BEL | Brand Extensions & Licensing Magazine | Fall 2015

AUTUMN 2015 | VOLUME 1 | ISSUE 1 | WWW.BELMAG.BIZ

BRAND EXTENSIONS & LICENSING WORLDWIDE HOW TO PROSPER FROM SHARING BEST PRACTICES FOR PROTECTING, PROMOTING AND ENHANCING BRAND INTEGRITY

Community of Best Practices COLLABORATIVE BRANDS. INNOVATIVE ACTION.

STUDIO

Renown artisan, Henry Dunay, now offers his sculpture and artistic expressions in multiple materials, all within select licensed categories.

License a Legend.

“The Father of American-made luxury in fine jewelry designs.”

Best in Pearl Design, Couture Jewelry Conference, 2001 | Best of the Best Jewelry Designer in the World, Robb Report, 1999/2000 Best American Jewelry Designer, Robb Report, 1999 | Contemporary Design Group Hall of Fame, 1996 | Diamonds International Award, 1994 Lifetime Achievement Award, Modern Jewelry Magazine, 1993 | DeBeer’s Men’s Collection Award, 1987 | Platinum Award, Japan, 1985

LuxeLicensing.com | +1 201 294 3697 Fine Leather, Silk, Crystal, Fine Gems, Furnishings, Fragrance, Accessories, Art ©2015 H.D.D., Inc. All Rights Reserved. The brand “Studio by Henry Dunay” is owned by H.D.D., Inc and Designer Henry Dunay. H.D.D.Inc, Henry Dunay, his current business affiliates and business advisers are not affiliated in any way with Henry Dunay Designs, Inc., as owned by Sandawana Holdings. No portion of this ad may be reproduced or distributed without the written permission of Luxe Licensing and H.D.D., Inc. and Designer Henry Dunay. LuxeLicensing is an independent, global brand representational group currently appointed for all “Studio by Henry Dunay” brand extension products and licensing considerations under the final design and distribution approval of Deisgner Henry Dunay, and/or H.D.D. Inc. LuxeLicensing, the corporation, it’s owners, management, staff, affiliate partners, sub-agents, or current clients are not affiliated in any aspect with Henry Dunay Designs, Inc., as owned by Sandawana Holdings. The “HD” insignia is trademarked by H.D.D., Inc. and Designer Henry Dunay and used by permission herein.

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Contents 34

COVER STORY

SPLiCE

COMMUNITY OF BEST PRACTICES The Society of Product Licensors Committed to Excellence is a global trade organization founded as best practice think-tank for trademark licensors. The organization continues to raise the bar of business standards for brand licensors and the brand industry overall. BEL talked with SPLiCE leaders to find out the whole story about organization, its initiatives, goals, and the future of trademark brand licensing.

FEATURES

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BIG INTERVIEW: Joseph P. Mohorovic, CPSC Commissioner

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BRAND LICENSING DOES NOT COME AT ZERO COST

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With extensive public policy, product manufacturing and product testing experience Mr. Mohorovic talk about Product Safety, challenges facing the Consumer Product Safety Commission, his initiatives, priorities and goals.

Many people think that brand licensing is easy money earned along the way, with royalty income representing net profit. In reality, it is far from that. What most people forget is that brand licensing requires resources, efforts, time and some investment. Best Practice by Christof Binder.

CHALLENGES IN GLOBAL LICENSEE MONITORING Underreported royalty revenues from non-domestic licensees are rising at a dramatic rate, resulting in a substantial loss of income to licensors. Sidney P. Blum, one of the world’s foremost authorities on royalty audits, explains challenges in the Global Licensee Monitoring globally.

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06 Editor’s Note

PUBLISHER | EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Goran Kernyak goran@belmag.biz

BEL rings in a fresh read

08 Brands In Brief

From Motorola, to Fortune, adidas, Cat and Tommy Hilfiger

CHIEF CREATIVE OFFICER William Kernyak william@belmag.biz

22 Brand: A License to Believe

How brand can stay competitive in the rapidly changed world?

26 Spooky Spending to Reach $6,9 Billion

INTERIM CMO Dan Scott dscott@belmag.biz

National Retail Federation’s Halloween Consumer Spending Survey

28 Grinch-less Holiday Season

Consumer pulse and retail holiday sales market research

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Sydney P. Blum Christof Binder Pete Canalichio Deborah J Scarpa Dan Scott Mark Di Somma

30 How Two Great Brands Inspired Two More

Toyota and Rolex. Two brands, two methods, two incredible accomplishments.

54 Brand Profile: David Beckham

A journey from soccer field to global brand worth over $710 million.

56 Brand to Watch: Lil’ Ledy - A Rebel With Style

Anatomy of a New Brand

SUBSCRIPTIONS: www.belmag.biz bel@belmag.biz

58 The Contour Centennial

Kiss the Past Hello.100 Years of the Iconic Coca-Cola Contour Bottle

60 Artful Commerce

BEL is a publication of: BEL | Brand Extensions and Licensing 708 Third Avenue, 6th Floor NY 10017, New York, USA P: +1 917 214 6101 E: bel@belmag.biz

Contemporary art fits into a multitude of licensing opportunities

62 Art Inspired and Licensed Products

Showcase: from Guggenhain, to Versaille and Smirke’s Facade

64 Social Media: Get Engaged to Facebook

The FB rules have changed, and you must be in the know to be in the now.

72 Spotlight on SPLiCE Members

www.belmag.biz

From AT&T to Whirlpool, twenty seven brand licensors presented.

81 Up and Coming Calendar of events

BEL magazine is published four times a year by BEL | Brand Extensions and Licensing. © 2015 BEL. All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by no any means without permission of the publisher.

All images are reproduced with permission of their respective owners.

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| BEL

Editor’s Note

BEL Rings in a Fresh Read on Brand Extensions and Licensing Worldwide

Welcome!

BEL Magazine is publication designed for qualified professionals who strive to connect, engage and collaborate with their peers in business – those who care about corporate brands, trademarks, brand extensions and licensing from all sides. The BEL audience are well-informed, growth-focused professionals searching for content that focuses on brand management, trademark protection, brand extensions and the overall licensing business experience.

This inaugural issue carries major feature on the Society of Product Licensors Committed to Excellence, and big interview with Mr. Joseph P. Mohorovic, CPSC Commissioner. Within the pages of first issue you will find information about more than hundred brands, best practices, market research, brand stories and through both, editorial and select advertisements, exclusive information about new players in the brand extensions and licensing business.

We would like to thank our Contributing Writers, numerous colleagues and SPLiCE and its members for all their support. Special thanks to the Institute of Contemporary Art - ICA Miami for collaboration, and to true artist and gentlemen, Mr. Henry Dunay, for honor to announce his licensing venture exclusively in the BEL magazine.

Let us go forward together.

Goran Kernyak, Editor-in-Chief

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BRAND AGENCIES IN BRIEF

Broad Street Licensing Group to Expand Tony Roma’s Brand Broad Street Licensing Group has been appointed by Romacorp, Inc., owner of the Tony Roma’s and TR Fire Grill restaurant chains, to represent its brands for licensing into the retail marketplace. Broad Street will extend the brands into strategically targeted products and alliances within the food category, including expanded frozen foods, refrigerated & shelf-stable sauces and dressings, fresh-prepared meals & appetizers as well as grilling appliances and associated products. Broad Street will bring the retail products to store shelves in both the U.S. market and overseas where the brand is expanding rapidly. Tony Roma’s is already

LMCA Named Licensing Agency for RCA in China The agency dedicated exclusively to brand extension licensing, LMCA, has been selected by RCA to represent its brand in China.

Through LMCA’s Shanghai office, licensees will be sought to sell RCA branded products with the same attributes the brand highlights in the US: strong American image, quality, value and trust.

Allan Feldman, CEO of LMCA stated, “With its long heritage and innovative products, RCA is well positioned to meet the demands

“Bill Cross and Carole Francesca are leaders in the licensing industry with a strong pedigree of taking restaurant brands to retail, and we are confident that their strong passion for our brands and industry connections will help drive growth for Romacorp,” said Jim Rogers, CMO for Romacorp, Inc. “Nothing says ‘ribs,’ ‘barbecue’ or ‘American’ like the Tony Roma’s name. We’re excited to take the Tony Roma’s brand to a new level in the U.S. market, and to introduce the brand in international markets,” said Bill Cross, Broad Street’s VP of Restaurant Licensing.

of the China consumer.” He added, “RCA enjoys the kind of respected worldwide reputation which is appealing in the China market. In China, quality evokes prestige, which makes this the perfect opportunity to expand RCA’s global reach and reinforce its global brand image.”

One of the most recognized names in the electronics industry and already a top ranked licensor, RCA has a full internal licensing staff in North America and in Europe addressing its licensing endeavors in all markets outside of China.

Spyder enters South Korea

elements of performance and fashion.

Ski and sportswear brand Spyder has launched in South Korea with an all-new product line available in freestanding stores and shop-in-shops. An accelerated retail rollout is planned with twenty-five Spyder stores opening across the country by the end of 2015. Spyder enters South Korea through an exclusive long-term global agreement between brands owner, Authentic Brands Group, and Global Brands Group.

Spyder is one of the world’s most recognizable and credible outdoor sportswear brands. Focused on enhancing the ski experience both on and off the mountain, Spyder prides itself on its advanced technical composition and style. Originally founded

by David Jacobs, coach of the Canadian Ski Team and Bob Beattie, coach of the United States Ski team, Spyder’s roots run deep in the ski community. The brand has been the official sponsor of the US Ski team since 1989. Spyder offers technical ski, fitness, and lifestyle apparel and accessories for men, women, and children. Spyder is a subsidiary of Authentic Brands Group, LLC.

Designed for the one of the world’s most fashion-forward and trendsetting markets and style-seeking South Korean consumer, both the men’s and women’s collections draw from the core DNA of the brand, fusing | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

under license in a variety of retail products, and Broad Street’s mandate is to grow the existing business.

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BRAND AGENCIES IN BRIEF

Latin World Entertainment Expand Sofia Vergara Lifetyle Brand Modern Family star Sofia Vergara, one of the highest-paid actress on TV, earned $37 million last year, according to Forbes. But Sofia is also a longtime entrepreneur who makes lucrative partnerships, endorsements and licensing deals through an agency she co-founded nearly two decades ago in Miami with former music promoter Luis Balaguer.

Since then, Latin World Entertainment grew from talent management agency into entertainment-marketing, production, licensing and new-media powerhouse. LatinWE represents the biggest stars, opinion makers and trendsetters in the Spanish-speaking entertainment world and leverages that star power to take brands into the burgeoning US Hispanic market. Sofia’s own endorsement contracts include deals with AT&T, Cover Girl, Diet Pepsi and Head & Shoulders.

Focusing to enhance her brand on global level, in January Sofia said goodbye to Kmart, the retailer with whom she kicked off her celebrity licensing four years ago with an apparel line.

Licensing deals for the Sofia Vergara Lifestyle Brand are also managed through the agency and include products such as Sofia Vergara Furniture Collection at Rooms to Go and Sofia Collection for Kay Jewelers. One of her latest licensing initiatives are fragrances Sofia by Sofia Vergara. First fragrance was launched in May and second in August.

Sofia is now expanding her business with two new partnerships announced recently.

E-hydrate The maker of natural Protein On-the-Go hydration drink mixes and energy gels announced that Sofia Vergara has joined the company as one of its equity partners.

“Sofia is one of the world’s leading women entrepreneurs and is a visionary professional whose presence extends well beyond that of a typical celebrity,” said Dan Adler, co-founder of E-hydrate. “We are honored that Sofia shares our enthusiasm for the company’s line of products and believes in the brand’s vision. Working with her and her team at Latin World Entertainment is a

pleasure.”

Sofia is enthusiastic about her involvement with E-hydrate. “I’m excited about E-hydrate’s momentum and commitment to making a range of great tasting and nutritious natural products for the whole family,” she said.

E-hydrate’s natural products are ready all the time and are available in convenient single-serve packaging, including the innovative Protein On-the-Go RTM (“Ready to Mix”) patent-pending pouch, which becomes its own bottle when water is added. E-hydrate’s drink mixes are available at all Target stores, and in keeping with Target’s tradition of generosity, E-hydrate donates 5% of its profits to benefit local community organizations from the sales of its line of natural nutritional products.

SharkNinja An innovative leader in the housewares industry, announced its collaboration with Sofia Vergara, and unveil the Ninja brand’s new coffee machine, the Ninja Coffee Bar brewer.

A native Colombian, Sofia is a passionate coffee lover. So, when SharkNinja CEO, Mark Rosenzweig, invited Sofia into the development process for the groundbreaking new Ninja Coffee Bar, she jumped at the opportunity to help develop a coffee machine that would enable her to enjoy the full flavor potential of coffee.

Ninja Coffee Bar features revolutionary Thermal Flavor Extraction technology, which delivers a variety of sizes and styles while achieving the perfect brew richness level every time. Ninja has completely reinvented the traditional drip coffee maker by designing a machine that unlocks coffee grounds’ full flavor potential and provides smooth, rich and well balanced hot and cold coffee and specialty drinks.

“The Ninja Coffee Bar will not only transform the coffee industry, we believe the new technology we’ve developed together will truly change the way consumers make—and drink—their coffee,” said Rosenzweig. “The Ninja Coffee Bar will help coffee lovers create delicious, rich, smooth coffee, iced coffee and coffeehouse-style specialty drinks to PAGE 09 |

enjoy at home and on the go.”

According to Luis Balaguer, CEO of Latin World Entertainment, “SharkNinja is a company known for innovation, market dominance, and customer satisfaction. They truly share Sofia’s passion for both coffee and creating products that enhance the lives of their customers. A perfect partner for the Sofia Vergara lifestyle brand.”

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TECH BRANDS IN BRIEF Binatone Acquired License For Motorola Accessories, Showcased World’s Smartest Baby Monitor Binatone Global, provider of IoT connected consumer electronics and lifestyle products, has acquired exclusive license rights to design, develop and market Motorola accessory products. This new agreement will add a range of consumer mobile accessory products including mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets, wireless speakers and car connectivity products to its portfolio of licensed products. Binatone will take over as the responsible party for supplying existing and new Motorola branded accessories in these categories worldwide from October 2015.

Binatone began its longstanding collaboration with Motorola Mobility in 2008, and is currently the official licensee for Motorola baby monitors, home and pet monitors.

The Motorola brand offers the largest baby monitors assortment in the word. The range was showcased at the Kind + Jugend trade-

show in Germany. The brand introduced new baby monitors with analytical features as well as a new product concept: Motorola Smart Nursery. This concept will include a variety of products outside of the baby monitor assortment featuring analytical characteristics and smart-sensors.

The newest monitor that Motorola introduced, MBP877 Connect, will be known as the world’s smartest baby monitor and offers analytics including temperature, humidity

level, noise and baby sleep movement analytics. All of Motorola’s connected products, including the MBP877 Connect, allow users to check in on babies from anywhere in the world via the Hubble application.

During the Kind + Jugend tradeshow, Motorola also introduced the MOTO LIFE, world’s smallest portable 2.5K lifestyle camera. The MOTO LIFE is a lifestyle camera with multiple uses and a 138-degree angle lens for a wide field-of-view.

The Cat S30 Smartphone is Made Rugged Bullitt Group, a worldwide licensee of Caterpillar for „rugged“ mobile devices and accessories, has launched the rugged Cat S30 smartphone - an affordable rugged phone offering tough credentials in an easy grip, non-slip design.

The smartphone is the result of extensive research amongst professional tradesmen and existing Cat phones users, 69% of whom cite their work environment as an influence on their decision to purchase a rugged phone. To address this need the Cat S30 has been built with tough professions in mind and builds on Caterpillar’s heritage of durable, quality products. The Cat DNA is found in every Cat mobile phone and accessory offered by Bullitt Mobile and provides boundless experience with robust mobility. Boasting superior rugged credentials throughout its design, the S30 includes anything from an easy-grip casing and shear strength material to IP68 and Mil SPEC 810G certification. The waterproof tough phone also boasts long battery life and glove-on working technology and comes with the latest version of Android. | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

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TECH BRANDS IN BRIEF Packard Bell Brand is Back to The U.S. JMM Lee Properties, a trademark owner and licensor, had secured trademark rights in the U.S. and reintroduces the Packard Bell brand to North America. Consumers will again be able to purchase computers, tablets and other technology products under the venerable brand name.

The Packard Bell name in the United States dates back to the 1930’s when the mark first appeared on radios sold regionally in the western United States. The company later ventured into television manufacturing due primarily to a patent agreement with RCA that allowed Packard to produce TV sets using proprietary RCA components. The Packard Bell name also appeared on a full

Pollard Banknote Signed Corvette Pollard Banknote, a leading lottery partner that provides instant tickets, interactive solutions, and marketing support, announced the addition of Chevrolet Corvette to its portfolio of licensed brands.

This new licensing agreement will provide lottery clients the opportunity to capitalize on Corvette’s brand prestige and social media presence, and add this luxury sports car and branded merchandise into a lottery program—for a supercharged instant ticket lineup.

Under this exclusive license, Pollard

I-O DATA DEVICE Joins the Blu-Ray Disc Licensing Program I-O Data Device, Inc., a well-known brand in the PC peripheral market in Japan, has joined the One-Blue Blu-ray Disc product licensing program as a licensee. I-O Data signed the License Agreement for Manufacturer of Aftermarket BD Drive Bundled with BD-PC Software which grants I-O Data access to important patents essential to the Blu-ray Disc standard from leading licensors.

One-Blue administers the licensing program for patents essential to Blu-ray Disc products and is the joint licensing agent of its licensors, including Columbia Technology Ventures, CyberLink, Dell, Fujitsu, Hewlett-Packard, Hitachi Consumer Electronics

line of home computers in the United States in the 1980s and 1990s before the brand went dormant in 1999.

Although Packard Bell goods have been sold widely in Europe and Asia for over a decade, the U.S. launch of the Packard Bell brand is unaffiliated with goods sold outside the United States.

JMM Lee Properties owns and licenses a diversified portfolio of home appliance, telecommunication and fashion trademarks, including the brands Bendix, AirTouch, Caloric, Litton, Modern Maid, Frogskins, and Slates. In addition to selling products under its own brands, JMM Lee also licenses its trademarks to leading retailers and manufacturers worldwide.

Banknote can now provide instant tickets that feature the redesigned Corvette Stingray - considered a flagship brand in the Chevrolet lineup. More than three million admirers interact with the Corvette brand via Facebook, and fans follow on Instagram to view the latest photographs that display the car’s provocative and distinct design.

This strong social presence facilitates the incorporation of social media elements into a lottery program, resulting in invaluable player engagement.

“The quintessential luxury sports car, Corvette Stingray is an ideal aspirational prize

that will appeal to car enthusiasts and lottery players alike. Corvette also offers a robust licensing program with premium products that mirror the superb craftsmanship of the Corvette brand and will be great for second chance prizing,” said Sina Aiello, Pollard Banknote’s Vice President, Marketing.

The Corvette license enhances Pollard Banknote’s sales-driving portfolio of high profile brands selected to appeal to the existing lottery player while attracting new players that are brand loyal. Current licenses include NASCAR, Tetris, Frogger, Star Trek, and others

Co. Ltd., JVC KENWOOD, LG Electronics, Panasonic, Pioneer, Philips, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Taiyo Yuden and Yamaha.

These sixteen Licensors have made available more than ten thousand issued Blu-ray Disc product patents worldwide that are essential to implementing the Blu-ray, DVD, and CD standards. One-Blue offers licenses for these patents for various Blu-ray Disc products including players, recorders, playback drives, recorder drives, software, PCs, pre-recorded discs, and recordable discs.

One-Blue aims at creating a level playing field and its patent pool is built upon industry best practices with attractive royalties, low transaction costs and a streamlined patent licensing process.

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PUBLISHING BRANDS IN BRIEF Around the World With Encyclopaedia Britannica Licensing agency JRL Group has secured a licensing partnership with GeoToys to develop a full line of educational puzzles and games under the Encyclopaedia Britannica and Britannica Kids brands. Geotoys first product under the license will be the board game Around the World. This award-winning board game has been revamped to include content from the world’s leader in reference and education, and includes over

200 questions and answers in categories such as geography, language, culture, and people over the world. The Encyclopaedia Britannica Around the World board game will complement the successful line of products at retail including the Britannica Interactive Science Library, the Britannica Interactive Animal Library, Britannica U.S. Talking Puzzles, the Britannica Kids: U.S. Presidents app on iTunes as well as the debut of the Encyclopaedia Britannica World Information Atlas this holiday season at Costco.

The Publishing Juggernaut Ventures Into Wine Women books publisher, Harlequin, partnered with Vintage Wine Estates to launch the first range of wines bearing the Harlequin brand. The brand new collection, called Vintages by Harlequin, features three varietals which include chardonnay, cabernet sauvignon, and juicy and complex red wine blend.

Vintage Wine Estates crafted Vintages by Harlequin wines to showcase the varietals’ individual styles as well as the nuances of the regions they are harvested from. The wines are available in U.S. only.

Fortune and Cornell University Launch Online Business Strategy Program Fortune, a Time Inc. brand, and eCornell, Cornell University’s online learning group, have launched a new online business education program titled “Mastering 21 Century Business Strategy.”

The program consists of six courses, each of which takes five to seven hours to complete, and is authored by Professor Justin Johnson of Cornell University’s Johnson Graduate School of Management. The courses cover such topics as competitive advantage and profitability, strategic positioning in markets, mergers and acquisitions strategy, supply chain threats and opportunities, the application of game theory to business strategy and much more. The program draws on Fortune’s deep editorial resources, access to business leaders and rich journalistic legacy to deliver unique and enriching course curricula to students. Fortune will provide students breaking business news and in-depth analysis, interactive digital and video content and | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

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access to targeted content featuring Fortune 500 C-suite executives.

“Fortune has always been a critical resource for business leaders and will now extend its mission to support the next generation of talent,” said Alan Murray, editor of Fortune.

“Technology is driving business change faster than ever before. Our program with Cornell will help students keep up with the broad implications of those changes.” “eCornell has always offered online programs that enable students to learn skills that they can apply,” said Paul Krause, CEO of eCornell. “In this new program, we take it a step further with current events and Fortune’s in-depth analysis.”

“This partnership illustrates the power of Time Inc.’s brands, as well as the potential to extend them across platforms and into new revenue streams. This is the first time Time Inc. has developed a branded university certification for one of its properties,” said Jim Jacovides., SVP International Licensing & Development, Time Inc.

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FOOD BRANDS IN BRIEF New Mott’s Fresh Sliced Apple Products In response to the rapid growth of consumer interest in organic produce, Robinson Fresh, one of the largest produce company in the world, introduced new organic varieties and value-added fresh apple products to the Mott’s brand. Mott’s, a brand of Dr. Pepper Snapple Group, is the nation’s leading producer of branded apple sauce and apple juice, and Robinson Fresh continues to expand the brand by developing new apple products, such as retail packs of apple slices with cheese, caramel, peanut butter and grapes. Mott’s fresh apples are an integral part of Robinson Fresh’s robust lineup of consumer brands available through exclusive licensing agreements.

Herbalife Launch “CR7 Drive” Sports Drink Herbalife and Cristiano Ronaldo teamed up for launch of Herbalife’s premiere sports drink: “CR7 Drive”. As Ronaldo’s official nutrition sponsor, CR7 Drive is the crowning jewel in the nutrition company’s relationship with famed athlete. Herbalife has been committed to the athlete both on and off the field as part of its multi-year agreement with Ronaldo.

CR7 Drive is a contemporary take on traditional sports drinks, without any artificial flavors or sweeteners. Like all Herbalife24 products, CR7 Drive has been tested for all banned substances through the NSF Certified for Sport program and meets the stringent standards set forth by the dietary supplement Good Manufacturing Practices.

PEZ Candy Partners With WWE New partnership between global entertainment company World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and PEZ Candy brings together two brands that have been part of American pop culture for decades. PEZ will introduce a collectible Giftset that will include three fan favorites: WWE Superstars The Rock, John Cena and The Undertaker.

Each set will also include one six pack of PEZ Candy.

The WWE Giftset will begin shipping to retailers in April 2016, just in time for WrestleMania 32.

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SPORT BRANDS IN BRIEF Derrick Rose and adidas Launch D Rose 6 A kid from Chicago’s Englewood neighborhood is not supposed to be the No. 1 overall pick by his hometown team and the youngest MVP in NBA history. The league’s top point guard is not supposed to have his will tested by suffering back-to-back season ending injuries and become nearly written off. But not every player is Derrick Rose, who learned toughness and resilience from his family and neighborhood to develop an aggressive game and cold, confident demeanor that remains unchanged.

Derrick continues to prove that he will never stop. Returning to the playoffs for the first time in nearly three years, he averaged more than 20 points and 6 assists and drained an unforgettable buzzer-beater to help give the Bulls a victory in Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals. While the squad would drop a hard fought series, Rose proved he’s still capable of dominance on the court.

Embodying Rose’s journey of overcoming adversity with hard work and perseverance, adidas unveils the D Rose 6. Inspired by his will to never stop, the silhouette is designed to elevate his aggressive game and compliment his drive to win championships.

Blending details inspired by the city of

Chicago with premium materials for a luxury finish, the D Rose 6 features the six-point star of the Chicago flag at the base of the laces and six reflective lines in the heel. The

silhouette’s diamond pattern upper and faceted eyelets call on the sharp, bold architecture of the city with a rugged feel to match Rose’s play.

Mr. Flawless Adds His Golden Touch to a FILA Classic

This T-1 Mid release is superb, as the two shoe pack appears in two iterations of black and white premium leather. Both colorways are dressed with a rich-golden flag and white midsole, sitting atop a gum outsole. Dual branding appears on the tongue with Flawless’ signature “Mr.” logo appearing above the FILA linear logo on one shoe and the Flawless linear logo below the F-Box on the opposite. Other product details include the Italian flag stitching on the tongue, custom sublimation foot-bed, and gold lace tips.

