“We are exploring monetization through potential new brand extensions. The current focus is to evaluate brand licensing, which may include and not be limited to licensing our brand out. Our goals include creating an income stream while extending reach and building brand loyalty. As we consider a brand licensing program, what are the keys to success?”

Thanks for your question Cheri. Licensing continues to be a powerful option for accelerating growth and extending the value of brands, making the decision to begin a licensing program a key consideration at strategy meetings worldwide. For those brands exploring licensing today and what impact it may deliver, consider the following. Licensing is thriving. According to Global License Magazine, The Top 150 Global Licensors accounted for $280.3 billion in retail sales of licensed products worldwide in 2018 versus $271.6 billion in 2017.

Keys To Successful Brand Licensing

To quote JFK; “Things do not happen. Things are made to happen.” This surely applies to the programs behind these impressive numbers. They approach licensing with purpose and commitment and share the following characteristics:

1. They are authentic to the brand. Packaging, product design language, brand messaging & tone, and quality all come in to play.
2. They are legitimate whereby the licensed product /service design and quality are aligned with the brand.
3. They are strategic, and clearly compliment core offerings.
4. The brand is fully engaged (i.e. not segmenting licensed products in an ‘us and them’ mentality) as consumers will easily detect a lack of authenticity.
5. They are willing to evolve with trends and the times.
6. They understand it is their target customer that gives them permission where to extend and anchor the program in customer research.
7. They ensure their program is strategically managed by those that understand both licensing strategy and brand strategy.
8. They understand they have to be fully committed to the program, it is essentially a new business unit.

Brand licensing continues to be a powerful growth strategy, benefiting brands with equity as well as those that need to borrow equity.

We hope this is helpful Cheri.

Do you have a brand or growth strategy question? Just Ask The Blake Project

The Blake Project Can Help: We offer brand licensing workshops to help brand owners develop a strategy for licensing or refine an existing one. Another way we serve our  clients is through a Brand Licensing Audit which is an essential guide in considering, building and/or improving a program. Please email us for more.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

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It’s human nature to test rules and boundaries, sometimes break them, accept them and respect them. Our entire lives we are exposed to rules and agreements. We learn early on that agreements facilitate trust, and we learn the full extent of their value when disputes arise.

A Brief History Of Contracts And Celebrity Right Of Publicity

Written in 1750 BC, The Code of Hammurabi was one of the earliest and most complete written legal codes. The Hammurabi code of laws, is a collection of 282 rules, established standards for commercial interactions and set fines and punishments to meet the requirements of justice. People have been dealing with contracts and the interpretation of contract terms for well over 3,700 years. A breach of the Hammurabi Code may have resulted in losing your head; in today’s world, it can make you feel like you are losing your head.

Rights Of Publicity And Protections Under The Law

The right of publicity (ROP), which came into play between 1953 and 1954, is the inherent right of every human being to control the commercial use of his or her identity. ROP does not have a federal law under which it operates; there is no unified federal standard for protection. ROP is recognized under state law and interpretation varies State by State. Name and likeness are mostly covered by state statutes and common law.

Additional aspects can vary substantially State by State. Some States and not all recognize voice, mannerisms and other forms of imagery. So, manufacturers need to be mindful of these nuances (especially when considering the risk of “parallel developing” something that will confuse the general population). When negotiating a contract, to be prudent, make an effort to clarify all potential intangible assets for which one will be licensed, and make note of the State to which the law of the contract is governed.

Celebrity Licensing And Endorsement Contracts

I recently caught up with Ken Schulman, Partner at Pryor Cashman. Ken’s practice includes celebrity and corporate brand development, copyright and trademark protection, litigation, arbitration, and general corporate and commercial counseling.

“Depending on the deliverables, you can have a 10, 22 or 100-page contract,” said Ken, “and with reasonable provisions and a schedule of requested activity, typically both parties act in good faith.” We discussed how both parties take risks; the licensee financial and the celebrity reputation. “Most celebrity licensing deals are more transactional in nature.” One defines what the artist shall do, how that may be done, and agree upon payment terms. For example, if the celebrity is to use their social media to promote a licensed product, one may negotiate if it will be the licensee who prepares the content for the artist’s approval or someone on the artist’s team to submit for the licensee’s approval.

