marketing-led: pivoting on one of the brand’s axes of authority and outsourcing some or all of the manufacturing, marketing and sales. Only clear communication and understanding between the teams responsible for product and brand innovation can ensure that new products deliver real added brand value, rather than the fool’s gold of brand damaging success.

More on this later.....

[1] Edward M.Tauber, Tauber Research, Brand Equity & Advertising, edited by David.A.Aaker & Alexanrder L.Biel Chapter 20, p313

ideas for articles that need writing

the contrast between brandowners and manufacturers?
key ingredients of a licensing programme?
what makes a brand licensable?

pouff.... another Porsche disappears from the driveway

There's nothing quite like sitting on a big licensing contract. The deal's done, the royalties are waiting to come in and everyone's looking forward to spending the money. The Porsche is on the driveway, the mortgage is paid off. Expensive holidays and a life of luxury are tantalisingly within reach. And then, pouff, with a phone call, the mirage turns into sand and 2 years of hard graft and nose-to-grindstone, hand-to-mouth existence reappear on the horizon, the Porsche turns into black plastic bin liners heaped on the driveway and the mortgage weighs heavily on your shoulders again.

latest brand extension

It's not all about being the middle-man, sometimes I even have time to create my own brand extensions... in this case little baby emma who was born in less time than it takes to negotiate and sign a pickle contract

big market opportunity - the www

Whereas the big opportunity in the 90's was the world wide web, the big opportunity in the 00's is the world wide waste