The Promotional Idea Showcase - Spring 2002 - Updated Quarterly

Special Markets
Targeting Women? Licensing May Be Your Best Bet
By Karen Raugust

Licensed properties intended primarily for women have been on the rise, running the gamut from sports events and leagues to media-related brands and artists’ designs. Good news for companies specifically targeting women.

Talk with your promotional counselor about the opportunities that female-related art, sports and media properties offer. Each sector is worth following for promotional insights. All three offer clues as to what resonates with women in an increasingly female-focused marketplace.

Sports Sells

Women’s sports leagues and events are desirable, female-targeted properties because of their visibility. One example is the Women’s Professional Basketball League (WNBA) backed by the National Basketball Association. The WNBA, which celebrates its fifth season this year, has licensees offering products that range from apparel to items such as pins, hair accessories, basketballs and backboards, jewelry, books, novelties – even bed linens.

The WNBA authorizes premiums and advertising specialties only in conjunction with its sponsors, a list which has included American Express, Anheuser-Busch, Champion, Coca-Cola, General Motors, Kellogg USA, Lady Foot Locker, Lee Jeans, McDonald’s, Nike, Sears and Spalding. Many of these companies have used premiums as part of their WNBA promotional activity. The 1998 season, for example, offered a team-identified mini-ball giveaway at each arena, sponsored by Spalding and Sears, and a mail-in trading card offer from Kellogg. Anheuser-Busch distributed schedule magnets at game venues, as well as coordinating a program for its trade customers involving cap and T-shirt premiums. 

Soccer Scores

The FIFA Women’s World Cup soccer tournament has been another high-profile women’s sports property. In 1999, the tournament was held in eight U.S. cities. Among the 20 licensees for the event were Adidas America for apparel, footwear and accessories and Mattel for Women’s World Cup Barbie. Other types of products licensed for the event were pins, charms and novelties; thermal mugs, sport bottles and foam coolers; T-shirts and fleece; and novelty balls, pennants, flags and bumper strips. Most licensees were authorized for the U.S. market only, but some went on to distribute products to Europe and worldwide.

The primary consumer market was young girls who represented 40% of the youth soccer players. In addition, female participation in high school soccer has doubled over the last few years, and in 1999, at the college level, more NCAA institutions had a women’s soccer program than had either men’s soccer or men’s football.

The World Cup’s policy toward promotional products is similar to the WNBA’s. Official Women’s World Cup sponsors have included Adidas America, Anheuser-Busch, Coca-Cola, EDS Global Sports, Fuji Film, Gillette, Hewlett-Packard, Hyundai, JVC of America, MasterCard International and McDonald’s.

The 2002 FIFA Women’s World Cup will be hosted in cities throughout Korea/Japan and in 2003 will move to China.

Media Makes Good

Media brands, including cable networks and magazines, comprise another sector of licensing with direct appeal to women. One example is Lifetime Television. This cable network featuring programs created for female viewers began introducing a licensing and merchandising program in 1999.

Cosmopolitan magazine launched its licensing effort in the early 1990s and saw worldwide retail sales of licensed merchandise reach $35 million in 1998. Product categories include health and beauty, fashion and other items a Cosmo reader might use in her daily routine.

One drawback of media brands in the eyes of some is the fact premiums are often limited to promotional use by advertisers in the magazine or on the network. With Cosmopolitan, for example, premium activity has focused on promotions by Cosmo advertisers, which use products supplied by retail licensees as premiums.

Art Opens Doors

Though sports and media brands are attractive because of the amount of marketing clout behind them, other types of properties may offer more opportunities for smaller companies, primarily because they’re less restrictive.

One area of licensing with a variety of female-skewing properties is the art sector. Many art images appeal to women. Licensed art properties have always done well in traditional art-licensed categories such as stationery and gifts, and recently have proven successful in primarily female-targeted product categories such as bedspreads, dinnerware, wallcoverings and other home furnishings, as well as apparel. 

Licensed artwork differs from other types of properties in that consumer awareness and recognition often springs more from shoppers’ exposure to licensed products in retail stores than from promotions, entertainment vehicles or marketing campaigns. 

Even in cases where an artist’s name is not well known, the images may appeal to women all the same. A female shopper may desire an item simply because she likes the way it looks, regardless of who the artist is. This means an art property can be appropriate for promotional products even without significant marketing exposure – one benefit of licensed art properties other female-skewing brands such as sports or media franchises don’t offer.

Karen Raugust is a freelance writer specializing in entertainment and media. She has written two books on licensing and is the former executive editor of The Licensing Letter.