Updated: Jan 25
By Philippe Guinaudeau, CEO
The most well-known brands, the most favorites brands, the most desired brands … All of these rankings are crucial for finding the most effective brands for driving penetration within a target audience. If a brand is well-known, it will naturally resonate with consumers and provide a halo effect around any marketing activity.
However, reach isn’t the only factor to consider when it comes to boosting ROI. Affinity is also a critical criterion of success depending on your purpose, target, category, or any other factors defining brand positioning. And the combination of those factors provides an accurate guide to select the best possible license for your food products!
This is demonstrated perfectly in the example below, which includes Spider-Man, Despicable Me, and other characters (source: BrandTrends, Germany, October 2021, Boys 10 to 14).
The graph depicts the top five brands in terms of purchase intent for Food and Drinks (last column on the right) in Germany among Teen boys. This suggests that if a Food & Beverage brand wants to collaborate with the most relevant Entertainment IPs to generate consideration among German Boys 10 to 14, Spider-Man is the best choice, as opposed to Lego (the #1 purchase intent brands, all categories, or Marvel the most popular brand in that demographics).
Despicable Me is ranked #2 on this list, but only #13 in terms of general purchasing intent. Following the general results would have led to the omission of this relevant brand for the combined category and target.
This would have reduced the marketing plan’s reach and affinity, as well as its return on investment. Furthermore, this may result in decreased relevance and differentiation for the licensing strategy, as well as, in the worst-case scenario, a negative influence on brand image.
Other brands confirm the discrepancy between general and Food and Drinks buying intent. Mario Kart is ranked #16 overall, and Batman is ranked #10.
To put it another way, sticking to the general purchase intent ranking, or most popular brand s ranking may cause companies to miss out on valuable opportunities to develop powerful licensing strategies by overlooking less prominent but more relevant brands for their target audiences.
And furthermore, these brands are generally cheaper to license, which maximize ROI.
