Funko’s Director of Group Licensing & Retail Strategy, Lucy Salisbury, talks music, sport and more

Lucy, I’m thrilled to have you back so soon! Let’s talk about the big news: you have a new CEO… Is that likely to impact the importance of licensing in Funko’s strategy?
Well, first, licensing is – and will always be – hugely important to Funko because we’re the world’s largest proprietor of licenses. And yes, we’ve had a new CEO on board for around four months: Cynthia Williams… She’s been incredible and outlined our new go-forward strategy. The strategy is very fan-centric; there are four main pillars to it…

Good place to start! What are the four pillars?
One is delighting core fans. Two is attracting and serving new fans… Three is selling where the fan is, and four is about improving the fan experience. Naturally, licensing is key for all of those, but particularly the second – attracting and serving new fans. So we want to unlock growth by expanding the fandoms we serve. Of course, we’ll continue working with the world’s biggest entertainment IPs from movies and streaming. In the past few years, though, we’ve also started tapping into fandoms from anime, video games, music and sport.

Indeed! And we discussed the rise and rise of anime last time we spoke – people can read that here . Video games we can do separately, perhaps… Shall we chat about music and sport today?
Sounds great! They’re interesting areas because we believe those fandoms represent a huge opportunity for major growth. Is this where you dial in your brother, though, Deej? He’s a huge sport fan, right?

He is! How do you know that?! He’s an enormous sport fan! And he was a remarkable athlete at school: county-champion this, medal-winning that…
Ha! Irritating, isn’t it?

Ha! Oh, my days! Our PE teachers were always yelling at me on the cross-country course: “Come on, Johnson! Your brother would’ve finished by now…” But in terms of two of those pillars – creating an experience and selling where the fan is – can you give me an example of that?
One example that comes to mind is our partnership with America’s National Football League, the NFL. We put a pop-up installation at the stadium of the Kansas City Chiefs… That meant fans could go in and do a Pop! of themselves in the fan colours of the team. This activation is all about creating an experience where the fan is and can easily be rolled out to other stadia. That’s an example of delighting the core fans, selling where the fan is AND improving the fan experience. We plan to do more things like that in Europe, Middle East and Africa as well – watch this space!

Great example! Thanks, Lucy. And bonus points to you for using the word stadia! I appreciate good grammar…
Well, you are a writer! Some bad grammar really annoys me… Confusing fewer with less. Ugh!

There’s a lovely line that illustrates the difference between those. I can’t remember who said it, but it’s to the effect, “If you try to correct my grammar, I will think fewer of you.”
Ha! That’s very good!

So! Looking at 2024, what’s been successful for you?
Some of our top-selling sport items this year have come from elite motor racing teams. As you may know, we have direct licensing deals with teams like Red Bull and Mercedes. And we do individual drivers in Pop! form: Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, George Russell and Sergio Perez spring to mind. Some of the drivers have had photos taken with their Pops too. For example, Lewis Hamilton has his 2014 world-champion edition Pop! That’s available from Mercedes AMG online store.

Then – in music – we’ve seen great success from huge acts… Some old, some new. There’s Queen’s Freddie Mercury in his look from the 1986 Wembley concert – that’s really cool! There’s also a Pop! Range of the major K-Pop act Blackpink. And we saw great sales of Oasis Pops this year following a little story about their reunion…

Ha! Hadn’t heard! But this is the beauty, I suppose, of the Pops… You can be quite nimble, can you not, when news like the Oasis reunion breaks? You can be straight onto that?
Exactly right, Deej. If there’s a major tour announcement, we can ramp up production on existing items. We might also come up with a new product… And we might do a deal that lets us sell exclusively at the stadium, say!

Oh, look at Noel Gallagher with his Union Flag guitar! Ha! Are there any others that come to mind?
Amy Winehouse has done really well, and we had that out prior to the Back to Black movie. We chatted about this last time: sometimes we don’t base our product on a new movie or show, but those things still become major marketing moments. That was the same with Queen: we saw the sales skyrocket when the film Bohemian Rhapsody came out.

