Josh Scherba Talks WildBrain Gains

In his first TV Kids Festival appearance since ascending to the president and CEO role at WildBrain, Josh Scherba showcased the company’s brand-building strategies and scale.

You can watch Scherba’s keynote session with TV Kids’ Anna Carugati here. It began with Scherba articulating WildBrain’s 360-degree approach to managing its wealth of iconic kids’ and family brands. “It is about our full suite of in-house capabilities, which allows us to go from initial concept through to screen through to retail. Having those capabilities all in-house makes us quite unique as an independent.”

Carugati asked Scherba about the company’s recent restructure around three key pillars: content creation, audience engagement and global licensing. “To get to this next stage of growth for our own and partner IP, we needed a simplification and a focused approach,” Scherba said on what motivated the move. “We started by taking a look at all of our in-house capabilities and distilling them down into their core objectives. That’s how we landed on the three pillars of content creation, audience engagement and global licensing. Once we had those in place, it was a process of structuring our company around them, along with a strategy that focused on a handful of our own IP and those of partner IP. It’s early days, but I will say that the clarification and simplification is making a big difference in terms of driving our business internally, and our partners are seeing it. Over time, I’m confident that we’ll get the results we’ve been looking for through this refined strategy.”

Carugati asked Scherba about the audience engagement issue and the tools WildBrain is employing to deepen how fans interact with and discover content. “It used to be that linear broadcasters were the key curators of video content. Now, kids are doing their own curation; they go from screening something on an SVOD service to YouTube to non-YouTube AVOD and then over to gaming platforms—whether it be Roblox, Minecraft or Fortnite. For brand owners to really understand this and have a holistic strategy is a huge advantage.”

The audience engagement capabilities at WildBrain run across its YouTube network of channels, its global distribution business, AVOD and FAST services and a Canadian broadcast operation, with a digital marketing team and an ad-sales solution. WildBrain CPLG, the company’s global licensing operation, has expanded its AsiaPac operations and built a skill set in location-based entertainment. Gaming is also a key opportunity, Scherba noted. “Our research is showing that approximately 76 percent of users of Roblox found games either on YouTube or then went back to YouTube for tips on playing games. Over 50 percent play Roblox while they have a video playing at the same time on YouTube. Over 50 percent of moms in the U.S. and U.K. regularly co-game with kids ages 6 to 8. Those stats point to a couple of things: that these kids are moving from platform to platform and building their own experiences and also that family plays a role in media moving forward. We’re referring to it as the family mediaverse.”

On navigating WildBrain through the complex maze of market conditions, Scherba said, “It’s about having a strategy and a structure that gives you a direction of where you’re going, but also allows you some flexibility to adapt along the way. It’s also keeping a close eye on those changes in consumption because it will continue to evolve quickly. At the same time, it’s about not losing sight of the long-term, consistent trends in this business, which always come back to great characters and story. You can never forget that, in spite of all the changes that are happening in the day-to-day.”