King Features Syndicate Trend Guide for The Phantom, Flash Gordon, and Popeye

King Features made a splash at the Spring 2024 Licensing Expo and now, thanks to the Chronicle Chamber, we are getting some idea of the “Trend Guides” for some of their syndicated comic strip characters.

Brands Untapped interviewed King Features’ Brand Marketing Director Beth Nock:

Beth, it’s great to chat. We’re here to explore King’s first-ever trend guides for The Phantom and Flash Gordon, created by the team, at XGuides – and they look great.
Thank you! A lot of creative and strategic thinking go into these guides and XGuides is an amazing agency to work with.

What for you makes a guide effective? What separates the good ones from the great ones?
I measure effectiveness by impact. Trends are fleeting and attention spans are short, so the creative must make a powerful and immediate impression that lasts. But great guides not only resonate…

Brands Untapped then interviewed Daniel Godoy, Founder & Chief Vision Officer at XGuides:

What’s the key to successful creative collaborations between a brand owner and a creative agency?
Empathy from the beginning, frequent alignment of interests and constant management of expectations during the whole process.

Good answer. Now, The Phantom, Popeye and Flash Gordon are iconic and have been around for decades… How do you approach bringing newness to these kinds of brands?
Since over saturated markets like ours unfortunately bring a perception of commoditisation, freshness is definitely mandatory to keep it relevant. Our crucial challenge is to use the brand’s emotional key points to generate not only attentional salience, but also associative memory stimuli and triggers…

Which brings us back to Chronicle Chamber and a focus on The Phantom:

As reported, King Features has released their very first Phantom trend guide at the May 2024 licensing trade show in Las Vegas, USA. It has been a bit hard to find out exactly what a trend guide is and to find the new imagery they have given licensed holders. However, we can now show you some of the images KFS will be pushing as the Phantom nears his 90th birthday.