by Ben Roberts, License Global
The Smiley Company is a brand licensing company based in London. It holds the rights to the smiley face in over 100 countries. To showcase its 50 years of brand building, positivity and creative collaborations, The Smiley Company CEO Nicolas Loufrani speaks about the creativity needed to build an impactful in-store experience or retail activation.
To begin with, talking about the definition of location-based entertainment (LBE) and the role this plays in customer engagement, Loufrani says:
“We have two different types of location-based entertainment. One is to work on outstanding retail activations with exciting shops and products. An excellent window display is a form of storytelling. It’s about creating an exciting experience for consumers around our products and our brand values of spreading happiness and positivity.
“Then we have the second level, which is really when we start developing retail with it’s not about selling the products, but it’s purely about the entertaining activation. And for example, to be part of an amusement park, or we’re creating fantastic activations with shopping malls, where there is a smiley activity. Interesting art to see throughout the venue.”
He adds that this is something that has become very important for retailers:
“Obviously, as we know, we need to create something outstanding for consumers to want to shop at retail.”
Working collaboratively
According to Loufrani, e-commerce has also had an impact. As a result:
“We’ve been developing much more storytelling with retailers over the past five years, and we’ve been working on all these exciting campaigns when it’s also while shopping malls or even entertainment spaces are looking to develop activations with famous IPs that are bringing a very reasonable profit, deliver offender DNA that’s going to trigger exciting activities for the consumers. “
When it comes to opening new licensing opportunities and brand activations through LBE, The Smiley Company is proactive; it doesn’t wait for people to contact it. Instead, Loufrani says:
“We create our activations. We pitch to shopping mall owners, amusement parks and department store chains.”
The Smiley company also works with specialised chains. It shares new ideas and themes, reinventing Smiley’s creative vision around its brand values.
“This is why we are actually quite successful with our 50th-anniversary campaign, of course, a perfect example of that. We’ve created an activation with department stores in 15 countries worldwide, such as Nordstrom and Gallerie Lafayette.”
The latter features things like skate ramps, tattoos and street art.
“We’ve also collaborated with one of the greatest artists in the world and the number one DJ in the world, creating a new song before the incredible music video highlighting our manifesto for happiness.”
Brand activation with The Smiley Company
As it celebrates five decades in the business, The Smiley Company has several experiential initiatives in the pipeline.
“We’re going to do something with one of the biggest shopping motivators in Europe,” explains Loufrani. This will be an emotional intelligence trail (EQ) with art developed by artists to express different emotions.
“This whole trail is about teaching emotional intelligence to kids, and the public and making people understand what they were showing agents is about and how important it is for us to understand better people, and it’s about living together.
“Another benefit we have as a company is creativity, and we always come up with very creative activations.”
What’s next in LBE?
Finally, speaking about the future of the global LBE marketplace, Loufrani says:
“The LBE marketplace will continue to grow. It’s something that consumers need, but they will always have to be increasingly creative. There will also be a mix of real-world and the metaverse. We have a lot of ideas that we are also looking at within Smiley, such as more sustainable activations.”
“Therefore, it will be critical to use sustainable materials. I’m looking at activations that can travel across locations instead of being destroyed at the end of that activation. We also want to create exciting collections of artwork that can be moved from one shopping mall to another, making them more sustainable.”
Location-based entertainment will be the core theme of Licensing Expo 2022 in Las Vegas. For more information on attending the event to meet exhibitors, delegates, and speakers from across the brand licensing market, or to find future partners in the LBE space, click here to register.
