With the ever-widening broadcast avenues for children’s programming, it still takes a Herculean effort to build an audience for a show. But now, more than ever, producers must build a market for their products – toys, home videos, cds, cd-roms, Websites, apparel, you name it – and the major challenge in children’s merchandising has gone from battling for shelf space and distribution to managing the distance between good exposure and over-exposure.

‘It’s something that we spend a lot of time thinking about,’ says Sid Kaufman, Nelvana’s l.a.-based executive vp of worldwide merchandising, who’s heading up a campaign for Maurice Sendak’s Little Bear that includes 23 North American licensees marketing products including plush toys, party supplies, costumes, puzzles and apparel.

‘The goal is to never really exceed the market. In the licensing business, if you oversupply, you’re subject to being closed out [marked down], and when you’re closed out, there’s a perception in our business that it’s over. The retailer says, `My battery-operated toothbrushes for Little Bear aren’t selling. I think the property’s dead.’ ‘

‘The issue of brand management is probably the single most important consideration, and that’s every move you make in the licensing area,’ says Andrew Cochran, president of Halifax-based Cochran Entertainment, whose Theodore Tugboat line of toys became available in stores in October.

He says producers have to decide what the public’s perception would be of the show and its characters if they saw them on a pencil or in the form of beautifully crafted toys.

‘If you get that wrong, that’s what devalues the whole brand, right down to the value of the television show,’ Cochran says.

Cochran also warns against the power of some licensees’ persuasion. ‘There’s a lot of people that can make a very compelling argument or case for their services and products, and it’s easy to be tempted,’ he comments. ‘Like anything else, if you really try to stick to your knitting, that in the long term is what continues to build the value [of the product].’

Part of understanding the product and its market includes knowing when to draw the line.

‘We’ve had interest from other companies in plush that really just didn’t feel right,’ says Mary Graziano, Cinar’s manager of licensing, referring to Wimzie’s House, which has a line of educational products including activity books now available, and floor puzzles, audio cassettes with learning activity guides and videos.

‘If you have one message out there in the educational markets. . . and you have another out at retail, it somehow just doesn’t ring true. That’s when you know when to draw the line,’ Graziano comments.

Cinar is currently negotiating a multimedia deal for two Wimzie’s House cd-roms with American publisher Simon Schuster for North American or worldwide distribution. Cinar and Micro-Intel of Montreal have been developing the two cd-roms for two years and anticipate a fall 1999 release. Cinar also has a Wimzie home video with Sony coming out in fall 1999.

Building the market

Some of the company representatives interviewed for this article say the popularity and quality of their programs were the spark for big sales.

‘Kids want to have that extension with brands and characters,’ Kaufman says. ‘Through this repetition on television (referring to Little Bear airing twice a day on Nick Jr. in the u.s. and recently the subject of a five-hour Nick Jr. marathon on Sept. 28), that market has presented itself to us.’

He explains that when launching a merchandising program to coincide with the launch of the television show or movie as is often done, ‘you don’t really have a market and you have to spend an enormous amount of money to develop one.’

Instead, he says Little Bear viewers are ‘loyal’ and ‘that only happens over time,’ adding that part of the reason Little Bear hadn’t been merchandised until now ‘had to do with the fact the market didn’t exist and the rights were just not that sought after.’

Steve McNie, Sharon, Lois & Bram’s manager, also emphasizes the importance of producing a good children’s program before jumping on the merchandising bandwagon.

‘Because it’s Sharon, Lois & Bram and they’re like the Rolling Stones of preschool entertainment doesn’t necessarily mean that we have enough critical mass to start merchandising. Everything starts with an excellent and marketable product.’

It then continues with the merchandising. On Oct. 27, Skinnamarink Entertainment released a Skinnamarink tv audio recording. A plush toy line with characters CC Copycat and Ella Accapella was launched in October. Distributed through KidsMotion, the toys are available at major retailers including Toys R Us and Wal-Mart.

Also entering the plush toy arena with an established audience is ytv’s Fuzzpaws through a strategic alliance with Hasbro Canada.

‘They’ve had significant airtime and they’re well-known,’ says Susan Mandryk, ytv’s vp of marketing. ‘There’s quite a loyal following of preschoolers. We thought that was a natural entree into the plush category since it is a preschool category.’

The Hasbro/ytv line includes Fuzzpaw puppets, water pals, novelties and puzzles, as well as novelty toys and Dark Night games and puzzles.

