Feature Fair Opinion: Kelvyn Gardner Brand awareness
PUBLISHING AND licensing have long been partner industries and the Frankfurt Book Fair has been a key staging point for licensing businesses for many years. But does Frankfurt still hold this position? My own background encompasses
20 years as a publisher of children’s collectable stickers and cards, first at Edizioni Panini of Italy and latterly with the business I co- founded, Merlin Publishing (now part of Topps Inc, of USA). Troughout the 1980s and 1990s I operated a sort-of “alternative calendar” in my world with Bologna signalling the beginning of the “licensing spring” and Frankfurt, six months later, the last call before the Christmas retailing season ended, albeit temporarily, the diurnal business of looking for new licensing opportunities. I can’t have been the only
licensing manager who took this view. In fact, licensing seemed to “piggy-back” on many a trade fair that, officially at least, were not licensing fairs at all. You can certainly throw Mip and MipCom into this hat. Toy Fair in New York goes in there, too. At each of these events my diary would be full of meetings with licensors and agents, and I recall that Frankfurt could be an especially long day if I was unfortunate enough not to have a city-centre hotel in any given year.
Big slice of the pie Tings have changed for me and I reckon they have changed for Frankfurt, too. Tere are many reasons for this. Firstly, rather than piggy-backing as I described above, licensing as an industry has, to a certain extent, come more into the foreground as business at large gets to understand more about this important marketing tool. October has seen the 10-year rise of a once-fledgling Brand Licensing show
thebookseller.com
opportunity for publishers to extend their rights and reach into multi- media”
in London which has now become a major international licensing event in the guise of Brand Licensing Europe, now the second biggest licensing trade fair in the world. BLE has often, in fact, overlapped the Frankfurt Book Fair in recent years. Bologna now has a licensing
off-shoot in the form of the Kids’ Licensing Forum, held within the Fiera pavilions and encompassing a conference and exhibition. Kazachok stages a successful licensing event in Paris each April. Te German office of the Licensing Industry Merchandisers Association, the body
I work for, puts on the highly popular Licensing Market in Munich each November. Is there a danger that Frankfurt will be squeezed entirely out of its licensing role? I don’t believe so. Why? Well, it does not take a
genius to see that publishing is facing challenges and opportunities in equal measure as a result of the convergence of digital media. Te e-book may be a threat in some ways, but equally it is an opportunity for publishers to extend their rights and reach into multimedia, apps, and entertainment based on and coming
Te e-book may be a threat in some ways, but equally it is an
Licensing is becoming an even bigger part of publishers’ revenue. Kelvyn Gardner looks at the evolution of the licensing businesses, and whether Frankfurt can still remain an important part of it
out of, the page. If that page is in many cases a screen, so be it.
Big slice of the pie Licensing thrives in all areas of consumer product, but entertainment has always been its core, especially among children. Typically, entertainment licensing accounts for around 46% of all annual licensing revenues across all product types. On top of that, publishing accounts for around 7%. Between the two, that’s a mighty big slice of the licensing pie. Te digital age presents a chance as never before for convergence to enhance and expand publishing’s role in licensing. IP owners will always need “storied content”. TV shows need the written word to allow consumers a deeper and daily-assessable entry into the world of the show’s characters if they are to win dedicated fans and consumers for their brand. Publishing is uniquely placed to
deliver this, and Frankfurt can stay at the heart of licensing’s search for quality licensee-partners. Tis year we have a special day of licensing education at the fair, which I’m delighted to be part of, and I congratulate the management on responding with this “call-to-action”. Licensing needs to grow bigger in
business everywhere, so we want an ever-expanding presence at key events worldwide. Maybe I will never quite return to my “alternative calendar” of earlier decades but I would certainly want to encourage the continuing expansion of licensing in the publishing field, and Frankfurt clearly has a key role in enabling both traditional formats, and the ever-changing world of digital publishing, to seize the opportunities that licensing affords.
Kelyvn Gardner is the m.d. of LIMA UK. He is speaking today at FBF Licensing Day, which begins at 14.30, Hall 4.C, Room Entente.
12 OCTOBER 2012 | THE BOOKSELLER DAILY AT FRANKFURT 17
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