This really got me thinking recently as there was a company who often licenses various intellectual properties to make their offerings more appealing to an existing group of people. While it can be profitable, you often have to ensure that you must abide by licensing agreements such as not using their properties with content that goes against their branding image. So what that means is that often companies don’t have much creative control and would get scolded by customers for not living up to their expectations in giving that fanbase what they want.
With this example there was a night and day experience where in working with a different branding partner they appeared to be so quick and attentive in addressing fan concerns where you would have thought that this was literally an entirely different company. But the main difference was that their partner in this case was more flexible and open to changes.
It almost reminds me of a workplace where you could have the best talent in the world but sometimes it’s the corporate office’s decision to force their workers to do things a certain way where the customer would simply blame people performing the work. This can be useful information when you are looking or companies to partner with if you want o avoid those who insist in dictating how you must run your business in order to use their IP.
Sometimes companies just have that strong of an intellectual property where it would be worth it to use it in your brand despite the limited creative freedom. But other times you may be able to earn and grow more with a business that is more flexible to ideas that allow you to showcase your strongpoints to make more revenue.