Brand licensing: A powerful marketing tool for today’s shopping battlefield

How do brands find consumers? How do they communicate with them when they do? And how do brands motivate them to purchase their product? Not so long ago, brand owners could rely on advertising to help them answer these questions. Not anymore. The Internet has turned everything on its head. New paths, both online and offline, are disrupting traditional ways of reaching the consumer. But there is another powerful but underutilised marketing tool that first emerged when advertising was still in its infancy: brand licensing. Licensing, whereby a brand owner permits other companies to create, market and sell products (or services) under their brand name for a royalty or fee, dates back more than 125 years. Until recently, with few exceptions, licensing did not have a seat at the marketing table. Now, however, in this era of digital revolution and retail transformation, it is being recognised as a way of engaging and bonding with consumers, inviting them to participate with a brand instead of pushing a brand at them. Licensing offers consumers a wider range of brand-aligned products with which consumers can interact. But it is vital that a licensing programme is well structured. This means that to be successful it needs to be able to fulfil some, or all, of the six objectives that this paper identifies. As this paper demonstrates, several major brands have implemented successful licensing programmes that follow this model, including Black & Decker, Coca-Cola, Baileys, Energizer, Polaroid, Procter & Gamble, Westinghouse and Weight Watchers (WW).