Commercial: How to use new media to bring characters to market

As learnt in a seminar at the Brand Licensing Europe 2007 fair:

• Create the characters
• Market them virally on the web
• Launch mobile content
• Deliver e-commerce merchandise
• Start internet TV broadcasting
• License merchandise
• Show TV content on traditional broadcast network.

... or something like that.

Advantages of this approach include:

• The ability to reach audiences cheaply
• The ability to reach niche audiences worldwide, cheaply
• Online stores offer a limitless merchandising space
• Profits, via the long tail, can be made from niche markets.

Currently, to achieve ‘optimum’ sales, one should be aiming mobile content at the average 16 year old, whoever that person happens to be.

Your character-driven website should include:

• A ‘living’ story, with frequent updates
• Tools to allow users to personalise the characters
• Engaging and interactive content
• Games
• Things that the word can be spread about.

Most of this was sourced from a presentation given by taymai.