Licensing professionals and licensees can win the brand’s support, and win support for their licensees, if we can deliver licensing programs that integrate the brand’s own marketing efforts and promote the brand’s own core business goals.

To make one point clear: It is not necessary for a licensing program to integrate a brand’s marketing program to be successful. There are countless examples of great licensing programs that utilize a brand’s equities without directly supporting its core business goals. But if a licensee wants to gain a brand’s support, and if the brand itself wants a licensing program that drives its own corporate goals, then its licensed products should support those goals in several crucial ways.

What It Takes

There are certain requirements for a program that fits with and supports a brand’s own goals.

• Categories that Support Brand Equities. All licensed products should reflect the equities of the brands they represent, and brands should not be licensed into product categories inconsistent with their core equities. But only the products that actually support those equities can be incorporated into the brand’s own marketing efforts. Consider brands with long histories: While they can be licensed into categories that fit such equities (especially when retro themes are popular), brand managers will not have strong reasons to support programs that do not emphasize the current brand positioning and business goals. John Deere and Coke both have successful licensing programs that draw on a unique heritage but cannot be integrated into the more contemporary positioning or business goals of the brands they represent.
  
  
• Consistent positioning. A brand can truly integrate a licensed product into its own marketing goals if the positioning of the licensed product is aligned with the positioning of the core brand itself. For example, if the core brand is a premium brand, then the licensed product must be a premium product, and not just a higher-priced version of a cheap product. This does not mean that a premium brand should not license a t-shirt; it means only that the t-shirt deal will not be one that the brand can use to build its own business.
  
  
• Similar target consumers. A brand will be more likely to integrate a licensing program into its own marketing efforts if its target consumers are the same. This does not mean that a brand that targets young consumers cannot license products mostly purchased by their elders, like collectibles; there are many examples of big successes along these lines. It means only that a brand will not spend money to support a licensing program that does not reach the same consumers its marketing plan is designed to reach.
  
  
• Complementary Channels of Distribution. A brand manager will be uninterested in supporting a licensee whose products are not sold in either (1) the same channels of distribution as the core brand or (2) a channel of distribution that offers strategic benefits to the brand. For example, a consumer packaged goods brand might enjoy seeing branded t-shirts for sale at Hot Topic, but it will not be able to integrate that program into its own efforts to promote a core brand sold only at supermarkets and drugstores.
  
  
• Successful Licensee. As much as a licensee may deserve a brand’s support, it must be capable of succeeding on its own; a brand will be much more likely to spend dollars to support a licensee if they can see that the licensee’s work is worth supporting. Brand managers are focused on one goal: growing the sales of the brand they work for. Licensing professionals can talk about why brand managers should support licensees until we are blue in the face, but the best case we can make for gaining that support comes with a strong and successful licensee.
  
  

A Case Study

An example of fully integrated licensing can be found in Southern Comfort eggnog, a national program launched in 2002 by HP Hood as the licensee and IMC as the licensing agency (the author is CEO of IMC). The program fulfilled the requirements listed above in the following ways, and with the following results:

• Product Category that Supports Brand Equities. Southern Comfort’s first national eggnog program debuted at a time when the brand was emphasizing its own unique flavor profile and “mixability.” A non-alcoholic drink mix is a great way to reinforce that message, and has allowed the brand to incorporate the licensed product into its own PR and advertising efforts.
  
  
• Consistent positioning. The Southern Comfort brand was interested only in licensing programs consistent with its own premium positioning: the formulation is rich and creamy; its packaging is colorful and unique; and its price is always at the top end of any retailer’s offerings.
  
  
• Similar target consumers.
Beverage alcohol brands target only consumers above the legal drinking age. Eggnog is consumed almost entirely by adults and is therefore consistent with the brand’s legal requirements as well as its own marketing goals.


• Complementary Channels of Distribution. Distribution of Southern Comfort’s eggnog serves the brand in two important ways. In states (like California) where alcohol can be sold in supermarkets, the core brand and the licensed eggnog are sold in the same place, with benefits both parties have leveraged extensively; they have made joint sales calls on major accounts and funded coupon promotions in retailers where the products can actually be shelved together. In states where alcohol cannot be sold in supermarkets, the brand’s licensed eggnog gains the brand a presence in places where it cannot go itself. In either type of state, eggnog distribution complements the brand and its own business and marketing goals.
  
  
• Successful Licensee. As a licensing partner HP Hood understood its own obligation to make the program succeed. It has not asked for support that its own success did not justify; nor has it asked the brand for support in forms that would not also benefit the brand itself.
  
  

Conclusion

Licensing professionals sometimes feel like the Rodney Dangerfields of marketing; we’re always trying to earn the respect of the brands we represent. When we can satisfy the brand’s own goals for marketing and growing their business, however, we will earn the support of brand managers, and we will achieve sustainable success from licensing programs that can be integrated into brand marketing programs, and vice versa.