Everything is a negotiation – financial, approval rights, activation, and termination. While the terms are the driving force, both parties are engaging based on reputation and relationship.

“Celebrities not making themselves available doesn’t help anyone,” said Jennifer Keene, Vice President, Athlete and Property Marketing at Octagon. She continued, “ The last thing I want when I do a partnership with a brand and my client is for the assets (e.g., time for production work or appearances, etc.) to go unutilized or underutilized. I want partners to leverage the assets and see the impact of working with a celebrity spokesperson can have for a brand. In most cases, there are protections in our agreements that protect the brand from a celebrity taking a deal but then never following through. There are provisions about the talent using ‘best efforts’ to make themselves available for contractual obligations with sufficient advance notice and ‘subject to his/her professional availability.’ There’s a grey area, of course,” Jennifer continued. “From the talent side, though, we usually include a provision that stipulates that a brand’s failure to request the services from the talent doesn’t give the brand reason to terminate the deal.”

What To Do Before And After Something Goes Wrong

Throughout my career, I have trained direct reports to be on great terms with the legal, finance and accounting departments, and always be nice to your corporate communications and PR teams. My suggestions include, and are not limited to:

• Always go to your attorney prepared with something to discuss and state what counsel you seek. Imagine your attorney looking at a list of 10 people whose calls need to be returned; how do you brand yourself to be bumped to the top of the list. Be the one who is prepared to discuss. If you have no idea what course of action to take, at least be prepared to discuss the dollars at risk, and/or the potential PR disaster at hand.
• Don’t wait to alert your legal, finance and accounting, and PR departments when something is at risk.
• Be respectful of your attorney’s time. I used to have “a deal” with the in-house attorney who did my contracts while at the NBA: One minute per thousand dollars of the minimum guarantee of the contract at hand.

Below are some additional thoughts and considerations to think through when entering into a celebrity licensing partnership.

Terms Regarding Payments Schedules, Marketing Requirements, And Product Approvals

• If there is a sales goal in addition to a minimum guarantee, is there a commensurate schedule of approval timelines that must be met? If a celebrity doesn’t approve product within the manufacturer’s sales and production timelines, how does that bear consequence? What if the licensee doesn’t submit their samples on time? Is there a cure?
• If a manufacturer ships an approved product, with quality standards that are of a material change from that which is approved, resulting in a sales and PR problem, then what? What defines a material change?
• If there is a minimum marketing spend requirement by the licensee, what is that for? Say, for example, there is an annual minimum ad spend requirement, is it for “new or old” product? Is the product evergreen, or is it trend?

For discussion, say the product of an agreement is seasonal apparel with two floor-sets (spring and fall), over a five-year term, and the manufacturer has agreed to spend $500K annually on marketing. Clarify to what each year’s marketing spend requirement correlates. For example, if a celebrity doesn’t approve the new season collection, is the licensee removed of the marketing-spend obligation for the season in the year said disapproved product would have been on retail floors? Can the $2.5M marketing budget be spent over the term, as opposed to annually? Is cross-collateralization acceptable? What are the notifications provisions in place to protect both parties? Are those provisions being met?

Obligations Of Both Parties

As it pertains to celebrity participation, the licensee will want to clarify how expenses are managed. Have a conversation about what reasonable and necessary expenses mean, and how travel for appearances will work.

What are the endorsement activities? Stipulate and define:

Promotional Appearance. Televised, non-televised? How many days, hours per day, and what is the notification requirement for the appearance?

Shopping Channel. Is the licensee allowed to use B Roll Footage?

Print Advertisements. Typically a celebrity will appear for a one (1) day photoshoot and will want the right to select their hair & makeup stylist, and have the approval of the photographer.

Television Commerce. When may and may not will the licensee be permitted to utilize T-Commerce?

Web Site Link. What kind of link or links will be permitted, and what is the approval process?

Social Media. As this is a newer and evolving type of celebrity activation tool, based on when the contract is being negotiated, you will need to address the who, what, why, where, when and how vis-à-vis the current environment.

Negotiate that endorsement fees or portions of financial obligations be defined on an ‘Activation Schedule’ defining what events trigger payments. For example, if a licensee agrees to pay a celebrity $25K for five tweets, negotiate something like $10k as an advance, and the remaining $15K is due upon completion of the fifth tweet, or something like that.

