What is Cartoon Character Licensing?

It is the word "licensing" that should clue you in here to what exactly cartoon character licensing is. Licensing, you see, is the use (by lease or rent) of an intangible asset (an intangible asset being something you can't actually get your hands on). Think of things like a tune such as 'White Christmas" or a name such as Larry Bird, or maybe a movie character like Harry Potter and, of course, cartoon characters (think Mickey Mouse or Donald Duck).

A license rents the use of these intangible assets (such as the name, the song, or use of the character) for use in marketing a product or service and requires that there be a licensee (the person or company that wants to use the product or service) and the licensor (the owner of the brand who operates a licensing program).

If there is strong interest in the consumer market, a company may choose to license its brand name or a cartoon character that serves as its mascot. A good example of this would be the Toys R Us's use of their mascot Geoffrey the Giraffe. By extending the brand to other companies to use, both companies win. The company who owns the character gets royalties for having their character used, and the person or company using the character gets to use a known money-making brand in order to advertise and sell their product. View more about Brand licensing agency

Why Cartoon Character Licensing?

As you can see, the concept of licensing - specifically brand licensing - is extremely profitable to both the licensor (the owner of the character or brand) and the licensee (the one using the brand name in order to market their own product). But one needn't use a major brand cartoon character in order to make use of the power of these characters.

It's a proven marketing fact that people - especially women and children - react well to a 'cute' character used to promote a product, and these two markets together make up a significant chunk of today's buyers. Taking this fact into account it is a good marketing technique to give your brand, product or service a friendly cartoon face, and if you can't afford a "name" character, you can lease one from any number of animation studios who will either create one specifically for your business or will let you choose one from a stock of characters that they have built up. Company has a cartoon character that can be used to bring their brand name and business logo to life.