Powering Up Brands

Kids’ content companies attending Brand Licensing Europe are devising new ways to stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace.

Brand Licensing Europe (BLE) was held last week at London’s Olympia exhibition center, with its organizers, Advanstar, predicting that attendance was to pass the 6,000 mark. The bullish forecast for this year’s event comes following a 16-percent attendance bump in 2010, which had 5,634 visitors.

Saban Brands, among the many leading licensors that will be at Olympia, will be showcasing two properties. The first is the Power Rangers franchise, which returned to the Saban fold when it was acquired from The Walt Disney Company last year. Kirk Bloomgarden, the senior VP of international licensing, attributes the large demand for the show to the fact that “Power Rangers is a classic boys’ action-adventure series. There is also real appreciation out there of the understanding Saban has for the brand.”

Bandai has been retained as the master toy licensee, and, according to Bloomgarden, “a major licensing programming is gearing up to roll out behind the broadcast launches around the world.”

BEING FRANK
Alongside Power Rangers Samurai at the Saban stand will be more than 150 characters from Paul Frank Industries, which the company acquired in August 2010. As yet, none has media associated with them, but, says Bloomgarden, “all that is about to change, as we are planning at least two holiday specials in 2012, very much in the style of the Snoopy holiday specials, one for Halloween and one for Christmas.”

Also pressing the flesh at BLE will be American Greetings Properties. Gabrielle Oliff, the VP of brand and marketing at the company, reveals that they will be at Olympia with a lineup of properties that includes the evergreen Care Bears, aimed, as always, at girls aged 3 to 7. As Oliff says, “No one makes caring cooler than the Care Bears.”

For boys aged 5 to 8 and 15-plus, American Greetings has Madballs. Oliff accepts that the property, first released in 1986, was initially considered “pretty repulsive,” but, she adds, “underneath their nauseating exteriors, the truth is, they really are pretty nauseating!”

Among the plethora of characters and brands American Greetings will be presenting at BLE is the classic Strawberry Shortcake. The veteran brand, which made its debut in greeting cards in the late ’70s before expanding into entertainment and a slew of consumer products, attracts girls in the 3-to-7 bracket just as strongly now as it ever did.

FROM THE HEART
Playing to a similar base is Missy Heart from Toonzone Studios. Konnie Kwak, the CEO of the animation studio, notes that the brand is aimed at 5- to 9-year-olds, “a demo that is definitely older than Strawberry Shortcake, but, as the story of a girl who wears hearts in her hair and her heart on her sleeve, there are similarities.” Missy Heart is directed by animation veteran John Kafka, who also directed Toonzone’s Action Dad.              

Tiny Warriors is also on the Toonzone slate at BLE. The series, a story of four friends, each a master of a different martial-arts discipline, with the motto “Tiny but tough,” is a co-production with Brazil’s Studio Sumatra. Written by longtime SpongeBob SquarePants staff writer Richard Pursel, and with a target demo of both boys and girls aged 6 to 10, the 26×22-minute series is slated for delivery in 2013.

In the spring of 2012, m4e expects to deliver Mia and Me, its brand-new hybrid show. Hans Ulrich Stoef, the group CEO of the German brand-management firm, says the co-production with Italy’s Rainbow S.r.l. “is at the top of the list of properties we will be presenting at Brand Licensing Europe. This mixture of live action and CGI is very difficult to achieve—even for the majors.”

Also being presented at BLE by m4e, and again due for delivery in 2012, is Conni, a short preschool series based on the bestselling books of the same name published by Carlsen Verlag.

Cyber Group Studios is also showcasing a book-based brand: Zou. Disney Junior will begin transmitting the series across Europe in September 2012. “We have appointed leading licensees for activity books, plush and DVDs, and products are scheduled to be on the shelf by the end of 2012,” says Pierre Sissmann, Cyber Group’s chairman and CEO.

Another series from Cyber Group Studios that will be presented at BLE is Fish ‘n Chips. Due to premiere this autumn on Gulli in France, the co-production with Timoon, which is aimed at both boys and girls aged 6 to 10, tells of the exciting adventures of two friends, a cat and a fish. It has already been sold to Cartoon Network in Australia and New Zealand, ATV in Turkey and extensively throughout the Middle East.