-Where possible, set up a shared calendar between someone on the celebrity’s team and your project management team, and maintain it.

-What measures will the licensee have in place to ensure quality standards are maintained?

-What happens to approved product and marketing collateral upon termination or expiration?

-Do you have the right resources? If you are turning a negotiated contract over to a younger or ‘green’ employee/team to manage, ask yourself if you have the time and resources to mentor and monitor an initiative.

Sometimes, it is worth hiring a “project employee” or to retain a seasoned independent “project mentor” to have them help set up, and/or monitor and be on-call to help ensure best practices are being followed to ensure success.

Warranties & Obligations

My friend Greg Battersby has practiced law for more than 40 years, and is one of the most respected names in the field of intellectual property law and licensing. He is also a prolific author and has co-authored more than 36 books on various licensing and intellectual property topics. We both served on the Board of Directors at LIMA (now Licensing International, the licensing trade association) and have had many a discussion over the years about celebrity licensing.

We agree that some warranties & obligations are black and white. For example, the celebrity of an agreement will represent and warrant that they are in good health and don’t plan to retire during the term of the agreement.

Then we have the moral turpitude clauses. Contracts with “morals” clauses are nothing new and are common and important. One needs to be critically clear on what constitutes a violation, and even then there can be room for interpretation.

When a licensee has already paid a celebrity for something, don’t count on getting anything paid back. When the dollars involved are large, and the two parties can’t see eye-to-eye on damages compensation, “Then you will have a lawsuit,” according to Greg.

Morals clauses will vary. In his Bloomberg Law article entitled, ‘INSIGHT: A Moral Compass—A Guide to Celebrity-Focused Morals Clauses‘, Steven S. Sidman – Carlton Fields- states that a typical morals clause goes a little something like this:

“Company shall have the right to terminate this Agreement if Artist knowingly and publicly disparages the products or services of Company or is charged with a crime involving moral turpitude, notwithstanding any subsequent dropping of such charges, and such charges become known to the public, or if Artist is otherwise involved in activities that subject Artist to widespread public contempt and/or which materially tarnishes Company’s image. In the event of such termination, no further compensation shall be due you or Artist, other than that theretofore earned and due and then unpaid. Furthermore, Company shall be entitled to a refund of any Fee unearned as of the date of termination.”

If a celebrity has been paid an advance, what defines a “fee unearned?” Don’t let that one be gray.

Lastly, there is perception and reality. When in a dispute, the licensee, and/or the celebrity, will have to work very hard to justify what’s been lost and how damages for financial compensation are valued and calculated; especially when appearing in a court of law. One may have a cut and dry case (very rare), and your attorney or legal team will help you navigate what will hold up in a court of law. Sometimes adding color to the facts will help, but be careful not to be emotionally colorful.

Celebrity licensed products can range from t-shirts & mugs to branded experiences. When evaluating a product in general, everything starts with the consumer. How will the consumer see the product in their lives? Then you have to ask yourself will the celebrity enhance that value, and will consumers see it a credible connection? Mind you there are many celebrity-branded and endorsed product success stories, and many failures; sometimes there is no accountability for the taste of the American public.

And what of dead celebrities? This guide will be helpful.

There is something to be said for a licensee and celebrity to agree on terms and take responsibility for, and be accountable to that for which they sign up.

The Blake Project can help you discover and solidify the right celebrity license or endorsement for your brand. Further, we serve as expert witnesses in celebrity licensing and endorsement disputes.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

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Under the right circumstances, licensing can resurrect these brands. With a well-conceived strategy, licensing can capitalize on their hard-won equity and overcome whatever challenges destroyed the brand. We can learn a great deal about brand licensing as we examine successes and failures experienced in bringing brands back.

Brands can easily be taken off the market and in the case of celebrities, pass away, but not so easily erased from our memories. There are many possible reasons for a brand’s demise, decline, and disappearance from the marketplace, and poor brand management usually is one of them. Bad management decisions and the inability to keep up with changes in the marketplace can cause an iconic brand to falter. Here are some other reasons (but not all of the reasons) iconic brands disappear:

1. The parent company stops investing in the brand’s marketing, innovation, and product development in favor of investment in other owned brands of a similar character. Example: Brim coffee (“Fill it to the rim with Brim”) ended up at Altria (the reconstituted General Foods), which also owned Maxwell House, which discontinued Brim. As companies continue to merge, brands we love may fall away as part of a large multinational’s brand portfolio.

