Nickelodeon, a Viacom18 TV network whose target audience is children below 14 years, plans to delve deeper into merchandising by branding its characters on fans, mobiles and television sets.
“Character merchandising and publishing plays a major factor in kids programming in order to connect with the viewers. We have lined up huge plans in the merchandising space and in the next six months we are adding more characters and tying up for more product categories,” said Nina Elavia Jaipuria, executive vice-president, in Hyderabad the launch of a new programme for India.
Nickelodeon’s merchandising portfolio has 40 categories which range from kids eyewear, boxing gloves, view finder, lunch boxes, and fast-moving consumer goods. Nickelodeon is the not the only channel which has used merchandising as a means to building stickiness with its channel. Cartoon Network and Disney are also vying for a piece of the action in this Rs 562-crore market which is growing at 30 per cent year-on-year. Cartoon Network has leveraging the strong pull of its Ben 10 character by extending it into categories like footwear, watches, eye wear, stationery, and chocolates.
Nickelodeon has 55 licensees across 40 categories, with 1,500 SKUs (stock keeping units) and 10,000 retail touch points. It plans to have merchandising partnerships with Metro Shoes to launch characters in children footwear, and with other players to launch bicycles, and home theatres. Jaipuria said that in the mobile phone segment, Nickelodeon will go through original equipment manufacturers.
