Language-learning apps have been entering into promotional deals with licensed properties for close to a decade, with many of the partnerships having a content component. Properties involved tend to skew toward character/entertainment and celebrity IP, although there are other examples as well. For the language-learning platforms, such pairings spur sampling and potentially new subscriptions, while […]
Archive | Education
Bringing Home (and Keeping) the Bacon
Over the last few years, licensed properties are increasingly playing a central role in programs that teach financial literacy to adults and children. The IPs are a way to not only raise awareness for these promotions, but to make the subject matter more accessible, interesting, and fun. Recent initiatives, mostly featuring characters or celebrities, take […]
Linking Licensing and Learning
Teachers and parents continue to be concerned about learning loss and the deepening academic struggles many children have faced since the start of the pandemic. That has likely been one factor driving several licensors and licensees that are active in entertainment/character licensing to forge new deals in the education arena. Licensing of educational products is […]
Basic Training
A number of property owners have announced the launch this fall of branded educational courses, online at the moment, mostly through partnerships with education providers. All are focused on professional training. The timing makes sense given the high number of furloughs and layoffs that have occurred since the start of the pandemic. Many adults want […]
Camp Sites
Since the coronavirus pandemic started, licensors, licensees, and retailers have been hosting virtual versions of normally live annual events that are important to students and families and cannot occur face to face. After going digital with prom and graduation, they are now addressing the next big virtual adventure: summer camp. Among the companies with ties […]
Learning Through Travel
Before the COVID-19 pandemic put the travel industry on ice, the practice of pairing licenses with vacation travel services, cruise lines, and other travel-related businesses had been on a long upward trajectory. One sector within that broader trend, illustrated by a recently announced deal between Thrillest and Academic Travel Abroad, consists of packages that put […]
Continuing Education
Alliances between owners of licensed properties and providers of educational curriculum can take many forms. They involve a diverse roster of property types and can target the whole spectrum of age groups, as these recent deals attest: Sesame Workshop licensed McGraw-Hill Education to use its Sesame Street characters in a free version of MHE’s Wonders […]
Learning to Love Licensing
Licensors of selected children’s properties are very slowly gaining a foothold in classrooms, largely through deals with manufacturers (or retailers) that focus on supplemental educational products purchased by teachers and home school parents, as well as parents, grandparents, and caregivers who simply want to help support children’s learning. These licensees sell their products largely through […]
Fake Languages, Real Licensed Content
A handful of entertainment properties, especially in the sci fi and fantasy genres, feature well-developed languages used by characters from alien planets or fictional cultures. These languages sometimes make their way into content-based licensed products such as books and language-learning courses. A recent example occurred when HBO partnered with Living Languages last summer for Living […]