(As appeared in MIPCOM daily)…
FROM the enduring appeal of Teletubbies, to the endless possibilities of new shows like preschool series Boy & Dragon, Cananda’s WildBrain is getting the most out of imaginiative content across a range of platforms, audiences heard at MIPJunior. Josh Scherba, president of WildBrain, Matt Rennie, vice-president of content & operations and Nico Lockhart, director of production at WildBrain Spark, took to the stage to share a WildBrain IP case study revealing the secrets of driving viewing figures through it’s “audience-led content creation”.
Hosted by Dubits’s senior vice-president Adam Woodgate, the panel explored WildBrain’s 360 approach to monetising kids’ brands globally in the digital world. The speakers revealed how Caillou, Strawberry Shortcake, Boy & Dragon and emojitown have evolved through development, production and distribution led by a unique understanding of audience, platforms and partners.
Rennie said, “We’re about high quality, high-volume, efficient production, treating YouTube as a astreamer with an engaged and scaled audience.”
Lockhart charted successes such as the rebooted Caillou, which follows a four-year-old boy as he discovers the world through imaginative play, as well as emojitown, for which WildBrain offers third-party service brand support. The latter show notched up one billion YouTube views in just 12 months, he said.
Discussing WildBrain’s first original IP, Boy & Dragon, Lockhart described how this show “delivered on its editorial promise” by offering “character-led drama… beyond the slapstick and physical comedy”. He reported that audiences tended to watch an average of four episodes on YouTube.
As owner of the global hit Teletubbies, WildBrain has also been exploring how to revisit an enduring icon with not one by two projects. “Just as Netflix started showing an interest in revising the show, we were already working on Teletubbies Let’s Go!, a new CG-animated spin-off for the official Teletubbies YouTube channel,” Scherba said.