Cultural merchandising: the hidden half of revenue in cinema and animation

Characterization is the basis for developing cultural activities. Cultural and artistic products and services are chained to one another on the basis of character conceptualization, and cultural merchandising (Cultural merchandising) is realized. Almost merchandising experiences in the world have taken shape around one or several characters, and the character's behaviors that appear in diverse cultural products are treated as a reference pattern for audience behavior. Cultural merchandising may take shape around a cultural concept or a character. In Iran Dalan Farhangbonyan is in charge of cultural merchandising and has so far held several festivals.

Definition of cultural merchandising

Cultural merchandising or Cultural Merchandising is among the money-making concepts of the world that is widely used in the creative industries of cinema and animation. This concept, in simple language, means using the attractions of an animated or real character or a cultural concept or a cultural story such as Quranic stories in the sale of various products and services. Box office revenue of various works, however staggering, still the figure of films' sales compared with revenue beyond the box office does not catch the eye. Managers of the film and animation industries believe that products related to various characters are among the few products whose sales do not need marketing. It is clear that selling Elsa and Anna dolls or selling Spider-Man clothes to a child who yesterday watched that film and animation is not a hard job at all.

Merchandising revenue

Character merchandising is among the principal sources of revenue generation of large companies in the world. This manner of revenue generation is to a large extent based on intellectual property rights. The owner of a character such as Spider-Man or Cinderella in fact becomes the owner of all rights of that character. So the maker of the character receives all or part of the proceeds from the sale of products related to it. Various companies often either themselves make ancillary products of the characters whose rights they hold or give a permit to another company to make them. The Disney company, by building theme parks, water parks and giving permits to various companies, has been able to obtain huge profit from this path. Having the rights to a character is vital for various companies; for example recently a legal battle over the rights to the Spider-Man character in American cinema has begun and Sony and Marvel may as a result suffer huge losses.

In what follows the bestselling franchises in history and their cultural merchandising revenue are presented. It is enough to compare the chart of the bestselling animations in history with this piece so that the scale of this part of the industry becomes more apparent.

Star Wars

Star Wars, the old-timer of the cinema world, is the most successful series in merchandising and the elder of this work. This series is so valuable that Disney not only recently made a new cinematic version of it, but also broadcast its series in the days of the coronavirus pandemic.

Cars

Pixar in 2006 made the animation Cars. People all over the world in 2011 were impatiently eager for the second part of Cars but this part disappointed everyone. One can say with confidence that 90 percent of the audience of this series like only its first part. Even critics consider Cars 2 the worst animation in Pixar history. This series sold 2 billion dollars at the box office. Those unfamiliar with the industry may consider this 2 billion dollars astonishing, but merchandising of this series generated 19 billion dollars in revenue; that is, 10 times the industry's box office revenue. It is merchandising of the Cars series that has kept this series on its feet, otherwise the third version of the film in 2017 was a stranger to many of Pixar's filmmaking standards.

Toy Story

Woody is probably the most valuable and wealthiest cowboy in the world. This cowboy's toys are everywhere and in the past 25 years have created 18 billion dollars of wealth. This figure is greater than the annual sales of most of the animations that Pixar has produced in recent years.

Ninja Turtles

Transformers

The Transformers series, which Iranians also know by the name Autobots, is among the successful revenue series. These machines that change shape and turn into robotic creatures are present in most toy shops. In addition to toys, video games of this series also sell in the world, and on the site of the Hasbro company one can obtain various products on the subject of Transformers.

Frozen

The animation Frozen, or Frozen, is Disney's trump card, of which so far 2 long versions and 2 short versions have been made. This animation can perhaps be considered the peak of Disney princesses and will probably move all sales boundaries. The Telegraph has forecast that Disney's revenue from character merchandising in the coming years will reach more than 100 billion dollars. The ice miracle is probably the miracle of character merchandising and will guarantee Disney's superiority over rivals. Several billion dollars of box office revenue is only the peak of a mountain whose root is in the heart of the ocean.