A veteran of well over 4 decades in entertainment and licensing, Warner Bros President for Consumer Products, Dan Romanelli recently received the Mipcom Lifetime achievement award. He was presented the award by Reed Midem CEO Paul Zilk.
The presentation ceremony was coupled with this year’s Licensing Keynotes, one of which was delivered by Romanelli himself and the other by Lucas Licensing President Howard Roffman.
In his 40 years at Warner Bros, Romanelli has heralded the consumer products of all of the Warner Bros characters and franchises including Bugs Bunny, Harry Potter, Batman and many more. In the past two decades alone, Warner Brothers Consumer products have done over 50 billion dollars worth of business.
Sharing from his vast experience while giving his keynote, Romanelli said,”Getting the mythical element in entertainment spurs a great licensing and merchandising programme. People need a reason to buy and when character association is right, that creates the reason. ”
“Licensing is all about entertainment, If the entertainment’s not working, the licensing too will not work,” he added.
The Licensing stalwart reminiscised about the time when Batman was launched and sold 30 Million T shirts. “There was a time when Batman TShirts were being sold in almost every city of the world. I remember that we were giving licenses to everyone who had black cloth” he said refering to the Black and gold Batman logo.
Commenting on the future, Romanelli added”Today competition is very intense and the life span of a succesfull property is 2-3 years. The measuring stick for success had become much shorter. As the control increasingly moves into the hands of consumers just like in content new media like internet and mobile are increasingly becoming important and will grow in their clout in the future.”
Star Wars is the biggest entertainment property in the history of Licensing and Merchandising with an aggregate of over 11 Billion Dollars that its consumer products have generated. Lucas licensing President Howard Roffman began by emphasizing on the importance of having conviction in your product. �Star Wars almost did not happen,� he said continuing that,� Universal passed on this project and to begin with even Larry from 20th Century Fox was not impressed but because Lucas was fresh from the success of American Grafifti, Larry decided to roll the dice for him.�
And what a roll it was….
Since it first hit screens 28 years ago, the space opera has enamoured millions of fans worldwide constantly breaking revenue records for a majority of categories it launched products in.
“Star Wars toys were number one (Boys) toys for six years in a row following the release of the first film” said Roffman, “however, by 1985 the kids that had been overwhelmed by Star Wars had grown up and the numbers were fast dipping”
“I had to take this bad news to Lucas” Roffman reminiscised. “Its not dead it is simply hibernating. They are going to grow up someday and then their kids will come back was Lucas’ reply. And Indeed in 1991 when Lucas Licensing published the first Star Wars spinoff with Bantam, the published property rose to Number 1 within months. This was followed by a series of record breaking figures in publishing, home entertainment, Gaming and Box Office.
Roffman shared with the audience the complete marketing plan for The Revenge of the Sith giving a month by month break up of planned consumer product, games and home video launches all which constantly led in to the release of the last Lucas Star Wars film. “It is very important to get all partners on board and share all the plans so that everyone is singing from the same song sheet” remarked Roffman.
The final of the Star Wars movies released on May 19 and has since garnered 850 million dollars at the box office. Star Wars toys were on the bestseller list for the first 3 months since release and contributed 9 % of sales of the total toy category in the US with retail backing the products well into 2006.
“The fans made it possible, not the marketing. It was discovered and adapted by the audience, and that is something which can’t be manufactured. We are just the trustees of the brand and it has been humbling to have served the brand,” concluded Roffman.