The custom packaging is incredible, with allover gold “Mr.” detailing on the interior and “Flawless” in FILA type-font on the exterior.

The release saw terrific sell through as pairs sold out both online, as well as Flawless’ Diamond District storefront location.

Since its introduction into Tennis, FILA has pushed the boundaries in tennis and fashion.

The T-1 Mid silhouette has since become a staple in the heritage footwear category, decades after its first appearance on court.

To put the exclamation point on the month of August, FILA has teamed with one of the most talked about jewelers in the game, Mr. Flawless on the T-1 Mid. Nestled in the heart of New York City’s Diamond District, Mr. Flawless, born Greg Yuna, has developed some of the highest profiled clientele. The craftsmanship he puts into his work and brand place him in an elite category, making this collaboration a no brainer, especially with the T-1 Mid model. | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

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SPORT BRANDS IN BRIEF Bulova and ManUnited Continue a Tradition of Legendary “Firsts” In yet another “first-of-its-kind” signature innovation, Bulova takes an unprecedented step with the launch of the ultimate cobranded timepiece—the Manchester United Club Watch—as a tribute to the world’s most storied football club.The modern classic boasts nine design links to Manchester United’s prolific history, expressed as touchstone details on the dial, case and leather strap, and is powered by Bulova’s proprietary UHF high-performance quartz movement.

Notes Bulova President Gregory Thumm, “This historic launch of the Manchester United Club Watch was shaped by a singular design vision, and with utmost attention to quality and craftsmanship.”

Destined to quickly become a collector’s item, the Manchester United Club Watch not only mines the franchise’s rich history, but also scores on design ingenuity.

• The 1878 at the 18- and 78-minute markers recognizes the club’s beginning as a team of railway workers and its original green and gold colors; • A flourish of train track, between the 12hour and 18-minute markers, signifies the importance of the Lancashire & Yorkshire

railroad to Manchester’s development as the world’s first industrial city; • The 7th hour on the watch, in bold red, is a nod to the number 7 jersey, worn by many of the club’s most memorable players; • A blacked out 23-minute marker commemorates the fatalities in the tragic 1958 plane crash, killing eight players, journalists and supporters; • The “United Trinity”- Best, Law, Charlton is honored by the red 7-, 9- and 10-minute markers on the watch, representing their jersey numbers; • A red 20-minute marker highlights the club’s league title haul - the highest in the English game; • Iconic details include the club crest on the dial, the Red Devil emblem on the crown, and the strap made from vintage-inspired genuine leather to pay homage to the footballs used in the early years of the game; Manchester United’s Group Managing Director Richard Arnold comments: “Bulova has been creating quality time pieces since 1875, just three years before the Club was formed. They understand how the Club’s history makes us who we are and we are delighted Bulova has commemorated some of United’s most important moments within this specially designed watch.”

Nike Vision and Kevin Durant Team Up Nike Vision and professional basketball player Kevin Durant teamed up again for the newest edition of their eyewear. Fall 2015 collection will feature an expanded offering, comprised of three adult styles and three children’s styles. The color story for the new collection was inspired by the bright, playful colors that Nike has incorporated into KD’s past shoe and apparel collections.

Nike Vision will also create 35 exclusive kits featuring an exclusive leather box complete with KD’s logo and signature, correlating directly to Durant’s jersey number 35. Each kit will contain all three available color ways and will be numbered one to 35. Marchon, the eyewear manufacturer and Nike licensee, will reward kit number one to a lucky winner via a sweepstakes on the Nike Vision web site.

Kit number 35 will be gifted to Durant himself. The remaining 33 kits will be available at select retailers.

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AUTOMOTIVE BRANDS IN BRIEF An Innovative all-Italian Collaboration

Collezione Automobili Lamborghini New Fall/Winter collection

It was 1963. Ferruccio Lamborghini turned to Pirelli to supply the tires for his brand new company’s super sports car, the 350 GTV, presented as a prototype at the Turin Motor Show the same year. And thus one of the most successful partnerships in automotive history was born, destined to mark some of the most important technological and historical automotive breakthroughs. That partnership, born of a pioneering era and set in motion by men of the caliber of Ferruccio Lamborghini and Leopoldo Pirelli, is still going strong today.

Two experts in motion now have come together to create an original capsule collection: Automobili Lamborghini powered by Pirelli Design. The partnership aims to create products with a strong technical inclination, inspired by the world of performance tires and aimed at “premium” customers. The project extends the two companies’ brand values and design – technology, elegance and 100% Italian-made quality – to clothing and footwear.

The DNA of the world’s most desirable super sports car brand translates into the Collezione Automobili Lamborghini with exceptional quality, innovative materials and bold design.

This contemporary fashion line delivers a new interpretation of Made in Italy menswear, based on sophisticated details and clean design.

For the winter, a total look with select hightech materials suitable even in extreme weather conditions. Waterproof membranes and bold bright orange or contrasting grey profiles are used in a capsule collection including super fitting short coats, t-shirts and polo-shirts in stretch fabrics such as piquet and jersey, fleece pants and five-pocket cotton trousers, all with the Lamborghini logo marking this authentic and internationally famous Made in Italy brand.

Moccasins These ergonomic driving shoes are designed to assist the articulation of the driver’s foot while driving. A brushed calf-leather upper has a shield-shaped Automobili Lamborghini cut-out in which the rubberized tongue fits.

In an unmistakable mark of Pirelli Design engineering, the rubber soles have a tread design evoking the radial pattern of its famous tires.

Polo shirt The polo shirt is crafted in mercerized cotton piquet, featuring a ribbed inlaid collar with two tones of gray and contrasting detailing in the neck and vents. A high-definition rubberized Automobili Lamborghini shield has a 3D effect and finishes off the shirt. | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

Jacket The highest levels of technology and quality, as well as significant research, have gone into the combination of materials: lambskin and nylon. “All-seasons” light padding ensures a garment suited to all latitudes. | PAGE 16

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AUTOMOTIVE BRANDS IN BRIEF Continental on More Grip With adidas The many parallels between tires and shoes are not hard to find. Tires are to cars what shoes are to runners – they form the only link with the road and must ultimately be able to transmit all of the forces involved. The rubber compounds specially developed for adidas by Continental feature particularly high levels of grip on all surfaces, helping runners to conserve energy that would go to waste in a shoe with less grip.

“Through our interactive, multimedia GetYourGrip campaign we are out to raise awareness of how the technology transfer from tires to shoes can result in performance improvements of up to 30 percent,” says Alexander Bahlmann, Head of PR, Passenger and Light Truck Tires at Continental . “The fascinating thing here is the sheer range of applications of these shoes that now extends from running, outdoor, and trekking, all the way to snowboard footwear.”

Since 2007, international tire manufacturer Continental has been supplying sports goods manufacturer adidas with “Traction Compound” soles for various segments of the footwear market. The initial adidas project focused on better grip has since grown into a full-blown technology cooperation, the scope of which adidas and Continental have progressively expanded. Today more than 80 different running, trekking, and outdoor shoes for men and women are already on the market. All of these shoes have extremely high grip soles made from special rubber

compounds devised by Continental. Further models are already in the pipeline. The experts at Continental have also developed sole compounds for extreme conditions such as snow and ice, to provide professionals and sports enthusiasts alike with even greater safety and comfort.

In the meantime, for both companies the relationship has developed into a textbook example of cross-industry collaboration, a fact reflected not least in the way that all adidas shoes with Continental Traction Compounds are clearly marked with the tire manufacturer’s logo at the point of sale as well.

While adidas benefits from the technical improvement of its products, for Continental the increased visibility in the premium shoe segment presents a fine opportunity to convince people who are less interested in cars of the quality and performance of its own products. Unlike drivers, who often pay little attention to the performance characteristics and condition of their tires, running enthusiasts show much greater interest in using premium shoes, which makes them more accessible to messages about the benefits of the latest product innovations and how they can translate into better performance.

Goodyear Launches Collection of Luggage and Bags American brand Goodyear has announced the launch of its collection of luggage and bags in the UK this October. The new Goodyear Luggage and Bags collection delivers a large variety of soft trolleys and hard case tough luggage for travelers who seek comfort and safety, as well as a collection of outdoor bags which provide smart technical features for voyagers planning long excursions. The new Goodyear collection also offers shoulder bags and duffle bags, as well as accessories, such as wallets and waist belt/hip pack. Backpacks come with rubber details and racing inspired looks reminiscent of Goodyear’s motorsports and racing heritage. The Goodyear Luggage and Bags collection will be available online at amazon.com from the end of October 2015.

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| BEL Info

AUTOMOTIVE BRANDS IN BRIEF

Shelby American & Carroll Shelby Licensing Continue int’l Expansion Automotive manufacturer and entrepreneur Carroll Shelby is one of the most famous and successful high performance visionaries in the world. He was also a pioneer for modern automotive licensing programs. In the 1960s, he began licensing his name and designs for various products. He founded Shelby American, Inc. and Carroll Shelby Licensing Inc., which is the exclusive holder of trademarks and vehicle design rights for some of the most famous muscle cars and high-performance vehicles. CSL also holds trademark rights for Shelby-branded apparel, accessories and collectibles.

To satisfy international demand for Shelby products, CSL and Shelby American have responded by opening a series of mod shops and Carroll Shelby’s Store locations worldwide. By partnering with high caliber businesses to open mod shops for custom| BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

ers in Europe, the Middle East, Australia, Canada, China and Africa, the company can help fans sate hunger for Shelby vehicles and parts across the globe.

“Shelby is continuing its international expansion by placing factory authorized modification centers and retail locations in key markets,” said Neil Cummings, Co-CEO of Carroll Shelby International and CEO of Carroll Shelby Licensing. “We will continue to open mod shops worldwide to give people access to the cars, parts and authentic Shelby merchandise they want. Our mod shops will be run by the best experts in those areas, who know the local regulations and are in touch with the consumer base.”

Shelby American offers performance vehicles and related products ranging from authentic continuation Cobra roadsters and Coupes, to cars based on the Ford Mustang.

Shelby American also builds the Shelby Raptor muscle truck and Shelby Focus | PAGE 18

ST hot hatch. These will be available now through mod shops in the United Kingdom, Canada, China and South Africa, as well as a US shop building cars especially for the Middle East. Shelby plans to continue its expansion and wants to license a facility in Latin America.

“Ford has taken the Mustang global for the first time with the new generation car,” said Joe Conway, Co-CEO of Carroll Shelby International and CEO of Shelby American.

“We are following Ford’s global initiative and plan to also offer our products worldwide.

All of the vehicles will be pure Shelby, but we also plan to tailor some of them to fit the local market.”

The new mod shops will also be permitted to open a Carroll Shelby’s Store and sell merchandise. A full range of authentic branded products will be available.

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AUTOMOTIVE BRANDS IN BRIEF Havoc Motorcycles Announces Company’s Launch, Features Mike Tyson Special Edition A new motorcycle manufacturer, Havoc Motorcycles, has announced its launch, releasing details of its line-up of heavyweight motorcycles to be available for the 2016 model year.

The flagship model, “Iron Flight: Mike Tyson Special Edition,” is a special edition produced under trademark license from iconic boxer and entertainer Mike Tyson. It features a 124ci engine, and Mike Tyson’s iconic tattoo incorporated into an airbrushed paint scheme, with matching machined wheels and accessories.

President of Havoc Motorcycles, Dr Jarrod Wiener, said, “We are passionately committed to making motorcycles that enable riders to symbolize their individuality, the source of their strength and freedom. We’re thrilled to be working with Mike Tyson and look forward to introducing riders to the Havoc Motorcycles lineup.”

Havoc motorcycles will offer three models initially, all of the heavyweight cruiser type.

All feature large displacement engines (113ci to 124ci). Each motorcycle is hand-crafted, featuring sculpted and molded bodywork of the ‘custom bagger’ style to offer enthusiasts a custom-inspired motorcycle right from the assembly floor.

Customers can personalize their motorcycles with a wide range of options from the factory, including a choice of wheels, billet accessories, powder-coating, anodizing, and paint finishes. Customers can even work with Havoc Motorcycles’ graphic designers and airbrush artists for a truly personal expression.

partner up is another testament to where Swisstrax has been and is heading,” Stolp continued. “We have been fortunate to align ourselves with some of the leaders in the industry. These partnerships confirm that we

are the leader in modular flooring and that is something we are very proud of.”

Swisstrax is also a licensed partner to Petty’s Garage, John Deere, Shelby Automobiles and Barrett-Jackson Auto Auctions.

Swisstrax Adds Dodge to Its Growing Licensing Portfolio Swisstrax, the manufacturer and distributor of modular flooring tiles, announced their new licensing agreement with Dodge. As a licensed partner, Swisstrax will introduce custom logo tiles that integrate Dodge’s family of brands including SRT, Ram and HEMI. Swisstrax also introduces a new line of Dodge branded car pads, anti-fatigue mats and parking guides.

Since 2011, Swisstrax has been a licensed partner to Ford Motor Company and the preferred flooring for the majority of Ford’s and GM’s events and exhibits.

With the addition of Dodge, Jesse Stolp, Swisstrax Vice-President of Operations, said, “I cannot express the excitement we have to be a licensed partner to Dodge, a true giant among the automotive sector. We look forward to working with such an iconic brand.”

Seen around the world with over seven million square feet sold, Swisstrax continues to lead the modular flooring market in quality and their commitment to sustainability.

“Having a company like Dodge wanting to

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| BEL Info

FASHION & LIFESTYLE BRANDS IN BRIEF The Historic Brand Comes Back

30 years.” Wayne said.

Britches of Georgetowne, the brand that brought reinterpreted American classic fashion to millions of elite and aspirational customers is set to return to the international marketplace. Co-founder of Britches of Georgetowne Rick Hindin and Stephen Wayne, Chairman of Stephen Wayne & Associates entered into an agreement to license Britches of Georgetowne branded products worldwide.

More than just a fashion menswear retailer, Britches of Georgetowne became a powerhouse in “lifestyle merchandising” and was among the first menswear retailers in the country to create a marketing platform for a wide range of upscale, private label lifestyle merchandise in addition to selling menswear.

Sold in 1988 to CML, a New York stock exchange conglomerate, Britches of Georgetowne’s co-founders, Rick Hindin and David Pensky, left the company after the sale and retail operations ended just over four years later. Earlier this year, Rescue Dog LLC, an entity created by Rick Hindin, acquired the Britches of Georgetowne trademarks.

“Heritage Brands are in high demand in today’s marketplace and the Britches of Georgetowne brand, one of the most iconic brands in the menswear industry for over three decades, meets that criterion,” Wayne stated.

Steven Wayne & Associates (SWA) has become best known for licensing such great names and companies as Sasson Jeans, Bum Equipment and Rampage.

Established as “fine clothiers since 1967”, Britches of Georgetowne ultimately grew to 197 stores in 27 markets, with sales reaching $200 million.

“Known for high quality and extraordinary value, the Britches brand became a major force in the men’s fashion industry for over

“The Britches of Georgetowne brand was always conceived as a “platform” for luxury products at great prices,” said Rick Hindin.

In addition to its menswear offerings, Britches of Georgetowne product segments included charismatic gifts and accessories featuring Montblanc pens, Cartier and Heuer watches, Silver Palette Grand Marnier Hot Fudge Sauce, Clyde’s Chili in cans, as well the store published its own Britches International Desk Diary.

“The current strategy is to align the Britch-

Kipling Launched David Bromstad x Kipling Collection David Bromstad, known for his interior design work and national TV shows, collaborated with the international handbag, luggage and accessories brand Kipling on a fall 2015 capsule collection.

David Bromstad x Kipling Collection, inspired by the chic travel days and pieces of the early 20th century is meant to double as both functional traveling items but also as unexpected home decor elements. The luggage models come in small, medium and large sizes. A first for Kipling, known for its crinkle nylon products, is the hard exterior on two of the luggage pieces, which boast support and structure. Backpacks, handbags and waist bags compliment the luggage set for a well-rounded collection of go-to travel and everyday pieces.

President of Kipling North America, Julie Dimperio, comments, “The David Bromstad

| BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

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es of Georgetowne brand with high quality, well established licensees in a wide range of product segments targeted to Millennials and Boomers,” stated Wayne.

It is projected that Britches of Georgetowne products will be available by the fall of 2016.

x Kipling Collection is the perfect addition to our fall product offering. The pieces make you want to book a vacation and see the world! David’s artful design and his vibrant personality shine through his work.”

David Bromstad said, “I’m an avid traveller and believe every category but travel has been tapped into when it comes to fun, personal style. Kipling is special here. You know it’s a Kipling bag as soon as you spot bright prints and a playful monkey keychain in a sea of dark, boring bags on a luggage cart. “ David is the original winner of HGTV’s hit TV show “Design Star,” which led to his role as host and designer on his first hit series for HGTV, “Color Splash,” where David transforms tired rooms into vibrant, unforgettable spaces. David’s work was recently featured at Dwell on Design 2015, which is the largest design event in the United States. He now brings that wealth of experience into homes through his Miami-based design firm, David Bromstad Designs.

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FASHION & LIFESTYLE BRANDS IN BRIEF Inter Parfums and Montblanc Partnership Extension Interparfums SA has extended its license agreement with Montblanc by five years. The original agreement, signed in 2010, provided Interparfums with the exclusive worldwide license to create, produce and distribute perfumes and ancillary products under the Montblanc brand through December 31, 2020. The new 10-year agreement, which goes into effect on January 1, 2016, extends the partnership through December 31, 2025 without any material changes in operating conditions from the prior license.

Interparfums SA’s annual sales for Montblanc now exceed $90 million, a 400% increase in just 4 years. Montblanc fragrances have met with enormous worldwide success,

driven in particular by performances from the Montblanc Legend and Montblanc Emblem lines.

Jérôme Lambert, CEO of Montblanc, commented, “We are very proud to announce the extension of our partnership with Interparfums. The remarkable successes achieved in the last few years, the result of our close collaboration, have naturally led us to renew our confidence in Interparfums.”

Jean Madar, Chairman and CEO of Inter Parfums, Inc., added, “Montblanc fragrances have met with growing success since the signing of our first license agreement. The work accomplished upstream by the Maison has contributed considerably to this success, and has allowed us to build a lasting position in the universe of men’s fragrances.”

G-III Signed Tommy Hilfiger Tommy Hilfiger and G-III Apparel Group have entered into a license agreement to introduce a line of women’s dresses. The new dress collection is designed to complement the existing Tommy Hilfiger women’s sportswear offerings. The Spring 2016 collection is inspired by iconic American style, with a modern twist featuring the bold use of print and color, and feminine fabrics and finishes.

Beginning February 2016, the collection will be available at select department stores, including Macy’s, specialty stores, and e-commerce partners in the U.S. and Canada.

“Our women’s collections are a key area of focus and a high-potential growth category for the brand globally,” said Daniel Grieder, CEO for Tommy Hilfiger. “G-III has been a strong partner with us on outerwear and luggage and is a market leader for women’s apparel in North America with an in-depth understanding of our target customer.”

Morris Goldfarb, Chairman and CEO of G-III, commented “The Tommy Hilfiger brand continues to demonstrate its wide appeal and longevity as a truly iconic American brand.

We are pleased to help extend that position and to further leverage the world-class infrastructure and capability we have built for the dress market and to extend our leadership in this important category.”

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by Mark Di Somma |

| BEL Brand Belief

LICENSED TO DELIVER

Brand: to

A

License

Believe

Mark Di Somma mark@markdisomma.com Consumer expectations have now risen to the point of unreasonable. In fact, today’s consumer is more literate, more informed, more aware of their rights, more spoiled for choice than at any time in history. They can shop for products anywhere in the world.

They can bargain on price knowing that if you won’t do the job, there’s someone down the road working out of a garage who will.

They are cynical, world-weary, cagey, difficult to convince and disloyal.

Doing business with them is hard … and they like it that way. They have the upper hand.

They own the control. Corporates may run the world, but consumers for the most part now own it, at least in their own minds.

Nothing is unique – at least for long Your opportunities to stand out in traditional ways are diminishing by the day. Commoditization across most sectors means the chances of you offering your customers anything inherently different at a product or serve level are nil. | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

Once upon a time, it was good enough to be good. If you had a good product, excellent customer service, or you knew your stuff really well, then that was all you needed to be competitive. Not any more.

You may think what you do is special. You may like to see your offerings as unique.

They’re not … or at least, they won’t be soon. To the person looking to buy, what you say and what you offer sounds just like what everyone has and everyone else does. And if it doesn’t yet, it soon will. They can’t tell the differences – either because the differences don’t exist, or because they are so subtle they don’t mean squat.

As the technological time to market continues to shrink and pressure on margins forces profits down in your sector and others, convergence is huge. More and more companies and products look more and more the same every day. So you’re moving into other sectors to get away from the noise, the clutter and the competition, and guess what?

- others are coming after you. Competition is everywhere – places you expect, places you don’t, and places you’ve probably never heard of.

Once you could shout in the media and get cut-through. Not any more. Consumers can | PAGE 22

now switch out faster than you can get them to tune in. You can’t grab their attention with the volume of your message anymore. Because they’re harder to impress, they don’t get excited, and apathy is epidemic.

Three options That brings you down to some fairly stark business opportunities. You can attack on price, and become a margin bottom-feeder – sifting up the work others don’t want and depending on technologies and volumes to get by. You can play the luck game – hoping you get chosen over others for work. Or you can become a brand …

Brand is the f word of marketing Everybody swears by it, few people understand its impact and everyone would like you to believe they do it more often than they do.

It is perhaps best defined initially by what it is not. It is not a logo. It is not a product as such. It is not television advertising. It

is not something that only multi-nationals have. Those with brands that matter (and many that don’t) who are looking to license often have a misguided understanding of “brand”. To them, it means fame. A brand has become, in the common parlance, anything that the media talks about. And that’s because many licensors looking to license products to consumers are building their licensing on that talk-ability. They are looking to expand access to something people know.

Marketers have a very different take on brands. Your brand is the idea you own in other people’s minds. A brand is what your consumers understand about you, so it is much less about what you sell and increasingly about what you state you believe.

Consumers are looking for brands that stand for the things they believe in too and that don’t get talked about enough (in their minds). Successful brands are a meeting of like-minds with their customers.

While we talk about brands being every-

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where, in reality most companies today are brand-less or negatively branded. They have an identity but they deliver no real understanding or only a negative one and they are not expanding their business on the basis of what consumers understand they stand for.

That’s because far too many of them have no idea on which to base their understanding of themselves. They just get on with what they do, and leave the understandings to sort themselves out. They manage their brand in terms of what it looks like but neglect to drive its significance or competitiveness in terms of achieving important understandings for consumers. They don’t have a belief system.

By contrast, some of the most powerful licensing brands in the world are built on belief. Disney, for example, believes in magic – and everything they put their name to, whether proprietary or licensed, reinforces that belief. It works because the people who buy Disney products are also looking for magic. Seeing the Disney brand reassures PAGE 23 |

them that the product or experience they are buying will be magical.

Wake up call Belief systems matter because the key word for competitive success today is “fit”. If you want your brand to create the most powerful understanding possible, then you need to know what your idea is, you need to ensure your impression is significantly different from the impression others are trying to make, and you need to convey it to people who will understand its importance and agree with what you are saying.

A powerful brand does that. When you have a strong brand, you own an idea in the minds of consumers and prospects that is simple and compelling. And if you license on that basis, you license based on expanding that understanding and expressing what the brand stands for in new ways (categories, channels, regions, etc.), not just providing more access points. In the context of licensing, the appearance of your brand is a signal BEL MAGAZINE |

| BEL Brand Belief

to the consumer that they are going to get more of what they already love the brand for.

It doesn’t stop there • A brand gives you personality – people like that. It defines you. It gives you an identity.

• A brand has a simple big idea. And that association is no accident. It is the association with that idea that distinguishes your brand from its competitors, and that association generates engagement.

• A brand has a story behind it – we all love stories. We want to hear what other people think about life. We want to know their point of view.

• A brand is something to base your communications and your licensed portfolio on – not the other way around. A brand is the baseline, the benchmark, the yardstick… everything that makes an impression gets measured against it to ensure you are making the right impression.

• A brand is built on common values – ideas and attitudes you agree on and subscribe to as a group – and so do your customers.

As you incorporate licensed opportunities into your brand, you need to think about the fit of each opportunity with these drivers: • Does the licensed offering fit with the personality of the brand – does it feel like something the brand would ‘do’?

Licensing a brand accentuates the nature of that brand. If you have a brand that feels like everyone else, extending the brand will only make it more everyday. If you have a brand that is refreshing and different, and you extend on that basis, then the brand will continue to delight and surprise and customers will literally buy into that feeling.

Your decisions will also be re-oriented around what works for what your customers understand, not just what everyone else is doing. And of course you won’t simply take up every opportunity that presents itself, no matter how attractive it may look. Decisions become easier because new ideas, directions and opportunities either fit with who you are and what you’re about … or they don’t. They are either on-brand or they are not.

How branding comes to life Stand up. Build your brand around an idea that bewitches your audience. Grab them by the heart with an emotionally based attitude and beliefs that make their soul soar.

Stand fast. Support your unique idea with values for the brand that encourage difference; values that push, stretch, demand, make people uncomfortable. Why uncomfortable? Because nothing good happens in branding without adrenalin. If you’re a

• Does it add to what people understand about the brand in a good way? Does it extend the idea that the brand owns?

• Does it bring a new dimension to the brand story? Does it take the brand narrative into new and exciting space?

• Is the new licensed offering consistent with everything you’ve said?

• Is the licensed offering in alignment with your values and what consumers value about you?

See, notice, buy Branding helps companies find the personality and the beliefs they must have to be profitable, and the impression they must make to be competitive. Your goal is to encourage the market to understand and then consciously see, notice and buy your brand at the expense of your competitors. | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

| PAGE 24

brand owner and you’re not sweating, you’re comfortable. Adrenalin is the chemical of change. You need to keep pushing boundaries, trying out new things, testing the limits of what works. If you’re comfortable, you’re already passé. Or as I like to put it, “If you’re not screaming, you’re wilting.”

