Several educational brands based on individual people or personas have recently signed licensing deals for products that help children learn at home or in school. Some of the properties are based on real people, some are characters created and performed by real people, and some are wholly fictional, educator-created brands. But all have positionings that […]
Archive | Celebrity
Chefs Prep More Plant-Based Products
Chefs and food influencers, both vegan and meat-eating, have over the years participated in collaborative initiatives involving plant-based dishes, such as creating limited-time menus in colleagues’ vegan restaurants, introducing other chefs’ vegan menu items in their own restaurants, or participating in pop-up vegan dinner experiences. They have also slowly become more active in partnering with […]
Augmenting Adaptive Apparel Assortments
By Karen Raugust on October 30, 2023 in Celebrity, Demographic groups, Diversity/Inclusion, Fashion, Licensing
The fashion industry has been slowly putting more focus on consumers with disabilities since the mid-2010s, when it began picking up the pace of adaptive apparel releases. The technique has been flourishing in the last 18 months, as the business has seen several launches of adaptive clothing lines from retailers and brands, not to mention […]
Full Court Press for K-pop and Sports
The connections between K-pop stars and sports have strengthened over the past few years, most typically taking the form of concerts during matches, promotional partnerships and brand ambassadorships, content agreements, and the like. The growing ties have also led to the emergence of a handful of collaborative merchandise initiatives, some focused on Asia and others […]
New Cooks in the Kitchen
As more actors and actresses dip their toes into the foodie space with cookbooks, food-based TV series, and other related content, they are increasingly lending their names, or their proprietary brands, to products for the kitchen, namely cookware and appliances. At least four such partnerships have launched or expanded in the last year: Stanley Tucci […]
Making Room for ‘Shrooms
Over the past couple of years, mushrooms have been at the center of a growing list of collaborations focused on sustainable accessories and footwear, functional drinks, and plant-based proteins, as well as gaining popularity as a design element. Psychedelic mushroom-based products containing psilocybin or other hallucinogenic compounds have been at the center of collaborations as […]
Oh, Baby
The market for nursery décor and other baby products is crowded, and it can be difficult for new and expecting parents to make a decision on what to buy. Licensing helps marketers differentiate and add trust. Conversely, the category is attractive to licensors due to its growth prospects; most of the many researchers studying the […]
A Bundle of Energy Drinks
Celebrities—especially those known primarily as social media influencers—are increasingly hitting the energy drinks, both in their personal lives and through licensing deals, or other forms of partnership, with energy drink companies. Most of the collaborative products tend to be limited-edition, co-branded flavors rather than long-term lines. And some of the pairings take the form of […]
A Budding Celebrity Sector
Celebrity floral designers are frequent collaborators with floral delivery services, local florists, subscription floral boxes, and the like. Recently, a few have started to expand their scope of collaboration slightly by pairing with non-floral-specialist brands or retailers, sometimes even extending into categories beyond flowers, albeit mostly still with a close connection to their core area […]
The Value and Variety of VTubers
By Karen Raugust on June 22, 2023 in Celebrity, Character/Entertainment, Content, Digital, International, Licensing
Consumer interest in VTubers (“virtual YouTubers”)—which got their start in Japan in the mid-2010s—has expanded significantly since the start of the pandemic, both in these digital influencers’ country of origin and abroad. VTubers are anonymous creators who use motion-capture and other technologies to create an animated avatar, usually anime-like in style, that does everything a […]