By Gary Symons
TLL Editor in Chief
Pretty much anyone in licensing can tell you that YouTube has spawned some of the most successful brands in the world.
Whether it’s MrBeast, the kids’ show Cocomelon, Baby Shark or Ryan’s World, YouTube streamers aren’t just attracting eyeballs—they’re attracting lucrative and mutually beneficial licensing partnerships.
One of the most successful in terms of viewership is the Canadian YouTube channel Super Simple Songs, which represents a major opportunity for partners in categories related to kids and families.
Super Simple Songs will have their agents from Buckley & Brown at Licensing Expo this year, and we wanted to draw your attention to a top brand that may not have hit your radar just yet.
Why?
Well, at TLL we love data, and the data says that Super Simple Songs is now one of the top YouTube channels in the world. The channel sits firmly in the top 100 in terms of subscribers, but more importantly, it is now in the Top 20 for video views.
According to the industry site Social Blade, Super Simple Songs has 41.9 million subscribers as of April this year, and has also logged over 50 million views.
Believe it or not, that puts Super Simple Songs above top YouTube channels like MrBeast and Baby Shark, and just four slots behind Ryan’s World.
Kids love it because it’s fun, with catchy songs and simple but clever animations, and parents love it because the simplified songs help with language skills.
In fact, according to the CEO of brand owner Skyship Entertainment, Morghan Fortier, the idea for Super Simple Songs was born from the experience of two teachers—Devon Thagard and Troy McDonald—who were working at a small English language school in Japan.
“I don’t think we realized it was a ‘Eureka moment at the time’, but it happened almost 20 years ago,” says Fortier. “Devon and Troy, the dynamic duo behind the cre-ation of Super Simple Songs, were teaching English to preschoolers in Japan and were wondering how to make the most of the short time they had with their students each week.
Super Simple Songs In YouTube’s Top 20 Most Viewed
“Their solution was to create simple, engaging songs that turned their lessons into memorable melodies. These were songs about numbers, colors, and actions that would be easy to remember. And it worked!”
One reason for the brand’s success is due to the fact the channel is seen by teachers as a key educational resource.
“Super Simple Songs has become a staple of early education in classrooms, daycares, and households everywhere in the world,” Fortier says. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a preschool teacher or caregiver who isn’t using Super Simple Songs in their classroom to help support their English language lessons.”
While Super Simple Songs attracted a good viewer base from the beginning, Fortier says the brand really started to explode when the team created a fully fledged company and production studio.
“Things really started to ramp up in 2015 when we founded Skyship Entertainment,” she explained. “Our goal was to take what was already a popular YouTube brand, and have a dedicated production team working together to grow and expand it. Our team of talented writers, musicians, puppeteers, designers and animators has grown Super Simple Songs from 1.5M subscribers in 2015 to over 41 million subscribers today!”
The creation of Skyship allowed for better production values and substantially more production capacity, but Fortier does say the basic premise of Super Simple Songs hasn’t changed at all.
“Our guiding North Star is to make the lives of parents, teachers, and caregivers easier by making learning fun and engaging for kids,” she said. “Because we stuck to that, teachers now use our content every day in their classrooms to support their lessons; parents feel confident and comfortable putting Super Simple Songs on the TV while they make dinner; and millions of children listen to our lullabies each night as part of their bedtime routines.
“We’ve built a really special relationship with our audience, which is something that’s very precious to us,” she adds. “We make sure that every video is designed with usefulness for our viewers in mind, ensuring it hits all the right notes.”
Super Simple Songs certainly has been hitting the right notes, both literally and figuratively.
For many years Skyship was primarily focused on producing high quality videos, working with educators to make sure the brand stayed true to its purpose, and growing its sizeable music distribution business.
Skyship Entertainment Offers Licensing for Top Brands
Now, however, there is increased demand for products associated with the Super Simple Songs from its millions of fans. That has inspired the management team to dive into the world of licensing, and seek out appropriate partners in a variety of categories related to younger children and their families.
“In the short-term, we want to expand our licensing partnerships in order to better serve our amazing audience,” Fortier explains. “There are some key areas we’re focused on: products that support daily routines (such as bedtime, bath time or dinnertime), publishing, and bringing products direct-to-consumer, which just makes sense, since we’ve had such a ‘direct-to-consumer’ relationship with our audience so far!”
Super Simple Songs has been involved in some licensing activity, but Fortier says that, until now, it has not been core to the business or the brand. That is something she and the Skyship team intend to change.
“We’ve done a lot of “dabbling” and “dipping our toe in” with products over the years,” Fortier says. “We self produced plush toys. We sold CDs and DVDs. That was okay, but we were breaking even at best and it was sort of like treading water as far as growth.
“Long-term we want consumer products to be a pillar of our business,” Fortier explains. “If we’re able to grow it to the same levels as our content business, or our music distribution business, we feel that the entire Super Simple brand would hockey stick pretty rapidly.