Stand out. Make a promise that has customers locking you into their lives because you stand for ideas, principles, beliefs, attitudes that they treasure.

Go to market. Bring your brand to life with an external promise that cuts through the clutter and get you noticed. Promise your customers not just a product or service, but an experience that puts ping in their lives.

Deliver, deliver, deliver. Live the promise you’ve made. And make every licensed product you endorse an extension of that promise. The moment you stop delivering you change the understanding that people have of you and give them a reason to call their belief in you into doubt.

Mark Di Somma is a creative strategist, a commentator on brands and branding and an Author at Branding Strategy Insider.

Connect with him at @markdisomma or by email at mark@markdisomma.com.

NEXT ISSUE JANUARY 2016 | MAIN FEATURES: SPORT AND TECHNOLOGY BEL Magazine is publication designed for qualified professionals who strive to connect, engage and collaborate with their peers in business - those who care about corporate brands, trademarks, brand extensions and licensing from all sides. The BEL audience are well-informed, growth-focused professionals searching for content that focuses on brand management, trademark protection, brand extensions and the overall licensing business experience.

What does BEL stand for?

BEL is the abbreviation for Brand Extensions & Licensing

| BEL Retail

CONSUMER SURVEY

Spooky

Spending to Reach

$6.9 Billion

With a bit more confidence in their finances consumers are eager to embrace fall and all of the celebrations that come with it. Those celebrating Halloween this year look for several different activities to do with their families and friends. Retailers of all shapes and sizes will welcome millions of shoppers with promotions on candy, decorations and costumes.

According to the National Retail Federation’s Halloween Consumer Spending Survey, more than 157 million Americans plan to celebrate Halloween this year. The average person celebrating will spend around $74, while total spending on Halloween is expected to reach $6.9 billion.

It’s estimated that 68 million Americans will dress up this Halloween and another 20 million pet owners will dress up their pet.

Consumers plan to spend an average of $27 on costumes for the whole family, and a total

| BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

of $2.5 billion on store-bought, homemade, large and small costumes. Shoppers will spend $1.2 billion on adult costumes, a total of $950 million on children’s costumes and $350 million on fashionable and fun costumes for their furry friends.

Nine in ten Halloween celebrants will buy candy, spending a total of $2.1 billion, and an additional 33% will buy greeting cards, spending a total of $330 million. Two in five celebrants plan to decorate their home or yard, meaning there’s no question consumers will see their fair share of pumpkins, hay bales and even life-size Minions and black cats strewn across their neighborhoods. The average person planning to buy decorations will spend $20 with total spending expected to reach $1.9 billion.

When it comes to how consumers plan to celebrate, almost 68% will hand out candy, almost half will dress in costume, though

| PAGE 26

there will be no shortage of jack-o-lanterns lighting up windows this year with 41% of people planning to carve pumpkins.

Attending a Halloween party was last season’s most popular activity and 49 million Americans plan to throw or attend a party with friends and family.

More consumers have decided to head to stores or shop online early to pick out costumes and decorations. Similar to past years, the majority of consumers will find inspiration for their costumes online or will head to costume shops and retail stores before they make a final decision.

Pinterest continues to grow in popularity among those looking for costume inspiration. Millennials remain the drivers of Pinterest traffic around Halloween though with 25% of 18-24 year olds and almost 24% of 25-34 year olds using the site for costume inspiration.

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No Tricks, Just Treats!

Baskin-Robbins offers a lineup of Halloween themed frozen treats, including its new Piñata Pumpkin Patch Cake. The world’s largest chain of ice cream specialty shops is putting a spooky spin on a classic favorite with the new OREO Cookie Halloween Cake, decorated in orange and topped with festive Halloween OREO Cookies. A returning favorite, Trick OREO Treat is Baskin-Robbins’ fun twist on the candy-filled trick-or-treat bag on Halloween night. This flavor features vanilla-flavored ice cream packed with Halloween OREO cookies, along with Baby Ruth and Butterfinger candy pieces.

Baileys Coffee Holiday Creamers

With an estimated 3.2 million tiny tots looking to dress the part, princess costumes will once again top the children’s costume list.

Another 2 million will be their favorite Disney Frozen character. Additionally, more than 1.8 million children will don a Star Wars costume and 1 million will select a little yellow Minion costume. A witch came in again as the top adult costume with more than 4.3 million adults going with old reliable. Star Wars characters ranked fifth for adults: 1.4 million adults will channel Han Solo, Princess Leia, Yoda or another beloved Star Wars character this Halloween. Animal characters, Batman characters and zombie round out the topfive adult costumes.

About one in ten Halloween celebrants plan to dress their furry friends in costumes. For pet parents looking for film inspiration, Petco’s Star Wars Halloween Ewok Dog Costume will surely have any dog’s tail wagging.

HP Hood LLC, licensee of non–alcoholic Baileys Coffee Creamers, has launched Baileys Coffee Creamers seasonal flavors for 2015. The line of premium non-alcoholic flavored coffee creamers is adding the new Frosted Vanilla Cookie flavor and welcoming back two seasonal favorites, Pumpkin Spice and White Chocolate Peppermint Bark to the brand’s existing 14 flavors.

Hood’s portfolio of national and super-regional brands and licensed products includes Hood, Crowley Foods, Simply Smart Milk, Heluva Good!, LACTAID, Blue Diamond Almond Breeze Refrigerated Almond Milks and Hershey’s Milk and Milkshakes.

Nestlé Crunch and Peanuts Partnership Nestlé brews a spellbinding host of treats this fall with new Nestlé Crunch sharable Peanuts character bars and vibrant skull- and bone-shaped SweeTARTS for Día de los Muertos.

To delight trick-or-treaters of all ages, the new Nestlé Crunch Peanuts Molded Fun Size Bars feature the whole gang of eight Peanuts characters. The multi-season Nestlé Crunch partnership with Peanuts marks the first time these two iconic American brands have come together to offer one-of-a-kind chocolate collections for the holidays.

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| BEL Retail

MARKET RESEARCH

Grinch-less

Holiday Season The holiday shopping season has officially begun, with nearly one-third of all shoppers and 42% of parents already in the throes of their shopping, according to the new Consumer Pulse survey from Rubicon project .

The annual survey examined the holiday shopping habits among 2009 consumers ages 18 and above in the United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, and includes data on online and mobile shopping trends and how consumers are spending their money this season.

“This year, we are seeing a clear shift in when, where, and how consumers are spending their holiday money,” commented Dallas Lawrence, Senior Vice President for Rubicon Project. “Consumers have taken control of the holiday shopping season, starting earlier, and signaling a clear desire to shop online and on mobile devices. For the first time, US consumers are telling us that an online-only outlet, Amazon, will be their number one shopping destination in the US and eBay will be one of the top three shopping destinations in the UK. ” “Consumer confidence appears on the rise as a significant majority of shoppers plan to spend the same or more on holiday purchases with most budgets exceeding $1,000,” added Lawrence.

78 percent of those surveyed across the three regions plan to spend the same or more money this year than they did last year – an average of $1,011. U.S. parents are leading the generosity push this year with 48% willing to open their wallets a bit wider this year than last. | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

Online for the Holidays According to the survey, nearly three in four holiday shoppers across the three regions will make purchases online. Specifically in the U.S. more than one-third of shoppers anticipate conducting the majority of their shopping online, with 96% of U.S. parents planning to shop online in some capacity this holiday season. Those consumers in the U.S. who plan to do the majority of their holiday shopping online plan to spend 20% more than consumers who plan to do the majority of their shopping in-store.

Perhaps the most notable trend this season is that according to U.S. consumers, Amazon.com is their top shopping destination followed by traditional go-to stores, Walmart and Target. The move online this year is not in the U.S. alone as eBay will be a top three shopping destination in the U.K. Mobile is certainly not being forgotten, with general mobile consumer use around the world increasing at a fevered pace. This year 25 percent of holiday shoppers in the U.S. will turn to their smartphones to make holiday purchases.

“Whether consumers are shopping from their tablet or clicking through an ad on their smartphone, more consumers than ever are researching, price comparing, and shopping on-the-go, with nearly one in four holiday shoppers in the U.S. planning to shop on their smartphones this year,” said Joe Prusz, Head of Mobile for Rubicon Project. “For brands that embrace the consumer shift to mobile, it will surely be a very merry mobile year.” | PAGE 28

Tech Under the Tree About half of consumers say requests from gift recipients is the largest influence on their holiday shopping. Gift cards and apparel are the two most popular items consumers are planning to shop for this year followed by toys.

While 63 percent of all consumers surveyed prefer to purchase lots of smaller gifts rather than one large item, nearly half of those surveyed still plan to purchase at least one “big ticket” item this year, with technology purchases ranking high on the big ticket wish list. About 2 in 5 in the US and CA and 1 in 3 in the UK plan on purchasing technology , and are most likely to purchase tablets within that category. Over 1 in 3 will buy video games. In total, shoppers plan to spend more than $300 on tech-related items this holiday.

Deloitte Forecast: Retail Holiday Sales to Increase 3.5 to 4 Percent According to Deloitte’s annual retail holiday sales forecast, retailers in the US should see a moderate increase in holiday sales in the stores and online this year.

“An improving labor market, increasing home values and relief at the pump gave more Americans reason to believe the economic recovery was gaining real traction this year,” said Daniel Bachman, Deloitte’s senior U.S. economist. “Those recurring improvements helped buoy sentiment and spending over the past several months. Housing and employment tend to create a more meaningful wealth effect than that of the financial mar-

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kets, so the recent stock market fluctuations and instability overseas should not have a marked impact on shoppers’ holiday spending intentions. However, while retail holiday sales are expected to rise, the increase may be smaller than last year due to the lingering effects of flat personal income growth in the first quarter.”

Deloitte’s retail and distribution practice expects total holiday sales to climb to between $961 and $965 billion, representing a 3.5 to 4 percent increase in November through January holiday sales (excluding motor vehicles and gasoline) over last year’s shopping season. This growth rate is below last year’s 5.2 percent gain. Additionally, Deloitte forecasts an 8.5 to 9 percent increase in

non-store sales in the online and mail order channels during the 2015 holiday season.

“Online sales continue to be a growth channel, but more importantly, we’ve passed the tipping point where online and mobile engagement play a greater role generating sales in the physical store – where more than 90 percent of retail sales occur – than in digital channels alone,” said Rod Sides, vice chairman, Deloitte LLP and retail and distribution sector leader.

Deloitte forecasts that digital interactions will influence 64 percent, or $434 billion, of retail store sales this holiday season. This figure reflects the amount of traditional brick-andmortar retail sales impacted by shoppers’ use of digital devices including desktop and

laptop computers, tablets, and smartphones.

“Our research shows that people who shop on their phones, tablets and other devices while in stores are more likely to make a purchase and spend more overall,” added Sides. “Also, nearly 80 percent of shoppers say they engage with a retailer or brand through digital channels before setting foot inside the store. These interactions are retailers’ opportunity to engage shoppers seeking inspiration, reviews, product locators, or the option to buy online and pick up in the store.

Retailers that are likely to come out ahead this holiday season are the ones connecting the dots between their digital channels and their stores – rather than focusing solely on the online ‘buy’ button.”

Consumer Pulse KEY U.K. FINDINGS • U.K. consumers plan to spend an average of around £730 on Christmas shopping this season, including spending about £281 per child and £217 on themselves.

• Although apparel, gift cards, and toys are most popular, nearly half plan to purchase makeup/beauty supplies and 44% plan to purchase jewelry.

• 43% anticipate the majority of their Christmas shopping will be done online but nearly half (47%) say last minute purchases will be made in stores.

• Argos (44%), Marks & Spencer (30%), and eBay (28%) are top destinations for this Christmas season.

Consumer Pulse KEY U.S. FINDINGS • Americans plan to spend an average of $1,051 on holiday shopping this season, about $397 per child.

• In the US, shoppers who plan to do the majority of their holiday shopping online also plan to spend significantly more – 20% more – than consumers who plan to do the majority of their shopping instore.

• A quarter of Americans plan to holiday shop on their smartphones.

96% of U.S. parents will shop online for the holiday.

Amazon (69%) and Walmart (58%) dominate as goto retailers for U.S. holiday shoppers.

Consumer Pulse KEY CANADA FINDINGS • Canadian consumers plan to spend an average of $1,333 on holiday shopping this season.

• 34% of Canadians plan to purchase a gift for themselves this year and spend an average of $281 per child and $378 on their own gifts.

• Best Buy (42%) and Toys “R” Us (34%) lead the way for holiday shopping destinations.

M&M’S Makes Holidays Sweeter Thanks to a licensing agreement between Mars Retail Group and Gemmy Industries, fans of M&M’S Brand Candy can enjoy treats in new ways during the Halloween and Christmas seasons. In addition to eating the delicious chocolate candy, fans can wear them as Halloween costumes and display them as Christmas decor. Each costume set includes an inflatable costume, white gloves, fan and battery pack. This 12-inch tall M&M’S Brand Character Red is dressed like Santa Claus and performs a hilarious side-stepping dance that will add joy to the holiday season.

During the Christmas season, M&M’S Brand is the most-purchased chocolate brand for gifting, stuffing stockings and filling candy bowls, according to the 2014 Christmas Beacon Report.

“M&M’S Brand Chocolate Candies have been family favorites for generations, especially during the holidays and seasonal celebrations,” says John Capizzi, general manager of Licensing for Mars Retail Group. “We’re pleased to offer M&M’S Brand fans these festive items from Gemmy Industries, an innovator in entertainment and seasonal decor.”

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BEL MAGAZINE |

by Pete Canalichio |

| BEL Brand Story

BRAND INSPIRATION

How Two

Great Brands

Inspired

Two More

Pete Canalichio pete.canalichio@brandlicensingexpert.com Toyota, a company that created a brand for the masses elevated its value with the Lexus brand – a benchmark in luxury, performance and reliability since its inception.

Rolex, known for the world’s most accurate and elegant watch brand targeted at the wealthy, devised a way to share its expertise with a much bigger portion of mankind through the Tudor brand.

Two brands, two methods, two incredible accomplishments.

I remember when Toyota launched the Lexus brand. It was back in 1989. I was in my first year of business school at the University of North Carolina. At the time, Japanese automobile manufacturers where capturing huge chunks of market share in the U.S. from their | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

When you think of how some of the world’s greatest brands came to be, Lexus and Tudor come to mind. Both brands were launched by companies that already had well established brands in different segments - Toyota in the case of Lexus and Rolex in the case of Tudor.

Two brands, two methods, two incredible accomplishments.

American competitors.

To put the share loss in perspective, the big three automobile manufacturers – GM, Ford and Chrysler – were responsible in the early 1970s for 90% of all vehicles sold in the USA. By 1989 their collective share dropped to 73%. Today that number has dwindled to about 45%, making all three companies a mere shadow of their former selves.

While there are a variety of reasons for the demise of the American automobile manufacturers at the hands of their Japanese competitors, the primary reason has been quality. The disparity in quality between Japanese and American vehicles grew to such an extreme, a bitter rivalry ensued. As Japan grew stronger in other industries including | PAGE 30

electronics, shipping and appliance, many Americans feared the Japanese would soon “own” the United States.

The tension between American and Japanese automobile manufacturers got so high that Hollywood made a movie in 1986 called Gung Ho in an effort to portray this cultural divide in a light-hearted and disarming fashion. For those interested, the movie features Michael Keaton as the protagonist who struggles to bridge the gap between his Japanese and American colleagues. While Gung Ho never won any major awards, it should keep you entertained while educating you on this distinct and important period in history.

It seemed the more American consumers

drove Japanese made vehicles, the more disappointed they became with American engineering. With each shortcoming, American automobile brand equity suffered. The loss in equity adversely impacted consumers’ brand loyalty. It seemed the only people who insisted on buying and driving American made automobiles at the time were those who lived through World War II; I am imagine many of those American car drivers deep down wished they were enjoying the benefits of Japanese cars. You see, this wasn’t about patriotism, it was about value. Middle class Americans were becoming enamored with the features and benefits of the Japanese automobile manufacturers. Toyotas, Nissans and Hondas were better designed, more reliable and cost substantially less than their

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American counterparts. Furthermore, they got much better gas mileage. With the oil embargos of the 1970s and early 1980s, gas mileage became an important attribute for American consumers. The Japanese understood this and American consumers rewarded the Japanese automobile brands with increased brand preference and purchase.

While Nissan and Honda saw significant gains during this period, Toyota connected the most with American consumers and achieved the greatest success.

Toyota’s market share in the US grew from 2% in 1970 to 6% by 1983 (source: Ward’s Automotive Group).

Eiji Toyoda, Toyota’s chairman at the time, understood that his company’s competitive advantage would enable Toyota to continue PAGE 31 |

to make inroads with American mass-market consumers. Toyoda also understood that while many middle class Americans were flocking to his vehicles, their attributes would not enable his company to break into the desirable and lucrative luxury automobile market.

At the time, the luxury market was dominated by Germany’s BMW and Mercedes brands and by GM’s Cadillac and Ford’s Lincoln divisions. The German brands offered the affluent top-notch engineering and performance; the American models provided the wealthy with comfort and status.

Sensing a window of opportunity Toyoda knew he had to make a push if he hoped to enter the luxury automobile market. To BEL MAGAZINE |

| BEL Brand Story

Toyota, a company that created a brand for the masses elevated its value with the Lexus brand – a benchmark in luxury, performance and reliability since its inception. compete, Toyota needed an automobile that could outperform its foreign rivals on their own turf. And, since the Toyota brand stood for reliability and economy, it could never serve the role needed for this new unnamed luxury automobile.

With a clear understanding of the time and resources needed to enter the luxury automobile market (projected at 7 years and over $1 billion), Toyoda could have chosen to purchase an existing luxury automobile manufacturer such as Jaguar (the way the Tata Group did in 2008). Or, he could have chosen to license one of the world’s luxury brands from another category such as Gulf Stream aircraft or Mont Blanc pens and entered the automobile market that way.

Instead, Toyoda in 1983 decided to build the brand in house and initiated the F1 Project.

To accomplish this goal, Toyoda spared no expense. The F1 was built from the ground up utilizing no existing Toyota platforms or parts. To ensure its lofty standards were achieved, tests were conducted throughout Europe, the US, Australia and Saudi Arabia.

To compliment the F1, Toyota created the Lexus marquee in 1986 and designated the first vehicle the Lexus LS 400. In January 1989, the Lexus LS 400 debuted at the North American International Automobile show in Detroit. With a litany of new features including memory seats and automatic tilt-and-telescoping steering, the Lexus LS 400 was met with significant praise. Moreover, it came with a price tag thousands less that the competition. The first generation Lexus LS 400 sold 165,000 units over its life – more than both BMW and Mercedes.

The Lexus LS 400 consistently earned the JD Powers award for best in quality and quickly built a reputation for reliability.

Shortly thereafter, Consumer Reports rated Lexus one of the best automobiles in the world. Now in its fourth generation the Lexus brand stands for excellence, performance | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

and quality. Not only did Eiji Toyoda achieve his goal of entering the luxury automobile market, he redefined it.

Juxtaposed with the creation of the Lexus brand, the Rolex Company in 1946 chose to create the Tudor brand, inspired after the long-reigning English dynasty. To put the launch of the Tudor brand in context, Hans Wilsdorf and his brother-in-law Alfred Davis founded the Rolex Company in 1905 with the belief that watches could be worn on the wrist and be both elegant and reliable.

At the time watches were large and needed to be carried in the pocket. They also were plagued with inaccuracies. Wilsdorf knew if he could solve these two problems, he could revolutionize the watch industry.

In 1914, the Kew Observatory granted Rolex a class “A” precision certificate, the first wristwatch to ever receive this rating. Rolex would go on to achieve many “firsts” including the first ever watch with a self-winding mechanism and the first ever waterproof and dustproof watch. These achievements made the Rolex brand synonymous with precision and cutting-edge technology. To compliment this precision, Wilsdorf pushed his designers to create timepieces with unmistakable style and elegance. From the early twentieth century to this day, Rolex has been the benchmark in chronometers. With watches ranging in price from $2,500 to over $40,000, the Rolex brand is reserved for the wealthy.

And so, Wilsdorf in 1946, decided to create a new brand “that would sell at a more mod-

est price” while attaining “the standards of dependability for which Rolex is famous.”

With the end of World War II there was renewed hope for the future; however, people were suffering. This was an especially difficult economic period. Many returning home from the war could not find jobs. Factories throughout Europe and Asia had been destroyed and the focus was on rebuilding.

Even the wealthy weren’t buying like they had been and this was adversely affecting Rolex sales.

Rolex needed a new brand that could capture a bigger market for their watches. Wilsdorf believed if the Rolex Company could capture consumers at the price point below where Rolex branded watches were sold, their market size could more than double.

This would allow Rolex the ability to enhance revenue growth for the foreseeable future.

Wilsdorf also understood that if he didn’t reach a broader audience for his product, Rolex might experience a significant period of revenue decline.

Like Toyoda, Wilsdorf could have purchased another watch company such as Breitling or licensed an existing affluent brand such as Waterman to meet his objectives. Instead, he chose the Tudor brand, which he had trademarked back in 1926 and kept in safe keeping for just such an occasion.

Unlike in the creation of the Lexus brand, where Toyota parts could not be used if it expected to be classified as luxury automobile, Tudor watches, which were a category below Rolex, could make use of Rolex parts and movements. Moreover, in a lower classification, Tudor could be sold for a fraction of the price of a Rolex while still commanding strong margins.

Through the creation of the Tudor brand, Wilsdorf understood he could grow revenue while preserving the exclusivity of the Rolex

Rolex, known for the world’s most accurate and elegant watch brand targeted at the wealthy, devised a way to share its expertise with a much bigger portion of mankind through the Tudor brand. | PAGE 32

brand. The Tudor brand, in turn, would fulfill pent up demand of the affluent market which had been clamoring for a watch with performance and elegance, but which was not as expensive as a Rolex. To ensure the Tudor brand would have its own enduring identify, Wilsdorf positioned Tudor as the watch to be worn when participating in “dangerous” professions. This positioning allowed Tudor to be the perfect watch for real and aspiring divers, miners, pilots and race car drivers.

Over the past 60 years Tudor has built a reputation for ruggedness and reliability. In a natural evolution of the brand, Tudor became the official “timing partner” for Porsche

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Motorsport in 2009. By aligning with one of the world’s most renowned performance automobile brands Tudor will continue to reinforce it brand promise for exacting precision in all types of environments.

While the Rolex Company is privately held and does not divulge its sales by brand, we know Tudor markets and sells more than 140 styles of watches today. Suffice it to say, Wilsdorf’s launch of the Tudor brand enabled him to achieve his objective of growing the Rolex company revenue over the long-term (now at $3 billion) while offering a larger portion of the population a chance to own Rolex technology.

PAGE 33 |

Both Toyoda and Wilsdorf were visionaries that understood where they wanted to take their companies.

Toyoda began with a brand for the masses and elevated his company with the Lexus brand, considered by many the benchmark in luxury, performance and reliability.

Wilsdorf set out to create the world’s most accurate and elegant watch brand. He then devised a way to share his achievement with a much bigger portion of mankind through the Tudor brand.

BEL MAGAZINE |

by Goran Kernyak |

| BEL Cover Story

COVER STORY

Community of

Best Practices COLLABORATIVE BRANDS. INNOVATIVE ACTION.

More than eighty-percent (80%) of SPLiCE members license consumer goods globally with fifty-two percent (52%) having a licensing program in existence for over fifteen years, ninety percent (90%) having a licensing program in existence for five years or more and ninety-three percent (93%) having two or more brands to license.

Spotlight on SPLiCE members pages).

SPLiCE - the Society of Product Licensors Committed to Excellence is a global trade organization founded as a best practice think-tank for trademark brand licensors.

BEL: Where did the idea originate and why was the organization established?

The US based organization founded in 2004 with the vision to continuously improve brand licensing, continues to raise the bar of business standards for brand licensors and the brand licensing industry overall.

The goal in carrying out the organization’s mission is to act responsibly as a Licensors Community of Practice to share best practices for protecting, promoting and enhancing brand integrity. | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

At this moment SPLiCE comprises 59 member organizations from 40 industry sectors, including business, government and non-profit. They include some of the world’s biggest licensors and together they manage more than USD$104.1 billion of licensing agreements worldwide. Members include P&G, Caterpillar Inc., Harley-Davidson, Dorna (MotoGP), The Coca-Cola Company, Nike Inc., LEGO, Whirlpool Corporation, Hasbro, The Walt Disney Company, Crayola, Stanley Black & Decker, Unilever, Biltmore, Meredith Corporation, M&M MARS, Reebok and Ford Motor Company. (for more info about members please see | PAGE 34

To find out more about the organization, its initiatives, goals and plans BEL talked to: Kimberly Kociencki, CEO and Founder of SPLiCE; Gayle A. Jones, Head of Licensing at P&G and past SPLiCE Chairman; Kenny Beaupre, Retail Business Development Manager at Caterpillar and SPLiCE Chairman; Shahab Khosravan, Director of Worldwide Compliance at The Coca-Cola Company and past SPLiCE Chairman.

Kimberly Kociencki: In June 2002, Rachael Shagott, then at Fisher-Price, and I discussed an industry standard for licensee and retail quality systems. At the time, the licensing industry was not providing guidance or direction needed for Licensors in regard to the internal management directives of contract requirements necessary to minimize risk. Formal benchmarking projects were cost prohibitive for licensing however we knew the question to solve was: how might a licensor determine if they are doing the right things in order to protect their brands.

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Kimberly Kociencki

Kenny Beaupre

Shahab Khosravan

Gayle A. Jones

PAGE 35 |

BEL MAGAZINE |

| BEL Cover Story

Kimberly Kociencki CEO, Society of Product Licensors Committed to Excellence As a SPLiCE founder in 2003, Kimberly served as the first President of the Board of Directors. Today, she leads strategic innovation, benchmark initiatives, and member meeting facilitation and collaborates with the Board of Directors within Governance as Leadership Model.

