The more things change...

This morning we were going through a stack of decorated kitchen calendar towels that we rescued from my parent’s house – apparently my mother had been saving them for years.  What was striking about these little gems was how often you could recognize the era by the design and color palettes – no chance of confusing a very colorful (and groovy…) 1972 look with a stylized retro from 1963. But as we looked more closely and laid them out side by side, the similarity becomes quite evident. The icons really don’t vary much – utensils, spices, coffee and tea, birds – these are what typically made kitchen towels… kitchen… back then, and these are what make up kitchen towels now.

The lesson here is that, in our business, while the style and palettes change over the years most of the products are still remarkably similar. Obviously this isn’t going to hold true for every category, particularly where there are technological advances, but if you think about it those are the exceptions. Boys like dinosaurs and rockets, girls like princesses, kitchen towels have veggies and fruit, curtain fabrics are stripes or floral – is it 1930, 1950, or 2011? How about all of the above?

Pick mine!

There is an interesting new study from the University of Pennsylvania regarding marketing and kids. They had children ages 4 to 6 “taste test” a healthy cereal that was served in boxes labeled “Healthy Bits” or “Sugar Bits”. They also tried both names with and without cartoon characters on the box, but it was always the same cereal. It’s no news to anyone with young children that the packaging influences what they want in the store (just watch the tantrums being thrown in the cereal aisle) but the study found that the kids actually believe the cereals with the characters on the boxes TASTE better. Now that’s effective marketing - or brainwashing - take your pick. Without the characters they rated the Healthy Bits better than Sugar Bits, I would guess due to prevalence of "healthy food" marketing, but a good result nonetheless.

This got me thinking about why manufacturers pick certain designs (instead of ours…) and how you may want to view what this business is really about. One of my short definitions of what we do in art licensing goes something like this: we try to convince manufacturers that their product will sell better with our design on it rather than someone else’s design, or worse with no design at all.

Sure we would like to think there is a lot more subtle nuance to our industry, and sometimes there is, but that’s pretty much the bottom line. You can certainly work upward from there, but try not to lose sight of what really drives your customer’s business.

Looking down the road...

Sorry to have gone missing, but we have given new definition to the phrase “crazy busy” over the last few weeks. We have moved the contents of an office, a house and also dealt with the passing of my father and everything that goes along with that – all in the last month or so - and of course the Two Town biz has continued to cruise merrily along as well. Every once in a while we have had to remind ourselves to stop and breathe… thankfully life is starting to settle down a little bit.

Another excellent post from Seth Godin today called “Bring Me The Stuff That’s Dead”, you can read it here. He points out that the first of the early adopters rarely do anything of consequence with the new…whatever…and the real quality work comes later. In our world, this meshes rather well with our advice of not chasing trends – it’s good to be aware of them but the effort of trying to be the first at everything will generally exclude you from any possibility of doing quality work. A quote from the post:

“I love to hear about the next big thing, but I'm far more interested in what you're doing with the old big thing.”

Maybe not as much fun but far more likely to be a viable effort in a “product driven” business like ours.

A new report from research company The NPD Group (called Kids Leisure Time IV) states that face to face communication is dropping among kids as they get older. Face time drops from 17.5 hours per week for 2 to 4 year olds down to 10.8 hours per week for 9 to 12 year olds. Per week. Am I the only one that finds that to be a scary number, not to mention a scary trend? It has been no secret that person to person socialization among kids is being replaced by online networks, cell phones and video chats, but they go on to report that kids still have the same amount of leisure time, about 68 hours a week. Meaning they still have the time but significantly less of it is being spent in the company of their siblings and peers. So here’s something to ponder: what will that mean for the gift industry, or partyware, or crafts, etc. a few years down the road as these kids become our principal consumers?

And then it was gone...

So if you ever wanted an indication of how the market works nowadays, look no further than Guitar Hero. The EPM Licensing Letter yesterday reported that Activision is disbanding the game and ceasing development because sales are (horrors!) declining. Now I suspect that even those declining sales would “wow” any of us in art licensing, however they are going in the wrong direction so - out with it.

