The Kitty that Roars with Licensing Gusto

by Felicia Sominglai

Which characters are the kings and queens of licensing? Seriously, take a minute to think about it and make some guesses.

Your intuition might lead you to Mickey Mouse, or to Winnie the Pooh, or to superheros like Spiderman or IronMan, or maybe to Pixar characters like Nemo and Lightning McQueen. What about Star Wars? If your intuition leads you to these characters, you’d be right. (Incidentally, every single one of these properties (Disney traditional, Pixar stable,Winnie the Pooh, Marvel, and Lucas Films) are all under the Disney domain. And, according to work done by the Licensing Letter, the top three properties  for licensing in Canada and the USA come from the Disney Princesses, Star Wars, and Pooh. Each of these properties is worth well over a billion a year in revenue and taken together, they account for almost a third of all character licensed revenues in Canada and the USA.  

But there is one other property that needs special attention. Move over Princesses, there is a Kitty that is world-wide licensing royalty.

Hello Kitty is a fictional kitty character comic created by Sanrio Inc. The famous kitty made her first appearance in Japan on a vinyl coin purse in 1974. Three years later, she was introduced in the United States. Sanrio initially was targeting pre-adolescent females, but Hello Kitty caught on with teenagers and adult consumers as well. It is now one of the "powerhouse" characters in North America (see below) and with its strength in populous Asia, it vies for world-wide cartoon popularity supremacy.

Given the comic's look and feel, it seems obvious that Hello Kitty character  would end up as dolls, stickers, greeting cards, clothes, accessories, school supplies and purses. But what is surprising is that Hello Kitty appears licensed on toasters, televisions, home appliances, massagers, hard rockin Stratocaster guitars, wines, high end gemstones,and computer equipment. It is even less obvious (and more surprising) that Hello Kitty has been licensed out to rare collectibles and an airline. Yes, that’s right, an airline!

EVA Airways, a Taiwanese airline company, has brought brand licensing to a whole different level.  Originally launched in 2005, the totally Hello-Kitty themed fleet has recently grown to 5.(EVA added 2 more to its fleet in the last few months). Just how Hello-Kitty themed is the Hello Kitty airline service?  It's 100% Hello Kitty integration. Every consumer touch-point has been Kittied-up: the plane, the luggage machines, the ticket counters, the in-flight design, the boarding passes, the flight attendant uniforms, and the food. These images speak for themselves.

Even airport in Taipei was even redesigned in order to fit the theme.

The luggage handlers drive Hello Kitty equipment

Hello Kitty, pillows and head rests

In-flight service Kitty-style!

According the EVA, the Hello Kitty themed air service has been a huge success since launched. According to the Evergreen Group, the parent company of EVA Airways, all the Hello Kitty jets have occupied over 85 to 90 percent per flight, well above industry averages.  Try the experience online yourself: http://evakitty.evaair.com/en/pages/experience/lineplane.aspx 

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TOP 10 LICENSED ENTERTAINMENT/CHARACTER PROPERTIESU.S. AND CANADA, 2010

1.                  Disney Princess -- Disney -- $1,725 million

2.                  Star Wars & The Clone Wars -- LucasFilm -- $1,415 million

3.                  Pooh -- Disney -- $1,100 million

4.                  Toy Story -- Disney/Pixar -- $915 million

5.                  Cars -- Disney/Pixar -- $810 million

6.                  Hello Kitty -- Sanrio -- $750 million

7.                  Mickey & Friends -- Disney -- $725 million

8.                  Peanuts -- Peanuts Worldwide/Iconix -- $660 million

9.                  Sesame Street  -- Sesame Workshop -- $525 million

10.                WWE -- WWE -- $520 million

Why I Like "the Like"

by Shirley Pechthold

A recent study was conducted by Napkin Labs (a Facebook app developer) to measure the effectiveness of a brand’s Facebook page. Through an investigation of over 50 brand Facebook pages, the study concluded that only6% of the people who “liked” the page actually interacted with it (in terms of likes shares and comments). Furthermore, the study concluded that the interaction of the majority of the 6% was only once every eight weeks. Napkin Labs assessed that brands need to focus more on maintaining their relationships with “superfans” who interacted much more than the average. They also suggest that brands should focus less on achieving a high number of likes for their page, and focus more on creating more likes and comments by the already existing fans.

I think that that the conclusions of this study are important. After all, marketers have long known to focus on the most valuable customers. Yet, this study seems to be missing a critical component of a "like" and its relation to a Facebook brand page. 

Awareness building is expensive

Of course, it's true that a brand that has built a Facebook page is using that social community page to build relationships. That being said, the value of a Facebook page is not only to stimulate a track-able response via likes and comments (i.e. the outcomes of a relationship), but also stimulates awareness of the brand. By being "liked", the brand's identity is exposed to other Facebook users. Suggesting that there is no value to this exposure, is like saying there is no value to a brand logo being displayed on the boards at a hockey game. Yet, the market indicates that this exposure is worth a lot of money. Exposure of a logo on 8 feet of boards of the blind-side (non-camera side) of an NHL game is about $30,000 for the regular season home games.

But wait- there's something else too. When someone likes a brand’s Facebook page, news and updates are presented on their newsfeed from the brand. For me personally, I liked on Facebook a lot of clothing brands. When I open my own Facebook page, I get to see the brand's new products and hear firsthand about the brand's promotions. Often, these links will lead me outside of the Facebook environment to the brand's website (where I have made purchases). Other times, however, I will be linked to the brand's Facebook page (where I have made purchases). I assume that the brand can track how many clicks were generated off of this news update, and in turn measure how many purchases were made. But the research presented done by Napkin Labs zeros in on the Facebook environment.

The conclusion that I am drawing is this: Marketers ought to "Like" a  Facebook "Like" a lot more than Napkin Labs would have them believe!