The eighth annual KidScreen Summit was ablaze with activity, literally, as 1,367 executives from the children’s entertainment world converged in New York last week to analyze the future of the industry and, on day one, to flee an electrical fire and flood in the Sheraton Hotel & Towers.

And although the mishap elicited many conversations, multiplatform strategies were top of mind for most delegates this year.

Donna MacNeil, KidScreen’s VP and group publisher, says panels that focused on working in the nonlinear environment were teeming with attendees looking for hints on how to use new media effectively.

‘People weren’t necessarily looking at how to create content, but rather how to use it as a marketing tool,’ she says.

Andrew Lane, brand development manager at prodco marblemedia, says the conference illustrated the need for the industry to rewrite the rules. He points to Taking the Retail Reins, a panel that looked at the exclusive Doodlebops licence agreement between Montreal’s Cookie Jar and online retailer Ty’s Toy Box.

‘It wasn’t traditional and they didn’t have the metrics to say it would work, but they took a gamble and it paid off, and that was a theme for many of the panels this year,’ Lane says.

Navigating uncharted new media played into the summit’s final event, Pitch It -where pre-selected producers had six minutes to present their property to a panel of broadcasters.

Alberta-based producer Rocketfuel captured the event’s top gong with the TV property C.I.E. The toon, geared for eight- to 12-year-olds, centers on a group of online detectives who use hidden access codes to solve mysteries.

Jocelyn Christie, editor of KidScreen magazine, says it was the first year in which all of the pitches included strong multiplatform supports. But MacNeil adds that some of the broadcast judges warned producers some properties swing too much to new media and less on how it would work on television.

Next up is the KidScreen West summit, May 14-15 in Santa Monica, CA, where the panels will focus on licensing, marketing and consumer product strategies for children’s entertainment. Both events are organized by KidScreen magazine, which is owned by Playback’s parent company Brunico Communications.

www.kidscreensummit.com