Kind of feels like a Target sku…

This is life on the cutting edge of the industry. The next, newest, coolest …thing…will always be nipping at your heels, and the minute your concept falters they start looking past it. I once jotted down a quote in a conference, don’t remember whose, that sums it up nicely:

“The media, and hence the world, is interested in what is new, not necessarily what is better.”

Stay nimble, stay new, and stay in play.

Atlanta Snippets

As you may know I like to write down little snippets of conversation that seem to have some impact – these are a few I picked up at the recent Atlanta show:

“It’s a new world and you just need to find your place in it.”

- a well known licensing agent

“We’ve got the salespeople, the art staff and even the owner busy writing orders with customers.”

- gift company sales mgr on how busy the show is

“Dogs? – I’ve got a kennel full of them.”

- successful artist in a discussion about failed ideas or projects (dogs)

“Used to be you checked your pride at the door – now you have to check your hurt feelings there too.”

            - in the same discussion

“We’re not doing anything new unless we can convince mgmt that it will sell well – so basically we’re not doing anything new.”

- art director at a gift company

“The problem with being right all the time is that it leaves everyone else with no room to be anything but wrong.”

- in a discussion about competitor dynamics

Unfortunately (actually... fortunately) we were quite busy much of the time and I missed a number of snippet-worthy comments - because if I don’t get them down right away …poof… they are gone from memory - but the general feel of the show was quite positive. Of course every once in a while we would get someone lamenting how bad things were but, unlike the past couple years, that was the exception not the rule. We have seen the momentum continuing in these early days after the show with follow-up requests to the designs we sent and additional designs needed - a really good thing. Seems like the ball is rolling, here’s to hoping it keeps up for a while!   

License that?!

Great post for art licensors today on Seth Godin’s blog called “When was the last time you bought a tie?” Don’t read Seth? If you want to be in this (or any) biz you should, he has clarity of vision about all things business that is hard to match. Here is one quote from the post:

“The challenge, then, is to develop products that match what the market is looking for, and more important, to overtly and aggressively seek out the people in that situation and ignore the rest.”

Sound familiar? If not, read back through this blog…
If you want to make a living in art licensing you need to give your clients what they want, not just what you like to do. I can’t tell you how many times we get wildly abstract art, or inappropriate fine art, or just plain weird designs submitted to us that bear little or no resemblance to what has been selling product on the market. And usually when we suggest that is the case they want to argue with us about it. I love wild and wooly creativity, however take my word for it – like it or not you won’t be creating a new style category anytime soon in this business, and particularly not in this economy. Study what’s out there. The next big thing is likely to look a lot like the last big thing, because that is what sells in the market - and what sells in the market is where your focus should be.

Now the real work begins!

Just returned from several exhausting days in Atlanta where we exhibited at the Atlanta Gift Market. The License and Design section is a relatively new show within the AmericasMart, this was the third year, and it is definitely getting its legs. We have actually had good shows all three years, and we are already working with the Mart to fine tune the dates and plans for next year - I have no doubt 2012 will be bigger and better yet.

I was discussing the show with one of the other exhibitor/agents and we were lamenting the fact that you really don’t know how successful a show is for about 6 months or so after it is over. There is always excitement in the air on the floor and it affects everyone – including the attendees – so the art looks better, the collections are fresher and the people better looking…well, OK maybe not that…

Then you pack up, go home and start the process of sending out the designs and doing the follow-up. This is the real meat and potatoes of any show and best done immediately, and you can expect follow-up to continue for months afterward. What we were discussing was how weird it is that after a really heads-up, exciting show you send out their requests, and then all that new found rapport and sparkling conversation you had with that customer typically goes dead for a few weeks. There are always exceptions of course, but it’s quite disconcerting – as she said, you wonder if you just sent all that material into a black hole or something. Gone. No response. This is why I am always amused by exhibitors (including us) who are crowing about the great deal they just made, or the huge number of fantastic meetings they had, or how they have already paid for the show with a coming contract.

Really? Hmmm, let’s talk more about that in June…