Tag Archives: Marco Huesges

WildBrain CPLG scores wave of new Emoji partners across EMEA spanning fashion, accessories and back to school

Posted on by

WildBrain CPLG has scored a new wave of new deals across EMEA for the globally revered Emoji – The Iconic Brand, adding a selection of new fashion, accessories, and back to school partners to the ever-expanding portfolio.

WildBrain CPLG’s Middle East and North Africa (MENA) team has inked a deal with Yellow Flower (Premium Brands) for an Emoji apparel line spanning babywear and kids’ t-shirts, now available at Carrefour stores across the Middle East. Additionally, Andy Enterprises has developed a new line of Emoji face masks, which has launched at 45 Brands for Less stores in the region.

The new partnership joins the previously detailed deal with the Kuwaiti sports and high street fashion retailer, Al Nasser, who has now introduced its first Emoji brand apparel range for kids and women. Meanwhile, the local high-end fashion retailer RIVA has just launched its second Emoji brand collection for teens and women.

Over in Central and Eastern Europe, WildBrain CPLG is building upon its long-term relationship with the Polish market leader for school supplies, St-Majewski, with the launch of a new range of Emoji stationery and gifts, including crayons, colouring pencils, notebooks, backpacks, diaries and money boxes. The line is now available online and at stores across Poland and Europe, with the support of an extensive marketing and PR campaign.

In a further local deal, WildBrain CPLG has signed Utenos who will launch an apparel collection for kids, tweens and young teens this summer.

Marco Huesges, CEO and founder of the Emoji company, added: “An integral part of our Emoji brand strategy is ensuring there’s always a fresh and enticing range of on-trend products available to consumers of all ages. WildBrain CPLG continues to secure best-in-class partnerships and these new deals are no exception – we’re sure these new ranges will be a huge hit with our fans across EMEA.”

Roberto Pallottini, licensing manager MENA at WildBrain CPLG, said: “The instantly recognisable Emoji brand continues to go from strength to strength particularly across the MENA region, where it’s become a key property for retailers, especially those within the fashion space. With its distinctive, vast and universal language, Emoji offers endless possibilities for licensees and retailers to get creative, as demonstrated by this latest wave of products that offer consumers some really fun and unique ways to express themselves.”

WildBrain CPLG represents the Emoji brand across the UK and Eire, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, across Benelux, Turkey, CEE, Spain and Portugal. It also reps the brand in Russia, France, MENA, Nordics, Italy, Greece, Poland, and Ukraine.

Additionally, WildBrain CPLG is handling worldwide licensing and merchandising rights for emojitown®, a new digital-first series and consumer products extension of the Emoji brand, for which the agency is developing a cross-category merchandise offering targeted at teens and young adults.

Emoji partners with Nice ioi to launch new women’s fashion line in Taiwan

Posted on by

Emoji – The Iconic Brand is expanding its presence across Taiwan through a new partnership with the local fashion brand, Nice ioi and the launch of a new apparel collection designed for the urban woman. The new deal has been developed in tandem with Medialink Animation International Limited.

Nice ioi has billed the partnership as a major coup for the Taiwanese fashion label, championing Emoji as a global phenomenon and gobally recognised brand with product presence in over 130 countries worldwide.

“Partnering with Emoji is an important tool for Nice ioi,” said Katarina Cheng, CMO of Ioi. “We could not be more exited and look forward to seeing stunning results from the collision of the two well-loved brands. Nice ioi has just given the world another reason to be in love with the Emoji brand.”

Nice ioi is recognised for its focus on delivering customers fast, fashionable products. The new Emoji collection will be targeted towards woman with an urban style.

“We’re proud to partner with Nice ioi who has done an amazing job in developing an emotional apparel collection for women in Taiwan. They are a highly respected partner of ours,” said Marco Huesges, CEO and founder of the Emoji Company.

Emoji partners with Nice ioi to launch new women’s fashion line in Taiwan

Posted on by

Emoji – The Iconic Brand is expanding its presence across Taiwan through a new partnership with the local fashion brand, Nice ioi and the launch of a new apparel collection designed for the urban woman. The new deal has been developed in tandem with Medialink Animation International Limited.

