What a pleasure to chat with you Nicolas Loufrani and how could it be otherwise, given that for 50 years you have dispensed with smiles. but how do you do it, as an icon born to highlight the good news of a French newspaper has become one of the most prosperous companies for the sale of licensed merchandise, reaching a turnover of 350 million dollars?
The company started 50 years from an initiative my father Franklin Loufrani has taken as a journalist for France Soir. He wanted to spread good news and positivity in the newspaper. He then turned it into a licensing company with the intention to bring happiness through collaborations. When I joined in 1997, I registered the brand name Smiley as only the logo was registered so far, and developed the first graphic emoticons, the smileys you see on text messages and that are now used every day by everyone. To build a company around intellectual property, it takes a lot of work and a lot of creativity. You have to understand and adapt to trends, reinvent yourself, work with the best partners, have a great team, and have a vision for the industry you’re in. Most importantly you have to have clear, positive values that will ultimately add value to partners and consumers
Sure that 50 years ago it was not so usual to use smilies to communicate, today, thanks to the iPhones, the panorama is enriched, how do you feed your creative vein, in other words in which direction is your evolution going?
Now we have entered the era of hyper collaboration, we manage the brand with more intelligence and expertise with a team of 40 top-notch executives and designers and through co-creation with brands and retailers. We not only bring a famous Intellectual property but we have a strategy per industry, per market segment, per country, per age group, and gender. We also select very carefully which partners we work with. We only want partners who have real brand equity or that offer the products and marketing we like. We constantly innovate (even this 50th campaign is totally unique). We bring clear and strong brand values, design directions, marketing, and retail campaigns. We create and develop with our partners more than 15,000 products a year! The next big trend for us is sustainability. We are starting a big campaign to bring change in the licensing industry and have trademarked our slogan “Future positive” which is going to be the vision we promote for the world through our products and marketing campaigns.
And communication? In Italy you rely on AIDA PARTNERS, what do you have in store for a birthday as important as 50 years?
Our 50th anniversary is a milestone for us and we are planning a yearlong of activations and very special brand collaborations. We have spent the past 2 years working on an amazing anniversary campaign on a scale no other intellectual property has ever reached, and that is the result of our creativity and network. We will open more than 80 pop-up shops with world-leading department stores where we will feature brand collaborations from 65 major designs and brands. With unique collector products based on the works of art created by André Saraiva. We will launch a global street art manifesto for positivity with him in the heart of 10 global cities, are planning major activations on World Happiness day, and will be working with one of the biggest musicians in the world to spread our message. We have a lot of great Italian brands that are partnering with us, like Armani Exchange, Dsquared, Montegrappa, Moleskine, Moschino, Philosophy, and Seletti. This is very important for me because Italy will always remain the country of creativity and craftsmanship… I can’t imagine my creative journey without Italy!
What is the best gift you would like to give yourselves to celebrate?
I am going to get a fabulous gift from one of our brand collaboration partners, but this is still top secret until they launch. It will be the most expensive Smiley product ever created and an impressive one!
