Tasty Furniture? Lemon Scented Breakfast?

I'm all for developing line looks for packaging that are "on brand", but sometimes striving for consistency to achieve the same look in branded packaging isn't a good idea. I think Walmart ought to give a little more thought to how they approach packaging for their Great Value brand before someone makes their morning pancakes with furniture polish.

Franklin, Barbie, and Calliou - LIVE!

Live entertainment for kids' brands is often a key component of a solid marketing strategy. For leading brands, live shows in theaters and malls are a great source of revenue. For other brands, live shows can heighten awareness and appeal among kids and their parents.

By coincidence, I have worked closely on all the brands featured in ad in this weekend's Toronto Star for Toronto's Sony Centre for the Performing Arts. I started my career in the toy industry working on Barbie branded products. Franklin the Turtle was every kids' best friend when I worked at Nelvana for four years, and it was like he became my friend too. It appears that the Franklin live show is similar (identical?) to the "Franklin and the Green Knight" program that I worked on at Nelvana. Finally, I got to know Caillou as master toy licensee when I was Marketing Director at Irwin Toy.

It's nice to see how these classic brands continue to entertain kids and gratifying to know that I played a part.

Sesame Street's Grover as "The Old Spice Guy"

As someone who works in marketing and entertainment, I've also thought that one of the greatest honors is to be parodied on Sesame Street. An even bigger achievement is to have Sesame Street parodying a parody, which is exactly what they've done with Grover's take on the Old Spice Guy:

Toy Tuesday: Fill in the Spot with Lego

This cute video from Lego uses clever visual devices to show how you can build anything from Lego.

Build Anything from Studiocanoe on Vimeo.

Just the Right Senses of Humor and Propriety

The Toronto Star’s current series on Canadian culture offers a fascinating overview of kids’ TV shows that are produced in Canada.

They quote many industry experts, including Cookie Jar’s Michael Hirsh, the BBC’s Adrian Mills, and Caroline Fortier from The Alliance for Children and Television.

The Star correctly points out that Canadian kids’ programming has wide appeal around the world because it seems to have just the right sense of humor and just the right sense of propriety:

• We have a good sense of what is acceptable and what is not acceptable.
• Canadians have different values. We are a cross between the European and the American.
• Canadian kids’ shows score low on violence and very high on informal education, happy characters and scenes depicting social relationships, ecological behaviour and cultural activities.
• We have shared social and cultural values --a passion and deep-rooted respect for the audience.
• Canadian producers can bring an ‘American’ sensibility to a program — particularly in animation or live-action drama for older kids — but in a toned-down, safer kind of way which some consider more palatable than the undiluted product.

Children’s television in general, and animation in particular, is a real Canadian forte, and I feel privileged to work with several Canadian companies who bring great entertainment to kids around the world.

Check out the full article in The Star here.