In the Background

Since the coronavirus lockdown began, usage of video chat and teleconferencing apps has grown significantly as employees and consumers around the world utilize them to participate in virtual meetings, cocktail parties, trivia contests, and Easter and Passover celebrations.

Zoom in particular has hit the mainstream in a big way, reporting a 151% increase in daily active users year-over-year in March. Meanwhile Google Hangouts and Hangouts Meet, Microsoft Teams, House Party, Marco Polo, FaceTime, and Skype, among many others, have all seen spikes in downloads and usage. In fact, seven of the top 10 video conferencing platforms in the U.S. saw week-over-week download growth of over 200% during the seven days beginning March 16, according to SensorTower, led by House Party with 502.3%.

The platforms are enhancing this spike in popularity by offering formerly paid-for services, features, or tiers for free during the pandemic, either for certain territories or users (e.g., schools), or for all. Many are free to begin with, or at least have a complimentary option.

Naturally, IP owners want to get involved in a hot sector like this, especially at a time when other marketing efforts can be problematic. They are doing so by offering virtual backgrounds, enabling users to look like they are chatting from the set of a TV show or a sports stadium rather than their living room. Zoom is the primary setting for this activity. But other platforms such as Skype offer virtual backgrounds as well, and more are jumping on the bandwagon as consumers start to request this feature. Microsoft Teams added virtual backgrounds in March 2020, for example. Some third-party apps also enable users to add backgrounds across platforms.

Licensors offering free Zoom backgrounds cover the gamut of property types:

• Entertainment. Fox, Lionsgate, Disney, CBS, and many other studios and networks have made Zoom backgrounds available based on their TV show and film properties, with The Simpsons, Parks and Rec, Picard, Marvel movies, Sesame Street, Jeopardy!, Disney Princess, Star Wars, and RuPaul’s Drag Race among the abundant and diverse examples.
• Sports. Most of the teams in the major U.S. leagues have released backgrounds of stadiums and other imagery. So have football/soccer clubs around the world, from the Geelong Cats of the Australian Football League to British club Manchester City, to Germany’s Borussia Dortmund, to name just a few examples. Colleges and universities also are well represented, as are golf properties, NASCAR, and a variety of other sports-related IP.
• Corporate brands. Home goods brands such as West Elm and Behr Paint, names in travel such as OneFineStay, food and beverage players such as Nescafé, restaurant banners such as Taco Bell, and candy brands such as Skittles are among a growing range of corporate IP owners creating backgrounds. (Not all maintain licensing programs.) The bulk of examples to date are either brands with logical connections to imagery that can be used as environments (e.g. travel or home décor) or have a fun or offbeat positioning.
• Video games. Backgrounds are available showing in-game images from properties such as Final Fantasy, Street Fighter, Elder Scrolls, Doom, Sonic, and many more, offered by publishers across the globe.
• Other IP. A diverse range of properties of all types, in addition to the main classifications broken out here, have also been involved. They include fashion and media brands (Highsnobiety), artists (photographer Gray Malin), musicians (Machine Gun Kelly), and more.

Of course, anyone can create a Zoom background, and users are doing so with unlicensed imagery such as album covers and screen grabs. But the number of legitimate licensor-endorsed and provided examples is proliferating as well.

Once the current crisis is over, this trend will likely wane as consumers go back, at least to a degree, to live meetings and in-person cocktail parties. And the players may change over time; Zoom, for example, is facing scrutiny for privacy issues, which could affect its future success. Still, it is likely that the use of video chatting, both for business and personal activities, will remain at a much higher level than it was pre-pandemic. And that means that the desire for fun backgrounds will probably live on, although at a lower level than is currently the case.

While not a commercial opportunity for licensors, backgrounds for Zoom and other video chat and conference call platforms bring long-term marketing benefits. Choices based on TV shows or video games may spark immediate action, such as the purchase of a download or product; options tied to sports can help maintain engagement and awareness during the off-season; corporate-branded alternatives may help create a positive image and lead to purchases, either immediately online or on a later shopping trip. In the current environment, video chat backgrounds are a way for all properties to remain top-of-mind at a time when many other marketing channels are off limits or on hold.

Raugust Communications’ April e-newsletter comes out next Tuesday, April 21. The Licensing Trend of the Month will take a look at how events from sports contests to fan fests are transitioning to the virtual world during the COVID-19 crisis and what some of the long-term implications might be. The Datapoint research spotlight will see what can be learned from an examination of product recalls. If you are not already a subscriber, you can sign up here.