About 1,500 animation and children’s media industry professionals and newbies gathered at San Diego’s Marriot Marquis last week for this year’s edition of Kidscreen Summit (Feb. 9-12). Among the many timely topics explored by the experts and panelists were how to maximize the potential of new kids’ content on popular digital platforms, practical success strategies in the “new streaming normal,” and the latest developments in the brave new AI universe, as well as presentations by development execs from Nickelodeon, Disney Branded TV, Netflix, BBC Kids, Warner Bros. Discovery, Walmart and others.
In a panel titled “The New Business of Content,” Darran Garnham (Founder & CEO, Tokido), Sean Gorman (President, Cloudco Ent.), Hanna Valkeapää-Nokkala (VP Transmedia, Rovio Entertainment), Andy Yeatman (CEO, Miraculous Corp) and moderator Peter Robinson (Founder, Gone With) discussed how they continue to grow the world of familiar brands such as The Care Bears, Miraculous and Angry Birds in a fast-changing market by focusing on expanding target audiences, fan engagement and loyalty.
“Discoverability and regular media exposure have become more and more challenging as there are so many platforms and it’s hard to have that consistent programmed view time on a weekly basis,” noted Gorman. “The average American consumer spends close to 3.5 hours a day on social media. Older audiences are looking for different things and want the content a certain way. We have more opportunities to expand the audience when we have a new show and a new movie, which are being delivered on different timelines. Brand collaboration is also a powerful tool to drive new audiences and bring in someone else’ s audience into our own brand with classic Care Bear content.”
Yeatman pointed out that a show like Miraculous has its own unique success story because it was launched as a linear show in 2015 on TF1 and Nickelodeon, back when that was the still the number-one way for kids to watch content. “We then experienced the tipping point of streaming,” he noted. “This show was launched 10 years ago almost in the early days of the streaming boom with the old-school production model, with six or seven co-pro partners. Many different broadcasters and studios needed to come together from around the world to fund the show and make it happen. Today, we have over 50 broadcasting and streaming partners, including the original co-pro partners, and we need all of them to make this show.”
Reaching Out to Wider Audiences
Yeatman also noted that although the business of content has changed a lot over the past few years, he and his team still have to manage all their partners. “Thankfully, not all of them give us creative notes,” he added. “But obviously, the ways in which kids interact and discover content has changed dramatically over the past few years. However, broadcast partners still really matter to us. The awareness for our content is strong in countries worldwide, but it’s a little stronger where we have global broadcasters like TF1 (France) and Televisa (Mexico). Of course, YouTube is incredibly important for us, as well as Roblox, which has only been around for four years. They are ways for us to reach new audiences. So, I would say that the model for funding our show is remarkably similar to the early days, but the way that we reach audiences around the world is much more fragmented now.”
Rovio’s Valkeapää-Nokkala noted that a brand like Angry Birds need to cast a wide web to continue to grow and find new audiences. She revealed that the core audience of the popular franchise are not children, but gamers who are between the ages 30 to 60. “Your typical audience of our puzzle game in the U.S. are 40-year-old women, but our slingshot games appeal to much wider audience…from kids to 50-year-old males,” she said. “We do have to cater to very different points of views — for example we have a Mercedes-Benz collaboration as well as a Talking Tom project for younger audience. We explore their back stories with comics to explain the lore to core fans. We also have long-form projects, as well as another feature in production right now. We need to be almost everywhere and that can be a bit hard. Gen Z and Gen Alpha don’t want to get service. They like to feel like they’re part of a tribe, so you need to work closely with the community while staying true to your brand. We do have 10-year road maps for our brand and we just stick to that.
Early Adopters, Superfans and Word of Mouth
In a separate presentation, research and strategy agency Gone With founder Peter Robinson discussed the importance of finding early adopters and turning them into high-yield audiences for brands. “The new models of creating content for kids may or may not take as long as the old one, but they involve many more steps,” he said. “You make the content, then you have to go and find that audience using the platforms available to us. They also need to prove their value, and there are lots of people producing content that offer the same value. You have to listen to that feedback, because you learn from the audience, and at some stage we need to figure out how to get paid. We start thinking about business models, licensed partners and channels, and about investment and funding. There’s a lot of work that we have to do as creators in this new model to get our content to a big audience so that we can actually monetize our work.”