Other markets

While ytv products, for instance, are available at mass-market chains Wal-Mart, Zeller’s, Shopper’s Drug Mart and The Bay, other producers are targeting their product lines in specialty markets, which according to Devine Entertainment’s president David Devine is the key to success.

‘With The Composers’ Specials [six two-hour fact-based drama programs on hbo and pbs, now available on video], we really do belong in specialty markets like piano stores, Yamaha stores or music shops,’ says Devine, whose target audience is eight- to 11-year-olds.

‘If you were to go to the hmvs or Tower [Records] of the world today,’ Devine says, you’d have ‘an awfully difficult time’ competing with popular artists such as Celine Dion or even Yo-Yo Ma.

‘If you want longevity and you have a product that you feel is long-lasting. . . you want to look for consistent ways to market to your target audience. So we want to keep the markets we have and slowly expand into specialty markets and stay in educational markets.’

Milwaukee, Wisconsin-based Hal Leonard, one of the largest suppliers of sheet music and musical notation in the world, distributes The Composers’ Specials series to about 500 music stores in the u.s.

Devine Entertainment also uses its pbs airtime to sell the series through an 800 number, which airs at the end of each program. Devine took a reduced licence fee in exchange for the number, which went on the air in September. He says that not only does it increase sales through the broadcast, but it helps people recognize the series when they see it at a retail outlet. Devine says it’s too early to release sales figures.

Devine has also taken a different direct sales route through family-oriented Salt Lake City, Utah company Feature Films for Families, which is distributing Devine’s video Beethoven Lives Upstairs via catalog and direct mail for the next 80 weeks. He says Feature Films has a mailing list of about 250,000 families in the u.s.

Kaufman says Nelvana has also targeted u.s. specialty stores with its products, and in some cases the retailers may have as few as 50 outlets, such as Noodle Kadoodle, one of Nelvana’s first retailers.

‘It’s hard to get a national chain to make that kind of commitment with 500 or 1,000 stores,’ Kaufman explains, ‘because they want to see some performance before they can make a commitment to a property. They’ve been pitched and heard the hype before.’

In February 1999, Little Bear will be the subject of a window display at New York’s FAO Schwarz, probably the world’s most famous toy store.

Another benefit some producers see in the American specialty toy store market, according to Cochran, is that the specialties are devoted to high-end kids’ products, and are usually more committed to the toys’ collectibility and having them on shelves for a long time.

‘Being accepted in those stores adds value to the perception of the characters and builds that sense of value into the brand,’ he says, adding that the mass-market stores are more volume-oriented and looking for this year’s big seller.

He laments the fact that this clear line between the two types of stores is drawn only in the States with stores such as Noodle Kadoodle, Zany Brainy and FAO Schwarz. In Canada, one of the largest specialties stores, Moyer’s Kids Are Worth It, went out of business several years ago.

Another specialty market on tap for kids’ product is concerts. Sharon, Lois & Bram obviously have made their living with concerts, but Treehouse tv is taking Ants in Your Pants, a kids’ music video program, on the road this spring. The net recently released its first Ants in Your Pants cd through ZepLenz in Toronto. Volume two will be in the works sometime in the undetermined future.

‘When we look at Treehouse,’ says Susan Ross, vp/gm Treehouse, ‘we don’t look at it as a specialty television service, we look at it as an opportunity for us to extend into all kinds of preschool-focused children’s entertainment.’

New media

ytv shows the same brand extension philosophy with its cd-rom partnership with Beamscope, cd-roms for Sailor Moon and Eat My Dust this fall and Flipper, Muppet’s Treasure Island and The New Kid on the Block in 1999.

‘We looked at where kids spend their time away from tv,’ Mandryk says.

Cambium Film & Video Productions has also been developing a series of new media and interactive properties for two of its programs, Bangs and the Tank and Monster by Mistake.

Dan Fill, Cambium’s creative development officer, says the company is developing a video game, along the lines of a Nintendo or Sony Playstation style game, and an educational cd-rom that teaches eight- to 12-year-olds how to play baseball.

Cambium is also developing a $200,000 interactive Website for Monster by Mistake with Toronto new media development company Templar iii. With an expected 1999 launch, when its first 13 episodes air on ytv, the site will have video components and show information, while advertisements and online purchasing are expected to be available in the site’s second year. ytv is currently airing Monster’s pilot, and a basic Website is already available (www.monsterbymistake.com).

Devine is also developing a close to $500,000 interactive Website with Rollercoaster Studios to complement its Inventors’ Specials, the six-part film series about inventors. To be launched in March ’99, the site will have videoclips from the films and chat groups, and further into the future, a product purchasing component.