The emoji company’s Marco Hüsges talks new growth opportunities for the brand, particularly in the digital field.
From Belgium to the US, LicensingSource chats to a selection of licensors and agents based outside of the UK to find out their takeaways from 2021, what they see as the biggest opportunities and challenges for licensing moving through 2022, their aims, and what word they would use to describe business in both the year just gone and the current one.
Today – Germany: Marco Hüsges, ceo/founder, the emoji company.
“2021 was a solid year for our company. Of course, Covid does have an impact on both revenue and earnings, but the business has been better than expected and stable throughout many categories and offered new growth opportunities, in particular in the digital field.
We launched our own digital first series – emojitown – on YouTube and introduced many cool new characters based on the original IP. The first six months already constituted a tremendous success; we have surpassed more than 260k subscribers and reached about 75 million views. So next to our core emoji brand business we are building – together with Wildbrain CPLG – the consumer products programme for this new IP, which is very exciting and offers brand new opportunities in different target groups and markets.
We will also be operating various DTR and loyalty programmes with leading European retailer and grocery chains across EMEA, as well as international QSR programmes and continuing our expansion in China.
‘Hibernation’ would be a good way of putting 2021 into one word, while ‘projectable’ is what I would like us all to say again in 2022.”
