PAW brings riches to Nickelodeon

Driven by the breakout success of its PAW Patrol brand in 2016, Nickelodeon International’s publishing division had one of its best years on record, with revenue up nearly 50% year on year.

The pre-school property is available worldwide through 37 Nickelodeon publishing partners including Random House US, Hachette, Egmont and Panini.

Tanya Visano, Nickelodeon vice-president of international content and Canadian consumer products, said PAW Patrol was a major factor in its “unbelievable year”, after the company “extended into full-blown [PAW Patrol] publishing programmes, meaning having all the different publishing formats in the major markets.” She added that its properties Blaze and the Monster Machines and Shimmer and Shine were enjoying “tremendous growth in Canada and the US [in 2017], with triple-digit jumps in those markets”.

Nickelodeon’s parent, US media giant Viacom, doesn’t strip out publishing in its annual report, so exact figures are unavailable. In the UK, PAW Patrol titles have earned almost £3.9m through Nielsen BookScan since publication of the first in 2015, with Phidal’s PAW Patrol My Busy Book the star, selling over 210,000 units for £1.1m.

Charlotte Castillo, Nickelodeon and Viacom Consumer Products’ senior v.p. for brand management, said the firm would invest heavily in books because kids want to go beyond the stories of the TV shows.

She said: “The wonderful thing about publishing is you can get much deeper—back-stories, origin stories. This is the content that, through research, we found that kids want to read. It’s a wonderful opportunity to extend the brand.”

Visano believes its Bologna 2017 breakout will be the Nella the Princess Knight franchise. She said: “Nella’s an eight-year-old girl, not afraid to speak her mind, who embraces her physical differences. It’s about empowering girls and being inclusive.”