Edison in the Boardroom Revisited: How Leading Companies Realize Value from Their Intellectual Property, Second Edition

Reinventing and Integrating Trademarks and Brands

For P&G, their brands and trademark names have always been the crown jewels of the company. “Our brands make an ongoing promise that when consumers buy Tide or Pampers or Gillette, they also are buying a promise of quality and value,” Baggott said. “The trust consumers give us is built up over decades of stewardship of those brands.”

Thus, when Global Licensing started talking about expanding its work by sharing P&G trademarks with partners externally, the discussions were again not easy. But this time, Global Licensing had a bigger benefit in mind than just additional revenue generation—a benefit that in time appealed to even some of the company’s most guarded brands. The proposal was that by licensing its name, a brand could quickly and efficiently expand its portfolio to reach more consumers in areas where P&G lacks either core expertise or manufacturing capability.

One of the group’s first partners, and still one of the company’s strongest stories, was with a then relatively-small but solid company called Kaz. Started by a father looking to provide comfort for his sick son, Kaz designed the world’s first electric vaporizer. The company quietly grew into the leading vaporizer manufacturer in North America.

Meanwhile, P&G owned Vicks, the market leader in over-the-counter respiratory products. Vicks was looking to expand its offerings to reach more consumers. P&G connected with Kaz. It was a company rooted in quality, consumer ...