Kimberly brings to the strategic table over 20 years of organizational relationship management experience, including global liaison management for Fortune 100 & 500 companies’ licensing and manufacturing programs.

Her aptitudes compliment SPLiCE as a world-class community of best practices.

Shahab Khosravan Director of Worldwide Compliance, The Coca-Cola Company.

Shahab is overseeing licensed and promotional products on behalf of The Coca-Cola Company. As a Founding member of SPLiCE and active Board of Director, Shahab has instrumented the organization’s first formal benchmarking survey and as Board Chair inaugural SPLiCE Member of the Year Award.

Through his leadership, Shahab has provided the SPLiCE membership a platform to begin the vigorous steps of identifying best practices in the licensing industry in regard to protecting the brand, quality assurance, and risk management. Shahab has participated as a Benchmark Champion, Team Leader and Team Member since 2004 and hosted 2006 Licensors Workshop as well as January 2005 New Year Member meeting at the Atlanta Coca-Cola Headquarters. Shahab served as the SPLiCE Board Chair from 2007 to 2009.

| BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

To build on this idea we knew it to be effective and beneficial to have other strong brand licensing leaders who would want to investigate the same by coming together in one place for one or two day workshop. The idea was tested at the 2002 Licensing Show at Javits in NYC and received a favorable response with enough interest to move forward with the momentum.

Now with support from management and the key licensing stakeholders, we proceeded to create an agenda to enrich all participants, be cost effective, and meet our ongoing goals of benchmarking. Topics included Licensing Models, Elements of Quality Licensing Programs, Risk Management, Product Liability, and Product Safety, and Selling Quality Metrics within your Licensing Program. The first event was truly a grassroots initiative. We identified early adopters from relationships built at trade shows, within LIMA, from industry standards organizations, and with existing clientele. It was key for us to secure behind-the-scenes internal resources providing technical, administrative and marketing support where needed.

Together, we cold called and personally invited all the potential attendees. The rest is history. The very successful inaugural Licensors Workshop was facilitated September 8 and 9, 2003 and a grassroots trade association emerged within nine months on April 26, 2004.

BEL: The list of SPLiCE members looks like the “Who’s Who” of Global Top Corporations. What are the selection criteria and what terms must a brand owner meet to become a member?

Kimberly: Members shall consist only of those companies engaged in the licensing out of brands, trademarks, or other licensable properties, who apply for and fulfill the requirements for membership. Individuals may not become members. Any company seeking membership must have either $1 billion or more in annual wholesale sales, or annual licensing royalty revenues of $10 million or more. We look to enrich our membership base with those companies with strong quality practices, brand licensing expertise, intellectual property protection practices, social accountability, and/or in other areas of | PAGE 36

interest to the organization.

Eligible companies may apply for membership by submitting a completed membership application form to SPLiCE. No applicant may be denied membership as a Member because it is a business competitor of another member or applicant.

BEL: The Coca-Cola Company and Caterpillar joined SPLiCE in 2004 as one of its first members. P&G has been a member since 2007. How long have you been personally active within SPLiCE? What are your impressions and experience with the organization so far?

Kenny Beaupre: My first experience was at the 2008 Licensors Workshop held at Nike’s world headquarters. That event had impact, and I learned about the Nike brand through the eyes of their employees. I experienced tours, demos and even running on their campus trails. That’s one of the great opportunities SPLiCE offers its membership—to learn about other brands and their journey to success. I know SPLiCE as a welcoming organization with strong thought leadership around licensing.

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priorities. A very productive two years!

Shahab: My goal as the Chair was to ensure members understood the success of the organizations depended on getting involved, collaboration and information sharing within the confines of Anti-trust guidelines.

BEL: Kenny, what are your priorities and what will you focus on as Chairman?

Kenny: Ensuring member value through information sharing—that’s bedrock and my top focus. Digital marketing, international licensing and human rights issues are my other member priorities.

BEL: Over the years, SPLiCE has established itself as very respectable, one-of-akind community of brand licensors. What is the “secret” of organization’s success?

Gayle A. Jones: I have been a member since 2007, bringing P&G into the SPLiCE community. We have found the member companies and members to share like experiences in licensing which allows for great collaboration and valuable insight as we all build our practices.

Shahab Khosravan: I have been involved since the inception of the organization.

SPLiCE is one of kind organization in which members have many benefits including candid information sharing and best practices.

BEL: During mandate as Chairman, what were your priorities and what would you emphasize as most important achievements in that period?

Gayle: As I look back, I now realize SPLiCE has taken a major step forward in broadening our membership from a numbers standpoint as well as type of industry standpoint.

We have put in place a strategic plan to ensure we continue to move the organization ahead across the areas which are important to our members. Lastly, we have put in place a stronger organizational and technical structure to support our members and our

Kimberly: The people. They are brand ambassadors and genuine experts. We engage a Governance as Leadership model with our Board of Directors which lends itself the ability to listen to what is most important to our membership and act accordingly. We are diligently responsible to our mission to continuously improve brand licensing. More importantly, it just begins there, I facilitate a number of benchmark initiatives and committees that all have a thought leader. Since the very beginning in 2004 I have lead these initiatives with a vision and mission to build meaningful collaborative goals and objectives. Together, we do make a difference, for our member companies and the overall industry.

Gayle: To me, the “secret” is totally around our members - the passion, support and willingness to collaborate to make licensing a true business model within our companies.

Kenny: I agree with Gayle. Our members are key to the success of SPLiCE! They represent some amazing brands. Not only do we learn a lot from our meetings, Licensors Summits and Licensors Workshops, but we develop some great connections in the process. It’s a great benefit to be able to pick up the phone and get advice from another licensing professional you’ve met at SPLiCE. Shahab: We have established a community of professionals who are willing to share best practices for the success of their brands and the overall licensing business.

PAGE 37 |

Kenny Beaupre Retail Business Development Manager, Caterpillar Inc. Kenny is the brand advocacy and licensing manager at Caterpillar Inc. and is responsible for managing Caterpillar’s licensed merchandise business, processes and operations. Since joining Caterpillar in 1997, Kenny has served in a variety of roles including Corporate Sponsorship Manager, Licensing Program Manager, and Marketing Communications Manager at Caterpillar Investments.

Kenny has been active in SPLiCE since 2008. He has led the International Benchmark Regulations team for two years and also served on the Brand Licensing Metrics & Objectives team, Anti-Counterfeit team and is contributing to the Licensing Scorecard Team. Since September 2015 Kenny is elected Chairman of SPLiCE.

Gayle A. Jones Head of Licensing, Procter & Gamble In this capacity, Gayle is responsible for overseeing the Company’s out-licensing and in-licensing strategies, programs, processes and relationships across all Businesses on a global basis.

Gayle joined P&G in 1981 in Sales Marketing. Since then, she moved into Brand Management and has held various positions in P&G’s Beauty and Professional businesses, with broad responsibilities on global Design teams and North America Delivery teams.

Gayle joined P&G’s Global Business Development organization in 2005 to capitalize on her experience working with external companies and partners internationally, a key long-term strategy for the Company.

Gayle was SPLiCE Chairman from September 2013 to September 2015 and previously SPLiCE Board Member and have served as an officer of the corporation in the role of Secretary.

BEL MAGAZINE |

| BEL Cover Story

BEL: What do members find as the top reasons and benefits of SPLiCE membership?

Kimberly: Access to peers where they can meet, share best practices, and agree to disagree in an antitrust environment. SPLiCE meetings are a place to check your title and get the work completed, collaboratively. We have ambitious agendas that are punctuated with networking experiences to build professional relationships. There is something for everyone and the best news is that it impacts the 360 approach to building a balanced scorecard for trademark brand licensing teams. It offers meaningful work and fun too, levity is a good thing in any industry.

Gayle: The sense of community where we all share the same challenges, goals, best practices and successes. I don’t believe there is another organization with the forum and structure to deliver what members are wanting and needing.

Kenny: They value networking, events and learning.

Shahab: SPLiCE is a close-knit community of professionals whom freely share information within the confines of antitrust guidelines.

BEL: What are the hottest licensing topics

| BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

addressed and discussed among members and within the organization?

Kimberly: Selling licensing internally in regard to the tertiary benefits of licensing has always been on the radar. Halo effects cannot always be measured in dollars.

Tied to this is the education portion, selling licensing within and outside to stakeholders.

It is so important to nurture the learning part however resources many times are limited so we are looking at this particular subject from all angles to provide our members a support model they can utilize in their companies.

Scorecarding is important on all facets of the business model whether it is a licensee, agency, lab, or any peripheral stakeholder.

We continue to look at the overall process to evaluate each objectively. Finally, to engage social media or not ~ it’s been a big question for many of our members. We are working on all these and a few others.

Gayle: I have one topic I believe drives all others - selling licensing internally. It is critical to continue to educate our Company decision makers on licensing – the what, how, who and why – to allow this to be seen as business model that supports and extends the brand – if managed correctly.

Without getting this cemented in the DNA of the company, other topics fall away.

| PAGE 38

Kenny: Digital marketing and social media are hot topics because of the rapid changes in these disciplines. Licensors are looking for ways to collaborate with licensees for the benefit of customers.

Shahab: Topics has varied over the years but typically it has been related to new product regulations, contract management and lately social media.

BEL: Content discussed at organization meetings is specific to process as you adhere strictly to SPLiCE Antitrust Charter and antitrust policy guidelines. Can you explain this a bit more please?

Kimberly: We focus on the processes that drive licensing, not the monetization thereof.

We do not engage in discussions related to royalty or price setting, core brand innovations, strategic planning or individual partner selection.

BEL: As a community of brand licensors, can you give us examples where you helped members to grow and resolve some specific issues?

Kimberly: Our solutions for our membership include keeping an eye on regulatory and standard influence, key performance indicators (KPI’s) that allow objectivity in the man-

agement of licensing programs, and how to convey scorecard relationship dynamics with licensees. In regard to regulation policies, we were actively engaged to respond to the Consumer Product Safety Commission’s Saferproducts.gov website in 2010. We wanted to ensure licensors would be aware of any listings from consumers in regard to potential unsafe consumer products manufactured by licensees. We continue to engage our conversations with the Commission to ensure we keep abreast of updates to the site development.

Specific KPI’s cover the gamut from selling licensing internally, contract nomenclature and our SPLiCE Playbook focused on tertiary benefits of licensing’s metrics and objectives beyond royalties.

Finally, we have also benchmarked areas that support transparency between the licensor and the licensee to build sound platforms. This tool is the SPLiCE Scorecard which includes quantitative verification for Program Administration, Brand Alignment, Manufacturing, Anti-Counterfeiting, Social Accountability, Environmental Sustainability, and Product Integrity Scorecards, to name a few.

Shahab: It has always been when either myself or a SPLiCE member has reached out

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to get outside opinion from other members about an emerging licensing issue. As we know, there are many solutions to a problem. However, having the luxury to obtain different perspectives allows us to choose the best solution.

Gayle: It varies by Company, honestly, but for me along with the majority of SPLiCE members, it is all about brand protection and brand extension in a very strategic manner.

The dollars are nice, but not the key driver.

For some other Licensors in the industry, it’s primarily about the dollars.

BEL: Does SPLiCE assist other brands to initiate or build a licensing program?

Kenny: Extend their brand(s) to new audiences, fill in product gaps and monetize existing brand equity. I find that the licensing model is especially good at extending brands. Through licensing, we’ve reached new consumers in many countries that our core products and services don’t reach.

Kimberly: We do through presenting at symposiums and tradeshows such as the International Consumer Product Health and Safety Organization (ICPHSO), the Licensing Expo in Las Vegas, Brand Licensing Expo (BLE) in London, and the Hong Kong International Licensing Show / Asian Licensing Conference in Kowloon Bay, Hong Kong.

We also open the floor to licensors that are not SPLiCE Members during our annual SPLiCE Licensors Summit in Las Vegas.

BEL: According to your insights what are the main reasons for SPLiCE Members to engage in licensing activities?

Kimberly: To protect the brands within global and domestic markets and various classes of trade. Protect the core and build the equity. When licensing is aligned with the overall strategic business plan, the sky is the view for the brand.

PAGE 39 |

Shahab: Passion, dedication and the DNA of SPLiCE which is to candidly and freely share information within the confines of antitrust requirements.

BEL: Eleven years ago when SPLiCE was established, brand licensing in many companies was not really well known business model. Can you compare the licensing business today and back then?

What are the main differences?

Kimberly: Trademark brand licensing has grown up with a distinct personality. Its assets speak loud and clear to its gatekeepers past the immediate monetization with a future focus to support the overall strategic Continued on page 68

BEL MAGAZINE |

by Goran Kernyak |

| BEL Product Safety

| BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

| PAGE 40

WWW.BELMAG.BIZ |

BIG INTERVIEW: Joseph P. Mohorovic, CPSC Commissioner

It may not be your job to fix the raw materials selection at one of your suppliers, but it is your job to make sure the product is safe and complaint.

The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), established by the United States Congress in 1972, is an independent federal regulatory agency tasked with protecting children and families from unreasonable risk of injury or death associated with the use of thousands of types of consumer products under the agency’s jurisdiction.

CPSC is committed to protecting consumers and families from products that pose a fire, electrical, chemical, or mechanical hazard.

Over the past 40 years CPSC has been effective in reducing consumer product-related injury and death rates by using a wide range of strategies to identify and address product safety hazards.

The CPSC’s regulatory authority extends to manufacturers, retailers, importers, and distributors of consumer products regardless of their size, number of employees, or revenue.

The CPSC does not endorse or recommend specific brands of products. Instead, the agency works to promote a safe consumer product marketplace in ways that range from training manufacturers and importers on compliance with the CPSC’s principles of product safety to developing robust performance standards.

While the Commission’s regulatory purview is quite broad, a number of product categories fall outside of the CPSC’s jurisdiction.

Product categories such as automobiles and boats, alcohol, tobacco and firearms, food and drugs, and pesticides, cosmetics,

and medical devices are regulated by other federal agencies.

In 2008, the CPSC was granted extensive new regulatory authorities and mandates to improve consumer product safety through the Consumer Product Safety Improvement Act (CPSIA).

This legislation empowered the agency at U.S. ports, directed that longstanding voluntary standards be turned into mandatory standards for various children’s products, increased civil penalty amounts and enhanced criminal penalty authorities, required testing and certification of children’s products, established the lowest lead limits for children’s products in the world, and spurred the creation of CPSC’s first foreign office in Beijing.

The CPSIA mandated that CPSC create an import surveillance risk assessment methodology to identify products imported into the United States that are most likely to violate consumer product safety statutes and regulations. Over five years, beginning in 2015, the CPSC is expanding the Import Surveillance pilot program to a full-scale national program. The CPSC envisions a program with increased agency presence at U.S. ports of entry, and a program that develops and deploys the RAM (Risk Assessment Methodology) surveillance system nationwide. The Import Surveillance Program mission is to identify and interdict violative or potentially hazardous consumer products at PAGE 41 |

U.S. ports of entry while expediting the entry of compliant trade.

Since enactment of the CPSIA, the CPSC increased its staffing levels, escalated its public awareness efforts, and reinvigorated itself as a force for improving consumer product safety.

The Commission consists of five members appointed by the U.S. President with the advice and consent of the Senate for staggered seven year terms and are responsible for setting the Commission’s policy. The Chairman is the principal executive officer of the Commission.

CSPC Commissioner Joseph P. Mohorovic was nominated by President Barack Obama on October 13, 2013, and he was confirmed by the U.S. Senate on July 28, 2014, to a term that expires in October 2019.

Mr. Mohorovic delivered the Keynote at SPLiCE Licensors Workshop in Buffalo this September. With extensive public policy, product manufacturing, and product testing experience he was speaking about issues facing the product safety.

On this occasion BEL talked to Mr. Mohorovic about challenges facing the CPSC, his initiatives, priorities and goals.

BEL: What strategies do CPSC use to identify and address product safety hazards?

Mr. Mohorovic: We use a variety of stratBEL MAGAZINE |

| BEL Product Safety

egies, but they all start with information collection. As information comes in, through the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), company reports, our consumer database, or other means, our teams of engineers, epidemiologists, psychologists, and other experts look into the reports to see if there are any troubling trends emerging. We have a formalized risk-scoring system that evaluates how likely an injury is to occur and how severe the likely injury is.

That score then helps determine whether we will seek a recall from a company, ask for some other corrective action, or tell the company there’s no problem.

BEL: How does CPSC learn about potential product defects?

Mr. Mohorovic: We have several formal information-gathering tools. One is the National Electronic Injury Surveillance System (NEISS), which uses data collected from the Emergency Departments of participating hospitals across the country to create statistical models of injury rates for any product across our jurisdiction. Another is our consumer safety complaint database, www.saferproducts.gov, or our consumer hotline, which gives us a more direct link to consumers’ everyday experiences. We also get hundreds of reports a year directly from companies who have run into problems in manufacturing or received consumer complaints. And, sometimes, news reports or other public sources are the basis for an investigation.

BEL: The CPSC identifies and acts on consumer product hazards that occur at international, national, state, and local levels. To accomplish this, the CPSC engages a wide variety of stakeholders and partners: consumers, industry, Congress and Federal Agencies, State Governments, international stakeholders. Tell us more please about your cooperation with them, especially with Industry and Federal Agencies.

Mr. Mohorovic: We literally could not do our jobs without cooperation with industry. We’re a tiny (by DC standards) federal agency, with fewer than 600 employees. We don’t have enormous investigatory resources to allow us to go digging up problems. We rely on | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

companies to fulfill their moral and legal obligations to report potential problems to us. We also rely on companies to be willing to recall products with issues before anyone is actually hurt. And the companies we’re dealing with most often are also the leading voices in their industries as we try to work with standard-setting bodies, like ASTM International, to develop more protective voluntary standards.

We also rely on federal partners, particularly the Department of Justice, who represents us in almost all of our work in court. We also partner with agencies like the National Institute of Standards and Technology to help refine our test methods, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to keep us up to speed on chronic health hazards, and fellow health and safety agencies like the Food and Drug Administration and the Environmental Protection Agency to keep us apprised of threats they come across and give us good models for how to build regulatory programs that keep consumers safe while minimizing regulation.

BEL: What are your priorities in this term at CPSC? Mr. Mohorovic: In terms of hazards from specific product areas, my biggest priorities | PAGE 42

are finding a way to prevent needless injuries and deaths from latent hazards like furniture and/or televisions tipping over or portable generators filling enclosed spaces with lethal carbon monoxide gas. But I spend a lot of my time on bigger-picture structural issues CPSC is facing, including how we can step up our game at the ports to better spot products that pose threats to consumers and how we can streamline our regulation to make sure consumers aren’t paying for rules that don’t come with safety benefits.

BEL: What are critical focus areas for CPSC and for you respectively?

Mr. Mohorovic: For me, the critical areas are in identifying significant, latent hazards – problems consumers are unlikely to see coming – and working collaboratively with all stakeholders (including industry and consumer groups) to close the gap between the actual and the perceived safety of the product, whether by making the product safer, making the consumer better informed, or both. Beyond that, I want to focus on improving how we do what we do, such as reviewing our existing rules to change or scrap the ones that are unsuccessful or unnecessary and making sure we’re as open and transparent as we can be with the com-

panies we regulate.

BEL: Globalization of supply chains adds a lot to complexity to product safety.

Many domestic and global trends influence consumer product safety. What do you believe are the most critical external drivers affecting product safety?

Mr. Mohorovic: I think the reality of the modern supply chain is such that there is no such thing as “external.” There are factors that are beyond a company’s direct control – such as vendor competence – but any company that thinks those factors are “not my problem” runs a huge risk of finding out just how wrong that perception is, and in a very expensive way. It may not be your job to fix the raw materials selection at one of your suppliers, but it is your job to make sure the product is safe and compliant, no matter what your suppliers are doing. If that means finding new suppliers, then that’s what you have to do. At the end of the day, CPSC is going to look to the manufacturer or importer of the finished product, and, if your best defense is to point at a vendor, we’re going to question not only your competence at making a product but your commitment to making it safely.

BEL: Prior to joining the CPSC in this term, you were the Senior Vice President of Intertek, a global leader in product testing, responsible for all aspects of performance, growth and strategic management in the North American region. With this experience and as the only MBA and only non-lawyer on the Commission you bring a bit of different perspective. You’ve said that as Commissioner, now you are thinking more in terms of Safety Return on Investment - SROI. What do you mean by that?

Mr. Mohorovic: In the private sector, managing a global business line, I framed my decision-making in terms of Return on Investment, bang for the buck. No matter how tempting an idea sounded, if it cost more than it was worth, I had to question its value.

At CPSC, obviously, I’m not looking to make a profit, but I still want to look at maximizing returns. The return I’m interested in is an increase in consumer safety, a reduction in the American consumer’s chances of being

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harmed by an unreasonably dangerous product. I feel particularly obligated to focus on the safety return because it goes to the same people who are also providing the investment – the taxpayers – and they ultimately fund each improvement twice, once by paying the taxes that support the agency and again in higher prices for safer products.

BEL: In which area can CPSC realize the highest SROI? Mr. Mohorovic: There are lots of opportunities, but I think the biggest is at our ports.

Just from products within CPSC’s jurisdiction (about 15,000 product categories), more than 235,000 importers bring in about 14 million shipments annually worth over $700 billion, and in some of our most prominent categories – like toys – more than 90% of the products in the U.S. are imported. It’s a function of mathematics, then, that about 4-in-5 recalls are of imported products. If we can evolve our import surveillance system to the point where we can better identify likely violative or defective products before they even reach the ports – and look for defects and not just regulatory violations – then we can protect consumers by keeping injury risks not just out of their hands but out of the country. It’s a substantial undertaking with a big price tag, but it could be a game-changer for safety.

BEL: What are the keys to meeting that challenge?

BEL: In Testimony before the U.S. House Committee on Energy & Commerce, Subcommittee on Commerce, Manufacturing, and Trade, you said: “Next evolution is not inspecting more, but more intelligently.”

Which direction does the CPSC need to go to achieve this goal?

Mr. Mohorovic: Two directions, really. The first is, again, developing more sophisticated targeting systems so that we can better find the needle in the haystack. The second is to shrink the haystack through a Trusted Trader model that allows us to save ourselves and the trade the waste of time and resources that is inspecting cargo we know (or should know) up front is safe and compliant.

Mr. Mohorovic’s professional experience in the field of product safety dates back to 2002, when he first joined the CPSC. During his four-year tenure at the agency, he served in various roles, including as Chief of Staff and first Director of the Office of International Programs. Notably, while serving at the CPSC, Mr. Mohorovic was instrumental in successfully negotiating 12 Memorandums of Understanding with major U.S. international trading partners. In 2006, he was elected the first Chairman of the International Consumer Product Safety Caucus (ICPSC).

For more info about CPSC please visit: www.cpsc.gov

Mr. Mohorovic: The biggest key is being willing to rethink our strategies. We can’t just inspect our way to safety – not only would it swamp the agency, but it would be a massive, wasteful burden on the American economy, which is already laboring under the weight of burdensome regulation from across government. So, we need to reimagine how we gather and use information to better pick our spots for inspection, to increase not just our success rate in finding violations but also the value of the violations we find – hitting for average and hitting for power at the same time, which any baseball fan will tell you is a very difficult thing to do.

Thankfully, we have the right people in place to do the rethinking, and it’s currently under way with a new pilot project, so I am hopeful we’re moving in the right direction.

PAGE 43 |

BEL MAGAZINE |

| BEL Best Practices

by Christof Binder |

PROFITABILITY

Brand Licensing

Does Not Come at

Zero Cost

Christof Binder, MBA, PhD Capstone Branding GmbH, Germany cbi@capstonebranding.com

| BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

Many people think that brand licensing is easy money earned along the way, with royalty income representing net profit. In reality, it is far from that. What most people forget is that brand licensing requires resources, efforts, time and some investment. As a result, the net profit resulting from licensing can vary between 95% of royalty revenues and as little as 0%. The following article discusses spending, cost structure and profitability aspects and illustrates best practice in brand licensing.

| PAGE 44

Licensing Strategy There are different strategic approaches to brand licensing, resulting in varying importance of profitability and financial results of the licensing initiative. Some licensors engage in brand licensing simply to earn additional revenues and to improve their financial results. In this setting, licensors are usually cost sensitive and try to minimize expenses related to licensing. On the other hand, some licensors do brand licensing to enhance brand value. Their brand alignment and licensing functions are more intense and strict, and they accept to re-invest substantial parts of their royalty revenues into the activity. And still others do brand licensing to protect the trademark in other classes or territories and thereby prevent third parties from free riding or counterfeiting the brand.

For instance, cigarette and liquor brands started brand licensing activities in order to bypass advertising bans in their core categories. Their goal was to enhance brand value, not to earn additional money. Similarly, designer brands reinvest most parts of their revenues from licensing to run their “core business” which is haute couture, fashion shows and PR. Depending on its strategic approach, brand licensing requires different management styles. Some companies have centralised, others have decentralised licensing management structures. The centralised licensor tends to control its licensees and their brand related activities—at higher cost, whereas in decentralised licensing the licensees operate rather independently and non-aligned with the business of the licensor—at lower cost. The budgeting method may also influence the cost of licensing. While some licensors base their budget decisions on defined functions and how to perform them effectively, others base it on “usual ratios” or rules of thumb as percentage of revenues.

Licensing Functions Licensing functions can be broadly split into two different areas: acquisition and ongoing management. During the acquisition phase, functions include: searching potential partners, due diligence, negotiating deal points, finalising and signing the contract. Sometimes, licensees simply drop in by chance. Usually, acquisition takes not only time (between 6 and 18 months), but also substantial legal support, while revenues from that license relationship are still far away in the future. The

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costs to initiate and acquire a contract can range from 5% to 50% of the total lifetime cost. Thus, acquisition is an important cost driver.