Robinson stressed the rewards of reaching the right audience early on in the process of adoption, as well as creating value for audience growth and viewing habits. “We have tons and tons more data now than we used to, but we have really struggled to think about how that data helps us understand the performance and growth for the brands” he noted. He also emphasized the huge role superfans and positive word-of-mouth (kids to kids, parents to parents and parents to kids) can play, and how to reward casual audiences to drive up numbers and ensure the growth of the project after the delivery of the first season or batch of episodes.
Strategies to Survive Sudden Layoffs
Among the other sessions presented at the Summit this year featured several animation and kids industry veterans speaking candidly about dealing with layoffs and losing jobs during a precarious time in the entertainment business. Sharing their own personal stories, they told personal stories about how they each went through the initial shock and despair stages of being laid off to finding hope and new beginnings with the support of friends and colleagues in the animation community.
Adina Pitt, who left her job as longtime VP of acquisitions, partnerships and co-pros for Warner Bros. Discovery’s kids & family division last year, recalled, “They say everyone’s going to lose their job in any field at some point in their career. I naively didn’t quite process that all good things come to an end. But now I can say to this group that I’m so proud of the time that I’ve had at that company. I went through about six mergers in my career, and that’s a lot of change that’s thrust upon you versus change that you that you initiate. But I’m really excited about the next chapter, because this is a moment in this industry that is going through so much change and so rapidly. To be able to be part of that process and reframing what the industry is going to look like and have the ability to do that now in a different way, that’s actually really exciting.”
She added, “I also have to say that I couldn’t think of a nicer, kinder more supportive community than the kids’ community writ large during what for me was really hard, I’m I don’t think any of us here are victims: I think we all are coming through better, stronger and smarter.”
Jilliane Reinseth, a longtime kids’ TV executive who has held creative leadership roles at Nelvana, Disney, Nickelodeon, Hasbro and WildBrain, and started her own consultancy company called Jolly Chipmunk, talked about the importance of reframing one’s perspective after an unexpected layoff.
“I’ve been laid off a few times because this is what happens in our industry especially with all these mergers, acquisitions and restructures, ” she recalled. “The hardest one emotionally was first layoff: It was my first job in children’s entertainment, and it was at Nickelodeon in Santa Monica. I loved our team and I worked on the first season of SpongeBob and developed and produced The Fairly OddParents. One day, Kevin Kay, who was the head of our team, came out form New York, and we thought we were going to have one of our team meetings. But then my direct Boss went into an individual meeting and came out and told me that he was just let go and that I was going to be let go too! That felt like a knife in my stomach, because it was totally unexpected!”
Reinseth said she first angry and frustrated, but she went on a walk around the block and asked herself, “How do I want to leave this company, and what’s the impression I want to leave them with?” So, instead of being upset, she asked her New York boss how his day was and empathized with him when he told her that it had been the worst day of his life because he had to let so many of his friends and colleagues go. “He told me that the reason we were let go was because this of the impact of the 9/11 tragedy in New York. Originally the layoffs were going to be shared between N.Y.C. and Los Angeles, but after 9/11, they decided that the New York office had been through a very difficult time, and instead just went with the L.A. layoffs. So, I felt then that It was OK, because on a bigger human scale, it was the right thing to do at the time,” she concluded.
Among the helpful tips the panelists shared with the audience was the value of reviewing past achievements and successes and keeping the positives fresh in mind when interviewing for new positions. They also reminded the audience of the most successful strategies for finding new jobs. As Christofer Updike, former VP of development at Peacock Kids and NBC and current senior VP of creative at Hidden Pigeon Company, pointed out, “About 80% of the jobs in the creative industry will be found through someone you know or someone they know. Keep that in mind, that means your friends or their friends. That was true for me: That’s how I got my job.”
For more information, visit summit.kidscreen.com/2025.
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