“Additionally, we’re nurturing the growth of our other kids brands. Bumble Nums and Noodle & Pals are both growing really well, and are proving to be darlings among consumer products and publishing.”
For that reason, Super Simple Songs has engaged licensing agency Brown & Buckley to help grow their three brands through targeted collaborations and partnerships. Fortier says the agency deal was key to turning that side of the business around.
“Once we started working with our licensing agents, Brown & Buckley, things started to move in the right direction,” Fortier says. “We’re learning very quickly the kinds of products our audience wants from us, and how best to deliver them.
Brown & Buckley Representing Super Simple Songs
“For example, we’ve released 10 or so books with Scholastic and they’ve been selling particularly well through the Scholastic Book Fairs in schools. This makes complete sense, given how focused we’ve been on supporting teachers over the years, and how much our content is used in classrooms as a result.”
The process has also been educational for Skyship, which is rapidly learning how to maneuver in the world of licensing, both from working with Brown & Buckley, but also from engaging directly with licens- ees. The company now has a better idea of what works—and what doesn’t—for different partners, and is using that experience to craft better collaborations that benefit both parties.
“Looking ahead, we’re committed to learning how to be excellent guides for our licensees,’ Fortier said. “Often a new licensee will gravitate towards trying to make a product off whichever video happens to have the most amount of views, and this isn’t always a winning strategy. A great example is our show Bumble Nums.
“Compared to Super Simple Songs, Bumble Nums is very small potatoes with regards to views, but we know it’s far and away the brand with the most highly motivated audience.
“It might seem counterintuitive based on sheer viewer numbers, but 65% of all product requests that are in our inbox are for requests for Bumble Nums products,” she explains. “That’s really valuable informa- tion that we can share with our licensees.”
Skyship also has a much better idea on what types of categories and partners it is looking for, and some are not obvious. As one example, Skyship recently signed a deal with the new costume company Noah & Zoe that resulted in some extremely cute outfits that Super Simple Songs fans can wear for Halloween, or just whenever they feel like it.
The company has also seen that products that are related to activities in which parents and their children interact every day are ideal not just from a sales standpoint, but in providing more ways to entertain and educate young children.
“The areas in which we think we could really see some success are products that revolve around daily routines,” Fortier explains. “Kids’ dinnerware, placemats, toothbrushes, bath toys, and bedtime prod- ucts, would all do great because so many of our most popular songs revolve around those same routines. Just google “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” or “Brush your teeth song” and see which one comes up first!
“Similarly, another area that could be huge for us is Party Supplies. Based on how many parents are creating and selling their own Super Simple party supplies on Etsy, we think this would be an overnight success.
“Surprisingly, that’s been a tricky category to land a licensing partner for.”
While Skyship is still looking for a partner to party down with, it has seen some notable successes since partnering with Brown & Buckley, despite the fact the campaign is only now getting underway.
Scholastic has seen great success with the Super Simple series and will be putting out more book titles, and Dover Publishing will be releasing the first Super Simple coloring books in September.
Skyship is also in the early stages of developing ‘music books’, which include buttons that play different tunes, with licensing partner Cottage Door Press.
An earlier collaboration with YotoPlay, issuing musical Yoto Cards loaded with music from Super Simple Songs, was a huge success. The first run sold out very quickly, so Fortier says the partners have produced a second run of the cards, that can be inserted into the popular children’s music box.
The company has also broken into the apparel market, developing a line of super comfortable bamboo fabric onesies with Ploom Baby which will be available later this year.
Noah & Zoie Launches Super Simple Songs Infant and Toddler Costumes
In another important step, Skyship is getting into the Direct-To-Consumer (D2C) business, currently negotiating partnerships with two of the top print-on-demand companies.
“These official license deals will give us a ton of flexibility, and the ability to create new products quickly as we learn more about what our audience wants to see from us,” Fortier says.
She and the teams from Skyship and Brown & Buckley are hoping the upcoming Licensing Expo will be a pivotal moment for the company as it transitions into a full, omnichannel licensing program. Fortier says it’s not just about selling products—although that is obviously very important—but rather about finding the right partners that will help build the brand and reinforce its key message of language development and education.
As Fortier explains it, the licensing program is also meant to reinforce its relationship with the fan base.
“Aside from just being an added revenue stream, a solid licensing program would really help us form a deeper relationship with our audience,” she says. “We want to be more than a screen to the kids who learn from and enjoy our content.
“There’s a kind of magic that comes from a favorite toy, or favorite book, or even a favorite blanket, that we’d like Super Simple to be a part of, so we’re really excited to be continuing to grow Super Simple Songs beyond the screen, and we’re looking forward to working with our current partners, and future partners, to develop amazing products that our audience can use and enjoy in their everyday lives.”
Anyone interested in exploring licensing opportunities with Super Simple Songs can contact Russ Brown, a partner and founder of Brown & Buckley, by email at russell@ brownandbuckley.com, or by phone at 516- 316-6781.
