Kevin Mayer, co-CEO of Blackstone Group-backed Candle Media, discussed the company’s 360 IP-investment strategy at the MipTV conference in Cannes on Monday morning.
Mayer was appearing alongside Moonbug Entertainment co-founder René Rechtman on a panel moderated by Variety international editor Manori Ravindran. Candle Media purchased children-focused brand Moonbug last year for $3 billion.
They previously bought Reese Witherspoon’s Hello Sunshine for $900 million and also own a stake in Will Smith’s production and multimedia company Westbrook, which produces, among other things, Jada Pinkett Smith’s popular Red Table Talk show on Facebook.
Former Disney exec Mayer described these as Candle Media’s “anchor” companies under which other acquisitions will be housed, pointing to Moonbug’s recent acquisition of the Little Angel YouTube franchise and Hello Sunshine’s acquisition of The Home Edit, a home organization brand first promoted by Gwyneth Paltrow that has spawned a Netflix show, books, magazines and merchandise.
Rechtman added that Moonbug, which is home to Cocomelon, one of the most popular pre-school brands, has a “strong pipeline of potential IPs we want to acquire,” and was particularly looking at the gaming space as the next frontier in terms of what kids are interested in, explaining: “We have to follow the eyeballs.”
Mayer also explained how Candle Media is focused on acquiring companies that have “synergy,” giving an example of Witherspoon partnering with Rechtman on a children’s series. “Reese Witherspoon has a fantastic idea for a new kids brand and she’s writing a book about it and she was going to make an animated series behind it,” said Mayer. (Last month Witherspoon announced she had written her first children’s book, “Busy Betty,” inspired by her own adventures as a child.)
“Moonbug specializes in kids animation and speaking to that audience and they have a huge built-in audience with which to promote new programming so of course Rene connected with Reese and one thing came to another and now Rene’s hopefully going to be – in the next many months – will be launching that new product with Reese and there’ll be a very substantial collaboration there.”
Mayer explained that Candle Media’s MO is to replicate Disney’s strategy of acquiring and building strong IP and franchise brands while remaining independent of any streaming platform or distributor. “Our mission is to have fantastic intellectual property that are franchises, that’s the operating model we’re used to from our Disney days,” he said. “That really works in three specific areas as an audience. That audience can be spoken to on streaming services, we can speak to that audience and engage that audience on social media […] and you want to have commerce.”
Adding of Candle Media’s unique position as an independent, he added: “The demand for content is going to continue to grow extremely robustly over the next 5-10 years. If you’re independent, there’s not a huge amount of quality independent products, so we like our chances there.”
Asked whether Candle Media intended to continue its partnership with Will Smith, who has faced opprobrium since slapping comedian Chris Rock at the Oscars last weekend, Mayer said there were no plans to divest Candle Media’s stake in Westbrook. “It’s a great company, they have great projects, they’re very multi-faceted, they have a film and TV production, they have social media stories like Red Table Talk […] they have a big social media branding operation, so it’s a very good company, we have a 10% stake, that’s where we are for now, we think they’re a really great company.”
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