Q&A
NBC Universal
Universally Speaking… Toy World Publisher John Baulch caught up with Paul Bufton, NBC Universal Brand Development vice president EMEA, to reflect on the events of the past 18 months and look ahead to a huge year for the studio, with two major movie launches next summer – Jurassic World and Minions. in the fashion and home space, but we are doing a lot more in the kidult area now too. Our back catalogue lends itself really well to that space. For example, with Back to the Future, Playmobil has seen great success with the DeLorean model, and we have high hopes for ET, which celebrates its 40th anniversary next year.
What are the key attributes you look for in a licensee partner?
How are you feeling about ’22 – is it set to be a big year for Universal and its partners? 2022 is going to be a really significant year for us, because we have two absolute juggernauts in Jurassic World and Minions. The James Bond movie has proved that there is huge pent-up demand for movie-going audiences, so that augurs well for our business. Also, we’re moving into new territory with Gabby’s Dollhouse, which has been airing on Netflix, and we’ve had good exposure on YouTube as well. We’ve started to introduce product into a few markets already – it’s done phenomenally well in the US and Mexico. The other aspect of our business which continues to perform well is our back catalogue our U Vault business. A lot of that success has been
I am sure all licensors would say this, but we are definitely looking for ‘best in class’ licensees. There’s definitely a view that less is more, and we want to strike a healthy balance between having a good portfolio of partners, but not over-extending ourselves. I’m a firm believer that if you work with best in class partners, you can build a genuine partnership where you are working off each other’s strengths and focusing on innovation and creativity. We want our partners to offer a point of difference and unique product offerings, and maximise that combination of entrepreneurialism and creativity, particularly in the toy and kidult space. It’s also important to make sure we are working with partners who have an eye on the future, the ones who are thinking about the evolving and emerging channels of distribution, as well as how they connect with their consumers and, increasingly, how they can support the sustainability agenda.
From an EMEA perspective, what can locally-based licensees bring to the licensing programmes? Which EMEA licensees have really stood out in the way they have contributed? When you are working with global partners,
you get scale and reach, but for me it’s all about the blend. The global partners have huge strengths, they are working with massive product development budgets and very strong design capabilities. You have the scale there to really drive the business forward. However, it is critical to blend that with regional and local partners to achieve a balance. Of course, you don’t want partners stepping on each other’s toes from a product and distribution point of view, but local partners give you many advantages: they often support categories that are more relevant in specific regions. Europe is a very nuanced region: the number of countries, the variety of cultures, the different retailers - it certainly isn’t a territory where a ‘one size fits all’ approach tends to work. We’ve had some great success stories with dedicated EMEA licensees: I mentioned Playmobil before, we have an incredibly strong relationship with them. It’s been great to see them branch out beyond the European region: they are starting to get some real traction now in North America. I would also call out Richard and the team at Wow! Stuff. Through diligence, innovation, and sheer gumption, they have managed to build a really successful business, not just in Europe, but also now in the US and across the globe.
How has the Universal business adapted over the past 18 months, both in terms of short and medium term changes? We’ve ridden the same insane rollercoaster as everyone else. It’s been a huge learning curve, but in truth, Covid has been an incredible accelerator for our business. We’ve definitely become more agile within the European market. The team has done an amazing job, particularly the retail team, who shifted a lot of in-store campaigns over to social,
