BORN LICENSING WINS AT THE 2022 LICENSING INTERNATIONAL EXCELLENCE AWARDS

We’re delighted to have been awarded Best Licensed Promotion for GEICO’s ‘Angry Bird Problem?’ campaign starring Angry Birds! The 30-second spot for the US insurance company premiered during the widely viewed 2021 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade – the first parade with spectators since 2019.

The winners of the 2022 Licensing International Excellence Awards were unveiled in Las Vegas in a ceremony that brought together industry executives from around the world to celebrate the best of the global licensing industry.

The 25 award winners were selected from 165 finalists from around the world. More than 800 entries were received, narrowed down by an expert global judging panel and voted on by members of the licensing industry at large.

Our Director, David Born, and Senior Licensing Executive, Amber Cheung, accepted the award on behalf of all parties. David Born commented: “I’m thrilled to have won this award for the third time and would like to thank everyone who voted for us. This really was a team effort so we’d like to share this award with the Licensee, GEICO, their creative agency, The Martin Agency, and of course the wonderful teams at Rovio Entertainment and IMG who were amazing partners throughout the process.”

The Winning Campaign

GEICO has a history of working with famous film and TV characters. For their 2021 ‘Bundling’ platform they had already worked with Disney’s Animal (‘There’s an Animal in the Attic’) and Hanna-Barbera Animation’s Yogi Bear (‘Yogi Bear Joins the BBQ’). For this latest spot they enlisted the help of everyone’s favourite flightless flock, Angry Birds, from the famous mobile game developed by Rovio Entertainment. Destroying pots and disturbing the neighbours, the feathered foes needed to be seen causing havoc to help show how GEICO makes insurance easy. Born Licensing were called on to reach out to Rovio and to use our extensive experience in this area to negotiate a license on behalf of The Martin Agency and GEICO.

Our expertise in licensing animation and entertainment IP for advertising campaigns allowed The Martin Agency to focus fully on production whilst relying on us to facilitate the license agreement and to manage the resource-heavy approvals process on their behalf. This campaign is a great example of bespoke animation being created for a project. Thanks to our experience in managing the approval process for large campaigns the process was smooth and straightforward. We’re thrilled with the outcome and can’t wait to see what characters GEICO has in store next….! Read the full case study for more information.