During an ongoing contract, the licensor’s functions include: business strategy/planning, product management, trend previewing, product design guidance, product quality testing, new product and marketing approvals, graphics and artwork, photo shoots, marketing and sales programs, auditing and compliance, reporting, collecting royalties, and contract renewal. Trademark protection is not a function in itself, but may still be very costly.

Major cost drivers are the product innovation rate, the extent of common integrated marketing initiatives, and the number of common customers/sales channels to be coordinated. I.e. fashion licensing is cost intensive because of product innovation (hundreds of new products every season) and point of sales integration (shop-in-shops integrating different categories including both own and licensed products). By contrast, food licensing with fewer products and less innovation can be managed at much lower costs.

The licensor’s time needed to manage a brand licensing contract should be no less than 10 mandays of an experienced license manager. For important contracts this figure can increase above 200 mandays. 35 mandays is a good approximation for an average figure to start with.

Level of Integration Some licensors require their licensees to buy selected services from them, or even assume selected core functions of the licensee. The payment for such functions can be by unit prices and effective use (i.e. for photo shoots), or by a percentage of sales (i.e. central marketing or sales). As a result, the licensor has additional revenues. As the licensor does not make profits on such functions, his overall profit margin (as % of revenues) will decrease.

Some licensors, i.e. Ralph Lauren, go even a step further and provide centralized advertising and/ or sales functions for their licensees. The cost for such centralized services is either invoiced directly to the licensee, or compensated through an additional percentage on licensed revenues. Again, this part of the value chain is “not-for-profit”; all such revenues of the licensor are expensed.

Such centralized functions do however change the profit margin of a licensing division quite substanPAGE 45 |

BEL MAGAZINE |

| BEL Best Practices

Exhibit 1

tially (see exhibit 1). Assuming a trademark royalty rate of 7%, an advertising contribution of 3%, and an expense ratio of 50% of trademark royalty revenues, the overall profitability drops from 50%

licensed sales trademark royalty revenues 7% on 1.000 advertising royalty revenues 3% on 1.000

Case 1

Case 2

1,000

1,000

70

70

-

30

total revenues

70

100

licensing expenses 50% of 70

35

35

-

30

35

35

50%

35%

advertising expenses profit profit in % of revenues

(case 1) to 35% if advertising is centralized (case 2). The more centralized licensing management, the lower is the profit margin of the licensor.

Life Cycle Royalty income is changing over the life cycle of a contract. During the acquisition phase, income is zero. The launch phase - between contract signing and availability on the shelves - typically takes 12

Exhibit 2 Cost of Licensing over Contract Lifetime

ILLUSTRATIVE

royalty income

licensing expenses

-1

0

2

| BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

4 | PAGE 46

6

8

10 time

months, depending on product and development.

After that, it often takes 7 to 10 years to reach maximum sales (see exhibit 2).

Licensee acquisition costs occur during the phase of zero income. Ongoing management costs are still high during the launch phase, but more or less constant over time once licensed products are launched and brand values aligned. As a result, budgeting licensing costs as a constant percentage of royalty income is not really helpful. A flexible approach to budgeting costs according to the contract life cycle is needed.

Contract Size Another important aspect is the royalty income per contract. While costs to manage and control a specific contract do barely depend on licensed turnover, royalty income does. Therefore, a contract generating higher royalty income is expected to be managed at lower (relative) costs than a contract with low royalty income. Accordingly, contract size must be considered in budgeting costs of licensing management.

Contract Portfolio After all, it is the total portfolio of licensing contracts, their position in the life cycle, and their specific contract sizes, that determine the appropriate costs of licensing. A young licensing initiative requires a much higher cost ratio than an established program with many established and successful licensees.

Agency Cost There is no statistical survey available on average expenses in licensing. However, the commissions charged by full service licensing agencies might serve as a first indicator. According to a study on “Best Practices in Trademark Licensing” published

by EPM in 2003, agent’s commissions range from 10% to 40% of royalties, with the most common range being from 25% to 35%. Considering that “make” (having an inhouse licensing department) or “buy” (outsourcing the licensing activity to an agent) is often a question of size, critical mass and factor cost, agent’s commissions are likely to be higher than the cost of an in-house licensing function. However, even with the best agent, some functions and costs remain with the licensor, i.e. securing and defending the trademarks, design guidance, marketing and sales integration, some approvals, etc. Therefore, the range of agent’s

commission cited above represents only 60% to 90% of total costs. As a result, costs of licensing could vary from 15% to 60% of royalty revenues.

In practice, the range is even larger. While a few licensors spend little more than 5%, others spend even 100% of total royalty revenues.

Some Case Studies Boxing brand Everlast is a good example for very efficient, low-cost licensor. Prior to being acquired

by Sports Direct in 2007, Everlast was able to run 88 licensees in a global brand licensing program with only three licensing executives. The licensing program generated US$ 13.4 million in licensing revenues at US$ 0.9 million cost, or 7%. This could be achieved despite low average royalty revenues of US$ 150,000 per contract. Cost per licensee was US$ 10,000. This figure even covers the considerable efforts of Everlast to acquire new and replace old licensees.

Another efficient brand licensing program can be found at Guess Inc., the US fashion brand. Guess Inc.’s revenues from licensing amount to US$ 111 million in 2014. Here, the cost of licensing is 9% of licensing revenues, or a profit margin of 91%.

In this case however, the licensor’s average cost per license amount to US$ 650,000 per year, or 65 times the amount of Everlast.

Ralph Lauren Inc., the US designer brand, ranks among the champions in brand licensing. Total royalty revenues reached US$ 182 million in 2013.

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Operating income from licensing was US$ 130 million, or 71%. Ralph Lauren spends on average over US$ 2.5 million per year on each licensee, showcasing the level of management and support Ralph Lauren provides to its licensees.

The three cases discussed above show different profit margins, as well as different cost levels per licensee. Still, the profitability levels are very high in all three cases, as is typical for brand licensing divisions. However, these cases do not account for the original cost to build the brand; typically, licensing divisions get the brand “for free”. In this regard, Iconix Brand Group Inc. is an interesting case study.

Iconix is a pure licensing management company with currently 35 brands, nearly 1.200 licenses and licensing revenues of US$ 407 million. However, Iconix acquired all of its brands (including some license agreements) from third parties, usually from insolvency or restructuring situations. In contrast to the other three cases, Iconix is not in a position to use its brands “for free” but has to bear the cost of financing and depreciation for the acquired brands. Iconix’s average operating expenses are 38% of revenues or USD 175,000 per licensee.

In addition to that, expenses for depreciation and interest amount to 14% of licensing revenues, adding up to a remaining profit margin of 48%.

Best Practice Licensors Some of the most successful brand licensors run their licensing business as a separate division.

According to the rules of segment reporting under IFRS 8, a licensing business must be reported in PAGE 47 |

BEL MAGAZINE |

| BEL Best Practices

Exhibit 3

450

80%

400 350

60%

300 250

40%

200 150

20%

100

licensing expenses in % of licensing revenues

revenues from licensing in USD mn

Cost Ratios of Best Practice Licensors - Total

50 0

0%

bandwidth min-max average Source: financial statements, Capstone Branding analysis

separate accounts if its operating profit makes up 10% or more of the company’s total operating profit. Brand licensors falling under this rule have to disclose revenues, costs and assets of their licensing business in the context of their financial reporting. We have identified 13 such companies with annual royalty income of US$ 20 million and higher. These companies represent a total annual royalty income of US$ 1.8 billion from licensing

Exhibit 4

revenue per agreement in US$ mn

Cost Ratios of Best Practice Licensors – Per Agreement 12 expected trend

10

y = 3,1038x 0,9604 R² = 0,8307

8

Michael Kors

effective trend

4

Esprit

0

Cherokee

0,5

1

1,5

Source: financial statements, Capstone Branding analysis

| BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

| PAGE 48

Here are the key findings: • There is nothing like a “typical approach” to brand licensing. The average licensing cost ratio of the thirteen companies varies widely between 12% p.a. and 64%. Some licensors decide to re-invest very substantial parts of their royalty income, others decide to operate more “economically”.

2

• Surprisingly, licensing expenses are anything else than a constant. All companies (except Hugo Boss with only 2 observable years) show a considerable bandwidth of cost ratios over time, reflecting: a) substantial fluctuations of royalty income (i.e. through one-time payments or accruals and deferrals at year-end) and b) “strategic spending” based on needs of licensees and/ or market.

Tommy Hilfiger

2 0

Calvin Klein

Ralph Lauren

6

Best Practice Cost Ratios Exhibit 3 illustrates the annual royalty income (bars in grey) and the bandwidth and average of operating costs related to licensing (not including D&A and interest expense) over a couple of years observed which is indicated in brackets behind the company name. Some of the licensors ceased reporting the licensing business as a separate segment at some point in time, for different reasons (i.e. being acquired, delisted, or no longer material).

• Only two out of the thirteen (Guess!, Hugo Boss) operate below the 20% cost ratio threshold.

Hugo Boss

Guess

their brands in some 3.000 license agreements.

All of them are well-known, successful brands which are successfully licensed to third parties since many years. Moreover, all of them maintain fully staffed licensing offices with experienced licensing professionals to manage, support and extend their licensed businesses. Considering the size, the long history and the stability of their licensing operations, one should expect that they all left the high-cost start-up stage and moved into a cost-effective, stable and well-organized stage.

There is reason to call them the “Best Practice Group” in brand licensing—not necessarily because they are cost-efficient, but simply because they are large, successful brand licensors since long.

2,5 3 3,5 cost per agreement in US$ mn

• If there is something like a “typical” cost ratio of brand licensing, this would be somewhere between 30% and 45% of licensing revenues. The overall average is 35% which is fully in line with our earlier estimates. To be clear, this ratio must be considered best practice. Less important brand

licensors (smaller licensing businesses, younger licensing initiatives) tend to have higher average cost ratios.

• When looking at the cost ratios, one must consider the royalty rates charged by these licensors.

Royalty rates per licensor range from 5% to more than 10%, with a mean value of 8.5% on licensed revenues. Licensing businesses with lower royalty rates will show higher cost ratios.

• There is no direct correlation between growth of royalty income, and cost ratios. Expenses seem to be variable; on average, expenses increase as fast as revenues. However, if one looks at cost ratios in the maturity stage of a licensing activity, a (very) slight decline of cost ratios can be observed with decreasing revenues and/or number of agreements. Thus, an important share of licensing costs is determined by the licensor’s attempts to grow the business.

Moreover, it would be reasonable to expect a size effect of cost ratios. In particular, relative costs (or cost ratios) would decrease with increasing revenues. However, no such effect can be observed in exhibit 3. An expected size effect of costs would result from step-fixed cost, or parts of the costs that are constant per agreement and decrease with increasing revenue under an agreement (agreement-fixed costs). Exhibit 4 illustrates this correlation between average revenue and average cost per agreement for the thirteen companies.

• The expected trend line (dotted line) describes the effect that there would be something like a decreasing cost per agreement, or even a maximum cost per agreement.

• In practice, such effect does not exist. The effective trend line (bold line) shows a very small (immaterial) contract-fixed size effect of licensing.

Apparently, licensing costs do not depend on the contract size, and thus are not contract-specific.

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revenues from licensing. The typical long-term cost ratio of best practice licensors is between 30% and 45% of revenues. This holds true for the best licensing brands. Weaker brands will need to spend even more to achieve long-term success.

Many licensors try to harvest brand licensing by underspending. While this approach might pay off in the short term, it might have an unhappy ending.

True and sustainable partnerships are a give and take. Strong licensees do not only expect a strong brand, they also expect the licensor to invest and to seriously support the licensing initiative as a long-term profit center. If it is no more than just a cheap cash cow, they will not renew and turn elsewhere. Numerous brand licensors have vanished.

Some because their brand became weak. And some for not giving enough back into the business and to their licensees. It is very clear that a serious brand licensing business needs an adequate operating budget.

Christof Binder is a veteran in brand licensing.

Since 1994, he is president of Germany based Capstone Branding GmbH, an advisory firm specializing in brand licensing, brand transactions and brand extensions. As an advisor to both brand licensors and licensees, he was involved in over 2,000 brand license partnerships in Europe and worldwide, of which he initiated close to 500. He is known as one of the leading experts in Europe on royalty rates and licensing economics. He also acted as financial expert in trademark valuation, as well as in trademark infringement and transfer pricing litigation issues to courts and arbitration panels in Europe. He is a regular author and speaker on brand licensing, royalty rate and brand valuation issues. In addition to Capstone Branding, he is one of the founders and a managing partner of MARKABLES, an online database for the valuation of brands.

• Instead, they depend on other factors, like size of the product range; rate and number of new products launched; degree of involvement of licensor in product design and communications; stage of the initiative in the lifecycle, cooperative marketing and sales; integration of activities.

Conclusion There is no successful brand licensing business without significant investment from the licensor – both upfront and ongoing. There are very few success cases with expenses below 20% of PAGE 49 |

BEL MAGAZINE |

| BEL Royalty Audit

by Sidney P. Blum |

ROYALTY REVENUES

Challenges in Global

Licensee Monitoring

Sidney P. Blum, Managing Director Stout Risius Ross, Inc, USA sblum@srr.com CPA, CFE, CPEA (E)(H&S), CFF, Royalty Audit, Dispute Advisory, and Forensic Services, “Certified Fraud Examiner of the Year – 2012” www.SRR.com

Significant new royalty opportunities have emerged with the expanding global economy, and in sync, underreported royalty revenues from non-domestic licensees are rising at a dramatic rate, resulting in a substantial loss of income to licensors.

Recovering lost royalties from licensees - sometimes in excess of 20 percent of reported royalties requires a team of globally and locally skilled contract compliance professionals.

The cause for the rapid rise in underreported royalties are broad in scope, ranging from legitimate business-process constraints emanating from sometimes overly complex global contracts to weaker controls and intellectual property laws in expanding international economies. Regardless of the causes of the underreporting, economic losses abound from the flourishing black- and gray-market distribution channels.

What’s more, licensee-monitoring has grown increasingly difficult as businesses become more dispersed and as products are sold in unmonitored global markets. Emails and phone calls to overseas licensees can often go unanswered, and sales figures from retailers are not reliable or even obtainable from many regions. With significant licensee operations in hard-to-reach manufacturing locales throughout many regions that are notorious for black and gray-market activities, contract compliance professionals are challenged more than ever to perform under the “right-to-audit” provisions included in most license agreements.

Digital Content: A Burgeoning Global Royalty Market As royalties from digital content have enriched many media companies for several years, contract-compliance professionals are being deployed

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globally and more frequently to assess royalty payments from digitally distributed intellectual property, such as video games, ring-tones, wallpapers, video clips, full-length music tracks and similar media. Monitoring royalties related to digital content presents its own unique challenges. Often, licensees remain so concerned with being “first-tomarket” or with the quantity of goods distributed that they neglect creating effective accounting systems to properly capture complete downloads and allocate royalties appropriately.

Recovering lost royalties from licensees — sometimes in excess of 20 percent of reported royalties — requires a team of globally and locally skilled contract compliance professionals in such diverse areas as telecommunications, data processing, international tax and trade law, national intellectual property law, local customs and languages, and professional accounting standards.

The following describes some of the reasons that licensees underreport digital media distributions and royalties. These issues are often overlooked by traditional contract-compliance professionals not teamed with the proper industry and technical specialists.

• Licensees frequently use third parties to distribute digital content. These third parties may not be

subject to the right-to-audit provisions listed in contracts between licensees and licensors. It may also be unclear as to whether the licensee or the third party distributor has the responsibility to pay royalties to the licensor.

• Licensors do not or cannot process the metadata provided by licensees to describe key aspects of their digital content. Metadata accuracy affects the licensors’ own ability to pay royalties to their content-creator partners (i.e., recording artists, song writers, game developers, etc.).

• A licensee’s self-reported royalty documentation may include only summaries of digital content sold, creating difficulty in retaining sufficient detailed delivery and revenue information to support royalty payments to licensors.

• Royalty payments to licensors may be calculated on the basis of assumptions.

• Licensors and/or third-parties may inappropriately exclude unidentified revenue from royalty payments to licensors.

• Digital media licensing agreements may not appropriately address items such as undelivered content, free samples and product bundles.

• Licensing agreements may restrict distribution of digital content to certain regions or localities.

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Tracking compliance with these restrictions can be complex.

Emerging Regional Trends Digital-content royalties is just one area of concern for Consumer Product licensors. Global companies are facing a number of emerging regional challenges in monitoring their licensees.

Asia Traditionally, with reasons ranging from the extent to which agreements work bi-laterally to cultural issues, Asian licensees have been reluctant to allow licensors to examine their financial records through contract compliance professionals. Such reluctance exists despite requirements or incentives for an examination and a specific obligation in their contract. Even identification by licensors of significant incidences of non-compliance or large financial consequences do not encourage field examinations in many instances.

In some cases, licensees have imposed conditions on license or royalty compliance examinations, such as restricting the records that may be accessed; limiting the time allocated to conduct fieldwork; and even requiring examination of record in cities other than where the documents are normally prepared and maintained, thus denying

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BEL MAGAZINE |

| BEL Royalty Audit

access to the staff that prepared the source documents.

In Asia, royalty compliance examinations have traditionally been seen as something that U.S. and European companies often imposed on Asian companies, but there are an increasing number of cases where Asian companies are examining other Asian companies. Indeed, Asian licensors are even examining European and U.S. based licensees. In Japan, for instance, where many companies have been in a unique position of being both licensors and licensees, some have been willing to respect their agreement to be subject to a royalty compliance examination despite the cultural concerns that such an exam would border on mistrust. More and more, Japanese companies are requiring that compliance be tested, with litigation and arbitration to follow, if necessary. Korean companies are also moving in this direction.

Some companies have advised their licensees that royalty compliance exams will be performed and that non-cooperation will bring consequences.

This approach may work where a licensee needs the licensor more than the other way around.

However, the tactic is still considered extreme and ill-advised in Asia.

A number of licensors are working to change these attitudes. Many have correctly sought to educate the licensee that good corporate governance simply doesn’t allow them to assume an “hones-

ty system” will work, much in the same way that many companies typically require contracts before entering into transactions or demand letters of credit before shipping goods to customers. They have explained the need to take some measure to verify compliance. In other words “trust, but verify.”

Unfortunately, in a large number of instances, licensors’ concerns about compliance in Asia have proven to be well founded with the identification of large sums undeclared. Notwithstanding the challenge of examining licensees who are later found to have high levels of underreported royalties, many examinations are being conducted successfully within Asia without unduly straining the relationship, especially if the program is managed carefully by the licensor and the contract compliance professional that performs the royalty compliance examination.

North America The breadth and scale of self-reporting programs placed in operation by licensors has had a favorable impact on the quality and accuracy of self-reporting to those licensors. In the absence of such proactive monitoring programs, in North America, first time royalty compliance examinations commonly identify underreported royalties in excess of 20% and occasionally, underreported royalties in excess of 100%. The reasons for underreporting are mostly centered on aggressive contract interpretation, royalty statements prepared by untrained employees, and a lack of licensee focus on their need to accurately self-report revenues and resultant royalties. Licensors tend to see an immediate impact when they place a broad monitoring program into operation, with a positive “coattail” impact even on those licensees that are not included in the initial wave of examinations, as word spreads quickly amongst licensees that the licensor has enacted a royalty compliance program. When starting a proactive royalty compliance program, it is important the licensor communicates to all licensees the intent and scope of the program so as to maintain relationships and so the program be perceived as thorough, impartial, and fair.

Generally speaking, North America licensors fall into three primary groups: • Companies that proactively conduct ongoing royalty-compliance examinations as part of normal business operations and that budget for recoveries over costs each year;

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• Companies that are reactive, conducting fewer than a handful of royalty-compliance examinations, and only after a determining that the licensee is underreporting; and, • Companies that don’t monitor licensees through royalty-compliance examinations.

For companies with proactive departments, the trend over the last five years has been to increase spending on royalty-compliance exams. Care needs to be taken to make certain the royalty compliance professionals selected are specifically trained in third party compliance examinations as licensors rarely have more than one chance to examine the records of the licensee. When companies select external providers, this cost is often offset by an agreement’s cost recover provision.

Such provisions generally allow cost recovery at underreportings in excess of 2% to 5%.

Additionally, companies with material revenues from self-reporting third-party licensees may now be required to enact royalty compliance programs to meet Sarbanes-Oxley Act requirements.

Europe - Middle East - Africa While many licensees are based in Western Europe and North America, their factory operations increasingly have shifted to Eastern Europe in search of lower labor costs and other financial incentives.

As this manufacturing shift occurs, professionals unfamiliar with traditional Western accounting internal controls and reporting are preparing royalty reports that almost always do not properly account for manufactured licensed product, sales and resultant royalties.

Most often, these misstatements appear to be honest misreading of complex foreign language contracts. In many instances, the errors are by individuals who have never seen a copy of the agreement and, therefore, are generally unaware of the unique restrictions that affect the royalty due to the licensor, i.e., on-returns, minimum-selling prices, related-party sales, shrinkage, calculation of gross revenues, price protection, etc.

Securing records from licensees in a reviewable format can be especially difficult in Eastern Europe, as the local customs and accounting rules can affect how information is capture, retained, and presented. Therefore, using a local royalty contract compliance professional skilled in local language, customs, tax laws, record retention requirements and industry practices is a must for a successful royalty compliance examination in

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Eastern Europe.

The European Union (EU) extension has encouraged the movement of consumer-product production eastward. This means that owners have to exercise their “rights of audit” to protect their intellectual property (IP) in countries that do not have a long tradition of doing so.

But royalty-compliance examinations are not the only tool, especially in Eastern Europe. Licensors may wish to consider a broader strategy to protect IP by lobbying government officials to protect the rights of consumer product licensors. This is particularly important in regions where counterfeiting is a significant source of local employment.

In a recent conference in Brussels on IP crime, it was clear that EU-level rights owners are far from winning the battle for political influence against those who believe in more limited rights. The Gowers Review of Intellectual Property in the U.K., for example, declined to support the extension of the U.K. copyright term for sound recordings and proposed the extension of “fair use” exceptions for some copyright material. It did, however, indicate support for a closer collaboration between rights owners and government. If this is an issue in the U.K., traditionally a strong jurisdiction for rights owners, then it poses even more challenges in the newer EU countries of Romania, Latvia and Cyprus, for example.

Conclusion Globalization has opened up many new markets for licensors. However, cultural differences and language barriers and misunderstandings of regulations have made the efficient collection of royalties from licensees a challenge in many ways.

Given the geographic, cross-boarder span of business today, companies may find the need to enlist the help of professional-services firms that have the global scope and expertise to deliver effective solutions.

Sidney Blum is one of the world’s foremost authorities on royalty audits and has authored multiple books and articles on the subject.

He can be reached for private consultations at sblum@SRR.com.

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BEL MAGAZINE |

by Goran Kernyak |

| BEL Brand Profile

BRAND BECKHAM

David Beckham David Beckham is a symbol of the powerful connection between iconic global stars and their loyal fans around the world for more than two decades. His fame extends beyond the soccer field. In much of the world David Beckham name is instantly recognizable.

Victoria Beckham, who has been famous in her own right as part of the Spice Girls, contributed to his celebrity beyond soccer.

David Beckham became one of the world’s most famous sports and style icons, and together with Victoria, the couple became lucrative spokespeople for various big brands while simultaneously they turned themselves into a brand.

Beckham brand is now worth over $710 million, according to the specialists at the London School of Marketing. Experts suggested that their marketing power comes from three main areas: Footworks – relating to David’s football revenues, The Beckham label itself and Beckham Venture – Victoria’s | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

fashion business. By current valuations, Footworks totals $225 million, the Beckham name at $105 million and Beckham Ventures at $90 million. Brand generate between $45 to $60 million annually. The family also have non-business assets worth an estimated $285 million meaning the total package adds up to $710 million.

Many endorsement deals make him one of the most recognizable athletes throughout the world. Having worn Adidas football boots from the start of career, in 2003 he signed a $160 million lifetime contract with Adidas, earning nearly half the money upfront, and will continue to earn percentages of profits on all of his branded Adidas products. He had 10-year collaboration with Pepsi Co. that expired in 2009. Other endorsements include Armani, Breitling, Burger King, Diet Coke, H&M, Marks & Spencer and Samsung, which in 2012 earned him $27.7 million. Beckham is working with Diageo, | PAGE 54

the world’s largest distiller, as a global brand ambassador of Haig Club, a new scotch, and has launched a venture with Las Vegas Sands Corp., the casino operator.

David Beckham is expanding his brand into acting too. He is already signed to star in the upcoming film Knights of the Roundtable: King Arthur. According to brandchannel, Beckham reportedly eyeing the title role in future Bond films after current Bond Daniel Craig retires following the release of SPECTRE, the 24th film in the Bond series. Becks as Bond makes for great attention-grabbing headlines (despite the little chance to really see him in the role of agent 007).

He is also a motorcycle fanatic, which made him a perfect candidate for the face of Belstaff, a global luxury lifestyle brand. He designed a 15-piece clothing collection for the British brand, and it was featured in an advertising campaign and a limited-edition photography book entitled ‘Off Road,’ both

lensed by Peter Lindbergh.

After several successful collaborations with the likes of H&M and Belstaff, the former England captain has launched his own label.

In December 2014, David Beckham and his long-term business partner and creator of American Idol, Simon Fuller, have signed a 50-50 joint venture with Global Brands Group, one of the world’s leading branded apparel, footwear, fashion accessories and related lifestyle product companies.

Seven Global is a joint venture designed to drive the continued development of all consumer product categories around David Beckham to the next level.

David Beckham Takes A Stake In The Kent & Curwen Brand Trinity Limited, a member of the privately-held Fung Group, owner of four high-end menswear brands, and one of the leading retailers of high-end menswear brands serving Greater China and Europe, recently announced that its Kent & Curwen brand has signed an exclusive five-year agreement that will see David Beckham play a multifaceted role in driving the brand’s business globally.