2. Challenges in the larger economic environment limit consumers’ continued participation with the brand. Example: Gourmet magazine, founded in 1941, beloved by foodies, couldn’t survive in a marketplace with declining magazine sales and was shuttered in 2009 to give Condé Nast’s other food magazine, Bon Appétit, a better chance of survival in a challenging magazine market.

3. Strong new competitors steal share. Example: Linens ’n Things lost out to Bed Bath & Beyond.

4. Inability to keep up with trends and changing market conditions. Example: Kodak. Although not dead, certainly comatose (Kodak has licensed its name for digital cameras and 3D printers, for example). Kodak kept manufacturing film as the market turned to digital cameras and then smartphones.

5. Changes in consumer behavior, which, over time, erode the brand’s relevance. Example: Netflix saw the future, but Blockbuster didn’t. Internet services and on-demand cable services changed consumers’ behavior for accessing movies. When Netflix started sending movies to consumers, Blockbuster kept building stores. Demographic shifts in the U.S. population can also impact relevancy as immigrants and their U.S.-born children fail to develop emotional attachment to brands. Example: Hostess (maker of Twinkies and other packaged desserts) disappeared and was revived. But by the time of revival, the U.S.-born Hispanic population had grown considerably. They are more attached to the Mexican snack brand Bimbo than they are to Hostess, to which neither they nor their parents may have any attachment.

6. Financial challenges. Brands that have had great success and are beloved are not exempt from extinction. Example: Pan Am, a famous international airline carrier, fell due to financial challenges.

Consider some other recent examples of brands that disappeared:

Nokia, once the world’s #1 mobile phone, was acquired by Microsoft, which had partnered with Nokia on the co-branded Lumia phone. Microsoft phased out the Nokia brand (an almost 150-year-old Finnish brand name) to focus on Lumia, which failed. Microsoft then sold Nokia, and a newly established Finnish company was granted a license by the brand owner to reintroduce Nokia phones. This brand may yet have a second life.

Hess gas stations are gone as the parent company focuses on oil. The Amoco brand disappeared when it merged with British Petroleum, and the Amoco gas stations, a mainstay of America, were rebranded BP.

Oldsmobile, founded in 1897, an iconic automobile brand name in America, found its sales slipping when it couldn’t compete with smaller, more efficient cars, including those of its parent company General Motors. The brand closed its doors in 2004.

And who can forget Woolworth’s (well Millennials probably never knew it)? Founded in 1879, it was the leading discount retailer in the United States and changed consumer shopping behavior. It paved the way for other mass merchants that followed its model. Losses mounted and the parent company closed the last stores in 1986.

Even famous Internet brand names have disappeared. Gone are Netscape, Ask Jeeves, Hotmail, and Excite. Following the Verizon acquisition in 2017, Yahoo and AOL are struggling to become Oath.

But some dormant brands make a comeback and are revived, often through licensing as well as other models. Examples include Puma, the VW Beetle, White Cloud, Polaroid, the Cleveland Browns, Ovaltine, and Breck Shampoo.

The brands that vanished all left behind strong equities and imprints on our memories. Often, these memories are strengthened by famous taglines such as “Fill it to the rim with Brim” or “Show us your Underalls” or “We Have to Earn Our Wings Everyday” (Eastern Airlines) or “Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile.” The loyalty and trust engendered by those brands doesn’t disappear quickly.

In fact, companies with a fresh or altered approach can often capitalize on existing equities, overcoming past challenges with greater flexibility, or a fresh strategy, a new consumer target, different product or retail distribution, a brand repositioning, or a modernized version.

And sometimes it’s not just how we remember the brands, but how we think we remember the brands. River West Brands was a company established to acquire the names of dead brands. Paul Earle, one of the founders, says that brand revival can take place based not only on what we remember but also “misremember” about brands. Brim was a decaffeinated coffee (that’s why you could “Fill it to the rim”), but do people really remember that or do they just remember that Brim was a coffee? River West brought it back as a full-flavored coffee, not limited to decaf. Earle believes that you can take the original value proposal of a brand and convert it into something related but different. He believes that people remember the essence of the brand but not the product specifics.