Right. I guess that’s partly because Pop! tends to capture iconic looks of iconic people. And I’m curious: do you treat partnerships with sport and music licenses differently? From the large entertainment partnerships, I mean?
To some extent, yes – but mostly around planning. With our major entertainment releases, we can plan two, three, four years ahead. If there’s a major movie or game coming out, for example, the IP owners will be communicating about it with our product-development team in particular. There’s quite a bit of dialogue and quite a lot of notice.

And that’s less true with sport?
Yes. Generally speaking, we tend to take a year or so developing a Pop! We sometimes do it quicker but – in football – a year is two transfer windows. That means that, if we’re planning to bring out a player Pop!, we might find out with only a day’s notice that they’re leaving their current club! So we just have to listen to the rumour mill, find out who’s having conversations with other teams, who’s not happy where they are… Maybe not make a Pop! of them just yet; focus on the players that are staying put for a while!

Just out of interest, Lucy… You say you sometimes have to develop a Pop! more quickly. What’s the fastest you’ve ever turned one around?
I think we got Fortnite out within maybe a four-month period…

Oh! For a second there, I thought you were going to say you did Fortnite in a fortnight! That would’ve been terrific… Just for the publicity!
That would be amazing! Ha! I’d love to be able to say that! But no, it was Fortnite in about four months. Because they’re a hardline product, of course. On top of the design, we’ve got to tool up, we’ve got to create moulds – we’ve got to ship the product in.

And in terms of upcoming sport or music product, do you have a favourite?
Well… I absolutely love Mohamed Salah and Erling Haaland. They’re incredible performers in their sport – and for Funko! I also really loved our Jack Grealish Pop! He posted images of himself with one, and very generously gave his time to fans at a charity event. We made a giant Pop! box for him to stand inside – and wrapped him up in it! Then the fans came into the room and unwrapped it to find him inside the box.

Ha! I won’t make a Jack-in-the-box joke… The fans must have LOVED that!
Can you imagine?! It’s great! We were so grateful to Jack; it was a really sweet thing to do. And another one… I absolutely love Queen – so Freddie Mercury is a huge favourite. We’ve done various versions of Freddie Mercury, but this is our latest. It’s done really well… I love the look of this figure; he’s so cute in that iconic outfit. Of course, I’m far too young to remember the actual Live Aid show at Wembley, Deej…

Yes, of course… I missed it myself actually; I was still doing the school cross-country! So now… Looking at the future, Lucy, is there a particular license you’d like to go after?
There are a couple of football and elite racing licences I’d love us to sign. Hopefully, I’ll be able to share some of those with you in our next roundup. Then, in music, we’ve already got a huge and diverse roster. I’d love it if we could sign Taylor Swift, though. You know, we have to take down a LOT of fake Taylor Swift Funko Pops – so she’s clearly in demand. It would be great to do an official one. And she’s definitely going to be reading this, right?

Let’s say yes! Let’s say she’s an avid Brands Untapped reader! Because I don’t know for a fact that she isn’t… Alright. Let’s wrap this up in the traditional way… What’s the one question I could’ve asked you today but didn’t?
Well, you could’ve asked me more about my burgeoning global role at Funko…

Oh, yes, that’s right! You’ve been promoted – like – four levels since we last spoke!
Ha! No, no, no! Definitely not! In fact, it’s not so much a promotion, it’s more of an increased remit. But it means that – as well as managing EMEA and APAC licensing – I globally manage some key sport licenses. We’ve spoken about some of those, particularly where they’re based in EMEA. But I globally oversee some of our integration with major licensors, particularly from a retail point of view. I also oversee our joint business planning teams in North America, LATAM and AIPAC as well as EMEA.

Gosh! Sounds like you must have some very long days, Lucy. I mean… It’s always ten in the morning somewhere in the world!
Ha! True… But it’s also always six in the evening somewhere… So it’s always time for a glass of something! Ha! But no, it’s great. I’m absolutely loving it.

Fantastic! Well, congratulations on that – and thank you again, Lucy, for joining me.