This week’s posting was written by our guest author:  Bill Jachthuber, an innovative and insightful marketing leader with over 26 years experience in developing business growth through strategic partnerships, innovative product platforms and marketing relationships with leading consumer and foodservice brands. As the leader of the licensing program for Cinnabon, Bill created over 70 innovative new products through strategic licensing partnerships which enhanced the Cinnabon equity with consumers across the United States.

What separates successful food licensing programs from unsuccessful ventures?

A well thought out plan that considers the brand first before the product or category. 

While there are lots of short term opportunities for brands to license their brand equity, the truly strategic, and well managed licensing opportunities are the ones that begin with a careful look at what the brand means to consumers and what the brand architecture will allow the brand to become for product extensions or category innovation.

So, how do brand owners begin to develop a robust licensing program?  At Cinnabon, we began with a careful look at the Cinnabon brand architecture, evaluating the places that the brand could play by category, before we approached any licensees for business opportunities.  We spent time talking with the current Cinnabon consumers, to see what they wanted from products with the Cinnabon brand.  We also carefully crafted a positioning for the product and the category we were looking to enter.  This avoided the situation that many brands find themselves in, creating products that undermine the brand and confuse the consumer, eroding many years of hard fought for consumer loyalty.

In this, we set up a strategic plan before the first deal was signed, and tried to thoroughly understand the implications for this franchised brand to enter into a food licensing agreement.

We asked the questions:

• What are potential categories that the brand should play in?
• Does this category have potential long term for growing the brand or
• Is this simply a short-lived trend that could spell disaster for products that enter the category?

Sadly, this careful analysis and research that is so essential for this stage is often either skipped, or done without qualified resources that have created licensed products for brands.

The process to research brand, understand consumer and marketplace, takes time and expertise.  It also requires a commitment from the brand to be patient to thoroughly explore and analyze before signing the first program.  It also requires control and discipline to manage the brand like the precious equity that it holds.  Signing licensing programs with the right suppliers creating the right products in the right categories adds to brand equity, and attracts new consumers to the brand.