Source catches up with a selection of licensees across key categories to find out how they’ve adapted over the past four months. Today: Rainbow Productions.
All this week, LicensingSource.net will be catching up with a selection of licensees across key categories to ask them how their businesses have been impacted by COVID-19 and what conversations the industry needs to be having to aid recovery.
Today: Simon Foulkes, md, Rainbow Productions.
“There are a number of dates which have been indelibly inked into my business brain. June 24, 2016 – boarding a plane back from Las Vegas in shock as the industry discovered the UK had voted to leave the EU – and March 23, 2020, when Boris Johnson announced the lockdown. On both occasions we had to adapt, and quickly, to ensure our order book could be teased open.
We know that costume character appearances are in demand. Taking away the personal interaction and the increase in visitor numbers, which COVID-19 did, we had to quickly reassess our offering to ensure it was engaging, entertaining and customer enhancing without any drop in integrity or experience. We created an Adapted Character Engagement programme which added to the costumer engagement and still ensured that the customer walked away with that mantel-piece-enhancing memento. Each ACE could be adapted to our client’s venue and available space also ensuring that we were in control of the experience and it was bespoke to their requirements.
With the restrictions on social distancing and reduced capacities, Rainbow has currently had to cease offering character appearances to retailers. But, the entertainment factor that the ACE programme can bring to shopping centres which can accommodate the increased footprint has certainly been well received.
However, licensing is an ideas industry and the likes of Zoom/Teams can’t hold a candle to this need for physical interaction.”
This feature originally appeared in the summer 2020 edition of Licensing Source Book. To read the full publication, click on this link.
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