Joining Zou and Fish ‘n Chips on the Cyber Group stand will be Tales of Tatonka. The series begins transmission this fall on RAI Due in Italy, and next year on France 5 and a number of other major European broadcasters, including TV2 Norway and YLE Finland. Citel will release the DVDs in France in 2012. 

BEING GREEN
Another brand with a strong environmental theme that will be on offer at BLE is Trash Pack, a brand-new 52×13-minute series from Italy’s Mondo TV S.p.A. Micheline Azoury, the head of international sales and brand manager at Mondo TV, says that Trash Pack is “a unique and hilariously funny edu-environment show.” The master toy licensee for Europe, the Middle East and Africa (EMEA) is Giochi Preziosi, and for the rest of the world it is Australia’s Moose Toys. Giochi Preziosi is also the EMEA master toy licensee for two other Mondo TV series: Puppy in My Pocket and Virus Attack.                 

Family adventure is on offer from Your Family Entertainment (YFE), which will be at BLE with Heroes of the City. “This series focuses on cars used to rescue and help people in cities,” says Stefan Piëch, YFE’s CEO. “As cars are a fascination for most of us, Heroes of the City should be an enjoyable viewing experience for the whole family, and, furthermore, it teaches kids that teamwork is exciting and that it is fun working together to solve even the most challenging problems.”        

Another key brand for YFE is Oscar the Balloonist. A co-production by YFE and ZDF, Oscar the Balloonist, debuted last December on KI.KA, where it has regularly gained a 30-percent share. Piëch reports that “publishing, merchandising and radio plays are all available for Oscar the Balloonist.”

MAKING AN IMPACT     
This is just a small selection of the titles on offer at BLE, and, with more companies expected to attend than ever before, the question becomes: How does a property make itself stand out from the throng of rivals, and what gives it licensing’s “X factor”?

“Some of the evergreen properties, such as Care Bears and Strawberry Shortcake, were popular with today’s mums when they were kids, and that does help,” says American Greetings’ Oliff. New or old, she adds, “it’s important for brands to have 360-degree consumer touch points, on air, online, consumer products; basically, the more ways a property has of reaching its target audience, the more effective and efficient is its communication with its consumers and the greater the chance it has of cutting through the clutter.”

This 360-degree approach is also cited by Toonzone’s Kwak as being of vital importance. “You have to be on every platform,” she insists. “You have to have a TV series, and games, and, of course, an Internet presence. The reality is that TV’s penetration isn’t what it used to be, and love it as we still do, and important as it still is, you have to design your property to work on all platforms.”

Cyber Studios’ Sissmann agrees, noting, “Our series are created from the beginning to become strong brands. The licensing program is designed at the very beginning along with the design of the characters and the writing of the scripts. But we only launch our merchandising program when we have secured TV exposure.”

PLATFORM AGNOSTIC
The importance of designing the series for multiplatform success is something that m4e’s Stoef is keen to stress. “Merchandising potential has to be built into the series. The truth is, 99 percent of the shows on television don’t really have merchandising potential. We design all our shows with 360-degree potential, and we also always work closely with retailers from the start so that we know what they want and can ensure that we have a large enough product line to meet their needs.”

Stoef does not think television exposure is always necessary to launch a property, suggesting, “Some of the other ways of launching a property, such as games and the Internet, are a lot cheaper than television, and, if it works there, you can always move it to television later when it is established.”

Bloomgarden at Saban Brands, however, says that it is “always best to allow your property to gain exposure on television before introducing properties at retail.” Although “the market is very much more fragmented than it was a few years ago,” he points out that “there are some very powerful players within that fragmented market, and we think it is important to take the long view, allow your property to grow its popularity and connection with its audience before launching your products at retail.”

In order to stand out in a cluttered marketplace, YFE’s Piëch says, “It is necessary to be consistent in what you do, and to focus on long-term, universal values. We like to concentrate on series with long-lasting, classic appeal, and also we pride ourselves on providing our clients with consumer products that match our high quality standards.”

Mondo’s Azoury, meanwhile, goes back to the basics: “In order to grab attention in a cluttered marketplace, a property needs cute, catchy characters, good production values and great TV exposure, and a strong master toy licensee capable of driving strong retail sales.”