Over the past few years, licensors and licensees have been looking to social media, especially YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram, for product development ideas. For example, a licensor might note that fans are creating their own room décor featuring one of its characters, and seek licensees for craft kits, wall art, or other as-yet-unexploited products that fit with the trend.
Starbucks’ launch of its Unicorn Frappuccino last month shows that sometimes social media can also drive licensors and licensees to introduce products or promotions that fit more into the realm of novelty or marketing hook than long-term business opportunity. These ventures can generate lots of publicity, as well as sales during a short window, if the connection makes sense and the timing is right.
Some examples of current social media trends on which a few licensors, licensees, or other marketers have capitalized:
- Unicorn foods. The unicorn food trend started with sparkly, pink and purple toast and moved on to hot beverages and bagels. Some examples are created and colored with healthy, natural ingredients such as blueberries, algae, and beetroot, while others are about sugar sprinkles, marshmallows, and dyes. Independent cafés got into the trend before the high-profile entry of Starbucks; the latter reportedly saw strong sales for the product and now has plans to introduce other limited-edition fantasy Frappuccino flavors.
- Play-Doh surprise egg unboxings. Fan-created videos show egg-shaped DIY sculptures made of Play-Doh or other colorful clay-like materials, often taking the form of a cartoon character. The clay is peeled off piece by piece to reveal a plastic egg-shaped container inside, which is filled with inexpensive toys, often licensed and themed to the same character. These are then unwrapped and demonstrated. At Toy Fair, the Fantasma booth featured a display of newly licensed Smiley Eggmojis, a product line inspired by the clay-covered surprise egg phenomenon.
- Slime. This trend, popular with middle and high schoolers, involves making slime in a range of colors and consistencies, using custom recipes and mixes of ingredients such as glue, hand soaps and sanitizers, glitter and sequins, corn starch, facial washes and shaving creams, and food dyes. Not only do the videos provide how-to instructions and recipes, but the makers often sell the finished product on Etsy. Sizzle Press has capitalized on this trend, pairing with a leading slime creator for Karina Garcia’s DIY Slime: 15 Easy, Cool, Borax-Free Recipes! In addition, a number of toy companies market slime-like sculptable compounds, including some licensed examples, such as Spin Master’s Avengers Kinetic Foam.
- Color Splash photo effects. Adobe’s Photoshop, Pocket Pixels’ Color Splash app, and other digital tools allow photographers, from pros to everyday iPhone users, to selectively colorize their photos. For example, the tools can be used to create a black-and-white photo of hands cradling a collection of colorful macarons. Photographers, as well as fans of color splash effects, have created collections of such images (both still and video) on social media. Agent MHS Licensing recently highlighted a number of its artists, in its newsletter to current and potential licensees, whose work fits with the color splash trend. Paintings by Pat Gamy, Corbert Gauthier, Victoria Schultz, Terry Doughty, Darrell Bush, and James Meger echo the look of color splash photography; they are primarily black-and-white or monochrome, with red cardinals or barns, orange pumpkins, or blue streams highlighted in spot color. In another example, licensee Trademark Fine Art offers Coca-Cola color splash vintage photography on Wayfair.
While these sorts of trends are typically more about looking for marketing hooks or creating short-term, publicity-generating products than about long-term product development, they are worth monitoring. They may offer opportunities for some marketers to boost awareness or stay on-trend, as long as the connection is organic rather than forced.
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