Food Licensing Tip #7: Finding the "Right" Partner (part 1)

(scary cat courtesy of Icanhascheezburger)


Licensing your brand means letting go.

It's one reason brand managers shy away from licensing. It's just too scary.

We all know how corporate life works: you take a successful risk and your boss claims the whole thing was her idea. Take a failing risk and you're logging onto Monster.com every 15 minutes.

Licensing means allowing your brand to be used on products made by someone else, yet with the explicit intention of making consumers think it was produced by you. In the case of food brand licensing, this often means "bringing the restaurant experience home." It's one big reason why consumers have embraced the grocery products branded with Burger King, TGI Friday’s, California Pizza Kitchen and others: they believe you made those products in your "factory" and are selling them to the grocery store.

Food brand licensing means contracting with another company to develop, produce and MARKET products bearing your name and logo. Simply finding a company who can make a product isn't enough.

It's not what you make, it's what you can sell that matters.

The licensee (the company making the product with your brand on it) has to sell-in that line to a grocery chain. There are various ways this gets done (brokers, Direct Store Delivery or DSD, selling agents), but this is the licensee's job. Your job as the licensor is to make sure you're working with the right partner.

One of the most-important considerations in choosing the "right" licensing partner is: will your brand become an important part of their long-term strategy for growth, or just a quick hit-and-run product that will be gone from supermarkets within a few months? Movie studios are adept at this sort of promotional licensing that's usually tied in to the release of a blockbuster movie. Burger King, for example, is currenly licensing the "Star Trek" concept as part of its "Kingons" satirical commercials.



and



(to find more Kingon commercials, click here)

But for companies who "license in" other brands to put on their products, the goal is to create a long-term strategy for growth that benefits both companies. Traditionally the big licensors like the studios and Disney did NOTHING to help their food licensees. But for restaurant chains, the crowded food marketplace means they have to go the extra mile to convince sometimes skeptical manufacturers their brand will "hunt" at retail.

Tomorrow: How to identify a "right" partner

For information about licensing, contact Broad Street Licensing Group (tel. 973-655-0598)