LICENSING SHOW 2000: Character Studies

OK, so you probably won’t be scoring that deal with Warner Bros. for Harry Potter toothpaste. (Actually, Johnson & Johnson already beat you to it.)

Never fear, because there is an endless supply of properties and characters available for licensing, as evidenced by the numerous agreements announced in June during the Licensing Show in New York City. Here are a few that struck promo’s fancy – beginning with a list of licenses, licensors, and licensees that struck the fancy of the Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association, earning recognition through the organization’s annual International Licensing Excellence Awards.

Gotta Win `Em All: It should come as no surprise to anyone involved in the licensing industry – or anyone involved in child-rearing, for that matter – that the Pokemon tsunami turned out to be the most-lauded property of 1999, since property owner Nintendo and official licensor Leisure Concepts did a masterful job making it the most-prevalent property of the year (January promo.) “They pretty much carried the entertainment category last year,” praises Charles Riotto, LIMA’s executive director.

Those ubiquitous pocket monsters earned LIMA’s top award as the License of the Year. Wizards of the Coast, Seattle, was named entertainment/character Licensee of the Year for its Pokemon hard goods (card sets and related merchandise). And Sears Roebuck & Co.’s PokeMart was half the reason the company won Entertainment Retailer of the Year honors. (A merchandising effort around Nickelodeon’s Blue’s Clues was the other half.)

Elsewhere in the Entertainment category, Kids’ Headquarters was named Licensee of the Year for soft goods for its Blue Clues apparel. And Burger King and itsy bitsy Entertainment took home the Promotion of the Year award for the fast feeder’s Teletubbies premium giveaway (June 1999 promo).

In the corporate brand category, M&M’s was named License of the Year. The candy had “a really well-executed program that enhanced the core brand [through apparel, toys, home furnishings, and other products] and was carried out in a very professional manner,” Riotto says.

Back on the Road: Lyrick Studios, Richardson, TX, is putting Barney & Friends back on the promotional road for the first time since the height of the property’s popularity in 1992.

Huge throngs of preschoolers and parents back then made mall-based tours “too crazy, so we started doing more controlled activities” like stage shows, explains Lyrick vp-marketing Sue Bristol Beddingfield. Although still strong, Barney is now old-hat as far as publicity goes. “It’s very hard for us to make news,” says Beddingfield. “We can get tens of thousands of people to these events and make some heavy noise.”

Better Homes & Gardens presents Barney’s Open House will hit eight cities starting next month. The magazine will support with an eight-page insert in its November issue, on-site sampling programs for advertisers, and a gift-with-purchase offer at Mervyn’s department stores (which will unveil a new line of Barney infant clothing and accessories). Other partners providing either direct or indirect support are Gerber (a video offer on 2.1 million products), pizza chain Sbarro’s (kids’ meal premiums), and Luv’s (a continuity program).

The tour is part of an effort to tweak the Barney character to create greater appeal for both toddlers and moms. “We’re not changing the character, but we are sprucing up the look around him,” says p.r. director Kelly Lane.

Victory in the Air: Bandai Entertainment has kept the development of animated kids show Gundam Wing close to home, negotiating all licensing deals itself rather than using third parties. The strategy seems to be working so far.

The series, which airs twice daily on Cartoon Network (in a kid-friendly version at 5:30 p.m., then later with more violence for the older set) has been a hit in Bandai’s native Japan for 20 years (and has sold more than $5 billion worth of product), so the company wanted to “keep greater control of things and make sure it was targeted to the right audiences,” says executive vp-marketing Ken Iyadomi.

Bandai unveiled 11 licensees at the show, which should add a raft of new products to the toy line the company launched last October. A May on-air sweeps offering a ride on a fighter plane drew 350,000 calls in 15 minutes, Iyadomi says, which led the company to plan another “flight” for fourth quarter: Kids send in photos of the toys they created out of Bandai’s model-building sets for a chance to become a Cartoon Network spokesperson and travel to Japan to visit Gundam’s animation studio.

Reindeer Games: For the second straight year, Minneapolis-based Pillsbury Co. will use a license from Golden Books Family Entertainment to offer Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer-shaped frozen cookie dough for the holiday season, this time adding SKUs from Santa Claus is Comin’ to Town (also from the Golden library) and A Charlie Brown Christmas (from a deal with Peanuts manager United Media, Kansas City, MO) to the festivities.

Pillsbury will support the eight million-package effort with TV spots, a 20 million-piece national FSI, and P-O-P including interactive coolers, after launching the product with little promotional back-up in ’99. The FSI will include a coupon for the Rudolph and Santa videos with Pillsbury proofs of purchase. “It was a great cookie, but we didn’t do too much around it last year,” says Michael Perkins, Pillsbury associate marketing manager. “It’s got a great mom-kid connection.”

The promotional drive actually begins at Halloween with cookies and a sweeps carrying Peanuts’s Linus (and his annual vigil for the Great Pumpkin), and later moves to Snoopy for Valentine’s Day and Golden’s Peter Cottontail for Easter. Westport, CT-based Ryan Partnership’s Minneapolis office handles.

Cookie Monsters: The folks at newly rebranded Sesame Workshop (formerly Children’s Television Workshop) happily dished out cookies from a new line of Sesame Street treats from Keebler Co. (which has taken a backseat on packaging, where its name is found only in the fine print). The new venture is the result of “several years of research at the Workshop” to make sure the products would fly “before we even went to Keebler,” says group vp-licensing Paul Crystal. The nonprofit company is actively looking for similar product alliances with big-name manufacturers – and for more straight promotional deals like its spring cereal effort with Kellogg Co. (January promo), says Crystal.

Schoolhouse Rot: Scholastic, Inc., New York City, generated some buzz from a property it wasn’t even pitching heavily, a new kids’ book series called Horrible Histories that spices up learning by presenting “history with the nasty bits leftin” (such as gruesome descriptions of the mummification process and the bathing habits of ancient Romans). Already a hit in the U.K., the series will launch in the U.S. later this year.

Good Mornings: General Mills and OddzOn, Inc., Napa, CA, are beginning the national rollout of a four-SKU line of Cheerios-branded cereal dispensers. Minneapolis-based General Mills is looking for licenses that “bring the products, and the emotions behind the products, to life,” says Leigh Ann Schwarzkopf, manager of trademark licensing.