First We Franchise

Posted on: Thursday 09 July 2026 6:49am by Liam Farrell

Takeaways

• Successful franchises start with a strong core idea and story engine before expanding into platforms, products, and licensing.
• Audience reach matters: creators should think about how an IP can live across broadcast, digital, apps, YouTube, and consumer products.
• Internationally successful children’s brands often rely on universal themes, humour, and emotional storytelling that travel across markets.

Moderator, John McEwan-Whyte (Bonnie & Braw) invited both the panel and audience to work together to create a brand-new children’s IP and then franchise it using his own ‘franchise wheel’ framework. The audience selected an animal (a jellyfish), a setting (a gym), and a historical icon (William Shakespeare).

The panel quickly got to work developing the idea. Grant Orchard (Hey Duggee) suggested that Will the Jellyfish runs a gym but, being a jellyfish, is unable to build muscle. A target audience of 3- to 5-year-olds was agreed, and Stephanie Gauld (Blue Zoo) identified opportunities beyond the core show, suggesting the concept could support a ‘super app’, featuring games and activities linked to episode themes, citing platforms such as Duolingo and Sago Mini World as other super apps. Building on the concept, Grant proposed that because Will cannot train his body, he trains his mind. Stephanie felt this opened opportunities for activities designed to ‘exercise’ children’s brains as well as their bodies.

Sean Henry (Warner Bros. Discovery) said creators need to think carefully about how they reach audiences and aim to be present wherever children consume content, referencing their rollout strategy for Batwheels as an example. Sean also highlighted the challenges of selling content internationally, noting that programmes relying heavily on on-screen text face difficulties. He noted that universal humour, entertainment, and emotional themes, such as friendship and teamwork, always travel well.

For Grant, one of the most important considerations was ensuring a franchise has a strong story engine. He insisted that creators need confidence that the concept can generate stories over many episodes without running out of ideas. In this hypothetical case, the Shakespeare connection could be used to base stories on books.

From a consumer products perspective, Rob Spindley (Crayola) asked how the concept could translate into physical products. He suggested the gym setting naturally lent itself to playsets. He highlighted the importance of designing characters in ways that can successfully extend into toys and merchandise. For example, Will’s tentacles would need to be exaggerated.

As the brainstorming continued, Grant suggested making Will’s gym mobile, because vehicles are important to franchises, but he also pointed out that if this were a real project, he would be worried about some of these decisions not enhancing the story. This led the group back to the central question of the show’s core hook. They eventually landed on the idea that Will’s gym is really about emotional wellbeing rather than physical fitness, resulting in the theme: ‘Everyone feels like a jellyfish out of water — until they work it out.’

The session concluded by exploring audience engagement strategies. Stephanie stressed the importance of a dedicated YouTube presence, supported by both short- and long-form content, regular uploads and lots of songs! Sean encouraged creators to work closely with broadcast partners when developing franchise plans and not be afraid to create platform-specific content where appropriate. Building these requirements into budgets and development plans from the outset, he argued, can help IPs reach audiences more effectively across multiple platforms.

This very fun exercise demonstrated that while licensing, digital extensions, and consumer products all play a role in franchise success, everything starts with a strong core idea and stories that audiences genuinely connect with.