This is consistent with other brands who were revived like The Sharper Image. And in a way, it’s the secret sauce to bringing a brand back from the dead through licensing.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Michael Stone is the Chairman and Co-founder of global brand extension licensing agency Beanstalk. He is also the author of The Power of Licensing: Harnessing Brand Equity (Ankerwycke, October 2018).

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Licensing Audit

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

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And while we all want to stay connected through our digital devices, there is another countervailing trend afoot: people are seeking a digital detox. More consumers are abandoning e-readers for real books or listening to vinyl records on record players. Even as ecommerce commands more of our purchasing attention, Amazon, the retail disrupter-in-chief, is distributing an ink-on-paper toy catalog for this holiday season and opening bookstores. And digitally native brands, such as Caspar and Eloqui, are opening brick-and-mortar stores.

With this backdrop, the landscape is such that brand licensing – the legal permission from one company for another to use its brand on different lines of products – can serve as a highly effective tool for brand building and strategic marketing.

Brand licensing is one of the most powerful ways to make the most out of an already strong brand because of its ability to extend brands to products outside the brand’s core business, reach new and existing consumer segments at new touchpoints and support and communicate brand equities. A stumbling block is that brand leaders and marketers sometimes view licensing too narrowly – as a form of logo decoration on products. Frequently, brand and marketing leaders will even neglect licensing entirely. When they do, they are neglecting a powerful tool to engage and bond consumers to their brand.

But once marketers recognize brand licensing’s potential – and understand that it’s not just a source of royalties and that it can deliver strong messages that cut through the digital and advertising information overload – they can develop programs that deliver big on marketing, communications and brand positioning objectives.

Among the many more meaningful and strategic benefits of licensing – these three go beyond royalties and logo decoration…

1. Licensing allows companies to deliver their message by extending into products that are outside of the core business, but that complement it. For example, Baileys is one of the world’s best-selling liqueurs, and the brand is most often seen as an occasional alcoholic beverage. But Baileys wants the brand to be used at all times of the day throughout the year and thought of as an impulse treat. So, to communicate that message and redefine the brand it made sense for Baileys to extend their brand through licensing to products such as chocolates, ice cream and coffee creamers.

2. Licensing can help companies reach new consumer segments and educate (or re-educate) them about the brand. Black & Decker, for example, initially served the male-dominated space of power tools. Looking to expand across gender demographics – while still maintaining aspects of their brand identity such as “power” and “electricity” – the company licensed the brand for a range of small kitchen appliances like toaster ovens and irons.

3. Licensing can build brand awareness and strengthen brand values. For example, Febreze, famed for its pioneering odor elimination technology and fresh scents, is now featured on a range of licensed products – often co-branded – providing its unique equities to products often associated with displeasing odors such as vacuum bags, spot and stain trigger sprays, trash bags and cat litter. The licensed products build brand awareness and drive home the brand’s marketing message ­­– that Febreze eliminates unpleasant odors and replaces them with light and pleasing scents – while also strengthening engagement with consumers and reaching new retail channels, such as pet and hardware stores.

While the bond between consumers and brands is being challenged and is changing in our digitally sophisticated world where so much product information is available to consumers, it remains uniquely strong. There are those who believe that brands are dying in this new environment, but as I’m sure you can guess, I’m of the opposite school of thought. In each of the examples above, the brand used licensing to strengthen the relationship with consumers, deliver the brand message and increase consumer touchpoints. And, by accomplishing any of these objectives, licensing promotes and supports the sales growth of a brand’s core product.

Brands today have the opportunity to be regularly connected to consumers, to make shopping easier and more convenient and to invite them into the brand experience. Now, more than ever before, brands need multiple messaging strategies. Brand owners just need to choose among the paths available to them and focus on those that will accomplish their objectives. Brand licensing is one of those choices, and perhaps one of the best equipped to navigate the complexities of the digital age and today’s marketing and retail ecosystem.

Contributed to Branding Strategy Insider by: Michael Stone is the Chairman and Co-founder of global brand extension licensing agency Beanstalk. He is also the author of The Power of Licensing: Harnessing Brand Equity (Ankerwycke, October 2018).

