Declining viewing time and the disappearance of TV channels aimed at kids led to an innovative collaboration in which Spin Master, in partnership with Azerion, is launching its own video platform for Bakugan Season 4. The goal of the collaboration is to increase traffic to Bakugan content and thereby increase brand awareness among the target audience of boys 6-12 years old and ultimately increase sales.
Our client Spin Master carries some toy brands such as PAW Patrol, Purse Pets,
Tech Deck and Bakugan. Animated series have also been created around PAW Patrol and Bakugan, and Bakugan is already entering its fourth season.
Bakugan is about the adventures of Dan Kouzo and his best friends. Together they read playing cards that rain from the sky and devise an action-packed fighting game. Moments later, it turns out that real creatures called Bakugan are hiding behind the cards. This opens up unexpected challenges for the friends, which they overcome together.
Previously, TV was the central means for the Bakugan toy brand to reach children with product campaigns and content. An animated series around the Bakugan heroes could be seen on children's channel B.O.Z for several years. With the disappearance of this platform that broadcast children's programs every morning on RTL7 until 2021, the distribution of the content also disappeared. Media agency STROOM is helping Spin Master to bring the Bakugan content to the attention of the target audience in a different way.
The changing kids media landscape requires innovative media strategies to reach and excite kids for content from (toy) brands. The Bakugan video platform fits seamlessly within this development to continue reaching the target audience where they are most active.
Changed media landscape and media use
Children were well served by TV until a year ago. The broadcasts on B.O.Z attracted about 45,000 viewers weekly. An 11-minute episode averaged 64% viewership. This amounts to over 3.2 million contact minutes with the Bakugan brand that disappeared like snow in the sun when B.O.Z. disappeared from the screen.
In addition, children's media use has become fragmented. Where they used to spend most of their time in front of the TV, they now divide that same amount of time between watching TV, Netflixing and playing online games. Consumption of linear TV is down 20% by 2021 and consumption of video on demand is up 33% over the past year. Bakugan can also be seen on Netflix, but it does not make up for the loss in reach of TV. The wide non-linear offerings make it difficult to stand out there and match TV's viewership numbers.
Brand Manager Olga Trier-Sassen sees the disappearance of the series on linear TV as a threat to Bakugan's fame.
"Bakugan content will mainly be seen on Netflix in 2021. With the demise of RTL B.O.Z., I strongly believe that we need to find other channels to bring Bakugan content to the target audience in order to increase Bakugan brand awareness."
Complicating this is the increasingly fragmented media use of children. Especially boys 6-12 years old. One activity that is most prominent within this target group is gaming, according to the NOM kids monitor 2020. 94% of boys play games regularly. This offers opportunities to reach them through gaming sites.
Content distribution through proprietary video platform
The solution to this distribution challenge is to use a new channel to distribute the content to the target audience. Media agency STROOM found a media partner in Azerion to distribute Bakugan's animated series by creating its own video platform. Azerion has many years of experience in distributing online games on titles such as Elkspel.nl. They are now using this experience to make the Bakugan video platform big in the Benelux by distributing the video content to the target group in a similar way.
Elkspel.nl is a gaming platform that is frequently used by its target audience. This makes it an ideal platform to reach the target audience and draw them to Bakugan's video content. This is done through fixed banners on the homepage and pages of games that are frequently played by the boys. In addition, a broad campaign was created in which banners, pre-rolls and home-page takeovers across the entire Azerion network were used to bring the series to the attention of the target audience.
Marc van der Ploeg of Azerion is proud of the new cooperation: "With the disappearance of TV advertising opportunities for the target group kids, including public broadcasting, we joined forces with STROOM and looked at how we could reach this target group through our platforms
. The result is impressive! An own video section for Bakugan within one of the largest game portals of the Netherlands and Belgium for this target group: Elkspel.nl".
Over the Easter weekend, the platform went live with 2 specials from the past 3 seasons and the first episodes of season 4 were posted online. Two new deliveries of the sequel series will be released each week through May until the entire season is online.
The platform is accessible without login and completely brand safe because Spin Master itself controls the platform and content in collaboration with Azerion. This is also an advantage over posting content on an open platform like YouTube.
Olga Trier-Sassen of Spin Master expects Bakugan to grow further as a brand through the video platform: "We are convinced that through the cooperation with Azerion and the creation of a completely new video platform, the brand awareness of Bakugan will increase within the target group. With the Bakugan video platform, we can also highlight our toys and get kids excited about the new metal Bakugans, thus we expect to increase the penetration of Bakugan toys and create new Bakugan fans."