By: Maryam Siddiqi

We all know that a great idea can come from anywhere, but the scale of content creation today is so vast that determining which ideas have potential for expansion—and which don’t—is daunting and complex. Kidscreen spoke with three digital-first companies to get a read on their strategies for finding new IPs and monetizing them in as many ways as possible.

The takeaway? Don’t just think outside the box—get rid of it.

pocket.watch

Pocket.watch launched with five YouTube creators in 2017 and made a business out of transforming channels and personalities into franchises. Today, it has 30 creators/channels and distributes content to 45 platforms in 80 countries. In June, the company signed on 13 more creators. How does pocket.watch keep its pipeline full? Kerry Tucker, chief marketing and franchise officer, explains.

The hunt: Size of audience is no longer the metric it used to be, says Tucker. Today, a YouTube channel is not even a slam-dunk at 100 million followers. What does matter is authenticity.

“It’s important that creators come to us with an authentic story, that they really love what they do and do it for a reason—and we can suss that out pretty quickly,” she notes. “Kids and family creator management at pocket.watch is a very high-touch business with deep subject matter expertise. From the CEO down, we’re always scouting for talent on social channels—who’s emerging, who’s trending. And we have a 10-person creator management team dedicated to handling everything from scouting, to contract reviews, to day-to-day management.”

She adds, “Many of these creators are just families in their living rooms, so it’s really just human management as we move them from something very insular into a broader business landscape.”

The assessment: Pocket.watch invests in creators across all platforms, including YouTube and TikTok. “The scale and diversity on YouTube is still incredibly strong and provides unique opportunities, specifically related to a creator’s library of long-form content,” Tucker says.

The company looks at data and demographics, as well as key metrics like engagement and audience penetration globally.

“Franchise value is really interesting because we look to develop franchises from digital-first talent, which is a bit of a differentiation for us. A video library is one of the most important things that we look for because we specialize in transcending the content from YouTube onto other platforms,” says Tucker. “The libraries are very important for that business, and give us an immediate secondary revenue stream for these creators.

The opportunity: The final consideration is whitespace. As Tucker explains: “Where are we not playing? We want all of the world’s kids to see themselves in our content, and therefore representation really matters. So we will forgo scale for representation, if necessary. Gaming is still a massive opportunity that I don’t think is going to go away anytime soon. And I’ve been really interested in what’s happening in magic [as a category]—it feels ripe for disruption.”

Pocket.watch’s definition of diversity is not limited to demographics, says Tucker, explaining that “it also includes a diversity of perspective, lifestyle and geography.”

She cites Hudson’s Playground as an example. The YouTube-based IP with over a million subscribers is about a family living on a working farm. “We believe Hudson’s Playground can potentially provide the inspiration to disrupt the genre of farming through everything from original content to consumer products.”

Invisible Universe

According to CEO Tricia Biggio, Invisible Universe (IU) considers itself an internet-first animation company that utilizes storytellers, animation studios and community managers to create and distribute content on the platforms that everyone visits most often on their phones—TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.

The company has developed mobile-led IPs for kid audiences with celebrities such as Jennifer Aniston and Serena Williams, and it raised US$12 million this summer to fuel its expansion. While IU’s strategy is to partner with influential creatives or personalities to develop brands, Biggio says it’s the process to exploit them that sets it apart.

Invisible Universe works with high-profile personalities to bring kid-friendly ideas to life, including Clydeo, based on Jennifer Aniston’s canine buddy.

The hunt: At Invisible Universe, the hunt is all about connecting new IPs with the right audiences, and then using those connections to further develop and exploit the IPs. “There’s this incredible whitespace that social media platforms provide to incubate IPs in collaboration—and in near real time—with the very audiences that will later become your consumers,” says Biggio.

“It’s more of a collaborative, direct-to-consumer approach, letting an audience tell you what they love about it and what they don’t. If you look at some of the broader trends around gaming and where kids are spending their time creating—in the Epic Games ecosystem, in Roblox—that same desire to build and create is going to extend to entertainment.”

When it comes to partnering to develop content, the company looks to all sectors of entertainment, whether it’s sports or film. “It’s crucial that the partner is genuinely interested in the creative development and willing to promote any franchise expansions, such as books, TV shows or other kinds of licensed products,” says Biggio.

Clydeo, whose TikTok bio is “Dog, Foodie, Cousin, Best Friend of Jennifer Aniston,” was created in partnership with Aniston (the character is an animated dog based on her own pooch, Clyde). The actor gives input into storylines and licensing opportunities, but isn’t involved in the day-to-day creative.