The Blake Project Can Help: The Brand Licensing Audit

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Growth and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers

So you have a logo, your corporate brand that stands for something – your brand reputation and relationship with your consumer. Once a licensed product is out of its packaging, and you put the product on, see the product from across the room or from across the street, will it be quickly identified as part of the brand’s ecosystem?

Incidentally, the phrase “if it looks like a duck…” was originally about a mechanical digesting duck. In 1783, a French automaton maker, Jacques de Vaucanson, fooled the world into thinking he’d replicated life. The mechanical duck was built to surprise audiences by quacking, moving it’s head to eat, seemingly digest, and then after a short time drop some fowl friends off at the lake. The truth is, it was a clockwork trick. The food went down a rubber tube into a stomach, whereupon a pre-stored mixture of actual canard crap was squeezed out of a bag.

Aligning Licensed Products With The Brand Ecosystem

Earlier in my career, I had the privilege to serve as VP Licensing for Rawlings, a leading sports equipment manufacturer. A company with great people and great pride in their product and brand. I specifically chose the sequence of product first, brand second as that is how the sporting goods industry works. At the time there was an air of skepticism about brand licensing, however without realizing it, their approval process was based on revenue first, how the logo looked and that’s about it. They weren’t holding licensed products to their own internal quality standards, as a result the reputation of their licensed products was poor.

After a brand licensing audit we realized that Rawlings’ core products provided something for athletes of all ages, abilities and affordability’s, however licensed products were limited to the good or better of mass. We had licensed baseball cleats for the person wearing a $14.99 to $59.99 baseball glove, but nothing for consumers using a baseball glove in the $79.99 through to the $500 Primo glove price range. We then defined the materials, textures, durability requirements, and product model-name collections. Licensees then developed better products. We added a new approval step for products core to the sport: let the “internal pros” wear and use the product. This drastically improved both the reputation of our licensed products and revenue. In the next year after the new guidelines were defined, we saw over a $500K spike in licensing royalty income.

When crafting guidelines for third-party activation, here is a quick checklist of things to cull together beyond proper visual logo usage guidelines:

• Corporate Brand
  • Primary Logo & Secondary logo: how they are protected and where.
  • When and where does a licensee use BRAND, BRAND®, BRAND©.
  • Are there interpretations for different consumers? For example a color palette may serve as a representation of the tone and manner to follow within different creative segments.
  • Forms of trade dress (e.g. Jeep seven slot grill, Adidas 3 stripes, NBA uniform designs)
• Product Model Collection names and attributes:
  • Price / Value relationship
  • Historical, current, future
  • Color, materials and design inspiration
  • Technology and Attributes
    • Durable, light weight, efficient, material specifications & sources
  • Images, photography and concept design
    • Mainstream media exposure
    • Specific Models
    • Active sponsorships and marketing partnerships
  • Communications/phrases, slogans and marketing assets
  • Tone, manner and voice of your brand. Does your brand’s voice talk technical specifics or emotional benefits?

In short, your guidelines should be built to allow effective motion in one direction only, and therefore build something with greater ease.

Volkswagen offers a valuable example on the importance of getting this right. They licensed a refrigerator manufacturer, Gorenje; to make VW Bus inspired refrigerators. Given the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) is looking to cut down on emissions from refrigerators, should we expect that VW includes in their brand activation guidelines their ‘defeat device’ – or software that can detect when it is being tested changing the performance accordingly to improve results? Remember, it’s all about your brand relationship and reputation.

Sink or swim. What you put in your licensing brand activation matters. Make your guidelines a living and breathing document and you will have healthy and sustainable licensing program afloat.

The Blake Project Can Help: We offer brand licensing workshops to help brand owners develop a strategy for licensing or refine an existing one. Another way we serve our  clients is through a Brand Licensing Audit which is an essential guide in considering, building and/or fine tuning a program. Further, we serve as expert witnesses in celebrity licensing and endorsement disputes. Please email us for more.

Branding Strategy Insider is a service of The Blake Project: A strategic brand consultancy specializing in Brand Research, Brand Strategy, Brand Licensing and Brand Education

FREE Publications And Resources For Marketers