Nice ioi has billed the partnership as a major coup for the Taiwanese fashion label, championing Emoji as a global phenomenon and gobally recognised brand with product presence in over 130 countries worldwide.

“Partnering with Emoji is an important tool for Nice ioi,” said Katarina Cheng, CMO of Ioi. “We could not be more exited and look forward to seeing stunning results from the collision of the two well-loved brands. Nice ioi has just given the world another reason to be in love with the Emoji brand.”

Nice ioi is recognised for its focus on delivering customers fast, fashionable products. The new Emoji collection will be targeted towards woman with an urban style.

“We’re proud to partner with Nice ioi who has done an amazing job in developing an emotional apparel collection for women in Taiwan. They are a highly respected partner of ours,” said Marco Huesges, CEO and founder of the Emoji Company.

The Emoji Company and WildBrain launch new 2D series Emojitown in major brand extension

Posted on by

The Emoji Company and WildBrain have forged a far-reaching content and licensing partnership to launch Emojitown, a new, digital first, animated series based on the emoji brand, as well as a new consumer product extension programme around it.

Under the partnership, WildBrain’s AVOD network and digital studio, WildBrain Spark, has teamed with the Emoji Company to co-develop and co-produce Emojitown, a new 2D series targeting teens and young adults.

WildBrain Spark, which holds exclusive global distribution rights to the new series, will premiere Emojitown on YouTube with a dedicated channel launching at the end of May, when viewers will be able to enjoy the first four episodes of the fast-paced, language-agnostic show, followed by additional episodes rolling out weekly.

Meanwhile, WildBrain’s global licensing agency, WildBrain CPLG, will handle worldwide licensing and merchandising rights for Emojitown, building on the agency’s extensive and already successful program for the Emoji brand across the UK, Europe, the Middle East, and other territories. WildBrain CPLG will work with Emoji Company and licensees to develop Emojitown products across key categories for teens and young adults.

Marco Huesges, founder and CEO of Emoji Company, said: “This is a significant development for the Emoji brand, bringing our globally recognizable icons into the digital-content space. With their preeminent reputation on digital platforms, including YouTube, and their deep understanding of licensing and brand amplification, WildBrain Spark and WildBrain CPLG are the ideal collaborators for our push into new content creation and consumer products for the teen and young-adult audience. Together we will take this hugely exciting step in the evolution of Emoji.”

Maarten Weck, EVP and MD of WildBrain CPLG, added: “Building on our strong relationship with the emoji company, this expanded partnership combines the strengths of the much-loved emoji brand with our creative and collaborative capabilities across consumer products licensing, digital-content production, and AVOD management.”

Rachel Taylor, commercial director of WildBrain Spark, said: “With its universal appeal, the Emoji brand is ideal for the creation of an animated digital-first content offering, and our creative team has produced a funny, wry and edgy series, underpinned by bespoke data and insights drawn from our premium YouTube network.

“We’re delighted that the emoji company saw us as the right partner to co-develop and launch this extension of its brand for today’s digital-savvy audience of modern teens.”

The Emoji Company details new Streetwear fashion collabs and Brazilian Cheese Bread restaurants

Posted on by

The Emoji Company has secured a slew of recent partnerships across both the global fashion and food and beverage markets, including a new deal with the premium streetwear brand Wicked Fashions Inc, and the famous Brazilian Cheese Bread restaurants, Rei do Mate.

Wicked Fashions Inc has teamed with Emoji to create a signature streetwear collection under its Southpole, Lockedt29, and WT02 clothing lines. The fashion line aims to combine the Emoji brand’s expressive icons with Southpole’s athleisure styles and will feature hoodies, jeans, shirts, and sweatpants.

The first collection is set to launch Holiday 2020. The partnership was brokered by Retail Monster, LLC., the emoji company’s North American Licensing Agent. 

“We are excited to enter into a groundbreaking collaboration with an established leader of the streetwear industry in the US,” said Marco Hüsges, CEO and founder, the emoji company. 

