The Source chats to eOne about charity and promotional tie-ups and celeb endorsement.
For a well-known brand, a good promotional partnership or celebrity endorsement can go a long way. The right ones can enhance a property’s existing positive messages with parents and families, as well as further growing its fan base. Plus they can also raise valuable funds for charities.
Over the years, eOne has aligned Peppa Pig with a number of promotional partners to help sustain excitement in the brand and offer fans new ways to engage with it.
“The core messages of friendship, sharing, helping and family will continue to be at the heart of what we do and, therefore, the heart of our promotional partnership plans,” Rebecca Harvey, eOne’s head of global marketing, explains. “Given the age of our preschool audience we look for promotional partners that reflect a wholesome family image and that share our values and goals.”
Tommy’s is the longest charity partner for Peppa Pig, with the relationship dating back to 2006. Since then, eOne has helped to raise over £4m. “Peppa is at the heart of many of Tommy’s fundraising efforts including the bi-annual Peppa’s Splashathon. As well as being very important to the Peppa brand, our work with Tommy’s has helped us reach other retail and nursery partners such as Tumbletots, Waterbabies, babyballet and national retail chains.”
Recent activity such as the babyballet Danceathon has proved so successful – generating £371,152 in one week – that it will now be extended to become a bi-annual fundraiser, alternating with the Splashathon.
New partnerships include Save the Children, which launched a Muddy Puddles Walk last spring with over 7,000 nurseries and families taking part and raising over £225,000. The charity also included Daddy Pig in its popular Den Day campaign. eOne is now discussing how to extend the Muddy Puddles Walk so that it becomes an annual event.
eOne also joined forces with Book Trust on a Bath, Book, Bed campaign with parenting nanny Jo Frost, while the fast growing PJ Masks has become the face of the Youth Sports Trust’s National School Sports Week, helping to launch the ‘Power of 3’ drive to encourage kids to do 30 minutes of activity a day.
There’s also lots of activity overseas – in Australia, Peppa was the official ambassador of the Cancer Council charity; in Spain, ‘Five a Day with Peppa’ helped promote healthy eating; while in the US, eOne worked with the Mess Fest with Muddy Puddles Project for paediatric cancer research. The company has also been involved with children’s projects in Brazil, Mexico, Greece and Hong Kong.
And then there are the celebrity endorsements, and Peppa has certainly attracted an A-list following. “By harnessing celebrity power we can benefit from social media exposure for our brands and the halo effect this has on sales, retail confidence and the sense of being on trend,” explains Rebecca.
Andy Murray was lucky enough to receive a message from Peppa (Harley Bird) before Wimbledon, which was broadcast on the Today programme and subsequently mentioned in a BBC interview and picked up by the press. Andy also posted it on his Facebook page (which has 3.7 million followers) and it got 19k likes and 751 shares.
Peppa also has the Beckham family seal of approval, with Victoria sharing an Instagram post from Peppa Pig Live, while in the US, celebrities signed Peppa goodies for charity which were then auctioned on eBay with the likes of Liv Tyler and Kristen Bell posting images on social media.
“Endorsement by celebrity is a subtle but effective means of reaching consumers,” Rebecca concludes. “For a brand like Peppa, it shows how the brand continues to resonate with each new generation of preschoolers coming through. The very strong love that children have for Peppa means that the brand becomes all consuming for the family around them – it’s typical for the whole family to feel a very strong connection with the show and the characters, and this is the perfect condition for celebrity endorsement.”
The health connection
Rebecca explains that it is vital to eOne that all partnerships with Peppa Pig reinforce a positive, healthy lifestyle.
She explains: “Peppa’s love for muddy puddles has helped many health and fitness initiatives get off the ground. As well as activities like the Muddy Puddles Walks and Danceathons mentioned previously, there are long-term initiatives such as Move with Peppa, a licensing deal with tumuv, which produces Peppa-themed movement and dance classes across the UK.
“These have expanded year on year and are now in 47 locations.”
This feature originally appeared in the autumn 2017 edition of Licensing Source Book. Click here to read the full publication.
