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LICENSOR FEEDBACK
Property matters From switching licensee presentations and workshops to Zoom, through to creating special content featuring their characters to help parents suddenly needing to home-school as well as work, licensors and IP owners have stepped up during the crisis. LSB catches up with some to get their views on the past few months.
Natalie Harvey, executive director of sales, Acamar Films “While it is an unprecedented and unusual period, our approach is ‘business as usual’ within the boundaries of what we are dealing with on a daily and weekly basis. We are still keeping all meetings (converting the physical ones into video conferences, although many of our meetings with agents were already using Zoom), and moving ahead on our various workstreams. On top of this we are, of course, assessing the situation’s impact on our business and on our partners all the time. We have a close relationship with our agents, licensees and retail partners and feel we’re very much in this together. The benefit of being an independent and smaller company is that we can be agile. We are so pleased to have been able to close some deals during this
period, but there are some categories of the business which are clearly affected, such as experiential. Being a content-first business focused on our audience, we need to continue delivering. At the start of April we launched a ‘Staying at Home Together’ initiative across our social media channels and websites in the UK, Italy, Poland, Spain and the Netherlands. We want to help families keep their young children engaged and entertained and it’s been a real success, both with our audience and our partners. Retailers and experiential partners in particular have been delighted and grateful for the quick turnaround support which enables them to keep close to their own customers.” Left: The benefit of being an independent and smaller company is that we can be agile, says Natalie.
Talia Tester, licensing manager, Carte Blanche Greetings
Inset: Me to You is a safe evergreen brand which brings people together, says Talia.
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LICENSING SOURCE BOOK EUROPE 2020
“Maintaining constant contact with partners has been key. As we have a presence in multiple territories it has been vital for us to check-in daily with our key partners on the ground to understand the situation as it evolves in each market. For me, it has really reinforced the sense of partnership within our company and the wider industry and the mentality that whatever we face, we are all in this together. We pride ourselves on our partnerships so we were very keen to support and strategise together, staying reactive to the ever-changing situation. While we were all (rightly) cautious at the start of lockdown, it definitely feels that there has been an optimistic shift and people are now looking ahead. The market is starting to settle and conversations regarding SS21 are progressing. We are very fortunate that due to the seasonal nature of our core brand, Me to You, we have been able to proceed with planned cross-category events around key moments and continue to progress deals with new licensees. With the growth of online business we have also been able to focus on promotions with our print on demand retailers and see the immediate benefits of this. Me to You is relied upon by retailers and consumers alike, it’s a safe, evergreen brand which brings people together, something which is even more important right now.”