In June, privately held Miniclip made its first appearance at Licensing Expo in Las Vegas. Miniclip also recently did a national kids meal promotion with Del Taco and a promotion with Universal on the movie The Lorax. Miniclip is looking at the deal with Hecht as part of a larger strategy to leverage its online brands with consumers in new ways, including at retail where they own licensing rights for toys, stuffed animals and other variations. The strength of this brand globally is an enormous advantage.” “More and more of the audience for the web, for TV and features is the global audience. “One of the reason I was so bullish and felt it was a coup to be involved with this is the global reach,” Hecht added. He also sees an advantage in that the properties will have instant global recognition with much of the target audience. ![]() So it is not just the power of the IP but also the power of the marketing vehicle as well.” When Miniclip gets behind the content we’re delivering and promotes it and markets it, then our partners are getting an enormous promotional vehicle. “The power of the brands is not only in the characters,” he said, “but also that our partner is the worlds biggest online game site. Hecht sees the international aspect as part of the attraction. the highest number of visitors come from the U.K., Germany, India and Australia. provides Miniclip’s largest audience – about 27 percent of its traffic. The Miniclip audience, according to Bergstresser, is about 55 percent male and skews from young teens to young adults for the most part. He has a gravity suit that allows him to float in space and turn upside down if he wants. Gravity Guy is a character chased by space-age cyber bullies. “It is going to be a launch title for Windows 8 as well.” ![]() “It has been in the top five on iTunes for games in all the major markets around the world and done millions of downloads,” Bergstresser said. They continue to create about a dozen new characters for their games annually. The other 70 percent involves various partners. Bergstresser said the company owns about 30 percent of its content outright or has global rights. Not all of Mini’s clips content is available to Hecht, as is the case with Penguin Club. “Finally we decided as a company, we really do need to look at how we can broaden the appeal of our IP, and a big area of that is licensing,” Bergstresser said. Then with the success of Angry Birds and other games that found life online, they saw the light. After he joined Miniclip, Hecht approached him about a deal, but Bergstresser kept saying, “We’re not sure it’s time.” Hecht knew Bergstresser because they had collaborated on a Princess Bride online game. Now he will try to do the same for Miniclip characters like Sketch Star, Extreme Skater, Minipets and Canyon Defense. Hecht is credited with helping develop and launch SpongeBob SquarePants, Dora the Explorer and other franchises while at Nickelodeon. Albie has such an incredible track record.” ![]() “Albie is really the first big jump into that broader IP licensing. What has taken so long for Miniclip to exploit brand extensions to its popular characters it does own? “I don’t think we had the depth of expertise to tackle the licensing arena before,” said Chris Bergstresser, who is a vp at based in Neuchatel, Switzerland. It continues to run as a game on Miniclip but is not one of the properties available to Worldwide Biggies to develop. Miniclip, based in Switzerland, with offices and facilities all over the world, is probably most famous for distributing and bringing the world the Club Penguin, a multiplayer online game that Disney acquired in 2007 for more than $350 million from its creator New Horizon Interactive. “It has authenticity that web audiences look at, and I think we’re going to be able to develop these properties in a lot of different mediums, everything from feature films to live-action game shows to animated web series.” “The Miniclip content is going to be very successful in other places,” Hecht said.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |