We reported here about measuring the number of Facebook fans. The German website www.Markenlexikon.com, now did the same for the German DAX companies:
Adidas has 8,8 Million fans, Volkswagen 6,5 Million, BMW 4,4 Million and Daimler 1,2 Mill.
Those rankings show how many people on Facebook want to be associated with a brand. This is not your usual market survey. Those people have chosen the brand voluntarily, not asked, on their own. The did express their sympathy all by themselves.
And that brings us to royalties in brand licensing.
If someone becomes a brand licensee, he buys access to existing customers and potential customers. The later have been tough to guess in the past.
As an example, when Chanel Perfume was introduced, the target group were not so much the couture customers, but those, who could not afford the couture. Today we could call them fans.
In the future, the number of fans your brand has, might be an additional tool to negotiate the royalty rate for a brand license. Plus, the number of customers your online shop has.