R.I.P. – Retention of Income Potential
There’s big profit potential and relatively low risk in managing dead celebrity brands, as evidenced by Iconix Brand Group‘s purchase of the Peanuts brand this week for a reported $175 million. Iconix owns the rights to several notable brands like Joe Boxer underwear, but this is its first venture into character-based brands. They figure they can pump some new life into the Schulz characters and generate as much as $75 million in annual license fees.
According to Mark Roesler, CEO of CMG Worldwide — one of the largest managers of intellectual property rights and owner of several dead celebrity brands including Marilyn Monroe, Mark Twain and Babe Ruth — consumer interest in famous people tends to increase even more once they’re dead. As a result, the earning potential of those brands is often far greater than when they were alive. Posthumous brands are definitely more stable and easier to manage without the scandals or career ups and downs, so there is less risk.
Roesler is a recognized authority on dead celebrity brands, having recently been enlisted to help calculate the future value of Michael Jackson. He also was retained as a subject matter expert in the O.J. Simpson civil trial to help estimate his future earning power for settlement purposes — a dead brand that is out-lived by its celebrity.
The Peanuts brand has actually dropped in the standings over the past couple of years, according to the Forbes list of top-earning dead celebrities, due largely to the addition of a couple of bigger hitters to the dead celeb circuit: Michael Jackson and Yves St. Laurent. Interestingly, Albert Einstein finally cracked the top 10 on revenue generated from his bobblehead promotion in McDonald’s Happy Meals — there’s some marketing genius.
Here’s the 2009 Forbes list of posthumous brands with the highest estimated annual earning potential (you can see the full list, and find lists for past years, here):
Yves St. Laurent–$359 million
Rogers & Hammerstein–$235 million
Michael Jackson–$90 million
Elvis Presley–$55 million
JRR Tolkien–$50 million
Charles Schulz–$35 million
John Lennon–$15 million
Dr. Seuss–$15 million
Albert Einstein–$10 million
Michael Crichton–$9 million
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