The assessment: The number of people liking, favoriting, sharing and commenting weekly on Invisible Universe’s content is in the tens of thousands, according to Biggio. “We getthis really organic pickup, and what we’re able to do then is start to look for the signs and signals of affinity getting built,” she says.

“We look at engagement—the number of likes or comments over the number of views on that particular post. But then there’s also what I consider the signs and signals, things like publishers reaching out, the streamers inquiring about film and TV rights, conversations with toy companies. We’re looking for that initial build on social, which spurs the conversations for franchise extensions.”

The opportunity: A big part of Invisible Universe’s success stems from the ability to respond to its audience with new animation in a matter of days, notes Biggio.

“On a micro level, we can source content ideas in the comments,” she says. “But on a macro level, we’re earning the audience’s affection for a brand, because we’re showing them that we’re always listening, and we’re letting them feel like they’re part of the process.”

However, she adds that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to social, and IU tailors content and community management to each specific platform. For example, content for Qai Qai, a sassy doll, is aimed at an older audience on TikTok, while preschool kids are the target for the YouTube channel Qai Qai’s Nursery Rhyme Remixes.

TIME Studios

Established kids entertainment exec Maria Perez-Brown joined TIME’s new kids & family division in June 2021 and quickly started looking for new ways to source IPs to make the legacy brand’s content stand out, landing on the nascent world of NFTs for source material.

“As a new studio, we needed to make a splash, so we’re coming at IP creation and ownership differently,” says Perez-Brown. “Our Web3 division, in addition to helping people amplify their brands around NFTs, is also generating NFTs of the covers of TIME magazine. Because of that, we have a lot of respect in the industry from the creative community, which happens to be very young. We’re getting access to new, innovative voices that are not coming through traditional sources to pitch shows.

The littles is one of the projects on TIME Studios’ Web3-based slate of animated series.

The hunt: “When I start having conversations with NFT creators, I see that there’s a world there—an IP that they’ve thought about quite deeply—but it’s not necessarily reflected in the illustrations that become the basis of their NFTs,” notes Perez-Brown.

“Their rules are very different from the rules that we all subscribe to in creating content for children. That whole dynamic of the traditional journey to [develop a] series is inverted, because they’re drawing, putting their images out there and taking them directly to the consumers. And the people who buy NFTs become the marketers of that particular IP.”

When evaluating creators, Perez-Brown says she and her team look for places where TIME Studios can bring added value to a creative relationship, asking: “How can we look at communities that have very strong, static creatives and use the strength of TIME Studios to help them develop character arcs and storylines that nobody thought were possible?”

The assessment: In a global market, the concept has to have global reach, notes Perez-Brown. “Diversity is also one of our pillars. There are universal stories in all of the shows that we do, but do we have a diverse lens to tell that story through?”

Another priority is to ensure that the creator’s fanbase will support this new form of content. “The creator has to have a real community that rallies around them and adores them,” she says.

The challenge: For TIME Studios, the main challenge is how to cut down the time it takes to produce a traditional television show, says Perez-Brown, adding that the answer to this question is still not clear.

“If we’re going to take a new IP and put it through the regular channels of creating a TV show, that’s a two-year process, and this community is a little impatient,” she says. “They really want to see results right away, because with NFTs, you’re able to come up with an idea and get it to market very quickly.

So we are also working with animation houses that understand that speed is an important element of this—speed to market, but not sacrificing quality and remembering that you’re going to be there for an audience of kids who are getting content from many different sources.”

The studio is learning and adapting to this form of IP-building in real time, adds Perez-Brown, pointing to the company’s agreement with Toronto-based Nelvana to develop and produce NFT-based animated series as an example.

“We’ve moved at an unheard-of pace,” she says about the deal, which went from idea to handshake in just seven months. “[The time between] the announcement that we were developing these properties and the partnership with Nelvana was infinitely shorter than most.”

The opportunity: It’s all about seeing everything as an idea, says Perez-Brown. “With the two or three IPs that we’re working with right now, we’re talking to publishers, and we already have scripts and bibles on the way for traditional TV series. We’re also looking at ways that we can enhance the NFT experience by launching a new NFT with different traits or different characters that may or may not be related to the original NFT.”

No matter what model is on trial, companies will need courage and confidence as they experiment in new spaces. And then, of course, it will be up to kids to determine just how far they’ll go.