Licensing
“To deliver a credible service, an agent must understand the dynamics that drive success and deliver a platform to help drive the opportunity”
bring properties to market with an entire universe of personality and character interaction planned into the concept. Successful toy licensing is now made possible by the repositioning of toy companies to become brand owners – they no longer simply conceptualise a great play product, but rather an entire world of complementary assets to entertain the audience in every area.” With its past experience in
licensing toy brands, Bulldog has developed a reputation for picking properties that really work outside of their core competencies. Rob furthers: “Having great licensors is key to all brands, but never more so than in toy licensing. Working with Moose has really demonstrated the scale of opportunity possible when a truly creative company has great market presence. “Moose Toys’ ability to drive consumer
interest through truly incredible product such as Magic Mixies, delivers exciting new worlds to consumers, which are then enhanced through content and a pipeline of innovation, enabling licensees to take the brand values and characters into new worlds of entertainment, and enhance the fun across all appropriate product areas.” However, a note of caution should be made. Not all toy properties work when it comes to leading a licensing programme.
How Bulldog began
One of the reasons for the foundation of Bulldog Licensing was to create an agency which understood the factors that deliver success for retailers, and this is especially true when it comes to licensing toy brands. Rob remembers: “A senior exec in the industry told me in 2005 that agency work was easy – throw enough brands at the market and one day, something would stick. But that wasn’t good enough for me. “If we were asking our partners to take a risk on our brands, we had to remove as much of the risk from that process as possible. To deliver a credible service, an agent must understand the dynamics that drive success and deliver a platform to help drive the opportunity.”
Bulldog was formed two years later and has gone on to deliver some of the industry’s biggest hits, driven by that same ethos of a comprehensive understanding of the market.
is fit for purpose before it is ever presented and it is not just thrown at the market in the hope something might stick. That is true for all brands, including toys. The toy brands which have been successful in licensing have displayed those key tenets behind successful licensing in all categories. The key is to understand those metrics and know where to find them (and where not!).
Rob believes there are some key factors which ensure a brand is fit for a licensing purpose. The first is brand currency. “Reach is a crucial element – what scale of audience a brand can reach is vital, but reach is not everything,” explains Rob. “If it were, there would be huge licensing programmes behind BBC Breakfast. “An ability to entertain the audience
is central to any licensed brand – toy or otherwise. We are asking the end consumer to take a social risk, to literally wear on their sleeve the brand that we represent: to say to their friends that they belong to the group of people that think x is great. So we need to make sure it is great in order to reduce the social risk of their decision.” Also imperative is scalability. If a property is only relevant in a couple of areas, it’s unlikely to work as a licensed brand. As with any brand being considered
for licensing, toy brands need to meet a number of other criteria including the time to market, the product mix, where is sits at retail, what its competition is, and much much more. Rob explains his selection process: “At Bulldog, we interrogate every brand opportunity with 37 questions prior to considering whether or not is should be in our portfolio. It is difficult to get into our agency, and it should be. “Licensees, retailers and consumers should know that the brand representative has taken on that role of ensuring a brand
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Looking ahead, Bulldog has another key toy brand ready for the licensing arena in 2022. Rob outlines: “Working with Moose Toys, Bulldog is once again putting together one of the most exciting programmes for the new brand, Magic Mixies. Delivering staggering sales already, Magic Mixies was the must-have Christmas toy for
2021 and has amazing brand development plans for 2022 and beyond. “Mixies has the opportunity to dominate the charts for licensed toy brands and, having launched the opportunity at BLE ’21, we are already closing agreements in all key categories with retail driving the demand,” exclaims Rob.
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