Brand Licensing conf. discusses Character Licensing biz

By Bollywood Hungama -

February 27, 2009 - 12:00 AM IST

The Brand licensing and Merchandising Show '09, Mumbai, had Spacetoon's Rajiv Sanghari, Graphiti's Munjal Shroff and Extend Brands Mayuri Pitale discussing animation and character licensing. The session was moderated by LIMA's Martin Borchstein. Character licensing galore: Talking about the licensing industry, Rajiv Sanghari said that entertainment/character licensing is the strongest vertical in the licensing business. "This vertical continues to be the strongest in the licensing business maintaining a 45% share in the market followed by trademarks/brands at 17% and fashion category at 15%. Fido-the licensing biz hero: Munjal Shroff, whose company Graphiti Multimedia has tied-up with Joanna Ferrone (creator of Fido Dido, popular as 7UP's brand mascot) and is creating content around it, said that that the peppy and cool character was still popular with brands and consumers, attracting a lot of licensees. Sharing a brief background about Fido and how it was created he said, "Fido is known as a huge trademark success throughout the US, Europe and Asia and is present in several categories such as apparel, shoes, stationary, accessories, soft drinks, etc." Fido was a case of enormous success for PepsiCo in the 80's and still being used on the 7UP's cans and advertisements in Argentina, Chile, Greece, UK, Ireland and India, amongst many other countries. Key to successful licensing strategy: Extend Brands' Mayuri Pitale, whose company represents Popeye and many other characters, highlighted the key to a successful licensing strategy. She highlighted the need to identify the USP of the property and evolve with the target group, to continue building the property over the years and to strategize according to the product life cycle of a certain brand.