It’s interesting that we have in the past week seen the big reveal of Brand Licensing Europe’s central theme for 2023 to be Location Based Entertainment.
In this post-Covid era of brand-building, new stats have shown the location-based entertainment sector to have soared by an impressive 67% since 2022. It’s a licensing category that has grown – according to the Brand Licensing Europe team – “exponentially” in value, creativity, and opportunity in the last few years, and one poised to only grow larger and gain more momentum into the future.
It shouldn’t surprise anyone, of course. We’ve seen design and licensing edge closer together to innovate new means of fan and customer immersion within an IP, so it makes perfect sense that the next iteration of brand-affinity can move beyond the physical product altogether and into something more experiential. And do it so successfully.
Innovations in design, technology, and even just a developing understanding of the customer psyche and what drives brand immersion is channelling a whole new economy of internalised fulfilment over external. An economy of experiences over things. And the potential here, when it comes to thinking sustainably, is huge.
It was at Reset Connect, a Climate Tech conference held in London this week that a panel session on Disruptive Business Models and Partnerships and how to engage customers in circularity raised the subject of the Wellbeing Economy. As a model, it starts from the idea that public interest should determine economics and not the other way around. It’s the theory that rather than pursuing economic growth through a narrow indicator like GDP, it monitors and values “new ways to measure ourselves,” as panellist, Ben Kellard, director of business strategy at Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership put it on the day.
“What if we didn’t place value on the ‘things’ we bought but an internal economy of experiences we have?” he asked.
With news this week of the global launch of Nickelodeon and Paramount’s SpongeBob SquarePants plastic-free soap and bath bomb collection with LUSH setting an entirely new agenda for what brand licensing can achieve in terms of waste-free, lower-impact product, is it too much of a stretch to picture a licensing industry – perhaps driven by its growth in ‘experiential licensing’ – sat nicely within that economic model of Wellbeing?
Sophie Thomas, co-founder of the circular economy accelerator estaW Ventures, summed it up when, speaking on the crucial role design plays in determining the sustainability of a product, she asked “why are things brand critical but never planet critical?” Isn’t it about time we disrupted some of those common traps we’ve fallen into?
So, it’s been a week of some deep thought here at POC. Deep thought and plenty of planning – for the summer (and you can expect a summer educational series to sink your teeth into in the coming weeks), for the rest of 2023 (because BLE and the Sustainability in Licensing Conference are going to be knocking on the door before we know it), and for 2024, when things really get cranked up another notch.
We’ll be kick-starting July with a visit to the Brand and Retail Conference in Birmingham next week (and we can’t wait to catch up with all our lovely colleagues and friends, again) before jumping into what promises to be a very interesting Paper Workstream Meeting on Wednesday, 5 July when Karin Morell, bioeconomy and health expert from RISE Research Institutes of Sweden joins in the conversation to talk through biodiversity in the production of paper goods. Members interested in joining the session, follow this link to register.
Non-Products of Change members are encouraged to get in touch with Rob Hutchins or Helena Mansell-Stopher to learn more.
Meanwhile, the Products of Change community continues to grow as this week, we welcome on board Centurion Europe. We cannot wait to learn and share more about the work the team is doing here to put itself firmly on the course for sustainable development.
Have a great weekend, and we’ll see you in Birmingham.
