Page 14 - Toy & Hobbly Retailer Magazine August-October 2019

LICENSING INTERVIEW
SESAME WORKSHOP
SPONSORED CONTENT
Fabulous Fifty
Will DePippo, director and Asia Pacific international media and education business at Sesame Workshop, chats 50 years of Sesame, new ventures and Australian activations.
Can you tell us about some key highlights from 2019 so far in the world of Sesame Street?
This year, we’re celebrating our 50th anniversary, which kicked off in February with an amazing story from 60 Minutes Australia. Liam Bartlett came to the set and interviewed the cast and crew who produce our flagship TV show. Later this year, we’ll be coming to Australia, as we do every year with the Sesame Street Muppets, to make appearances and celebrate our birthday locally. We’re also very excited about the new live ticketed Sesame Street Circus Spectacular show being developed by Showtime Attractions. This is going to be unlike any live show we’ve done before. HeadStart, as our major toy partner in Australia and New Zealand, continues to do an amazing job and was once again nominated for a global LIMA award at this year’s Licensing Expo.
Will, you have been at Sesame Workshop for almost 15 years now, what do you love the most about Sesame Street?
A lot of people don’t realise that we’re an educational, non-profit organisation. Sesame Workshop’s mission is to help kids grow smarter, stronger, and kinder. Being able to contribute to that mission every day is incredibly rewarding and not something I take for granted. In addition, I love the people that
I get to work with. As you can imagine, Sesame Workshop is a magnet for some of the most intelligent, creative, and kind-hearted people in the world,
and it’s wonderful to be part of such a talented team. We also
are fortunate to work
with amazing, best-
in-class partners like Haven Global, our local licensing
representatives who are an incredibly smart
and passionate part of the Sesame family. Everything we do is tied back to our mission. So when we take a moment to evaluate how we’re doing, we seek ways to measure the impact we’re making in the lives of families in Australia and around the world. We’re thrilled with Sesame Street’s performance on ABC Kids, Australia’s number one children’s channel. We’ve had an amazing 48 year partnership
with them which has led to generations of fans loving our brand. Sesame Street has 98 per cent awareness with Australian kids, and 94 per
cent awareness with adults, making Australia one of our top markets in the world. Market research has also shown us that mums especially love Sesame Street. Research we fielded in 2018 showed that Australian mums rank Sesame Street number one for education and preparing their kids for school, meaning that we are the gold standard for Australian mums when it comes to educational programming.
Sesame Street has recently collaborated with fashion label Kaws. This is a new and exciting shift from the traditional Sesame Street direction. How did these new ventures come about?
The response from fans and the industry has been really positive. We’ve been doing collaborations for years, in
fact one of our favourites was our campaign with Peter Alexander
two years ago, and we’re extremely excited for their new Sesame Street campaign, which
launches this winter. I think what was new
with the Kaws
and Uniqlo collaboration, was how massively popular and successful it was on a global scale. And similar to Peter Alexander, [it was] the cool factor. It’s been amazing to walk down the street in NYC or other cities around the world and see teenagers and young adults wearing
the apparel from this campaign. We’ve heard from other licensees, that this has had a positive impact on their own businesses as well, which is what we expected, but is very gratifying to see taking shape.
What are some of the key updates and announcements from Sesame Street that you can share?
As I mentioned before, we’re celebrating
our 50th anniversary, and our reputation
as the pre-eminent preschool organisation and brand in the world. In Australia, as mentioned, Showtime Attractions will be touring the Sesame Street Circus Spectacular from September – it’s the first concept of
its kind to be launched in Sesame Street history! We are also really impressed with HeadStart’s 2019/2020 catalogue of upcoming toy development – there are some really exciting plans in the pipeline. It has also been wonderful to see HeadStart’s collection of 50th Anniversary Plush launch at Big W
and Australia Post – and to be supported by catalogue – they look fantastic! We will also be visiting the Northern Territory in August to attend the Garma Festival – we will find out what issues are impacting Aboriginal families and will be discussing ways on how we can address those issues with Sesame Street content, in accordance with local expertise and partners. Looking ahead to the future, we are really excited about continuing our strong commitment to content innovation! In all my time working at Sesame Workshop, I have never been more excited about our future than I am today. ❉
14 TOY & HOBBY RETAILER AUGUST / SEPTEMBER / OCTOBER 2019
Elmo and Will DePippo