SpongeBob, Daria and Garfield join forces to tell Adland: Don’t Say Can*t
Born Licensing unveils first campaign to encourage licensing fictional characters in advertising
Last week we launched our first ever creative campaign targeting UK adland. We pulled out all the stops, deploying a crack team of famous characters to challenge the can’t-do attitude the industry has when it comes to licensing fictional characters in advertising.
As the licensing agents for some of the biggest studios in the world, we were able to enlist a stellar cast of loved characters including SpongeBob SquarePants, Garfield, Grumpy Bear from the Care Bears, 90s icon Daria, a Ninja Turtle, Beavis from Beavis and Butthead and Mr. Grumpy from Mr. Men Little Miss. Whoever said B2B marketing has to be dull clearly hasn’t experienced the power of fictional characters!
The bold creative sees these much-loved fictional characters telling the industry ‘Don’t Say Can*t’, encouraging adland to explore the almost-infinite realm of possibilities when it comes to utilising fictional characters in advertising campaigns.
The campaign was created by creative team Will Grave and Sander Vos, with designs by Xavier Segars. The ‘Don’t Say Can*t’ campaign is now running across digital channels following a launch with The Drum.
What is ‘Don’t Say Can*t’?
Our ‘Don’t Say Can*t’ mantra was inspired by the extensive research conducted for our recent white paper, A Case For Characters. During our research, we unearthed the startling discovery that 100% of industry Creatives had experienced campaigns where the IP did not go ahead due to perceived challenges of licensing characters[1]. We interviewed a number of UK Creatives for our research into the licensing of fictional characters in advertising and learnt that having scripts featuring fictional characters pulled, due to fear of it being too expensive or too difficult, left them feeling “rubbish” - who wouldn’t be disappointed at missing out on the chance to work with a childhood hero?!
As Will explains, “After 10 years in this industry, Sander and I have probably heard a ‘thousand’ can’ts in meetings over the years before an idea is even given the chance to flourish.”
Often Producers don’t know where to even start when presented with a script featuring a fictional character – and we don’t blame them! Fictional characters are 13.4 times less likely to appear in UK advertising than celebrities[2], so it’s not surprising that producers tend to have less experience in this very niche area. As a result, adland naturally tends to approach character licensing with far more hesitancy than hiring a celebrity, if not actively avoiding it altogether, for fear of the process being too complicated or too expensive.
However, Rights Holders are a lot more open to their characters being used in advertising than people think. And there really is a character for every budget!
We hope that our ‘Don’t Say Can*t’ campaign encourages the industry to see endless possibility when they think of character licensing, rather than perceived obstacles.
Behind the Designs
Creatives Will Grave and Sander Vos took inspiration from bold magazine covers and empowering sports campaigns that often feature celebrities or sports stars. We loved this angle as we’ve always felt that fictional characters are overlooked and underutilised when compared with celebrities in advertising.
When commenting on his experience with this campaign, Will wrote, “We wanted to be authentic to the individual characters’ tone of voice and we had to be to get it passed by the Rights Holders. Working with 90s classic Daria was an amazing nostalgic blast from the past. Seeing also the likes of a Grumpy Care Bear and SpongeBob fronting a ‘to the naysayers’ Nike-esque campaign was a lot of fun to develop, empowering them after being left out on the sidelines.
Having worked directly with Born Licensing, every step along the way they have been a creative client, willing to push the envelope and make good work. We’re confident for the creatives out there who want to reboot some of their favourite characters in their ads, they will never say ‘can’t’ to you.” Sander Vos added,
“It’s a unique challenge to come up with creative which is targeting other creatives. That’s why we felt that this campaign needed something bold and impactful. Luckily, we had the opportunity to deploy an all-star team of characters to deliver this. Through the use of cropping and bold typography we aimed to display these icons in a motivational and unexpected manner to inspire creatives to rally against those ‘cants’.”
The campaign is supported by a ‘Don’t Say Can*t’ manifesto with a message from Born and all creatives.
Special thanks to some of the Rights Holders we represent (ViacomCBS, CloudCo, and Sanrio) for allowing their characters to be front and centre of this fun campaign.
If we’ve succeeded in convincing you that fictional characters can make a powerful impact in your advertising, we’d love to chat! Give us a call or drop us an email to keep the conversation going.
CREDITS:
CREATIVE: Sander Vos, Will Grave
CREATIVE DESIGNER: Xavier Segers
Care Bears TM & © 2021 Those Characters from Cleveland, LLC. All Rights Reserved., ©Viacom Inc. SpongeBob SquarePants. Created by Stephen Hillenburg., © 2021 Viacom Overseas Holdings C.V. All Rights Reserved., MR. MEN™ LITTLE MISS™ © 2021 THOIP (a Sanrio Company). All rights reserved., Garfield © PAWS. All Rights Reserved.
[1] Survey Monkey poll conducted by Born Licensing among 50 advertising agency representatives, November 2020
[2] Born Licensing review of 4,032 ads from 2018-2020 https://sourcecreative.com
