Brands like emoji and WWF are cool to take to school

Together with Lightspeed GMI, a global integrated research organization, Boost conducted a Brand Licensing study in Italy and Spain to get a clear insight in what brands children know, like and aspire to collect during a promotion. In February 2018, both in Spain and Italy,  500 parents and 500 children in different age groups were asked about their opinion on famous kids brands, such as Disney, Barbie and Emoji.

Overall, the liking and awareness of many brands is very high but most brands lean to a certain gender. Even the best known and liked brand ‘Disney’ shows a difference in liking between boys and girls and are also quite set in terms of age groups. 

But are these brands cool? Can you take them to school? Boys prefer to take the boyish brands with girls doing the opposite. In Italy we see Emoji and WWF with the highest coolness factor (more than 75%). In Spain Dreamworks and Emoji are the two unisex brands scoring high with both genders, as 73% of the kids in Spain say they would bring them to show to their friends. 

There is difference in age group, as ‘being cool’ becomes more important at older age and the older kids normally lead the hype for a collectible promotion. The research shows that at age 11-12 kids find brands such as WWF and Emoji most cool and interesting. In Italy this even is the case for all age groups. Parents do not have a great influence on the success of a collectibles program, except when they really do not like a certain brand. This seems to be the case for e.g. Rabbids and Turtles.

In conclusion: brands with a wide target group like Emoji and WWF are perfect to bring to school. They appeal to both boys and girls of the different age groups. Older kids, in general, like it even more than younger kids and the older kids normally lead the hype for a collectible promotion.

Mario Schwegler, CEO Boost Group: “In choosing a license for a collectible promotion it is very important not only to look at the brand awareness of a specific brand. If you want your collectible promotion to be successful and create a hype, you will have to make sure that the license and carrier appeal to a broad target group.  In depth research studies help us better understand what kids like and want to collect and confirm that marketing campaigns can be very successful with innovative and sometimes surprizing licenses”.