Exclusive: London-based kids' entertainment Co Moonbug Entertainment plans Indian foray by year-end

Moonbug Entertainment recently unveiled a fresh new identity and look with the help of brand agency DixonBaxi. What prompted you to go for this new look? What is the idea behind it?

We started Moonbug five years ago with one logo and one brand identity. While we began as a start-up, aggressively focused on growth, we are now an established player in the entertainment industry growing beloved franchises, and it was time to present ourselves as a creative-driven company focused on inspiring our audiences to laugh, learn and grow. We are on more than 150 platforms around the world and have more than 20 IPs. We are a different company than we were when we first started so we wanted to refresh our corporate identity to convey the same energy and fun as our colorful shows and characters. Of course, the story behind this is much more important than a logo, because Moonbug stands for high-quality content for pre-school kids and families representing values such as resilience and empathy. Every episode should express those values. We are very happy with the positive feedback we received. In every episode we create, you will see our new Moonbug logo; we want to have clear brand attribution. We are the curator and creator of every piece of content that Moonbug makes. That is the story behind this.

Moonbug content works on every platform. We have also launched linear channels in various markets like Indonesia or the Philippines and will use the new logo on screen. We would love to do the same in India. 

Well, now that you talked about the Indian market. What are your plans for the India market? How do you see India as a market for Moonbug?

India is a high priority for us. I'm here now for a couple of days with my team that came from Singapore. India has the largest population in the world. It is the second largest population for Moonbug on YouTube. We had more than 11 billion views in the last 12 months. So on average around 1 billion views per month across all our brands. Only the US is bigger, but it's the largest by far in Asia. India is a very competitive market with incredible growth and lots of international and local players.

Because we have such a high and existing fan base, because people are familiar with our brands, there's a lot of potentials for us to enter more partnerships. On this base, we want to expand our cooperation with streaming platforms. We are looking at potentially launching a linear Moonbug channel and expanding our consumer product business. I also think there are a lot of advertising opportunities for taylor-made campaigns on YouTube, whether for toy or FMCG clients.

If you have a billion views per month on YouTube, that gives you a lot of potential. Also, we have a lot of traditional partners like the Disney channel. They had Supa Strikas and will soon add Oddbods our latest acquisition from Singapore. We are also looking at the originals. We think that the market is so big that it would be possible to have original productions in India. Streaming platforms in India need strong brands, and they need local relevance. I’m convinced we can bring both. 

Are you going to set up a team or office here in India?

We definitely will set up a team here in the future. I would bet we're going to have people on the ground by the end of the year. We already have native speakers in the team working out of Singapore. But if you really want to build this market and expand the Moonbug business, we want to be closer to our partners.  At Moonbug we try to build teams with the business in a very sensible way.

So have you identified any OTT platforms in India yet?

All our shows are on YouTube, besides this, we have partnerships with Disney, Netflix and Discovery / Warner.  

We are having lots of other exciting conversations with partners, and we will share the news at the right moment. Again, India is a high priority as it has everything which makes us excited, especially scale and a huge existing fan base. 

So what do you see as the biggest challenge facing the kids' entertainment industry in the regions that you oversee. And how do you plan to overcome them?

Well, it is how you find the balance between the global appeal of a show with local relevance. And then obviously, you have the language element, which obviously is very specific for India. Even though people speak English some parts of the population want to watch content in their own bespoken language. And it's not just one language. It's many.

But coming back to the challenge of the global appeal while being locally relevant, it is a challenge for every international player. We at Moonbug try to find the moments of children or families which are typically the same everywhere in the world, be it in India, Brazil, or in France. And we pick those moments in a very relatable way.

When you talk about languages, in India, at Moonbug, we have to make choices. A lot of our content is available in Hindi. We also have content available in Tamil. But in the future, we need to look at other languages and create partnerships around those. The other interesting idea we are exploring are local versions of our global IP’s, which are even more relatable in India.

I do believe we have the right ingredients at Moonbug. We have a studio in LA that is used to working with partners around the world. We have people like Kinjal Mehta, who works from the Singapore office, who is from India and has a huge network since her time at ZEE with partners. 

How do you measure the success of Moonbug content? What metrics do you use?

We have different ways to measure “success”. We have YouTube as our starting point. Every IP Moonbug has acquired over the past five years once started on YouTube, because we think this is the largest platform in the world, freely accessible to everyone. The only reason why Cocomelon is the leading kids’ IP in the world is because it started on YouTube.

And YouTube is very transparent about success because we can see all the data. There is a team of more than 50 people in London analyzing everything that happens on YouTube and feeding back to our creatives. 

Beside numbers and data, there is also an internal review process: We have defined some key criteria and a score system that helps to evaluate each episode we create. Does the music stand out? Are we promoting our key values enough? Such questions are discussed every week and will help us to constantly improve. 

Moonbug's mission is to expand kids' worlds and minds. What do you see as the biggest impact that Moonbug has had in this regard, and what do you hope to achieve in the future?

Our content has proven to be of big help for families and kids during some very intense periods over the past few years. During various lockdowns people had to stay home and the right content was a way to help kids and their parents in their day to day challenges. At Moonbug we managed to keep our cadence of producing high-quality content week on week in this period. We have been of help to a lot of families which  trust the Moonbug brand.

We’ve also heard from so many families that CoComelon has helped them get through their days and some of their biggest struggles. CoComelon is all about the little moments in life that are actually big moments to kids. We make sure that for every topic that’s relevant in family life, from potty training to sharing on a playdate, there’s a CoComelon song and episode that positively models each and every one of these experiences. Our songs show kids the way everyday routines are done with a positive approach. This positive feedback has been incredibly impactful and we are so proud to be able to support kids in their foundational years through positivity. We hope to continue supporting families in many more ways in the future. 

Diversity and inclusion are important values for Moonbug. So how do you ensure that these values are reflecting the company's content? Do you have a special team to monitor this?

Indeed, these are very important values for us, if not, the most. We really believe in “doing”, and not too much talking about it. Our portfolio of properties has a mix of characters from different backgrounds and cultures and we portray storylines that audiences across the world can relate to, no matter their means, geography, culture. When children can see themselves represented in the shows they love it as it allows them to picture themselves in those situations and helps them feel seen and included.