Under the agreement with Global Brands Group through its Seven Global joint venture, David Beckham will be personally involved in multiple aspects of the Kent & Curwen business, from product development, market expansion and advertising to store design and location. Trinity’s plans include the creation of new Kent & Curwen collections and marketing campaigns inspired and influenced by David Beckham as well as the opening of new flagship stores in China and other markets around the world, and the launch of an e-commerce site.

Trinity Limited will pay Seven Global up to 10% of sales, with a minimum guarantee of $3.5 million in the first year, rising to $7.25 million by 2020. Shares in Trinity, a publicly-listed company on the Stock Exchange of Hong Kong, jumped 52% after deal was announced.

Trinity Limited’s CEO, Richard Cohen said, “Kent & Curwen was established as a sports-related gentlemen’s fashion brand, so it’s a perfect fit to have David as a business partner - a true gentleman, celebrated for his fashion style, and the British sports hero

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of his generation. We are honoured to have David play a substantial role within the future development and management of the Kent & Curwen business. Sports-related men’s fashion is a significant growth opportunity in China and beyond, and I am confident that David, as a global icon, will enable us to engage more deeply with existing customers, and attract a new clientele to the brand.”

David Beckham said, “I’m always looking to work with brands and companies that have a rich history and authenticity. When this authenticity is rooted in the country that I came from, it attracts me even more to the partnership. What I love is that Kent & Curwen has a pedigree and excellence that has been passed not just through generations of Britain’s most celebrated style icons, from Laurence Olivier to Michael Caine and Mick Jagger, as well as many others who have worn their products.”

Bruce Rockowitz, CEO and Vice Chairman of Global Brands Group, said, “We are bringing together two highly complementary brands - the iconic British brand Kent & Curwen, with its rich sporting heritage, and the David Beckham brand, synonymous with sports, style and star power - and expanding them globally. This is just the beginning of our plans to extend the Beckham brand across all consumer product categories, leveraging the powerful worldwide platform of Global Brands.“ Kent & Curwen was established in 1926 by Eric Kent and Dorothy Curwen. The company first began as a manufacturer of military, club, and college repp ties that helped define 20th century British style. In the 1930s, Kent & Curwen introduced the iconic cricket sweater and went on to be the supplier to major sporting events and clubs even finding its way across the Atlanticto outfit the Hollywood Cricket Club and Palm Springs Racquet Club. It wasn’t long before such royals as the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Kent were seen sporting Kent & Curwen. More than fifty years after the brand’s creation, the Three Lions Herald became Kent & Curwen’s registered trademark. An undeniable symbol of excellence used by King Richard, the logo made clear that the brand was as regal and distinguished as ever.

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BEL MAGAZINE |

| BEL Brand To Watch

THE ANATOMY OF A NEW BRAND

Lil’ Ledy:

Rebel Style with

Lil’ Ledy is a contemporary styled brand created in a designy way. Asia meets Sweden.

Kawaii cuteness merges with modern design.

Two opposite elements create a new unique style.

While the consumer is on the look out for something new on a daily basis, it’s not that easy to come up with new products, ideas and concepts to live up to those expectations at the same pace. Everyone is looking for the best new thing, for the great idea that will keep on moving the economy on and on. Each season asks for hot new items, the word ‘new’ being the magical word of retail and our culture these days. It even beats the word ‘for free’. New, new, new.

How does one build a brand in such an ever-changing environment, when we all know that it takes time to build a brand, to establish an emotional connection with the target market? One season just isn’t enough.

And we are not talking about one seasonal, usually character based, brands that merely function as a decoration on a product. We are talking about brands that are here to stay, to evolve and grow with time. Brands with a strong brand concept and clear brand signals, backed up with a unique brand message. In the last few years we are witnessing the revivals of many popular brands from the past that are given a new polished face and placed on products. Sometimes not | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

even developing new content, just building on the positive emotions from the past. This is another proof of how challenging it is to develop a new brand.

On the constant look out for new brands, we spotted the Lil’ Ledy brand during the Brand Licensing Europe show in London last year. It caught our eye and attention with its unique style and strong visuals, as well as positive vibe. We’ve got even more interested after meeting up with Antonija Majstorovic, the creative director of the company Manu standing behind the Lil’ Ledy character based lifestyle brand. She showed us how passion and know-how are the perfect combination for getting things done and dreams turned into reality.

The company Manu has been working in the branding and marketing world for 20 years building and developing brands for international corporate clients. So, why did they decide to build their own brand and bring it to the licensing arena?

“We were looking for a new challenge, something to be excited about, to make our hearts beat louder and faces smile wider,” said Antonija. | PAGE 56

Of course, that was only the spark that started a new adventure. After all, the company built their know-how and brand expertise into the Lil’ Ledy brand. Yet this statement also reflects the brand’s concept/strategy – to bring positive messages and experiences to girls and women all over the world. The target market being the female consumer, the most competitive market in the licensing business, asks for clear and recognizable brand signals that stand out in the crowd.

That’s where the brand’s unique brand style comes into place.

Lil’ Ledy is a contemporary styled brand created in a designy way. Asia meets Sweden. Kawaii cuteness merges with modern design. Two opposite elements create a new unique style. It’s a natural style extension of the award winning design team at Manu incorporating their personal love for cute and loveable characters. The sophisticated cute style clearly reflects the essence of the Lil’ Ledy brand – a rebel with style. With its cuteness it fits the younger female market while being desirable for young women with its sophisticated design filing a gap in the market for urban women who never let go of

that little girl inside of them while pursuing their dreams and careers.

The brand has style, but what about the brand message? What new and relevant does it have to say?

This brings us back to why Manu has chosen the female market for its brand’s target.

It’s personal. They wanted to create a legacy for their own daughters filled with warm characters and positive messages. The Lil’ Ledy brand is all about empowering girls and women, showing them the beauty of life as well as the beauty each of them carries inside. It’s all about taking on the right attitude, accepting yourself with all your strong sides and little flaws. That’s what makes each person unique. Lil’ Ledy was created and developed to build a strong positive resource for girls and women giving them a character they can relate to. Positive, fun, vibrating.

Not perfect, just special.

By now we established that the Lil’ Ledy brand has a clear brand concept, unique brand signals and strong brand messages.

All tailored to the female target market.

Still, how can the brand stand the test of time and keep on delivering new content over and over again?

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We were surprised by how Manu managed to integrate the “new” factor into Lil’ Ledy’s brand structure. The Lil’ Ledy brand consists of various collections, each carrying its unique message, vibe and style. Each collection is built on a strong idea and sets of icons, evolving into illustrations and patterns. Each collection is created to cover a specific age range with its name and story, look and feel, unique color palette, characters and accessories. There isn’t a set number of collections. It’s an ever evolving storyline. New collections are added on a regular basis to the Lil’ Ledy brand portfolio, and existing ones updated. Not only did they achieve to reinvent the character through each collection presenting her in a new setting and story, they even managed to cover a wide age range within the female market.

On top of that, each collection is rounded up with a set of patterns broadening the product range the brand can be applied on (fashion, cosmetics, home décor, gift products, stationary, etc.), as well as giving the whole brand appearance a superior look.

Lil’ Ledy is a brand with a huge storytelling potential and we believe it’s destined to go places. The brand, launched last October

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in London (BLE 2014), already has licensing deals set in Europe and the US and won the One To Watch award at Licensing Expo in Las Vegas this June for being the best new brand.

“Most people will say that they don’t work or create for awards, but for what makes them happy. That’s true. But we really appreciate the One To Watch award which confirmed and reassured us, as well as our partners, that the Lil’ Ledy brand stands on firm grounds and that we can keep on dreaming even bigger. And we do have big dreams.

That pushes us forward. Dreams and love for what we’re doing. Call us idealists, but we truly believe that everything is possible once you set your mind on it and invest lots of time and hard work into it. We’re here to stay. The Lil’ Ledy brand is a long term project and we have much more to show and say. That love for creating something new is what we’re looking for in our business partners as well. We have the passion and persistence to take make it happen, for we believe in Lil’ Ledy. She brings a smile on our face each time we create a new collection.

That smile is what we want to see on everybody’s face,” commented Antonija.

A new chapter for Lil’ Ledy is opened.

BEL MAGAZINE |

| BEL Brand Anniversary

KISS THE PAST HELLO

Contour Centennial

The

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For 100 years, the Coca-Cola bottle has served as a muse for a who’s is who list of designers and artists – from Andy Warhol to Marc Jacobs. And, as an innovative crowdsourcing project has revealed over the last year, the iconic packaging design continues to serve as a canvas for creativity and inspire talented minds across all disciplines.

In 2014, Coca-Cola invited designers and artists from around the world to recreate and reimagine Coca-Cola bottle imagery and iconography from the last 100 years and design a poster using only Coke red, black and white. The result is a stunning array of “Mash-Up” artwork introduced in February as part of a global campaign celebrating the 100th anniversary of the iconic contour glass bottle. More than 130 artists from 15 countries responded with 250-plus pieces for the #MashupCoke project.

The project began as an internal, homegrown exercise when James Sommerville, Coke’s VP of Global Design, discovered several inspiring pieces of artwork featuring the contour-shaped Coca-Cola bottle in the Coke Archives. These heritage pieces showed how the bottle has inspired not only Coke’s commercial system and marketing communications over the years but also artists and designers re-thinking the Coke bottle in their own personal work. He chose 16 iconic works of art featuring the bottle and asked his design leads to choose one of them and add their own spin.

The response from team showed it was just the start of what could be a very exciting project.

Over 100 artists representing a range of styles and approaches were invited to collaborate with Coca-Cola and all of them have been encouraged to completely reinvent the same select images.

The only caveat was that their work had to have some connection – no matter how

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loose or direct – to the original piece. The Coca-Cola wanted to embrace its heritage in an artistic and emotional way. Not in a way that positioned the Coca-Cola bottle as vintage or a relic, but as an inspiration for what Coke could do tomorrow.

When the bottle originally launched 100 years ago, it was purposefully disruptive and an inspirational piece of design at the time enabling Coca-Cola to stand out from the competition. So there was a clear commercial mindset driving it. But over time, the bottle and more importantly the brand it represented became inspiring to others because people connected to it on an emotional level.

The Coca-Cola brand continues to resonate thanks to its rich visual iconography like the Coke logo and its signature Coke red color, but the contour-shaped Coke bottle is something you can recognize simply by touch and feel. It perfectly combines form and function and is arguably one of the most successful commercial designs of all time.

Many of the #MashupCoke pieces are featured in a global campaign commemorating the 100th anniversary of the Coke bottle. Select artwork was included in The Coca-Cola Bottle: An American Icon at 100, an exhibit at the High Museum in Atlanta; the traveling art tour The Coca-ColaBottle Art Tour: Inspiring Pop Culture for 100 Years; and in a limited-edition “Kiss the Past Hello” book produced by Assouline. Pieces are also featured on Coca-Cola Design social channels, including Pinterest and Instagram.

The limited-edition posters and the fact that there are a finite number of gallery spots and pages in the book are not the end of the line.

The potential of this work already inspire future packaging, equipment, licensing opportunities and more.

Coca-Cola bottle. These collaborations are another exciting milestone in the history of our brand,” said Marsha Schroeder, Global Licensing Manager, Worldwide Licensing.

Coca-Cola has launched a limited-edition collection of products including a bags and accessories from Herschel Supply Co., FRENDS headphones, scarves and bags by BECKSÖNDERGAARD, journals by Moleskine, phone cases by Skinny Dip and tote bags by RooTote.

The collection, inspired by a creative MashUp project, debuted at colette in Paris and on colette.fr in April and will be available worldwide at select retailers this fall.

Moleskine, whose designs represent “contemporary nomadism”, celebrate limited-edition notebooks featuring the work of five other MashUp designers, invited to use the notebook cover as their canvas. The result is five, original representations of the iconic Coca-Cola contour bottle on the front of the legendary notebook.

American designer David Schwen created a photographic representation of eight bottles arranged in a pinwheel formation, dripping with fresh Coca-Cola Red paint. This image is stark on a white, hard-cover canvas notebook. Available only through Moleskine Stores online and at Moleskine Retail Stores worldwide, it is printed in a limited run of 5,000.

The other covers are energetic illustrations of the bottle, each very personal and demonstrative of a unique contemporary perspective. Designers are Matt Allen, Chris Weston (forpeople design), Hitomi Watanabe and Iku Oyamada (HI(NY) design) and a team for Ogilvy & Mather Paris.

“In bringing the Mash-Up program to life, we partnered with iconic and beloved brands to celebrate the 100th Anniversary of the PAGE 59 |

BEL MAGAZINE |

by Deborah J Scarpa |

| BEL Art Licensing

TO BE LICENSED

Artful

Commerce

Museums nationwide are establishing branded stores not just as a much-needed source of revenue but also to complete the experience of their permanent collections and exhibitions.

Looking back at how Modernism got its start with the rise of commercial art and design, artists like De Stijl, Mondrian and Moholy-Nagy preached the integration of “high” and “low” art and the importance of experience and function. These artists felt that no separation should exist between fine art and commerce.

Deborah J Scarpa deborah@djs-3s0p.com | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

In the past decade, as museums looked for ways to enhance the experience of their exhibitions and create a unique environment, the need to provide the public with a sophisticated retail experience now has become de rigueur in most of the progressive art institutions in the world. As modernists believed there was a place for commerce in the realm of art, contemporary art fits into a multitude of licensing opportunities that are | PAGE 60

fast becoming the take away of any museum exhibition.

The new Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, in the Design District seems to be the perfect paradigm to test all kinds of experimental initiatives, alongside the development of a sophisticated branded retail experience.

ICA Miami recently presented an exhibition

by GucciVuitton, an artist collective and gallery founded by artists Loriel Beltran, Domingo Castillo and Aramis Gutierrez from the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami. Within the museum’s Atrium Gallery, the artists have created a temporary four-story salesroom, making available GucciVuittons’s back inventory of unsold artworks.

“The GucciVuitton exhibition reflects authen-

tic regional material and vernacular culture,” says Alex Gartenfeld, ICA’s Deputy Director & Chief Curator. “Emphasizing the works commodity status, and asking questions of value inherent to a gallery or museum.”

The Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, will build its new, permanent home in Miami’s Design District, on land generously donated by Miami Design District Associates. Located on NE 41st Street, the new 37,500-square-foot building is being designed by the Spanish firm, Aranguren & Gallegos Arquitectos, marking their first U.S. project to date. Featuring more than 20,000 square feet of exhibition galleries, and a 15,000-square-foot public sculpture garden, the new building enables ICA Miami to expand its reach and programs, dedicated to promoting the exchange of art and ideas throughout the Miami region and internationally.

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porary designers for his innovative silhouettes and masterful use of form, color, and materials. This exhibition - featuring over eighty works, as well as original drawings and sketches - was the first survey of his work in the United States at the Philadelphia Art Museum in 2011. In conjunction with Roberto Capucci: Art Into Fashion, the Philadelphia museum’s store sold smallscale versions of Mr. Capucci’s dresses, all of which were hand-sewn at the designer’s couture house in Italy.

Priced at $3,800, Mr. Capucci’s collectible dresses were made with high-end buyers in mind and established a continued interest and enthusiasm for textile exhibits of a unique quality from designers and artists without the reputation and following of Roberto Capucci.

For the surrounding luxury companies in the Design District, exhibitions of contemporary art are becoming an important new tool in their marketing arsenals. Fashion and jewelry executives have long cultivated museum exhibitions to provide a stamp of legitimacy and a chance to stand out in a crowded marketplace.

“The careful commercialization of art does help further the educational purpose of art as well as positively affecting the bottom line for so many museums” explained Franci Sager. “Gone are the days when the shelves of museum stores were limited to exhibition catalogs, magnets and souvenir coffee mugs. With museums nation-wide increasingly bent on establishing their individual brands, their stores have become more sophisticated,” according to Ms. Sagar, who also advises the Miami Art Museum, The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, the Gardiner Museum in Toronto and the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia.

There will always be a complicated relationship between art and commerce that establishes a well-defined brand experience with museum audiences. The museum store plays a role as a profit center but its capability of finding fresh ways to establish the museum brand is a progression of profound significance.

Deborah J Scarpa is an author and speaker on a variety of topics, which include: brand development, co-branding deployment, digital media strategies, business methodologies and activist marketing.

Deborah is President of DJS-3S0P and DJS-marketing. For more information: deborah@djs-3s0p.com

Another great example of the kinship between the arterati and the fashionista is the exhibition of Italian fashion designer and artist Roberto Capucci, revered by contem-

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| BEL Art Licensing

ART INSPIRED Guggenheim Cabinet & Nightstand The internationally renowned art museum and one of the most significant architectural icons of the 20th century, the Guggenheim Museum has inspired the concept of this cabinet and nightstand. This handcrafted, extremely versatile and unique cabinet is ideal for storing glassware and fine silver collectibles in the dining room or any other of your collections.

Built in solid mahogony, exclusive nightstand features unique finishes and a secret drawer.

Perfect for a contemplative and high-class environment, the Guggenheim fills the bedroom with fascinating personality.

Boca do Lobo’s Guggenheim is handcrafted in Portugal, according to traditional methods, by master artisans who pulse the art of work wood and glass in their veins.

Versailles Sofa The creativity and rich decoration of the Versailles Palace contributed to the inspiration of the creation of this exuberant sofa. The only sofa from Boca do Lobo opens the way to freedom and the need of bringing extravagant creations to life.

| BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

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illy Art Cups: Limited Edition sustain Art Espresso Cup Gift Set Coffee connoisseurs can enjoy illy espresso to its fullest with this sophisticated espresso cup gift set.

To celebrate the EXPO 2015 universal exposition, illy has collaborated with four emerging artists from coffee producing countries (Costa Rica, Guatemala, Ethiopia and Honduras) who have each designed a stylish illy cup to reflect their homeland.

Every cup is numbered and signed by the artist, to create a one of a kind coffee drinking experience, whilst the perfect dimensions of illy’s iconic cup design lift aroma and keep the rich crema beautifully intact.

illy Art Cups: Kiki Smith illy’s cups collection was born of the brand’s passion for art. Now, each year a famous artist designs an illy cup and there are nearly 150 designs, from names such Anish Kapoor, Jeff Koons and Pedro Almodovar.

Kiki Smith is an American artist whose explorations of the human condition, the body, and the realms of spirituality and nature have resulted in works of exceptional power and beauty spanning mediums from sculpture and printmaking to installation, textiles, and glass. Her work is held in more than forty important public collections in the United States and abroad. Featuring flowers, butterflies, suns and moons, her collection for illy has been inspired by the natural charms of day and night.

Bastille Day Cushion Inspired by Smirke’s Facade. Sir Robert Smirke designed the south entrance to The British Museum in Greek Revival style with forty columns based on those of the temple of Athena Polias.

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by Dan Scott |

| BEL Social Media

SOCIAL MEDIA

Get Engaged to

Dan Scott info@danscott.com | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

Facebook While Facebook is clearly noted as a consumer digital forum, there are many ways businesses have been embracing this social giant. Yet the rules have changed, and I’ve learned, you must be in the know to be in the now. | PAGE 64

In 2015, to the most successful brands of our day are in constant action mode with Facebook. These brands truly understand and appreciate the definition of “engagement.” Yes, the word is overused, especially in social media, but it is such a critical noun in this situation. Remember too, the word “promotion” is, in my many ways the antonym and the killer to “engagement”.

Of all the social media platforms, I have found Facebook to be easiest to test, monitor and maintain interaction with your current, future and even past consumers within the world’s #1 online social forum. Yet, the most frequently used consumer social platform is the least leveraged for businesses. You can change that, but it will require revising some thinking and actions. Let’s look at how important engagement on Facebook is and why, in a more granular way.

Commitment – Time for Change What does commitment within social media mean to you? If it means logging on multiple times a day and posting “Twitter like” headlines, or worse, approving the upload for a discount offer, you’re missing the point.

To me, the first rule in engagement, or the synonym used here, is to stick to something.

Are you committed to change? Hopefully yes, as the rules for Facebook business have changed. And this won’t be the last time they do.

On January 1, 2015,Facebook started to make a huge change to their algorithm that virtually eliminated the reach of promotional posts on Facebook. It is a major fact. What this basically means is that post on your Facebook page to promote that awesome sale you have going on, chances are – nobody will see it. Major brands on their Facebook pages that received a lot of engagement and have been able to drive tons of traffic back to their sites are now running away.

Facebook, like Google, will continue to change to not only keep up with changing audiences and their needs, but to cater to people, not advertisers. To respond to people, not companies. People control brands more than brands control people. The younger the social media visitor, the smarter

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and sharper they are to tricks or tradition.

Now, Facebook is programming against corporations and for the people.

We all want our followers (or fans) to visit us and keep us top of mind. So we jump on Facebook and announce whatever it is we want to display to the world. And, we try to mix it up. Maybe we come up with a ratio of other people’s content to our own content so that it doesn’t seem like we are just pushing our own stuff. Then, there are those who ask questions and post quotes to generate engagement so that we think they can stay in the game. It made sense for a while because it worked for a while. It’s time to change your commitment strategy on Facebook because Facebook changed.

Visitation. As real as it gets.

Social media is more and more becoming a reflection of our everyday lives. When social media was in its infancy, we were just trying to figure it out. Now that it has been around for years, we’re much more comfortable with it. With this growth, there’s also a growth in what we expect from it. We want it to be more like real life.

people often need encouragement. People don’t want to be sold, told or promoted to.

Do you?

Facebook has been doing a lot more surveys recently. What do you think they are hearing from users? How much they love promotional posts? Absolutely not.

MySpace is barely alive because they didn’t adapt to their maturing user base. To avoid that potential, Facebook has to become more human. It has to be a place where users are engaged, and for Facebook pages to continue to be successful, they have to engage their audience in a more authentic way. This will spike and sustain real visitation from people you care about who care about you. Not the door to door salesman or the guy delivering food because you ordered it. These are “real” visitors; in fact, you may never care if you see them again. Real visitation is from genuine people in your network who post, share and exchange information that may have little to do with the fact you are having a Fall Fashion Jewelry Special and more about the fact that Michelle Phan is laying more neck chain than a 1990 rap artist. Be open to that and open the door to

Now imagine this – You go out with a friend and this guy/girl starts talking about how awesome they are. They are constantly telling you what they are doing, and whenever they have something to sell, they try to get you to buy it. We all have that one friend who maybe stumbled into “the most amazing Multi-Level Marketing Company IN THE WORLD”. They believe that if you want to change your health, life, and the world, you need to get on board. (Side note: this is not about me knocking MLM companies. I do believe that there are legit ones out there, but it works for the purpose of my illustration).

That’s exactly how we have been approaching social media, at least for many of us.

We use it to tell people what we’re doing in our business, we share all of our posts, we promote our products, and you know what – people are tired.

Social media is becoming more like real life, and in real life, people crave connection.

People are looking to engage with others.

People want to laugh. People cry. People struggle through difficult situations and PAGE 65 |

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| BEL Social Media

visitation. Traffic will equal awareness and indirectly sales. Push a promotional hand out when people first walk in and I think you know what will happen to that hand out.

Promise This is great definition in a sense for engagement – it reminds me of the basis for engagement rings. For good business practice. For any activity that should be aligned with honesty, interiority and your word. Let’s start here – make it your promise to find out exactly what your audience wants and give it to them. Consistently.

Here are some things you should start to do as far as your Facebook promise…

1. Be more visual Type less words and use more photos. Better yet, short videos – and I mean short – as in sixty seconds to about two minutes. If it has humor, is really interesting, is trending, or has anything to do with Donald Trump, people will most likely share it. Here’s one of my favorites that may have you thinking twice about what to post next. This “Smores Dipped” video received 99,632,570 views when shared on a BuzzFood.

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/video. php?v=1004799346199958.

It goes to show you simple and food, work as well as cute babies. The results are astounding. So I tried it. On the Hershey Kiss Jewelry Facebook page, we were inching up to 100,000 “fans” and then I tried to post food. Hershey Kiss chocolates of course; not a word about jewelry. With an indirect brand glance on a Hershey Kiss cake, we gained 7,520 views, 705 likes, 225 shares, 60 comments with 811 post clicks. Not bad for a post of a cake.

Notice, no boost was paid for, although I do enjoy testing boosts. You should too. Once you see a level of activity that spikes beyond your normal views, comments or shares, try a boost. Yet, do it toward a target audience.

It’s as simple as using any filter. You can target those who are “fans and their friends,” or use it to dare I type the word… promote your page by adding any age group, interests and geographical area that you wish.

The boosts are all instantly tractable, may be paused and now have new measurement | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

The above statistics were organic(no paid boosts or post ads) and no tags of any sort were added. These numbers were generated within 2.5 minutes from the post placement. Creating and maintaining true engagement is the key to business success on Facebook. (c)2014/15 Facebook highlighting the license of Hershey Kiss Jewelry as created and represented by World Trade Jewelers.

tools and action buttons like “contact us” or “book now.” You can try them, but don’t expect a landslide victory. If you haven’t gotten it by now, engagement is about being real, and sincere. Attract people you want with more of a context VS content approach and you’ll gain trust and have those people coming back. This is where you develop true Facebook followers who will want to hear interesting stories about why you signed on a new designer, or why the jewelry you thought would sell didn’t. Yes, be honest.

People know when you are selling and when you are storytelling. Be a storyteller, just tell honest stories that have an interesting edge.

2. Read more than Post Social media isn’t all about talking or typing, it about listening or reading. What is your audience speaking about and why? How are they answering your questions without you even asking? I’ve always found those that listen more than speak (or post in this case) learn more and create stronger, winning strategies.

3. Engage When someone leaves a comment on my Facebook post, great brands engage them in an ongoing dialog. They ask follow up | PAGE 66

questions, looking at their response, using pre-approved phrases and words, not cutting and pasting responses. And while automation programs will ensure a response is timely, surveys prove the Facebook user is savvy and recognizes when their response is generated by a computer. Facebook fans live for the interaction.

Frankly, it’s more like real life. Facebook is morphing into a more “real life” platform and it’s working.

