PETER FITTON - senior vice-president and general manager, ad sales and promotions, The Walt Disney Company UK and EMEA
- Are clients becoming more interested in doing EMEA deals? If so, why?
We have seen growth in interest from partners wanting to work with us at a regional level - for example, we worked with Peugeot on a major EMEA campaign around the launch of Toy Story 3. Partners want to ensure consistency of message, maximise assets, create efficiencies and achieve value across markets. Scale is also important - we were able to work with Pixar to create a bespoke piece of Toy Story animation for Peugeot to use in its advertising, which was a real first. We've also seen continued growth in brands wanting to work with us on a country-by-country basis, when the need is to ensure that each campaign is 100 per cent local and tailored.
- How does your pan-EMEA business complement what you do in the UK?
Our local in-country teams, and our regional EMEA team, work as a close-knit group, in planning regional campaigns, and also in sharing best practice. We are finding that sharing ideas around our team, and getting diverse perspectives, can inspire great creativity. Our UK and Ireland team recently integrated and launched Disneymedia+, giving our partners the opportunity to work with us on much broader and innovative campaigns.
- How are you getting advertisers involved with your content?
In short: across many touchpoints, with only appropriate brands. We're working with partners across platforms such as TV, cinema, Disney Stores, online, DVD/Blu-ray, and in the experiential and live events space, to create bespoke opportunities. As a trusted family brand, it's important that we partner with brands that are aligned with our values, and add to our audiences' experiences.
- What trends are you seeing in children's advertising?
The kids and family market seems to follow an exaggerated trend of the rest of the market. Retailers are an extremely influential force on the kids' advertising market, and spending patterns are reliant on listings and shelf space, so integrated campaigns, creative sponsorship and promotions and having a trusted brand will continue to be incredibly appealing and effective for this audience.
- How are you generating revenues outside of the traditional TV space?
With the launch of Disneymedia+, we are giving trusted partners the ability to access the whole of the Disney "universe" in an integrated way, using all of our platforms, from film partnerships such as the Pirates Of The Caribbean franchise, to Disneyland Paris events, to live theatre such as The Lion King, to integrated online and mobile activity.
- What is your view on how TV works best with digital?
I think everyone knows how much kids now multi-task across different platforms: television acts as the stimulus, and digital acts as the glue to enable a more immersive experience. This is a proven route to more successful campaigns. Having the elements truly linked together in a way that makes sense for consumers, and not just having them coexist, is paramount. This is also true outside the confines of TV and digital, and so it is central to all the opportunities we are creating for partners, whatever the combination of elements involved.
SIMON COX - vice-president, Turner Media Innovations, EMEA
- Are clients becoming more interested in doing EMEA deals? If so, why?
Yes, we're definitely finding that clients are increasingly opting for pan-regional campaigns. As well as the obvious cost benefit, there is the fact that campaign creative remains consistent. Due to the scale of our broadcast portfolio across EMEA, Cartoon Network, for example, broadcasts to well over 100 countries in 21 languages and to more than 61 million homes within the region - we can target pretty much any territories our clients want to.
We do all the translations for campaign creative, typically executed on TV and online, enabling clients to reach more countries than they could afford to on an individual country-by-country basis.
- How does your pan-EMEA business complement what you do in the UK?
In the UK, we have offered additional retail solutions as part of our package for some time now. Extending this service across EMEA, and offering our clients promotional campaigns that are accompanied by significant retail shelf space in multiple territories, is a fantastic complement to our existing UK business.
- How are you getting advertisers involved with your content?
Ben 10 is a Cartoon Network series that we have licensed in the UK since 2006, and it has been the top-selling toy in the UK pretty much since launch. We do a lot of the ad campaigns for our licensees, which has contributed to the successful and continued growth of the franchise. Event sponsorship is another great way of getting advertisers involved with our content, such as Tesco sponsoring a Ben 10 premiere event and Hasbro sponsoring the Boomerang Pet Party. In addition to individual programme sponsorship, we also offer sponsorship of branded blocks.
- What trends are you seeing in children's advertising?
We're seeing some really exciting innovations around branded entertainment. The number-one online activity for kids is gaming, and we recently did a campaign for Ubisoft's latest release in its Raving Rabbids: Travel In Time games franchise, whereby we re-versioned an existing high-end Ben 10 online game to create a new game for Ubisoft called Rabbid Maker.
- How are you generating revenues outside of the traditional TV space?
We are doing a huge amount of work in the econometric modelling areas. This is allowing us to develop predictive models that are leading us into some deals where we are sharing revenue on increased sales that we generate. Basically, we are being paid more if we increase effectiveness. We also work really closely with our licensing division to maximise the rate of sale on our own properties to, in turn, make higher royalty revenues.
- What is your view on how TV works best with digital?
TV is still the most important driving force. However, when used in conjunction with other media, the effect is much greater if planned and executed well. We have moved from a scenario where everyone knew what weight of spot activity on TV would drive a desired weight of sales to a much more fragmented landscape. This landscape offers much better opportunities to engage the consumer through things such as gaming, competitions, direct drive to retail and e-commerce. TV is the platform where we can find our consumers. From there, we direct them to the non-linear space where we are able to truly engage them.