Viacom’s Leigh Anne Brodsky

January 2007

By Anna Carugati

Visit just about any toy
store and chances are you’ll see a whole range of Nickelodeon-branded products,
from Dora dollhouses to SpongeBob
SquarePants video games to Blue’s
Clues toys and books. Leigh Anne
Brodsky, the president of Nickelodeon and Viacom Consumer Products, oversees
the Nickelodeon and Viacom consumer-products business, as well as the licensing
and merchandising for Nickelodeon and Nick Jr., MTV Networks International,
Comedy Central, Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Paramount, TV Land and Spike TV.
Brodsky is always looking for new ways to extend the experience viewers enjoy
with TV shows and characters on screen to a wide range of products.

WS: The
consumer-products market is a very crowded one. What is Viacom’s general
philosophy toward this business?

BRODSKY: It
really is another brand experience. Our core business is either movies or tele­vision
programming or our websites. Our view is to take the beloved characters and
story lines and favorite properties into another creative iteration based on
the brand. The real magic happens when there is an emotional connection between
the consumer and that property. So there can be shows that do quite well on TV
and people love them, but if there is not the emotional connection to the show
or to the brand, they tend not to be interested in extending that brand
experience to purchasing toys or home products or T-shirts or shoes with the
characters on them.

WS: Do you
start thinking of products while you are developing a show or are you focused
on creating the best show possible, and the products come later?

BRODSKY: It’s
the latter. Nickelodeon is looking to create dynamic shows that are relevant to
our very broad kid audience of boys and girls up to age 12, 13, 14. Nickelodeon
looks for shows that stand out, that reflect the world that kids live in today.
So there’s diversity on our screen and also creator-driven shows that are
different and represent a kid’s point of view, so kids feel empowered.

There are a lot of great
development criteria, but one of them is not necessarily consumer products. But
I should say that once we see that a show is hitting and has an audience that
is excited about it, and that the ratings continue to climb and the Q scores
start to grow, then we know that it may be something that could work in
consumer products. And for each property we take a different approach from a
consumer-products perspective.

With SpongeBob, for example, we actually started with products
for an older demo because we had heard that college kids and teenagers were
taping the show. So we launched with some higher-end, older kids’ products that
gave the property an aspirational feel at retail. But that could never have
been possible had the show’s writing not been so strong and as appealing to
adults as it is to kids. That has definitely helped us there.

In the case of Dora, it’s clearly for preschoolers, and after the show
was on for almost two years, we started to come out with products. We started
with apparel, mainly for girls. When we started to develop dolls with Fisher-­Price, we found that Dora was ideal for that
product category, because of her hair and her look and her eyes—she
really translated really nicely into 3-D. So we went that route. In the case of
The Backyardigans, it’s an
ensemble show, so the product line—T-shirts, apparel, sleepwear and toys—reflects
all the characters. We have multiple characters on the shelves.

WS: What about the properties from Comedy Central and
Paramount?

BRODSKY: South
Park is by far the biggest hit
that we have in the consumer-products area for our adult brands. The show just
celebrated its tenth season, so we have created collectible figures that
reflect famous moments from the show; we’ve done boxer shorts and T-shirts and
chess sets, and of course DVDs are a huge seller for us.

For Comedy Central in
general, our busiest category is DVD, so we have created footprints at retail
that are Comedy Central sections. We are able to create a home for products
from South Park to Chappelle’s Show
to RENO 911! and Mind of
Mencia. So anyone who is a fan of
comedy and specifically of Comedy Central can go to that spot at retail and see
a number of their favorite shows and the products from those shows.

We also manage the
Paramount licensing, and this year for the first time we introduced a licensed
product line based on The Godfather.
We created an award-winning video game that has sold close to millions of units
so far globally. And we also came out with a high-end line of T-shirts. We were
told that the Godfather T-shirt
at Neiman Marcus was the best-selling T-shirt they had ever had. It was an
incredible success. And next year we will come out with more Godfather products.

WS: When you
have well-known brands like Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, does that make the
work with retailers easier?

BRODSKY: The
idea of a presold brand is absolutely part of the battle. But at the end of the
day, compared to ten years ago, today there are half as many retail outlets and
retail accounts in the U.S.

With all of the media
growth, you could argue that the shelf space has lessened while there are more
properties. It’s a very challenging environment, and retailers want something
that has a proven track record, yet they want stuff that is new, so it’s
sometimes contradictory. Having the well-known brands helps, but that is just
part of the equation. You’ve got to be able to come up with something that is
customized for the retailers. With retail consolidation, they each need to make
sure that they stand out, so we have to go in with specific promotions and
marketing programs for them. And then, of course, it’s about getting the
product right, and making sure that the pricing is right and the packaging is
right. All those things come into play and we coordinate with the network and
make sure that when they are doing something big on air, we try to do it at
retail.

WS: How do
you decide what products can best extend a character’s life beyond the screen?

BRODSKY: We
have certain partners that we have done business with over the years. So we
have a very collaborative relationship with a number of our licensees.
Sometimes we watch tons of the episodes and we brainstorm. We look at trends in
the marketplace and what products are popular in terms of kids or teens or
whatever age group. We look at how well certain product lines of our
competition are doing at retail. So there are a lot of things you take into
account. But there are certain products that you always try to do: obviously
DVD is one, toys are another, T-shirts, some kind of apparel program. But then
there are other categories. We’ve been doing a number of products in the pet
area. We just did a licensed SpongeBob hamster cage [laughs].
Sometimes you go into categories that are not so obvious, but it was part of an
extension of our pet products.

There is health and
wellness. That is an area that we immediately thought we could make a
difference in. We did a license for SpongeBob spinach, we have Dora clementines. We’ve also done a number of healthy products
like carrots and Craisins [dried cranberries] and use our characters in ways
that can be good for kids. We’ve always said that what’s good for kids is good
for business, and it has proven to be true. We’ve found that our partners who
are doing the SpongeBob
carrots, for example, saw their sales really go through the roof, and it is
because of the power of these characters.

WS: What have
been some of your most recent products?

BRODSKY: In
addition to partnering with Hasbro on some classic games, like a SpongeBob Monopoly, we’ve also done things like a SpongeBob and Dora Etch a Sketch. We also
introduced a SpongeBob Lego set that has done well and an Avatar Lego
set. So we look to brands that are already [established] in the marketplace,
and by adding our character and its different characteristics the brand is
taken to a whole other level. That has been very well received.

Charlotte’s Web came out before Christmas. It’s a Nickelodeon
movie from Paramount Pictures and we’ve come up with a very limited and
targeted beautiful product line. We have a Madame Alexander doll based on the
character Fern. We have Ty Beanie Babies with Gussy the Goose and Wilber the
Pig. We created a Charlotte’s Web
Scrabble game. We also did some really high-end products, including cashmere
sweater sets that have the spider web on them and some really beautiful
T-shirts that have some of the inspiring words from the book. And we even
created a Pave Swarovski Crystal handbag that retails for more than $1,200.