4. Consistency Beyond the style guide or brand book regulations, this means the person posting should be the same voice and tone. While this seems like a simple fact, you may be shocked to see how off brand some companies get around holidays or when they feel challenged. Consistency is key and fundamental in building retention on Facebook for any brand.

5. Analyze and Adjust This is one of the most important part of strategy - proactively looking at your Facebook stats (or as they bill them, “insights”) and seeing what people are resonating with.

The more you do that, the better you will understand what works for your audience.

There’s a ton of information inside of Facebook’s Insights tool, and if you export the raw data files, there’s even more that you’ll likely never examine.

Three Facebook metrics tend to get the most public discussion: Likes, Comments and Shares. But the first two of those are basically worthless. Post likes are meaningless. OK, not completely, as a post’s likes do impact its organic reach, but realistically, a like is a one-second long, one-click engagement. How valuable is that? Do you remember the last post you liked on any platform?

As for comments, they’re typically considered a “deeper” engagement, since people actually have to start typing (and presumably thinking, but that’s debatable), but most comment numbers are skewed by comment spam. When automated comment spam is peaking (seemingly every other week), it can easily account for a large percentage of the comments on a given post. Facebook is constantly fighting off comment spam bots; as soon as they wipe one out, another one pops up quickly.

On its Insights dashboard, Facebook shows you “Engagement Rate” which their Help Pages define as, “the percentage of people who saw a post that liked, shared, clicked or commented on it.” Here’s a snapshot of a page from a new, Philadelphia-based Limousine Company:

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posts, specifically videos and photos, wildly outperform status updates and links. In November 2014, Facebook announced on its own marketing blog that they’ll be cracking down on “promotional” posts in 2015, and if your “content” is really just a blatant advertisement (“Buy now!” or “sign up here”) with little context or relevance to your fans, you can expect that content won’t reach much of your audience.

Track your own Share metric Sharing is caring, as they say. In other words, fans actually care about your content if they’re willing to share it with their friends.

Track how many people do this. The numbers won’t be overwhelming, but they can be telling if you give them context.

Want more reach? Upload video directly to Facebook Facebook made an important sweeping change over the summer. They started auto-playing videos on mobile devices. So when users scroll past timeline posts with embedded videos, the video starts up and entices users to click and play them. Mobile is a massive piece of the Facebook audi-

ence; a report from Q2 of 2014 revealed that over 1 billion of their 1.32 billion monthly active users (> 80%) access Facebook from their mobile device, and 30% access it exclusively from their mobile device.

One of the results of this shift is that embedded videos are reaching people in the timeline at a 2-3x greater rate than links to content or typical status updates. Simply put, Facebook is rewarding publishers by giving video more regular placement in your audience’s timeline.

Tag other fan pages to enhance your reach Want to reach new fans? Start tagging relevant entities with large followings in your posts. By tagging other fan pages, you can often reach people who are fans of those pages but not fans of your own. It’s a great way to reach new fans. In some cases, small Facebook pages have been able to reach 2-3x their entire audience with posts by using this technique.

I hope you found this feature helpful. If so, please let me know, or if you wish to read about other social media platform, I welcome your feedback. Info@danscott.com

Within 3 hours of posting this Happy Father’s Day graphic that linked to a special offer on the Hollowsands.com site, they reached over 3,500 locals, of which 212 liked the page, 348 clicked through to the web site, 53 shared it. The result was over a dozen new clients, one being the DoubleTree Hotel. The take-away…Don’t promote - engage.

Beyond engagement is the “Reach Rate,” which isn’t an official Facebook metric.

Facebook only shows raw reach numbers in their reporting, presumably for an obvious reason – reach rates are typically in the single digits when reach is expressed as a percentage of your audience. They conveniently neglect to show you that math. Still, the number is easy to derive. For each post, divide the organic reach number by your total 10.

You’ll realize quickly that certain types of PAGE 67 |

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| BEL Cover Story

Continued from page 39 plan. I’ve seen complete programs develop with dedicated 360-teams that support marketing, legal, quality, product integrity, social media, social accountability and environmental sustainability. It’s exciting to finally see executive teams understand the complexity of licensing, the opportunity to extend the core brand culture footprint, and to inevitably look at licensing as a marketing extension to compliment overall core brand qualities. To achieve the rich dynamic attribute licensing can be is to harbor a team of core brand experts that inherently know their brand, can leverage accordingly, and most importantly know how to protect the brand from dilution and infringement.

Gayle: Today it is much more known and established, with service providers focused entirely on supporting licensing. This allows more confidence in the business model and also allows internal resources to focus more

| BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

on building the core business.

Kenny: The bare bones structure is pretty similar, but today there is an intense focus on social media and digital marketing. We weren’t even talking about that in the beginning. Also, the number of companies licensing internationally has grown. And, consumer product safety laws are also tighter, which brings a new set of issues altogether.

Shahab: Licensing has evolved over the years and brands are now fully aware that brand extension sometimes is only possible through licensing which can also be profitable.

BEL: How can SPLiCE and its members help others in the industry to overcome the always present angst that brand equity can/will be harmed through brand licensing?

Kimberly: Again, if licensing is aligned with

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core brand teams, and proper vetting of the licensee selection is conducted, this is a measure of best practices. As we all know, nothing is a given or perfect however if from the beginning the brand owner knows where they want to go, invites the right fit in partners and allows the ‘magic’ of innovation to happen, everyone involved will have a stake in the game. At the end of the day, there needs to be gain for everyone to protect their own assets.

Gayle: I am not sure we can ever overcome the angst over protection of a brand equity and it is a continuous education process as people come and go within an organization.

However, with best practices in place and the right level of governance, it makes it a bit easier. My advice is to start small, either with a small program or a smaller brand within your portfolio, and test the waters. Success seems to drive an openness to expand.

Kenny: Although nothing is guaranteed, it’s possible to mitigate some of the angst and risk. To those who are considering this model, I would invite them to join SPLiCE and discover some of the ways our current members worked through these challenges.

Each of our members are either working on this problem or have solved it.

Shahab: This is a difficult question to answer since there is no one size fits all solution to the question of licensing effectively. Again, I believe staying close to the core of brand standards and heritage is the key.

BEL: By your opinion, what are the main challenges in the brand licensing business today?

Kimberly: The challenges today are key category saturation, changing demographics, and how brand licensing is sold in markets.

There are many brands represented in apparel, footwear, lifestyle products, and toy licensed product categories thus providing consumers many choices. Those consumers are connected virtually more than ever before through community platforms and social media. For instance, Millennials want brands that support a cause; social accountability, fair business practices, and environmental sustainability are key. This active consumer group expects to be part of a conversation with the brand, listened to, not to be lectured to. They want their voice to influence brand development and its line extensions.

Soon, this group will be bigger than Baby Boomers in the US which will pose an even stronger sense to build dynamic engagement with consumers. If played right, licensing programs can challenge core brand thinking and truly enhance the overall brand experience.

Social media is the key connector which is still not 100% adopted across all licensing programs or by trademark brand owners.

Creating transparency platforms, open communication vehicles to listen, and stronger partnerships with licensing stakeholders can pose solutions to these challenges today for tomorrow.

Gayle: Everyone is getting into licensing so the universe of good partners is shrinking and room for another entry in categories is

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At this moment SPLiCE comprises 59 member organizations from 40 industry sectors, including business, government and non-profit. They include some of the world’s biggest licensors and together they manage more than USD 104.1 billion of licensing agreements worldwide. more limited. Utilizing a strong brand that links directly to the licensed category can help with retailers and consumers.

Kenny: Gayle is right; finding great licensee partners can be a challenge, especially partners with strong distribution capabilities.

Additionally, shrinking margins put pressure on all players in a licensing model. Other challenges include product differentiation and regulatory requirements.

Shahab: It is for each brand to stay within the core of their heritage, brand standards and the priorities.

BEL: What are the main obstacles preventing faster development and growth of brand licensing business in fast emerging markets?

Kimberly: Brand awareness prior to launching a licensing program, indemnification, trademark registration in class of trade, retail fragmentation, taxes, lack of team or resources in country, and the list goes on.

Gayle: This is an easy one – licensing is an infant business model and there are lots of strong local brands and products and consumer loyalty to those local brands.

Additionally, unlike North America where the go-to-market is well established, emerging markets just sell differently, usually requiring multiple licensees for the same category.

Much more complicated, more risk and less reward.

Kenny: It starts with distribution strategies.

Some emerging markets have fragmented retail distribution and are price sensitive.

Some native licensee partners may not be able to articulate the brand story to their markets. Import/export issues, currency fluctuations, taxes, duties and tariffs are other obstacles.

Shahab: A very good question which may require in-depth analysis for each brand. But PAGE 69 |

typically the main issue is for consumers in emerging markets to understand what is licensing and most importantly the “brand love” score within the region.

BEL: Which steps does SPLiCE take and which steps do key players in the brand licensing business take to overcome obstacles, help better understand their business, and develop a faster growth trek, especially in fast emerging regions?

Kimberly: Key research aligning their core brand demographics and awareness of their brand in speculated markets. Then, benchmarking with other brand owners in regard to case studies, sharing best practices and painful lessons learned.

Gayle: While we dabble in licensing in emerging markets, it is not a priority due to the complexity we have seen. I know other companies are successful but I believe it depends on the brand, the categories in which to play and the level of return. SPLiCE has an international benchmark team, with members who are successful, to help identify the challenges, obstacles and best practices to help other members perhaps try their hand in these markets.

Kenny: SPLiCE brings licensing experts together, creates a community of collaboration (within anti-trust boundaries, of course) and presents relevant information on licensing trends. It’s up to each of our member companies to digest, collaborate and apply what they learn to their programs. With SPLiCE, you don’t have to figure out licensing on your own; rather, you can leverage the vast knowledge of the community to build a better program.

Shahab: To understand the consumer behavior, demographics, retailers and creating a licensing program which makes sense for the region.

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| BEL Cover Story

BEL: SPLiCE organizes and hosts the Licensors Summit in Las Vegas. Once a year Members also gather at SPLiCE Licensors Workshop. Tell us more about these events.

Kimberly: The vision for SPLiCE Licensors Summit is to facilitate best practice licensing process management. We achieve this by inviting both licensors and expert service providers in an educational forum that builds awareness of best practices and hot trends in the licensing industry. The SPLiCE Licensors Summit affords opportunities for licensors and service providers to understand business challenges and generate connections.

For the past four years we have conducted our meeting at MGM Grand Resort in Las Vegas. Presenters distinguish how they streamline processes, influence more productive and efficient licensing business models, and pose developed technologies, industry trends, processes and/or consultation practices to support the licensing industry. SPLiCE Licensors Summit provides brand owners with the invaluable opportunity to gather innovative knowledge from key presenters within a controlled environment.

SPLiCE Licensors Workshop (LW) acts as the annual meetings for our Board of Directors and Members. It is an onsite event when we present benchmark findings and feature panel presentations relevant to our membership at large. We engage a creativity philosophy of divergence and convergence to sustain unique idea implementation on best practices.

The vision for SPLiCE Licensors Workshop is to provide best in practice licensing education through sharing educational best practices through benchmarking initiatives, trends, identifying critical challenges for collaborative solutions, and learning from guest industry speakers.

We assemble a SPLiCE Licensors Workshop Executive Committee to collaborate throughout the year to enrich the topics, content, venues, agenda, and networking selections for our event. We are an active Licensors Community of Practice and understand the importance of planning together from a team approach to exceed and delight our membership expectations for our annual LW | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

event. This year we celebrate our roots and bring it back home to sunny Buffalo.

BEL: During SPLiCE Licensors Workshop this September, the “SPLiCE Member of the Year” award will be presented. Who are the candidates this year and which criteria must be satisfied to compete for the award?

Kimberly: This award is what SPLiCE considers to be a measurement of values, passion, diversity, leadership, quality, accountability and overall output from an individual or Member company for creating substantial impact to SPLiCE. This award process is open to our SPLiCE community to nominate an individual or Member company who has: gone beyond the call of membership duty; demonstrated extraordinary team work; shared resource contributions; and/ or delivered innovative contributions to the organization.

The SPLiCE Member of the Year Award will be presented during our 13th annual SPLiCE Licensors Workshop State of the Union, Wednesday, September 30th in Buffalo.

SPLiCE Member of the Year Esteemed Recipients include 2009 Manny Grace, The Walt Disney Company; 2010 Tracey Murphy, Jarden Consumer Solutions; 2011 Shahab Khosravan, The Coca-Cola Company; 2012 Toni Sdao, Whirlpool Corporation; 2013 Scott Bannell, Stanley Black & Decker, Inc.; and 2014 Tod G. Cole, The Walt Disney Company.

The organization actively contributes and participates at other brand licensing relevant events and collaborates with trade show organizers and organizations.

SPLiCE was and plan to participate again at Hong Kong Licensing event in January 2016.

For the first time this past June organization was presented through SPLiCE Lounge at Licensing EXPO. In its inaugural year, SPLiCE Lounge was incredibly successful, and provided collaborative meeting space for Caterpillar Inc., DuPont, Electrolux, Hallmark and the NFL. SPLiCE Lounge also embodied the educational and collaborative nature of the organization, holding daily educational “salons” with members and visitors on topics from Social Accountability and | PAGE 70

Licensing Scorecard, to International Licensing, Brand Licensing Metrics and Objectives, and Direct to Retail.

This autumn organization makes its debut at Brand Licensing Europe in London offering insights through a series of free educational sessions. It will be the first time SPLiCE has brought its insights to BLE and the first time some of its members have been represented at the event.

BEL: Your active participation at this year Brand Licensing Europe (BLE) looks like a kind of cornerstone for much intensive activity in Europe. Tell us more about your educational program at BLE and international initiatives and activities.

Kimberly: We are very excited about our inaugural participation in the BLE Licensing Academy with a series of SPLiCE panel discussions. It is an honor to extend best practice insights at BLE to the European Licensing Industry with global experts. The three SPLiCE panels will address Anti-counterfeiting and Social Accountability on Tuesday, October 13th and Direct to Retail on Wednesday, October 14th. Our panels are comprised of experts in fields ranging from global brands to drug enforcement.

The presenter roster includes experts from Chupa Chups, the National Football League, PBS, Sainsbury’s, the Walt Disney Company, United Nations Office on Drug and Crime, the World Customs Organization, World Trademark Review, and 24IP Law Group.

Attendees will have the opportunity to learn from, and engage with, these experts during moderated presentations. Panels will emphasize the current state of affairs, trends, and collaborative solutions with focus on important discussion around issues that affect us all as consumers and as licensing professionals.

BEL: What are the priorities and plans for SPLiCE in the coming years?

Shahab: To provide value to our members and ensure our community continues to share information freely and within the confines of antitrust guidelines.

Kimberly: It is paramount in the strategic plan is to retain and delight our membership.

The approach is to expand the membership

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base to include adjacent industry segments and others like luxury, sports, technology, food and beverage, and art brands. Focal education schemes remain to hone in on subjects that matter most to our membership with new presenters and venues to continue the brand learning.

We plan to carry on global educational partnerships with: 1) Members; 2) Potential new members; 3) Adjacent organizations and media houses; 4) Service Providers; 5) Government regulatory bodies; 6) Academia; and 7) The global licensing industry, in general.

For more information’s about SPLiCE visit their web site at www.SPLiCEonline.com

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SPLiCE |

| BEL Spotlight

MEMBERS American Red Cross AT&T Billboard The Biltmore Company The Boeing Company Boy Scouts of America Brown-Forman Caterpillar Inc. Church & Dwight The Clorox Company The Coca-Cola Company Cracker Barrel Old Country Store Crayola Deere & Company Dorna Sports MotoGP Dr. Pepper Snapple Group DuPont Electrolux Energizer Ford Motor Company Fruit of the Loom General Mills The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co. Hallmark Cards Hamilton Beach Brands Harley-Davidson Hasbro Inc. Hearst Communications Hewlett-Packard Honeywell Jarden Consumer Solutions Kimberly-Clark Corporation The Kraft Heinz Company Kodak LEGO Mars Retail Group Mattel Inc. Meredith Corporation MillerCoors Motorola National Football League NBCUniversal Newell Rubbermaid Nike Inc. The Ohio State University P&G PBS Reebok International S. C. Johnson Inc. Saban Brands Stanley Black & Decker Textron Inc. Unilever U.S. ARMY U.S. Postal Service The Walt Disney Company Whirlpool Corporation Yamaha Motor Corporation Zippo | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

REPRESENT OVER 40 INDUSTRY SECTORS Aerospace Amusement Parks Appliances Art Automotive Beverages (Soft Drinks) Beverages (Wineries & Distilleries) Business Equipment Celebrity Estates Cellular Technology Children’s Products Cleaning Supplies Collegiate/University Confections Consumer Products Construction Dental Technology Digital Imagery & Technology Electronics Entertainment & Character Farm Products Fashion Food & Beverage Footwear Gifts & Novelties Government Health & Beauty Household Goods & Housewares Industrial & Commercial Equipment Infant Products Juvenile Products Motorcycling Music & Video Nonprofit Outdoor Lifestyle Photographic Equipment & Supplies Publishing Racing Rubber & Plastics Spirits/Alcohol Sports Sporting Goods Stationary Goods Telephony Textile (Apparel Clothing) Textile (Footwear & Accessories) Tools (Commercial and Residential) Toys & Games Trademark Brands Transportation Trucks and Other Vehicles Wellness For more info please visit our web site at www.spliceonline.com | PAGE 72

The AT&T brand is over 100 years old and is a recognized leader in brand recognition, ranking No 6 in the BrandZ 2015 Top 100 Most Valuable Brands.

At AT&T, we’re bringing it all together. We’re helping people connect with advanced mobile services, next-generation TV, highspeed Internet services and smart solutions for businesses. Fast, secure and mobile connectivity – to everything on the Internet, everywhere, at every moment and on every device – is what drives us at AT&T. AT&T is leading the way to the future - for customers, businesses and the industry.

We’re developing new technologies to make it easier for our customers to stay connected. We envision a world where everything and everyone work together. We envision a world that works for you.

We want our Brand Values and Brand Elements to work together towards a beneficial outcome for us and our Licensees. We strive for a simple composition that helps make possibilities personal, and we want to create an emotional connection with our audience.

We are looking for Licensees to enhance or to expand the AT&T brand into product categories or geographic territories that that bring value to our customers and core products. We expect superior customer service and high quality innovative products from our AT&T licensees, in addition to strict adherence to our brand guidelines.

Learn about AT&T brand licensing, technology licensing, patent licensing and patent sales at www.att.com/intellectualproperty.

For more info and contact information please visit our web site at www.att.com/intellectualproperty

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Spotlight on SPLiCE Members

Biltmore is a distinguished brand in the home furnishings, bedding and bath, and gourmet and entertaining categories. Our licensed products are inspired by an original American treasure that has been a hallmark of design, style, and hospitality for more than a century. Known as America’s largest and most visited historic home, Biltmore, located in the Blue Ridge Mountains of North Carolina, was completed in 1895 by George W. Vanderbilt, who decorated his home with unique and beautiful objects from around the world.

Today, guests connect with Biltmore in so many ways — from visits to the estate and overnight accommodations to our successful wine business. Our licensing program extends the Biltmore experience for our 1.3 million annual guests, enabling them to enhance the beauty and comfort of their own homes with products available from over 10,000 retailers across the U.S. and internationally. Biltmore licensed products inspire confidence, creating the way for long-term relationships with our guests who have the desire to express gracious living and hospitality through quality and inspired furnishings in their home.

Celebrating our 25th anniversary this year, we achieve a special milestone in the home furnishings industry, confirming our commitment to the industry and consumers. Our greatest strengths lay in the rich legacy of the Vanderbilt family, our unwavering commitment to quality and the trust that consumers place in our brand.

Our licensed partners include Artaissance, Atlanta Cheesecake Company, Belk, Burton + Burton, Capel Rugs, Fine Furniture Design, Habersham Home, Larson-Juhl, Seven Seas, Unique Stone, and Wildwood Lamps & Accents.

For more info please visit our web site at www.biltmoreforyourhome.com or contact: fyhinfo@biltmore.com

For more than 90 years, Caterpillar Inc. has been making progress possible and driving positive and sustainable change on every continent. Caterpillar is the world’s leading manufacturer of construction and mining equipment, diesel and natural gas engines, industrial gas turbines and diesel-electric locomotives. The company also is a leading services provider through Caterpillar Financial Services, Caterpillar Remanufacturing Services, Caterpillar Logistics Services and Progress Rail Services.

Caterpillar makes hundred of products, but footwear isn’t one of them. It doesn’t make apparel either or any of the other 25,000 individual consumer products – from phones, baseball caps and watches to eyeglasses and toys – that bear its name.

Caterpillar is fairly unique in the fact that they have a strong, genuine work brand with an authentic heritage which they can license beyond the core products and services. By licensing the essence and lifestyle of Caterpillar, the company has been able to successfully transfer its tough and bold image to licensed merchandise, allowing them to reach a whole new audience for the brand.

Today, Cat branded consumer products are available in over 100,000 retail outlets, 100+ Caterpillar branded retail venues, and 150 countries around the world. Cat trademark merchandise is a direct reflection of the global values built into every Cat product– tough, durable, and bold.

A corporate licensor must be true to their brand wherever they are operating in the world. As a brand grows and extends its life in the marketplace, the natural growth into new categories is closely explored and then, when appropriate, becomes an extension beyond the core work products.

The Caterpillar brand is enduring. Retailers and consumers can count on it being there– meeting expectations over the long haul.

For more info please visit our web site at www.cat.com or contact: Kenny Beaupre beaupre_kenneth_j@cat.com PAGE 73 |

For more than 100 years, The Clorox Company has been making everyday lives better, every day. We have a robust portfolio of leading household brands across a number of categories including laundry, home cleaning, food, charcoal, water filtration, cat litter, natural personal care, waste management and food protection. Key brands include Clorox; Pine-Sol; Liquid Plumr; Tilex; Fresh Step; Scoop Away; Glad; Kingsford; Hidden Valley; KC Masterpiece; Brita and Burt’s Bees. Clorox’s Office of Alliances is dedicated to seeking out quality trademark licensing partners across our brand portfolio. More than 80 percent of the company’s sales are generated from brands that hold the No. 1 or No. 2 market share positions in their categories.

Clorox is looking for partners with fresh ideas, and who share our passion for developing brands for mutual benefit. A few of our current trademark licensing programs include Burt’s Bees Baby clothing, Clorox pool and spa, Kingsford charcoal grills and accessories, as well as Hidden Valley Ranch flavored sunflower seeds. We are also experienced licensees, and a great example of this is our Glad with Febreze trash bags.

Given the breadth of our brand portfolio, we are open to entertaining a wide range of opportunities.

Our values are an intrinsic part of who we are as a company and as individuals: do the right thing; stretch for results; take personal ownership; and work together to win. This is a commitment we make to each other and to our consumers, customers and shareholders. We act with integrity and strive to achieve excellence.

For more info please visit our web site at www.thecloroxcompany.com or contact: licensing@clorox.com BEL MAGAZINE |

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Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. provides a friendly home-away-from-home in our old country stores and restaurants.

Our guests are cared for like family while relaxing and enjoying real home-style food and shopping that’s surprisingly unique, genuinely fun and reminiscent of America’s country heritage…all at a fair price. Over in our restaurant we serve up delicious, home-style country food like meatloaf and homemade chicken n’ dumplins as well as our made-from-scratch biscuits using an old family recipe. Our authentic old country retail store is fun to shop and offers unique gifts and self-indulgences.

Established in 1969 in Lebanon, Tenn., Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. (Nasdaq: CBRL) operates more than 630 company-owned locations in 42 states.

Extending our brand beyond our physical locations is an important component of our strategic plan.

Cracker Barrel Old Country Store restaurants and CB Old Country Store products are both owned under the Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. umbrella of companies. Cracker Barrel Old Country Store, Inc. licenses a variety of premium meat and dry goods products in supermarkets under our ‘’CB Old Country Store’’ brand.

Cracker Barrel Old Country Store tries to stay true to the old fashioned way of doing things while offering some modern conveniences. That means hand selecting our bacon before slow-smoking it over real hardwood for hours. And dry-curing our hams for a real, rich flavor. It takes longer, but you can’t rush true taste.

With our CB Old Country Store buttermilk baking and pancake mix, hams, deli meats, and gravy mixes authentic home-style flavors are closer than you think.

The John Deere tractor is more than just a piece of farm equipment – it’s an icon that has come to symbolize qualities like innovation, quality, hard work and durability. For the people who depend on their John Deere equipment for their livelihood, the brand’s familiar green and yellow color scheme is like the team colors of a beloved alma mater, and that’s a connection that the company’s global licensing operations take very seriously.

Licensing the John Deere brand begin in 1946 when the first replica toy John Deere tractory was introduced by Ertl. During the late 1990’s a dedicated team was assembled to expand the licensing operations. By 2010 there were close to 200 licensees between North America and Europe, when efforts were redirected to expand the licensing model globally to support Deere’s strategy of providing world-class farming, construction, turf-care and logging equipment to ‘those linked to the land’. Today, John Deere is a market leader with core product factories and operations around the world, and the licensing team has staff and supplier partners in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Europe, India, Mexico, Russia, South Africa and the United States.

John Deere plans to stay the course with its licensing efforts in the near future, with any growth or expansion of the brand carefully controlled so as not to risk losing the emotional connection it has with its many fans. Regardless of where its opportunities in the future lie, Deere insists on a mutually beneficial relationship where we build strong connections with licensees to market branded merchandise that reinforce the strong connections customers have with our John Deere brand and our dealers who serve them.

For more info please visit our web site at www.crackerbarrel.com www.cboldcountrystore.com

For more info please visit our web site at www.deere.com/en_US/corporate/ our_company/about_us/doing_business_with_us/licensed_merchandisers/ licensees.page

or contact: Licensing@CrackerBarrel.com

or contact: PaschkeDaleW@JohnDeere.com

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For more than 100 years, Electrolux has been a global leader in appliances for home and professional use. This year, Electrolux will sell more than 50 million products in more than 150 countries. With more than 60,000 employees, our vision is to be the best appliance company in the world as measured by customers, employees and shareholders.

