Who earns on the heroes of Russian cartoons

Sales of goods under the animated brands in the world bring their creators billions of dollars. Russian multipliers also learned how to make money on a franchise: last year their income was almost 84 million dollars.

Sales of products under the Pig Peppa brand (the heroine of the animated series for kids) in the 2014 fiscal year exceeded one billion dollars. Disney princesses, Mickey Mouse, Spiderman, Winnie the Pooh, the “Wheelbarrows” heroes bring more than a billion dollars to manufacturers of products under these brands every year.

The Russian animation industry also produces super popular cartoons: “Masha and the Bear” and “Luntik” are among the top five most popular Russian-language channels on YouTube - each of them has been viewed more than three billion times. Animated brands in 2014 in Russia accounted for 95% of almost 2,5 billions of dollars in retail sales of all licensed goods.

"Masha and the Bear"

The small two-story building of the Animaccord studio is located in Murmansky Proezd, not far from the Moscow metro station Alekseevskaya. Only an attentive passerby can guess that it is here that one of the most famous animated series in Russia, “Masha and the Bear,” is created: the main character of the series, Masha, “looks out” onto the street from the second floor - a sticker on the window glass.

From the modern Russian multblockbusters "Masha and the Bear" entered the market last. The series began broadcasting in 2009, and naughty Masha quickly fell in love with the Russian audience. Since then, the 51 series has been released, now the official channel MashaMedvedTV on YouTube has 3,2 with a million regular subscribers. By the number of views - and this is more than three billion times - he is in the top five leaders of Russian-language channels on YouTube.

“Initially, we did an animation project,” says the managing director of the Animakkord studio, co-producer of the series Dmitry Loveiko. It’s difficult to predict whether to make a brand out of a cartoon - to build a world of heroes and goods around it, it’s difficult, he explains: besides the quality of the content itself, the way it is distributed, the audience’s loyalty to the characters, and the main thing - competition influence the opportunity.

But when it became clear that the content would be popular, in “Animaccord” they understood: “Masha and the Bear” could become a brand, which in future, probably, can be sold. We studied the experience of Russian and foreign projects, legal practice, elements of the licensing strategy of leading players. But first of all they were guided by the successful stories of Smeshariki and Luntik, which by then were already well-known in Russia, recognizes Loveyko.

The sale of licenses for the right to release goods under the name of their heroes is the main source of income for cartoons manufacturers, says Loveyko. Product licensing in 2014 accounted for 60% of the revenue from the sale of the brand “Masha and the Bear” (the rest is revenue from advertising and paid subscriptions to YouTube). The most popular products for branding are toys and food. The founder of the hypermarket chain Begemot, the general director of the toy manufacturer Grand Toyz, Sergey Kiselev, calls Masha and the Bear the undisputed leader among licensed products in his network.

Licenses for the right to manufacture products under the Masha and Bear brand since 2009 have acquired more 150 companies around the world. Among them, Loveyko lists the largest international players in the consumer market: food producers Danone, Ferrero, Perfetti van Melle, toys Simba Dickie Group and Ravensburger, stationery Crayola. In 2013, the total licensees' revenue from the sale of Masha and the Bear goods was 45,6 million dollars in wholesale prices. In 2015, it will reach 60,8 million dollars, expects Loveyko: "If it were not for the crisis, it would be more."

"Luntik and his friends"

Co-owner of the animation studio "The Mill" Sergey Selyanov - a veteran of the Russian film industry. He produced “Peculiarities of National Fishing”, “Brother” and “Brother-2”, “Boomer-2”, “Anton Here Next” and a few dozen more popular Russian films of the last decades. In 1999, the studio Mill stood out from the STV film company controlled by Selyanov, which started creating animated series and full-length cartoons.

In 2006, Mill, together with the channel Russia, launched the production of the animated series Luntik and His Friends, which they began to broadcast in the program Good Night, Kids. Four hundred and forty episodes have already been released, another fifty are in production. The number of Luntik’s views on YouTube has exceeded three billion - it’s also in the top five Russian-language channels on YouTube, according to Google data.

According to Selyanov, the income from the sale of content and product licensing from Luntik amounts to approximately equal shares. He did not disclose the revenue of “Mills” for “Luntik”, but says that the revenue from sales of licensed goods under the brands “Luntik and his friends”, “Barboskiny” and “Three bogatyr” from May 2014 to May 2015 of the year amounted to 53,2 million dollars in wholesale prices.

The first licensees appeared at Luntik in 2006 - Egmont Publishing and Simbat Toys supplier.