Meanwhile, over on the Brazilian Cheese Bread restaurant scene, and Emoji has now detailed a new partnership with Rei do Mate in a move that will see the franchise develop a set of collectable cups featuring designs from the Emoji by Britto collaboration.

Thanks to a deal brokered by Lotus Global, customers buying the 18 cheese bread combo can take home one of the exclusive Emoji by Britto collectable cups. The promotion will run across 300 of Rei do Mate’s stores, as well as on its online platforms that offer delivery service.

“We are thrilled about the launch of this promotion that will truly entertain Brazilian people during the Xmas season,” said Hüsges. “This partnership is the perfect symbiosis of our partnership with famous artist Romero Britto and we are proud to be working with Rei do Mate again for the Brazilian territory.”

Emoji renews its partnership with Argentina’s Felfort to roll out more licensed chocolates across the region

Posted on by

The Emoji Company has renewed its partnership for the fourth year running with the Argentinian manufacturer, Felfort, the South American business that will continue to produce licensed chocolates, candies, cereals, and more for the global licensor.

Felfort and Emoji struck up their partnership in 2016 when the Argentina-based firm was tapped to develop and produce Emoji themed chocolate coins. Such was the success of the range across the region that the pair extended the line to include the more recent launch, Chocolate Jack.

“We could not choose a better association to continue building our brand in Argentina,” said Marco Heusges, CEO of The Emoji Company. “Emoji and Felfort provide excellent moments to all young people who love chocolate.”

The move comes as Argentina continues to battle through both the ongoing global Covid-19 emergency as well as its own current economic slow down. Despite this, Felfort continues to manufacture a wide variety of successful products, competing on equal footing with industries and imports from some of the world’s largest economies.

The Emoji Company takes legal action against Emoji King for trademark infringement

Posted on by

The Emoji Company has taken legal action against Emoji King and the use of its trademark that the company believes to ‘similar to the point of infringement’ upon its own trademark registered company name. Emoji is the registered name by The Emoji Company  for a multitude of goods and services.

The company owns the well-established Emoji trademark in more than 100 countries, encompassing goods and services in up to 35 classes.

In court proceedings, it has been stated that the use of Emoji King infringes The Emoji Company’s trademark rights. It has since prohibited several companies – one of which is Emoji King Industrial Co Ltd – from directly or indirectly advertising, offering, and bringing into circulation any products for which The Emoji Company holds registered trademarks.

The trademark Emoji is licensed and used through an international network of renowned agents, licensee, retailers, entertainment and advertisement companies around the world, and the Emoji brand has been globally awarded by the licensing industry.

Official Emoji brand partners include blue chip corporations such as Sony Pictures Animation, Ferrero, Burger King, Nikon, Walmart, Nestle, Zara, Aldi, Pepsico, Ravensburger, The Hershey Company amongst many others.

“Given the success of the globally established and recognized emoji® brand, there are competitors that try to imitate the original,” said Marco Hüsges, CEO and founder of The Emoji Company.

For that reason The Emoji Company continues to take legal action and working with customs globally to defend its well-established brand identity and honest reputation against trademark infringements.

The Emoji Company supports 50808 crisis response campaign

Posted on by

The Emoji Company has offered its support to a new initiative from 50808, a service that provides in-the-moment support for people in emotional crisis, by supplying the platform with its extensive library of Emoji brand icons. The partnership was struck in order to help those in need easily communicate when seeking help.

Launched in Ireland, the partnership was devised by the local creative agency, Havas Dublin, as a means of enabling those in need to communicate through a universal language.

Ian Power, CEO at 50808, said: “Our service provides in-the-moment support for people in emotional crisis, over text. For our Irish launch campaign, we wanted to compel those who prefer to text, rather than talk. Havas Dublin came up with the idea of conveying this important message through the universal language and with the help of the Emoji brand and we loved the concept. This required us to find a complete bank of Emoji brand icons to utilize – and so the search began.”

Through its connection to the Vivendi network and Universal Music Group’s brand management and merchandising unit, Bravado, the partnership was cemented and the 50808 campaign brought to life.