Electrolux Global Brand Licensing has been in the business of licensing the company’s brands for more than 40 years in 75 countries. Electrolux owns more than 50 brands and actively licenses 20 brands worldwide.

These brands include Electrolux, AEG, Frigidaire, Zanussi, White-Westinghouse, Eureka, Gibson, Philco and many other wellknown brands.

In today’s reality – A great product without a great brand often leads nowhere. Licensing is in its core about capitalizing on established brand equity instead of building an entirely new brand. What we offer are opportunities to move faster using the strengths of our well-established brands, utilizing both consumer recognition and brand loyalty. We develop and manage a range of licensing programs in various product categories, helping our nearly 100 brand partners to grow and strengthen their businesses.

Our brand partners are selling a wide variety of products. We offer traditional appliances in some markets, along with personal care products, televisions, auto accessories, LED lighting, telephones, cookware, water purification and many other consumer products.

In addition, our commercial brand partners are in the solar and electric power industries.

We have a dedicated licensing team in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA and Stockholm, Sweden to support the strategic development of your business.

For more info please visit our web site at www.electrolux.com/licensing or contact: Licensing@electrolux.com

Energizer Holdings, Inc., is a global leader in power and lighting solutions, and one of the world’s largest manufacturers of batteries and portable lights.

By leveraging the global positioning and presence of the Energizer and EVEREADY brands, the licensing program has strategically expanded to include innovative products that complement the core, including portable power and mobile accessories, household lighting, automotive batteries, generators, inverters and much more.

Licensing is a key pillar of the Energizer Holdings strategy, and the company is focused on further global expansion of the brands into relevant categories.

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Fruit of the Loom, Inc. Is a leading global company specializing in the design, manufacture and marketing of a number of iconic family apparel, athletic apparel and sporting equipment brands including: FRUIT OF THE LOOM, SPALDING, RUSSELL ATHLETIC and VANITY FAIR. Fruit of the Loom, Inc. Is an independent, wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, Inc. FRUIT OF THE LOOM was born in 1851 when brothers Benjamin and Robert Knight bought their first mill and started producing cotton cloth and textiles in Warwick, Rhode Island. In 1871, FRUIT OF THE LOOM was registered as an official trademark, making it one of the world’s oldest brands – predating the invention of light bulbs, cars and telephones.

Today, more than 160 years later, FRUIT OF THE LOOM is now a global underwear and casualwear business employing more than 30,000 people worldwide.

Our colorful T-shirts, underwear, athletic apparel, sports equipment and intimate apparel are known by consumers in all corners of the globe and our name is synonymous with providing quality, value and style. Staying true to our roots and close to our heritage, our collections are authentic, timeless and unmistakably FRUIT OF THE LOOM. We are passionate and driven; devoted to enriching our customers’ lives through comfort, performance and fun.

We serve the world by making food people love. As one of the world’s leading food companies, General Mills believes that food should make us better. Food brings us joy and nourishes our lives, connecting us to each other and the earth.

General Mills operates in more than 100 countries around the world and has more than 100 consumer brands. Headquartered in Minneapolis, General Mills had fiscal 2015 worldwide sales of US $18.8 billion.

The General Mills brands are with you at the family dinner table, on a nature trail, or at a special celebration, and licensing plays a big role in connecting with consumers and supporting the brand message. Key licensed brands include Betty Crocker, Green Giant, Fiber One, Cheerios, Yoplait, Pillsbury, Old El Paso, Trix, Lucky Charms, Cocoa Puffs and Wheaties. Other valuable properties in the portfolio include Annie’s, Progresso, Nature Valley, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cookie Crisp, Golden Grahams, Kix, Totino’s, Hamburger Helper, Fruit Roll-Ups, Gold Medal, Cascadian Farm, Muir Glen, Larabar, Bugles, Bisquick, Toaster Strudel and Chex Mix. Significant growth to date has come from Betty Crocker decorating products, Green Giant Fresh produce and Fiber One fresh bread. General Mills is looking to expand in both food and non-food categories in North America.

Food licensing opportunities exist in fresh, frozen and refrigerated categories. Nonfood opportunities exist across a number of categories with a focus on apparel and accessories, home and kitchen, seasonal celebrations and gifting, beauty, collectibles, toys and crafting.

For more info please visit our web site at www.energizerholdings.com

For more info please visit our web site at www.fotlinc.com

For more info please visit our web site at www.generalmills.com

or contact: licensing@energizer.com

or contact: Dave.Springbob@fotlinc.com

or contact: danielle.andrews@genmills.com PAGE 75 |

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The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company was founded in Akron, Ohio in 1898 with 13 workers producing bicycle and carriage tires.

Today, we are one of the world’s largest tire companies, employing approximately 67,000 people worldwide. Our famous logo, the iconic Goodyear and Winged Foot Design, was first used in advertising in 1901. This vintage logo can still be found on officially licensed fashion clothing and footwear. The modern logo can be found globally on items ranging from hand tools and car accessories to luggage and toys, and, of course, tires.

From our early carriage tires to being the first tire on the moon, our famous logo remains an integral part of the Goodyear signature – a symbolic link with the company’s historic past and our dynamic future.

At Goodyear, innovation is more than what we apply to products and services; it represents the foundation of the company. With more than 70 licensees worldwide, Goodyear has become an iconic lifestyle brand as its values of innovation, durability, reliability and performance can easily be transferred into many different product categories: apparel, footwear, accessories, luggage, sports equipment, promotional items, car accessories, safety products and toys. We seek licensees whose values mirror our own – those with an innovative spirit who create quality products. Goodyear also licenses its Goodyear Eagle, Goodyear Racing, and blimp design trademarks.

Hallmark makes the world a more caring place by helping people express what’s in their hearts and connect in emotional ways with others. In the U.S., innovative Hallmark greeting cards and gifts are sold through leading mass retailers, the network of Hallmark Gold Crown specialty stores and online. Worldwide, Hallmark offers products in more than 30 languages available in 100 countries. Millions of households enjoy family friendly television programming offered by cable’s top-rated Hallmark Channel and fast-growing Hallmark Movies & Mysteries.

For more than 100 Years we’ve helped people connect. Giving people meaningful ways to connect with those they care about most is at the heart of everything we do. We create things that make people feel good.

Our expertise in emotional storytelling has helped us secure a place in consumers’ hearts. We’ve earned this special place in people’s lives by reaching them in many different meaningful ways. People engage with the Hallmark brand to create and capture memories and moments they cherish their entire lives.

Hallmark’s brand purpose is to inspire meaningful connections, which enhance relationships and enrich lives. Our brand promise is an inspiring challenge and our ultimate goal. Our brand’s purpose and promise express our central commitment to the consumer and should be served by every product, service and experience.

We are eager to continue growing our licensed products business in emerging markets while providing continued guidance and support for our established licensees. That’s the Goodyear licensing division, always looking forward while cherishing our past.

In a partnership with Hallmark, you can leverage our expertise and vast intellectual property portfolio to create a more meaningful connection between consumers and your products.

For more info please visit our web site at www.goodyear.com

For more info please visit our web site at www.Hallmarklicensing.com

or contact: Fabrice.faurie@img.com

or contact: hallmarklicensing@hallmark.com

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Hamilton Beach Brands, Inc. is a leading designer, marketer and distributor of small electric household appliances, as well as commercial products for restaurants, bars and hotels. Hamilton Beach products can be found in households and business throughout the world. Hamilton Beach Brands, Inc. is a wholly-owned subsidiary of NACCO Industries, Inc. (NYSE: NC), and is Headquartered in Richmond, Virginia.

Staying connected with consumers is a vital element of our company mission to provide innovative solutions to improve everyday living. We’re proud that our product quality, wide variety of options, superior customer service, and brand name strength continue to earn us kudos with consumers.

We license our Hamilton Beach and Proctor Silex brands across the globe in a number of product categories and territories. With over 100 years of established brand equity, you can be assured that you are partnering with one of the best consumer products companies in the business. We have strong partnership experience as both a licensor and licensee and have experienced professionals across all aspects of the business, including quality, marketing and legal specialists, that can help you bring your product to market.

As a brand partner, we entrust you to represent our brands with the same level of innovation and quality that consumers have some to expect from our trusted brands.

Potential licensees should be prepared to demonstrate how our brand adds value to your product and how your product will enhance the value of our brand.

Information on innovative Hamilton Beach, Proctor Silex, TrueAir, Hamilton Beach Commercial, and Weston Brands can be found online at: www.hamiltonbeach.com, www.proctorsilex.com, www.westonproducts.com and www.commercial.hamiltonbeach.com. or contact: Wendy Reid wendy.reid@hamiltonbeach.com

For 112 years Harley-Davidson has united people around the world through amazing products and an authentic set of values, igniting passion and a sense of shared community. With both global significance and local relevance it is no surprise that Harley-Davidson ranks as one of the strongest brands in the world.

Harley-Davidson established its trademark licensing program in the early 1980’s to ensure that its trademarks were protected and to create an authentic assortment of branded products that allow consumers to express themselves through the brand. Harley-Davidson works with 85 licensees producing products in the following categories: apparel (with an emphasis on Dealer imprint t-shirts), footwear, eyewear, accessories, children’s apparel, lighters, watches, jewelry, rec room, home décor, toys, pet supplies, and promotional items.

At the core of Harley-Davidson’s retail program is its network of independently owned and operated dealerships, with more than 1400 Harley-Davidson dealerships worldwide. Supporting and enhancing Harley-Davidson’s relationships with its dealers is at the forefront of the licensing program.

We also work with select licensees to distribute some licensed product through other relevant channels of distribution.

In 2014, the Harley-Davidson licensing program generated approximately $450 million in retail sales globally. Annually, 10 Million T-shirts are sold and over 51,000 SKU’S are produced in a variety of product categories. Harley-Davidson’s formula for success stems from the strength of our brand and our relationships with our licensees, as well as the diversity and loyalty of our customer base.

For more info please contact: licensingdept@harley-davidson.com

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Hearst is the largest worldwide publisher of monthly magazines, with a span of 21 titles that reach 78 million readers and 54 million site visitors each month. For over a decade, Hearst Brand Development has personified our powerful and diverse magazine portfolio (many centennial with a long-standing, relevant history) into brand-enhancing products. By understanding the behaviors and lifestyles of our readers, we are able to connect millions of loyal, engaged consumers to their favorite brands and fully integrate these products into the fabric of their daily routine and style.

In 2014, consumers spent more than $400 million on Hearst branded products across fully diversified retail channels. Hearst Brand Development’s range of legacy brands benefit from both national and regional distributions as well as consistent exclusive partnerships, including the Esquire Shirt and Tie Collection at Men’s Wearhouse, the Metropolitan Home Furniture Collection at national and regional furniture retailers in addition to the introduction of soft home products at BedBathandBeyond.com, Seventeen Confections at It’Sugar, and Car and Driver car care accessories at mid-tier and specialty retailers. Our success is amplified by the scale and engagement with this branded audience and our ability to reach them moment-to-moment across all desirable omni-channel platforms in print, digital, mobile, and social media networks.

New and noteworthy launches include the Esquire and Jefferson’s Manhattan: Barrel Finished Cocktail, the Seventeen Bedding Collections at Kohls.com and JCP.com, and the addition of the New Neutrals product line to the Good Housekeeping Blinds and Shades Collection.

Honeywell is a Fortune 100 company whose innovative technologies are making our world cleaner and more sustainable, more secure, connected, energy efficient and productive. The Honeywell brand is known throughout the world. Honeywell’s proven technologies, leading edge patents, and world-renowned brands can be one of the best and fastest ways to accelerate your success. Whether you’re looking to shortcut R&D challenges, leap-frog competition, or command premium pricing through brand affiliation, Honeywell is a uniquely rewarding partner for Intellectual Property licensing. We approach licensing in a clear, straight-forward way with a focus on achieving mutual success.

With expertise across a wide variety of vital industries, Honeywell offers a vast set of portable technologies and can enable your company to compete more effectively and grow market share.

Honeywell provides specialized know-how, patented technologies and valuable business support to maximize your success in achieving business goals.

Benefits of Technology Licensing: • Shorten product development time • Gain entry into otherwise protected industries • Enhance quality of products and processes • Build competitive advantage • Increase sales revenue • Expand existing business capabilities

Sources: AAM 2H 2014; Spring 2015 MRI GfK; comScore.

Customers prefer to buy brands they know and trust. With Honeywell behind you, you’re more likely to succeed. Our strong brands, our cooperative go-to-market initiatives, and our established position in a variety of key industries can help pave the way to higher profitability.

For more info please visit our web site at www.hearst.com

For more info please visit our web site at www.honeywell.com

or contact: gebrown@hearst.com

or contact: Mylee.Xiong@Honeywell.com PAGE 77 |

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Jarden Consumer Solutions is a division of Jarden Corporation, a world-class, Fortune 500 consumer products company with a diverse portfolio of innovative products.

For nearly 100 years, consumers have trusted our brands. We market products under the Bionaire, Breville, Cadence, Crock-Pot, Food Saver, Mr. Coffee, GrillMaster, Health o Meter, Holmes, Rexair, Rival, Oster, Seal a Meal, Sunbeam, Villaware, and other leading global brands in more than 90 product categories and in over 110 countries.

We manufacture, market, distribute, and license a broad line of market-leading, branded consumer products and solutions designed to improve the lives of our consumers.

We enhance the consumer’s home environment, personal care, wellness, cooking, baking, garment care and other daily necessities. Our wide range of product offerings include air purifiers, blenders, clothes irons, coffeemakers, cookware and accessories, fans, food processors, heated bedding, heating pads, microwave ovens, personal and animal grooming products, roasters, slow cookers, stand mixers, and vacuum sealer / food storage systems, just to name a few.

Jarden Consumer Solutions has an established product licensing program and global strategic relationship management that delivers an expanded ecosystem for consumers looking for new ways to engage with their favorite brands.

Mars Retail Group (MRG) is a division of Mars, Incorporated, a privately owned company with net sales of more than $33 billion worldwide. Founded in 1911, Mars, Incorporated has 75,000 Associates across the globe and six business segments including Petcare, Chocolate, Wrigley, Food, Drinks, and Symbioscience.

Based in Mount Arlington, N.J., MRG supports and builds the iconic Mars Brands, from M&M’S Brand and the charismatic M&M’S Characters to SKITTLES, SNICKERS, STARBURST and TWIX Brands.

Licensing partnerships with MRG provide tremendous brand awareness, since the company’s esteemed brands enjoy powerful consumer recognition.

MRG partners with Mars brand teams, retail partners and licensees to create unique merchandise and in-store displays to create an unforgettable experience for consumers.

Themed displays can align with seasons, holidays, or special events and include a wide range of licensed items at varying price points, such as apparel, novelty, housewares, accessories, plush, dispensers and candy.

Several key factors differentiate the MRG program from competitors: the Brands’ strong heritage and popularity, and the iconic M&M’S Brand Characters, loved by all ages. Mars licensed products are proven successes, and MRG is excited to continue expanding the portfolio.

A potential licensee should have a strong track record with a history of developing and managing brands and a successful sales and distribution organization in place.

For more info please visit our web site at www.jardencs.com

For more info please visit our web site at www.mars.com

or contact: licensing@jardencs.com

or contact: gail.martin@effem.com

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Headquartered in El Segundo, California, Mattel, Inc. is the worldwide leader in the design, manufacturing and marketing of toys and family products. Mattel has a rich portfolio of brands including Barbie, the most popular fashion doll ever produced, Hot Wheels, Monster High, American Girl, Thomas & Friends and Fisher-Price. Mattel also partners with entertainment industry giants like Disney, Warner Bros, DreamWorks and WWE to deliver a wide array of content-inspired toy lines. Additionally, Mattel has a worldwide team that licenses its brands across over 100 different product sub-categories spanning merchandise, publishing and content across a full range of mediums, platforms and channels. With 50+ exciting brands and approximately 31,000 employees in 40 countries and territories, Mattel sells products in more than 150 nations.

As the leading global infant and preschool brand, with product solutions for every step along the way in a baby’s day - Fisher-Price® offers innovative solutions across a multitude of categories including baby gear and care, infant accessories, publishing, music and party supplies.

This year, Thomas & Friends will celebrate its 70th anniversary and will leverage this milestone to activate untapped growth opportunities for the brand.

Barbie, the doll that started it all, heads into 2015 with new soft lines partnerships, an updated look, and the most innovative and customizable products fans have ever seen.

Across the girls business, from Monster High to Ever After High, Mattel continues to lead the fashion doll category and reach today’s girls with on trend themes, compelling storytelling, aspirational characters and beautiful product.

Hot Wheels will continue to fuel kids’ imaginations by giving them the keys to create and discover new play experiences through fantastical vehicles and thrilling track sets.

For more info please visit our web site at http://corporate.mattel.com/

Meredith Corporation is the nation’s leading media and marketing company, reaching 100 million consumers on a monthly basis.

As a media company, Meredith provides brand reinforcement 365 days a year through several native promotional channels for our brands.

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Through its diverse collection of storied breweries, MillerCoors brings American beer drinkers an unmatched selection of the highest quality beers steeped in centuries of brewing heritage.

Meredith has several robust licensing programs under our iconic Better Homes and Gardens brand including home décor, real estate services, and floral arrangements.

Recently, Meredith launched a new licensing program for Allrecipes that assists everyday cooks to accomplish their cooking goals through a collection of cookware, bakeware and kitchen gadgets.

Miller Brewing Company and Coors Brewing Company offer domestic favorites such as Coors Light, Miller Lite, Miller High Life and Coors Banquet. Tenth and Blake Beer Company, our craft and import division, offers beers such as Leinenkugel’s Summer Shandy from sixth-generation Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company and Blue Moon Belgian White from modern craft pioneer Blue Moon Brewing Company, which celebrates its 20th Anniversary this year.

Tenth and Blake also operates Crispin Cider Company, an artisanal maker of pear and apple ciders using fresh-pressed American juice, and imports world-renowned beers such as Italy’s Peroni Nastro Azzurro, the Czech Republic’s Pilsner Urquell and the Netherlands’ Grolsch.

Future licensing growth will leverage our other well-known trademarks including Eating Well, Traditional Home, Parents, Successful Farming and Family Circle.

MillerCoors also offers pioneering new brands such as the Redd’s Apple and Redd’s Wicked Apple franchises and Smith & Forge Hard Cider.

Our brand licensing work ranks us the world’s 3rd largest global licensor. We help our licensing partners go to market further and faster using a Meredith trademark that lends immediate recognition and credibility across a broad segment of consumers.

MillerCoors seeks to create America’s best beer company through an uncompromising promise of quality, a keen focus on innovation and a deep commitment to sustainability. MillerCoors is a joint venture of SABMiller plc and Molson Coors Brewing Company.

Learn more at MillerCoors.com, at facebook.com/MillerCoors or on Twitter through @MillerCoors.

For more info please visit our web site at www.meredith.com/national-media/ brand-licensing or contact: Claire Pierce Claire.pierce@meredith.com

Universal Partnerships & Licensing (UP&L) oversees NBCUniversal’s consumer product and digital licensing for Universal Pictures, NBC Television, Focus Features and Sprout Channel. This dedicated division is also responsible for film, home entertainment and television promotions. NBCUniversal is one of the world’s leading media and entertainment companies in the development, production, and marketing of entertainment, news, and information to a global audience.

NBCUniversal owns and operates a valuable portfolio of news and entertainment television networks, a premier motion picture company, significant television production operations, a leading television stations group, world-renowned theme parks, and a suite of leading Internet-based businesses.

NBCUniversal is a subsidiary of Comcast Corporation.

This year, UP&L continues to expand its licensing programs based on the blockbuster film franchises, Minions, which has grossed more than $1B and counting at the global box office, Jurassic World, the third highest grossing film of all time with $1.5B at the global box office, and Fast & Furious.

In 2016, the fifth film in the collaboration between Universal Pictures and Illumination Entertainment, The Secret Life of Pets, a comedy about the lives our pets lead after we leave for work or school each day, will debut in theatres. On the television side of the business, UP&L continues to build upon the successful “The Biggest Loser” franchise, while introducing new opportunities from the kids network Sprout, as well as NBC and Esquire Network’s summer ratings powerhouse, “American Ninja Warrior,” in addition to the highly-anticipated miniseries, “Heroes Reborn,” based on the 2006 breakout series “Heroes;” and fan-favorites including “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” “Brooklyn Nine-Nine,” “Battlestar Galactica,” and “The Office.”

For more info please visit our web site at www.millercoors.com

For more info please visit our web site at www.nbcuniversal.com/

or contact: David2.Lee@millercoors.com

or contact: Megan.Johnson@nbcuni.com PAGE 79 |

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Newell Rubbermaid Inc., an S&P 500 company, is a global marketer of consumer and commercial products with 2014 sales of $5.7 billion and a strong portfolio of leading brands, including Sharpie, Paper Mate, Rubbermaid Commercial Products, Irwin, Lenox, Parker, Waterman, Contigo, Rubbermaid, Levolor, Calphalon, Goody, Graco, Aprica, Baby Jogger and Dymo. As part of the company’s Growth Game Plan, Newell Rubbermaid is making sharper portfolio choices and investing in new marketing and innovation to accelerate performance.

Newell’s brands are known for delivering superior performance, design and innovation. Our brands continue to succeed globally because of strategic and disciplined choices made based on insight, analysis and experience. We love our brands and are passionately committed to consumers. We put consumers first in everything we do and belive that when our consumers benefit, all of our other constituents benefit.

Trademark licensing can create opportunity for our brands to benefit consumers in strategic categories. The company will consider licensing trademarks where the needs of consumers for a product and the core equity of our brands align. Our brands offer the value of established equity and can significantly accelerate growth in market, however licensed products must be positioned to strengthen that equity and not simply borrow from it.

Newell seeks partners that are leading in their respective categories, and that can provide consumers with an experience that delivers on the brand promise. Expectations for licensed products are high; they must deliver the same level of quality and innovation consumers have come to expect from the brands they trust.

For more info please visit our web site at http://newellrubbermaid.com/OurCompany/DoBusinessWithUs/BrandAssets/ Pages/BrandAssets.aspx | BEL MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2015

The U.S. Army’s Trademark Licensing Program is about more than just commerce.

The program leverages the importance of pride, performance and personal development to build brand awareness and create multiple touch points for Americans to show support to the U.S. Army,” says Paul Jensen, Director of U.S. Army Trademark Licensing.

Since 2006, the Army has strategically extended its brand to more than 50 categories including apparel, footwear, jewelry, consumer electronics, gift and novelties, collectibles, cutlery, health and beauty, and camping equipment, among others. Army licensed products are available in more than 80,000 stores across the United States, including major retailers such as Walmart, Target, Kmart, Toys “R” Us, Dick’s Sporting Goods, The Sports Authority and J.C. Penney.

The Army Trademark Licensing Program was created to share the time-honored qualities of the Army’s service to the nation. The Army has established a strict set of brand guidelines for licensing, and the goal of the program is to promote positive brand awareness. New and improved brand guidelines were launched in spring of 2015, enabling licensees to create fresh and original designs for a modern approach to the U.S. Army brand. The Army will continue to focus on combating brand infringement through a number of different initiatives, such as introducing a new hologram program and continuing its retail education initiative.

Proceeds from the licensing program support the Army’s Morale, Welfare and Recreation (MWR) program, which benefits soldiers, retirees and their families. Examples of how this fantastic program helps the Army community are visible on Army posts across the United States: daycare and child development centers, movie theaters, bowling alleys, basketball courts, sporting and cultural events, travel opportunities, job training, and much more.

For more info please visit our web site at www.goarmy.com/ or contact: usarmy.pentagon.hqda-asa-mra.mbx. army-trademark-licensi@mail.mil | PAGE 80

Whirlpool is the number one major appliance manufacturer in the world, with approximately $20 billion in annual sales, 100,000 employees and 70 manufacturing and technology research centers throughout the world in 2014.

The company markets Whirlpool, KitchenAid, Maytag, Amana, Jenn-Air, Consul, Brastemp, Bauknecht, Indesit and other major brand names in more than 170 countries.

Focusing on consumer needs fuels our growth and keeps us relevant in homes around the world. We exist to create purposeful innovation that helps keep homes running smoothly so personal and family lives can flourish. For generations, we have done the right thing, helping people make the most of time so they can focus on what really matters – their families and their lives.

In everything we do, for generations to come, we will sustain our commitment to make each experience an extraordinary one We’re proud that our brands have become a familiar backdrop for so many quality memories. Because it’s your family life that inspires our family of brands. From cooling to cleaning and preheating to reheating, we believe you should be able to express yourself anywhere in the home. Our strong portfolio allows you to team up with distinct brands designed for your specific needs and budget. Each brand has spent decades developing a personality that complements the character in your home.

For 100 years, people around the globe have welcomed our portfolio of brands into their daily lives. We‘re always looking for licensees who share our passion for filling homes with innovative solutions that help create more moments that matter.

For more info please visit our web site at www.whirlpoolcorp.com/licensing/ or contact: BrandLicensing@whirlpool.com

WWW.BELMAG.BIZ |

UP-AND-COMING

CES | Las Vegas | January 6-9, 2016 | www.cesweb.org

Hong Kong International Licensing Show | January 11-13, 2016 www.hktdc.com/hklicensingshow

NRF Convention and Expo | New York | January 17-19, 2016 www.nrf.com

Sport Licensing & Tailgate Show | Las Vegas | January 24-26, 2016 www.sportstailgateshow.com

PGA Merchandise Show | Orlando | January 26-29, 2016 www.pgashow.com

International Toy Fair | Nuremberg | January 27 - February 1, 2016 www.spielwarenmesse.de

ISPO Munich | February 5-8, 2016 | www.munich.ispo.com/en

Toy Fair NY | New York | February 13-16, 2016 | www.toyfairny.com PAGE 81 |

BEL MAGAZINE |

Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami

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