“We do not sell licenses to anyone who wants to buy them,” says Ludmila Tsoi, Melnitsa Commercial Director. With each licensee, the studio works on exclusive rights, therefore it selects manufacturers that are well represented in federal and regional networks, with large production volumes and working capital. This, according to Choi, helps to avoid the feeling of the “ubiquitous presence” of the brand and does not provoke a glut from the buyers. Now Luntik has sixty licensees, including toy makers Grand Toys and Simbat Toys, confectionery products Ferrero and Sweet Tale, as well as puzzle maker Step Puzzle.

Smeshariki

In August, the motor ship with the image of the blue rabbit Crochet cruised the Neva 2014. Thus, the Smesharikov hero was used by Promsvyazbank in promoting one of his products.

The founder and owner of the production center "Rica", producing "Smeshariki", Ilya Popov does not look like a typical businessman: only bright colors, instead of a jacket - a T-shirt. By now, the 453 series of Smeshariki has already been released. In the 2014 year on the Russian market, according to the Vestnik of the licensing market, there were 130 licenses for animation and game films. And in 2004, it was Popov who first decided not only to bring the Russian cartoon to the market, but to immediately build around him a whole licensing world.

“We didn’t have the task of simply making a show,” recalls Popov. “We created the world of heroes, simultaneously launched a line of books, developed a licensing area.” The peak of popularity fell on the 2005 – 2007 years, when Smeshariki had a pool of licensees, which remained virtually unchanged. After that, the project "came to the plateau," says Popov. In addition to Smesharikov, Popov and his partners also produce Fixikov, Malysharikov and several other animation projects and represent in Russia the interests of owners of rights to the characters of foreign cartoons (Sponge Bob Square Pants, South Park, Ninja Turtles). " and etc). But still the main source of income remains Smeshariki. Therefore, now Popov calls the main task of the company to achieve a long-term project presence in the media space.

Last year, from the sale of licenses for “Smesharikov”, “Rica” received 4,7 million dollars - 75% of the total revenue from the animated series. The revenue of the licensees from Smeshariki in 2014 was about 76 million dollars in wholesale prices.

According to the company's website, the Smeshariki brand has more than sixty licensees who produce more 4200 products. Most of them can be found on the shelves of food stores: two thirds of licenses are for food, and a third for manufactured goods, says Popov. In the front row of licensees - all the same largest manufacturers of food and children's products.

Brand in a bottle

The most successful, judging by sales, the license in the domestic market is the Prostokvashino brand, which is owned by French Danone. According to Nielsen, dairy products under this brand for February — March 2015 of the year accounted for ten percent of the entire Russian market.

The company “Unimilk” (Danone bought it in 2010) entered into an agreement with the writer Eduard Ouspensky for the right to use the characters of the book “Uncle Fedor, the Dog and the Cat” in the design of the packaging in 2002. “The success of the brand was overwhelming,” said Danone spokesperson Valeria Trifonov. In 2008, the Matroskin cat became the symbol of the Prostokvashino brand - it looks like a cat from a cartoon on packs of milk. The decision, according to Trifonova, turned out to be “unusually true”: sales increased, market share and brand awareness increased not only in Russia, but also in the CIS countries. Now only milk with Matroskin on the label sells 27 million bottles per month. In 2014, Prostokvashino was the fastest growing brand among all Danone products in the world.

Past the ticket office

In some categories, the volume of pirated products under animated brands can go up to ninety percent, says film producer Sergey Selyanov. Most often, he said, fake toys, clothes and other textiles. In stationery and school supplies, as well as in some types of toys, the amounts of counterfeit and legal licensed products, according to the observations of the director of the studio "Animaccord" Dmitry Loveyko, are comparable. The owner of the Riki production center, Ilya Popov, estimates the share of counterfeit under the Smeshariki brand at about a quarter or even a third of all products on the shelves: “Detection cases amount to hundreds.”

“There are two types of piracy,” explains Lyudmila Tsoi, commercial director of the Mill animation studio. - The first is when a company, not being our licensee, manufactures products under our brand. The second is when some licensees try to understate sales volumes in order to reduce royalty payments. ” Mill in 2014 had twenty cases of litigation, more than fifty were resolved before the trial.

“Masha and the Bear” last year filed about three thousand lawsuits against counterfeit dealers. “Our representatives, as a rule, first offer the shops to remove the counterfeit, then make a test purchase and file a lawsuit in court,” explains Loveyko.

“It’s very difficult to compete with Disney Russian animation producers,” Nazarenko said. - The fact is that Disney is actively using its global capabilities. Take, for example, the largest toy market for them: the main royalties they receive from Lego, Hasbro and Mattel are not new toys developed in Russia and Russia, but imports of dolls and designers that are ready for the whole world. ”

It’s harder for the Russian copyright holder: he is faced with the task of either finding a Russian manufacturer that invests several million dollars in molds, or convincing a foreign major player that the brand has potential outside of Russia, Nazarenko said. “So far, this has been successfully obtained only at Animaccord - contracts with Simba Dickie and Spin Master are very cool,” he said.