December 16, 2016

#ClangersForKindness Campaign Reaches Millions

Kindness has been sweeping the nation as #ClangersForKindness, Coolabi Group’s creative brand campaign for its hit pre-school brand Clangers, has generated exceptional consumer reach and engagement.

#ClangersForKindness brand communication integrates TV and radio advertising, YouTube, PR, sponsorship, social and blogger interaction and has been encouraging Clangers fans to ‘Be a Kindness Star’ suggesting how they, and others, can easily become Kindness Stars through simple, everyday actions. To this end, Coolabi Group has been working with Kindness UK, the benchmark organisation for unbiased information about kindness.

To date, over 10,000 kindness wishes have been made and the #ClangersForKindness hashtag has had a reach of two million.

As well as promoting kindness in the lead up to World Kindness Day (13th November) the campaign has been creating awareness about the Clangers brand and products during this key selling period.

Two video ads, one brand and one product, and two toy unboxing films were released, with views to date across Facebook and YouTube reaching almost two million.  The TV campaign was seen by over three million children*, including 1.2 million of the key audience demographic of mums with children 0-3**

The radio campaign ran across 80 stations, including Heart FM and Magic FM in the lead up to World Kindness Day, with a combined reach of over 15 million and generated an estimated 500,000 competition entries in total.

The Mumsnet campaign centred around a discussion on kindness and a competition on the site had nearly 5000 entries, which is double their usual numbers. There was a reach of over 3.7 million unique users on Mumsnet, showing it truly resonated with their members.

Blogger outreach alone drove 14,000 competition entries, with all posts supporting the ‘Be a Kindness Star’ strand of the campaign .The Gingerbread House received the most entries and has an example of the great wishes being suggested.

To inform the campaign, Clangers commissioned a piece of research into kindness, with One Poll, and child development expert Dr Jacqueline Harding, surveying families of pre -schoolers to find out more about how to nurture kindness.

The findings were released to the press and gained coverage across national and regional press, achieving a combined reach of over 36 million with pieces in the Daily Express and Daily Record, plus key parenting titles like Junior. In addition, product PR has been supporting sales and Clangers product recommendations have also featured in the national press.

Toy product sales are already outperforming 2015 sales at key retailers Boots and Toys R Us.  The campaign continues across PR and social and is the pinnacle of an incredible eighteen months for the acclaimed pre-school series. The Clangers series has won multiple television awards, including a BAFTA, consistently hit No.1 in the ratings and launched 52 brand new episodes of the series on CBeebies.

Michael Dee, Director of Content, Coolabi Group, comments: “This campaign has proved that kindness really is infectious, we’ve been absolutely delighted with the campaign’s engagement and the lovely comments and kindness wishes people have shared. Kindness is an integral part of the Clangers brand and will be a continuing campaign theme for 2017.”

For more information, please contact:

Fiona McGarva

Sundae Communications

0161 711 0517 / 07786 434313

fiona@todayissundae.co.uk / @todayissundae

www.todayissundae.co.uk

*BARB 2016. Children = HW0-3 + CH 4-15

** BARB 2016. HW0-3

About Coolabi Group

Coolabi Group is a leading independent international media group and rights owner specialising in the creation, development and brand management of children’s and family intellectual property rights.  The group has particular expertise in books, television and digital.

Coolabi owns the rights in over 20 TV series and some 360 half- hours of programming; it has shows airing in more than 140 territories on channels including: ABC, Cartoon Network, CBeebies, CBBC, Clan / TVE, Disney, F5, ITV, Kika, Nickelodeon and Sprout.

Brands owned and represented by Coolabi include the much-anticipated remake of Clangers, currently airing on CBeebies, and Scream Street, currently broadcast on CBBC. Other properties include Beast Quest, Domo, Poppy CatPurple Ronnie and the Smallfilms’ properties Bagpuss and Ivor the Engine.

The group also creates original series fiction for publishers and has created some 100 published series, consisting of over 1,000 books, sold in more than 40 languages. Four of these series, Warriors, Beast Quest, Animal Ark and Rainbow Magic have sold over ten million copies each and Coolabi is currently working on brand extensions for some of these properties the latest example being the hit new Beast Quest mobile game, co-produced with Miniclip.

About Clangers

Clangers is an internationally renowned UK pre-school stop motion animation featuring a family of loveable, pink, mouse-like creatures who communicate in whistles and eat soup from their little blue planet’s soup wells.

The show, created by Peter Firmin and Oliver Postgate first made its debut on BBC Television in 1969, and returned to CBeebies to huge fanfare in June 2015 with a brand new, multi-award winning series featuring Mother, Major, Tiny, Small and Granny Clanger.

The new series of 52 x 11 minute episodes, from international rights owner Coolabi Group, has all the magical, surreal, gentle, melodic elements of the original show and transforms it into an even more vivid, vibrant, technically improved production. The show uses the same stop motion animation techniques as the original creators but with modern-day equipment, technology and a larger team. It is narrated by Michael Palin in the UK and William Shatner in the US.

Since launch, the top rating show has won the BAFTA and Broadcast Awards for best pre-school animation 2015, plus the 2016 Voice of The Listener and Viewer (VLV) award for excellence in broadcasting, the 2016 Pulcinella Award for best pre-school animation and the 2016 Bulldog Televisual Children’s Award.

The Clangers live on a blue planet with holes topped with metal dustbin lids, which flip open with a ‘Clang!’ to reveal steps down to their home beneath the surface of the planet which contains a series of interconnecting tunnels and caves. The new series features the Clangers friends including the Soup Dragon, Baby Soup Dragon, the Iron Chicken, Sky Moos and Froglets.

The music score has been composed by John Du Prez (Grammy and Tony award-winner for Spamalot) and the title sequence recorder player is Sophie Westbrooke, Royal Academy of Music & BBC Young Musician of the Year competition winner (woodwind section).

The new series is co-produced by Coolabi Group, CBeebies, Smallfilms and Sprout, with BBC Worldwide for its international channels. BBC Worldwide is also the international distributor for the show.

Clangers currently airs on CBeebies in the UK and Australia, ABC in Australia, and Sprout in the US.

It has been made by Manchester-based stop motion animation specialists Factory (Strange Hill High, Newzoids), and award-winning puppet makers Mackinnon and Saunders (Frankenweenie, Wes Anderson’s Fantastic Mr Fox, Mars Attacks).

Clangers has a strong licensing programme, with 25 licensees across key categories including toys, clothing, publishing, arts & crafts and toiletries.

About Kindness UK

Kindness UK is the benchmark organisation for unbiased information about kindness. Kindness UK believes that kindness should form a greater part of everyone’s day to day life and undertakes national initiatives to promote and share kindness with schools, organisations, businesses and the public at large. www.kindnessuk.com