“Our service aims to save lives, and we’re thrilled to have the support of the emoji company to help us in our efforts to encourage those who need us to reach out,” added Power.

Marco Hüsges, CEO and founder of the Emoji company, added: “Supporting this humanitarian initiative of helping those in need is an honour for the emoji company. We are excited to work with Vivendi and Havas on this project.”

50808 is now live. Visit text50808.ie for more information.

 

It’s World Emoji Day 2020 – Emoji Company CEO, Marco Huesges talks the continued success of the global brand

Posted on by

It’s World Emoji Day 2020 and a happy World Emoji Day to you all, a day on which not only the Emoji Company itself, but the hundreds upon thousands of emoji users the world over celebrate the global popularity of those little icons that have been helping people spread their messages, and finding their way into the modern day lexicon and communication on a daily basis.

But today isn’t just about celebrating the estimated six billion emoticons used everyday as the world finds a universal language in emojis and emoji stickers, but also a day to celebrate the global success of the official Emoji brand – an award-winning lifestyle brand that spans the global licensing scene from retail partnerships, to making new waves in gifts, collectables, and more.

Over the past two weeks, Licensing.biz has been catching up with just some of the leading licensees of the Emoji brand in a series of video snippets talking to the strength of a brand that has continued to keep conversation going, even throughout the world’s ‘Great Pause’ throughout these testing times. And it all culminates with today’s celebration.

Licensing.biz catches up with Marco Huesges, CEO and founder of the Emoji company to talk about the international appeal of the brand.

Firstly Marco, Happy World Emoji Day to you. How are you celebrating World Emoji Day this year? What makes this such an important day in the calendar for you?

World Emoji Day is the day of celebrating the global popularity of icons and how they enable us to spread unmistakably messages and to connect with people from all over the world.

For us as emoji company, creator and owner of the Emoji® brand, it is also the day to celebrate the global success of the brand together with our license and agents whose ambitious and enduring brand support is the fundament for our success story and that motivates us every day to develop new concepts, style guides and emotional consumer product strategies.

We’ve seen from the video series you’ve been running with Licensing.biz that there is a great energy from licensees across the globe for the Emoji brand. What is it about the Emoji brand that unifies licensees, retailers, and consumers in this way?

Licensing is an emotional business. In an overloaded, fast moving consumer product world each company constantly seeks to find the perfect way to connect with their target audience. The Emoji® brand offers the ideal foundation to do exactly that. Our brand truly connects products and people; it builds inevitable relationships and helps to deliver understandable consumer messages.

The video series also highlights the real breadth of partnerships you have in place for Emoji. What’s the key to maintaining such a far-reaching portfolio of partners?

The universal character of the brand, its depth, its popular content variety and diversity allows us to work with partners from any industry sector which leads to our broad portfolio of licensing partners which come from so many diverse areas, such as consumer product, entertainment services or the marketing and advertisement space.

Can you talk us through some of the biggest campaigns/biggest success stories for the Emoji brand this year? What have been some of the break-through categories for you guys?

The year 2020 started with some great initiatives. We launched a very successful direct to retail program with the leading discounter LIDL in multiple countries. All through 2020 we continue to work with Ferrero for KinderJoy in various territories and Burger King will be launching a QSR program with collectable Emoji® plush toys in various countries.

Our brand collaboration program Emoji® by Britto has seen some great new partnerships with Goebel Porzellan GmbH for Europe that includes bags, spectacle cases, umbrellas, coaster and cups and that has recently launched.

In short we will be able to announce some new digital licensing as deals, some loyalty programs in South East Asia as well as some exciting international apparel brand collaborations very soon.

How does this position you for the coming months and years? Looking ahead, you’ve dropped hints of some pretty major partnerships coming, what have you got in store for us in the coming months?

Despite the Covid-19 situation we have partnered with lots of new licensee since the beginning of 2020 and continued existing partnerships. 2021 will see some exciting loyalty programs happening in Europe and the opening of more Emoji® apparel stores in Mainland China will continue.

