Identity’s Highlights From Licensing Expo 2018

For more than 35 years, Licensing Expo has connected the world’s most influential entertainment, character, art, and corporate brand owners and agents with consumer goods manufacturers, licensees and retailers.

This year the event, which returned to Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas and took place from 22-24 May, hosted more than 5,000 brands who showcased the latest developments in consumer trends to 16,000 attendees from more than 65 countries, all of whom represent the $262 billion global brand licensing industry.

In our position as an integrated events partner, Identity attended all three days of Licensing Expo this year and worked with our client Rovio on the design and build of their exhibition stand at the show for Angry Birds.

Rovio

Rovio Entertainment Corporation is a Finnish, games-first entertainment company, that creates, develops and publishes mobile games and acts as a brand licensor in various entertainment and consumer product categories. The company is best known for the global Angry Birds brand, which started from a popular mobile game in 2009.

Today, Rovio offers multiple mobile games, has produced The Angry Birds Movie, which opened number one in theatres in 50 countries (and has a sequel planned to hit cinemas in September 2019), and licenses the Angry Birds brand to consumer products and other entertainment content worldwide.

Measuring at an impressive 225 square metres, the Rovio Angry Birds stand was designed, built and installed by Identity. The booth featured gorgeous graphics from the game world throughout, including giant character cut-outs, a huge inflatable of the “Red” character and TNT boxes which also provided lighting.

Inside were two custom-designed large meeting rooms plus an open meeting area, storage and an attractive reception desk. The space also housed two large digital screens and a product display unit which showcased the latest range of Angry Birds plush toys.

One notable highlight of the booth took place in the activation area, where a 14-feet tall high striker strongman installation enticed expo visitors to gauge their anger management by trying to ring the game bell and win a prize.

Even if we say so ourselves, the Rovio stand was one of the best-looking at the entire show and was incredibly busy throughout all three days of Licensing Expo 2018.

Every year at Licensing Expo there is so much to see and do – here are some other highlights from this year’s event.

Bandai Namco

The crowd-pleasing draw of the Bandai Namco stand was this brilliant Pac-Man meeting room.

Buzzfeed

Buzzfeed’s booth was one of the most mysterious at the show. The outside was striking but simple, and you had to enter the booth before you could see any part of the activation, which was a series of connected rooms that you navigated through doors by answering classic Buzzfeed-style questions. Clever and effective!

Cartoon Network

The Cartoon Network stand had one of the biggest screens at the entire expo and also housed this Rick and Morty activation, which showed the characters’ spaceship buried into the booth carpet after a crash landing.

Discovery

This Discovery Shark Week activation was incredible – so many people took photographs during the Expo.

FOX

It takes a very special brand to be recognisable by silhouette alone but these Simpsons graphics on the elegant FOX stand do just that.

Line Friends

The Line Friends booth featured a giant version of their bear character, Brown.

Mattel

The Mattel stand was the largest at the show and featured a magnificent curved LED screen, two sets of double decker meeting rooms plus a huge, striking Mattel logo.

Peanuts

Another brand that has characters so instantly recognisable you don’t even need to colour them in (visible in the background), the Peanuts booth was beautifully designed.

Universal Brand Development

Universal were promoting the highly anticipated Jurassic World sequel and Licensing Expo and took advantage of this to full effect by utilising a “real life”, incredibly convincing Blue the velociraptor to walk around the show! Quite the crowd-pleasing stunt.

Warner Bros

The Warner Bros Consumer Products booth was one of the show’s biggest. Open and inviting, it featured a Harry Potter section and a series of large, connected screens that highlighted the brand’s most popular shows and characters.

WWE

The WWE stand included a to-scale Andre the Giant statue and an open meeting area designed in the style of the wrestling ring.

Licensing Expo is not only a hugely important occasion in the calendar, it’s also one of the best showcases for exhibition stands across the licensing world. Throughout the event, stand after stand was packed with delegates in pre-scheduled, back-to-back meetings, thus ensuring maximum impact and business development opportunities for the companies who invested in the exhibition. The expo was a big success and is testament to the global colossus that is brand licensing.

If you are interested in how Identity can assist you at your next live event, please contact us today on telephone number 01323 469111 or by email to letstalk@identitygroup.co.uk.