Network pulled back merchandise in order to reinvent and relaunch familiar characters
Nickelodeon’s Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Pictured (clockwise): Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo, and April O'Neil.
As long as pizza remains popular, the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles will be ripe for reinvention.
What began as a comic book series in 1984 is now one of the most durable properties in kids’ media. In September, Nickelodeon debuted the 2D animated series
Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the network’s second reboot of the property following a CGI-animated show that ran from 2012-17.
According to Pam Kaufman, President, Viacom/Nickelodeon Consumer Products (VNCP), merchandise played a key role in both reboots. “Back in 2010, we were thinking of making a meaningful play in the consumer products business,” she says. “Frankly, in our own portfolio of development, there wasn’t a property that would go down the action figure aisle,” Kaufman tells
Variety.
So Viacom found
TMNT, which was then a dormant intellectual property (IP). “It felt like Nickelodeon: Four brothers, it’s funny, amazing adventures, wasn’t that violent. And then we found a creative team that was ready to reinvent it.”
After relaunching it for a new generation of kids and their nostalgic parents, Kaufman says, “it quickly became the No. 1 selling action figure, for multiple years. So: mission accomplished.”
But there’s a property life cycle to all IP, and Kaufman eventually noticed a consumer products decline in the
Turtles merchandise. “In late 2015, we decided that we want to manage our own future and our own contractions of retail,” she says. “So we took a pretty bold step, and decided as a company: we’re going to pull back on
Turtles. It’s time to reinvent. So we slowly removed product from the shelves.”
For the 2018 2D relaunch, in which co-executive producers Ant Ward and Andy Suriano return to the humor and action of the original comic book, with a young, multicultural cast (and different species of turtles), Viacom
collaborated with Playmates Toys, the longtime master toy licensee for
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to invent a new toy line, replacing the older products on the shelves.
Thirty-five years into the
Turtles life cycle, Kaufman says it still feels new. “It’s a property that has reinvention in its DNA. Our creative team has always had a blast working on it.”
Also, from Variety:
In the New Retail World Order, Licensing Partners Become Competitors
Studios, networks, merchants are in multi-directional race for consumers' dollars
Despite the demise of Toys R Us, which rocked sales for Hollywood’s film and TV merchandise, the death of retail stores is exaggerated.
Online commerce only accounts for around 10% of U.S. retail sales, and such brick-and-mortar mass-market retailers as Walmart and Target are still corralling two-thirds of sales in many product categories. But the pursuit of direct-to-consumer sales online by all players in the merchandise ecosystem has unleashed multi-directional competition, and that contributed to Toys R Us shuttering its stores in bankruptcy earlier this year.
“It used to be sacrosanct that studios and television networks not compete with retailers and manufacturers,” says Ira Mayer, a New York-based consultant and co-director of the Institute of Branding & Licensing at Long Island U.-Post. “Now the studios and TV networks sell direct to consumers, and the manufacturers sell direct to consumers, competing with their retailer customers. Everybody is competing with everybody. That’s where the real stress in retail is today.”
This “new retail world order” will be the subject of a panel at Nickelodeon’s Partner Summit, moderated by Variety executive editor Debra Birnbaum, on Nov. 13 at Paramount Studios.
As competition comes from every angle, the mantra from licensed-merchandise executives is: They want to stand out by delivering to consumers a uniform purchasing experience across all platforms and, if possible, inject an emotional component to products. The emotional experience is best delivered in brick-and-mortar stores where consumers can be presented with big video screens, costumed characters prowling the aisles and other razzle-dazzle.
“You have to give [shoppers] an experience and consistency in our storytelling,” says Pam Lifford, president of Warner Bros. global brands and experiences. “It’s very difficult in the fragmented media environment. There is no one answer to that, other than you have to be everywhere, 24/7.”
How to standardize experience across diverse retail platforms? Online retailers selectively let Hollywood content owners and product manufacturers plant landing pages or virtual stores in primo slots on their commerce websites.
“Many retailers are asking us to curate our brand experience in virtual storefronts on their websites,” says Dion Vlachos, executive VP, U.S. retail sales and global publishing, Viacom Nickelodeon Consumer Products. Such virtual stores do more than sell with a click; they provide backstory on products to draw consumers deeper into franchises and details on in-store promotions. They also weave in merchandise for sale in a subtle way.
Within the growth of online commerce, says Ken Potrock, Disney president, consumer products commercialization, Disney parks, experiences and consumer products, “the biggest lift in traffic and conversion for shopDisney is coming from mobile.”
“Everybody is competing with everybody. That’s where the real stress in retail is today.” IRA MAYER, CONSULTANT
The brick-and-mortar stores are where the potential is broader for injecting some razzmatazz with consumers buying licensed merchandise. “Some of our retail partners are really focused on content, while others want to leverage local, in-store events or exclusive product,” says Potrock. “It really depends on what each retailer is looking to accomplish.”
Retailer Target creates video content to promote Hollywood brands in 60- and 90-minute videos that are mined for source material to create a halo effect across online and physical stores.
“We’ll bring that to social media, Instagram and Facebook in six-second video increments,” says William White, senior VP marketing at Target. “That total experience seems cohesive when our guests later walk into one of our stores.”
Hollywood merchandise pros say the vitality of physical stores is also evident at dollar stores, which used to simply blow out obsolete Hollywood merchandise — such as unsold products from flops — but increasingly have received products for current Hollywood brands.
“The bulk of our business today is definitely done in bricks and mortar, but we take an omni-channel approach to retail,” says Carolann Dunn, vice president of consumer products for Discovery. “We want to have our products our superfans are.”
Tipsheet
What: Nickelodeon’s Partner Summit
When: 4 p.m. Nov. 13
Where: Paramount Studios, Hollywood
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