Brand Licensing Europe 2023 - that’s a wrap!
Charlie and Bonnie at BLE outside ExCeL London
It’s been a few weeks since Brand Licensing Europe 2023 and we’re still reeling from the brilliant time we had onsite. Dare we say it was one of the least stressful onsite experiences ever despite a National train strike on day one - and the threat of a Tube strike. And that really is saying something, as Charlie’s been running event press offices for over 25 years!
Brand Licensing Europe (BLE) is the leading event in Europe for licensing professionals, bringing together hundreds of brand owners with thousands of retailers, licensees and manufacturers. And this year was record-breaking:
28% increase in visitor attendance
31% increase in retailer attendance
17% increase in pre-arranged meetings
We’ve worked with Informa Market’s Global Licensing Group for the last seven years (and separately with BLE under Advanstar from 2006-2010) to secure solid, results-driven, pre-event media coverage across trade, vertical and business press. Our strong relationships with journalists in licensing and across vertical sectors give us the edge in achieving great results year on year.
This year, we achieved:
Brand Licensing Europe: 594 pieces of coverage throughout Europe and beyond with a reach 18.8 million
Licensing for Retail Day – a launch event in April 2023: 36 pieces of coverage including 11 feature articles
Global Licensing Group: breakout coverage in The Guardian, You magazine, Mail Online and Marketing Beat
One of this year’s objectives was to raise the profile of Ella Haynes in her second full year as event director of Brand Licensing Europe, via thought leadership and spotlight pieces, resulting in coverage across Marketing Beat, License Global, Licensing.biz, Licensing Source and many more.
Charlie and Bonnie headed down the ExCeL London to run the press office, meet with journalists and mingle with some familiar brand characters!
Charlie Le Rougetel, founder of Big Top says: “BLE is an amazing brand to work on because it’s backed by a highly talented, collaborative team who are not scared to shake things up year on year to surprise visitors and deliver what this industry needs from a trade show. They are also a data-driven team, which provides valuable insight for PR and marketing to tweak the campaigns as we get closer to the show, ensuring we’re hitting the right people in the right places and delivering record results year on year.”
Laura Freedman-Dagg, head of retail, Informa Markets Global Licensing Group says: “I love working with Charlie and the Big Top team. They are excellent at jumping on opportunities, brilliant writers, so quick to understand our market and objectives and just a pleasure to deal with. I have no doubt they elevate our campaigns significantly.”
We love BLE, really love it. It’s a real highlight in our calendars and to achieve amazing results like this year on year to present back to the team makes us so happy. Roll on 24-26 September 2024.