We entered into various direct to retail partnerships with leading retailers from various countries and entered into some serious licensing deals in the digital space which will increase global brand visibility.

For now, we really want to wish everyone, all our partners, licensees, agents, and friends to stay healthy and hope to see them soon in person!

 

It’s World Emoji Day 2020 – Emoji Company CEO, Marco Huesges talks the continued success of the global brand

Posted on by

It’s World Emoji Day 2020 and a happy World Emoji Day to you all, a day on which not only the Emoji Company itself, but the hundreds upon thousands of emoji users the world over celebrate the global popularity of those little icons that have been helping people spread their messages, and finding their way into the modern day lexicon and communication on a daily basis.

But today isn’t just about celebrating the estimated six billion emoticons used everyday as the world finds a universal language in emojis and emoji stickers, but also a day to celebrate the global success of the official Emoji brand – an award-winning lifestyle brand that spans the global licensing scene from retail partnerships, to making new waves in gifts, collectables, and more.

Over the past two weeks, Licensing.biz has been catching up with just some of the leading licensees of the Emoji brand in a series of video snippets talking to the strength of a brand that has continued to keep conversation going, even throughout the world’s ‘Great Pause’ throughout these testing times. And it all culminates with today’s celebration.

Licensing.biz catches up with Marco Huesges, CEO and founder of the Emoji company to talk about the international appeal of the brand.

Firstly Marco, Happy World Emoji Day to you. How are you celebrating World Emoji Day this year? What makes this such an important day in the calendar for you?

World Emoji Day is the day of celebrating the global popularity of icons and how they enable us to spread unmistakably messages and to connect with people from all over the world.

For us as emoji company, creator and owner of the Emoji® brand, it is also the day to celebrate the global success of the brand together with our license and agents whose ambitious and enduring brand support is the fundament for our success story and that motivates us every day to develop new concepts, style guides and emotional consumer product strategies.

We’ve seen from the video series you’ve been running with Licensing.biz that there is a great energy from licensees across the globe for the Emoji brand. What is it about the Emoji brand that unifies licensees, retailers, and consumers in this way?

Licensing is an emotional business. In an overloaded, fast moving consumer product world each company constantly seeks to find the perfect way to connect with their target audience. The Emoji® brand offers the ideal foundation to do exactly that. Our brand truly connects products and people; it builds inevitable relationships and helps to deliver understandable consumer messages.

The video series also highlights the real breadth of partnerships you have in place for Emoji. What’s the key to maintaining such a far-reaching portfolio of partners?

The universal character of the brand, its depth, its popular content variety and diversity allows us to work with partners from any industry sector which leads to our broad portfolio of licensing partners which come from so many diverse areas, such as consumer product, entertainment services or the marketing and advertisement space.

Can you talk us through some of the biggest campaigns/biggest success stories for the Emoji brand this year? What have been some of the break-through categories for you guys?

The year 2020 started with some great initiatives. We launched a very successful direct to retail program with the leading discounter LIDL in multiple countries. All through 2020 we continue to work with Ferrero for KinderJoy in various territories and Burger King will be launching a QSR program with collectable Emoji® plush toys in various countries.

Our brand collaboration program Emoji® by Britto has seen some great new partnerships with Goebel Porzellan GmbH for Europe that includes bags, spectacle cases, umbrellas, coaster and cups and that has recently launched.

In short we will be able to announce some new digital licensing as deals, some loyalty programs in South East Asia as well as some exciting international apparel brand collaborations very soon.

How does this position you for the coming months and years? Looking ahead, you’ve dropped hints of some pretty major partnerships coming, what have you got in store for us in the coming months?

Despite the Covid-19 situation we have partnered with lots of new licensee since the beginning of 2020 and continued existing partnerships. 2021 will see some exciting loyalty programs happening in Europe and the opening of more Emoji® apparel stores in Mainland China will continue.

We entered into various direct to retail partnerships with leading retailers from various countries and entered into some serious licensing deals in the digital space which will increase global brand visibility.

For now, we really want to wish everyone, all our partners, licensees, agents, and friends to stay healthy and hope to see them soon in person!