SUNNY BUNNIES 17 of children in Romania. In Hungary, the show reached 30% of children aged 4 to 14 years, while in Poland it reached 13% of children in this age group. One of the strongest markets for the show to date has been the US, where Sunny Bunnies runs on Disney Junior and the Disney Channel. In its first two months on TV, Sunny Bunnies reached 34% of all TV kids aged 2 to 5 years old. “The deal with Disney in so many territories is a massive vote of confidence for this show, proving that excellent quality original content can come from any place,” says Irina Nazarenko, the co-founder of Media I.M Closer to home, Sunny Bunnies runs on Sky Kids in the UK and launched on Disney Junior UK from midNovember last year. At the end of 2017, Media I.M announced that Discovery Kids in India would be taking on the series and Brazilian SVOD app PlayKids had taken season one of the show. “Introducing Sunny Bunnies to Indian kids has long been an ambition, and Discovery is the dream partner
to launch our little friends on their Indian adventure,” says Maria. “India is not only one of the biggest, most vibrant and exciting markets in the world but it’s also an extremely challenging one to break into, which makes this deal a genuine milestone for Media I.M. And we know Indian children will love this show as much as their counterparts around the world” These latest round of broadcasting deals follow on from a busy year on the licensing scene, with many new partners coming on board to bring the Sunny Bunnies to life away from the screen. Funrise Toys has been appointed master toy in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, bringing a range of collectable figures, bean plush, light-up and bounce plush and accessories to the market in AW18. Faro Tekstylia will bring a range of textiles and bedding to market in Spring 2018 in Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland,
Romania, the Slovak Republic, Slovenia, and the three Baltic States: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and Ukraine. With CPLG recently appointed as licensing agent for EMEA (excluding France, Turkey and MENA) Media I.M. is now on the hunt for licensing agents in other key territories such as Latin America and Asia Pacific, while Digital Light Studio gets to work on a third season. “We always knew the show had great potential, but we didn’t expect that it would get picked up in so many countries so quickly, or become the biggest IP to ever come out of Belarus,” says Irina. “It’s the start of a really exciting journey.” In EMEA Whitehouse Leisure is on board for amusement plush and accessories, and there will be activity pages appearing in Redan and Kennedy Publishing’s compilation magazines in Q4 2017 and Q1 of 2018. Townley is also working on a health and beauty range for UK, EU, USA, Canada, Latin America and Mexico.
YouTube and social media success The Sunny Bunnies Englishlanguage YouTube channel launched in April 2016 with management support from DHX-owned Wildbrain. Since then, the channel has reached more than 250M views and 330K subscribers (Dec’17). The Sunny Bunnies channel is within the 10% of best-performing kids YouTube channels globally. The Sunny Bunnies Facebook page launched in September 2017
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and is building a strong following by posting memes using Sunny Bunnies content targeted at the older audience. “We’re targeting people who might not necessarily know the brand at all, but think our memes are funny and will share them,” says Irina. “In the future we’ll also promote products through social media.”
Left: Memes using Sunny Bunnies clips overlaid with funny quotes are popular on Facebook.
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