Paddington & Company’s Meltwater Story Executive summary When the first book, A Called Paddington, was published in 1958, it marked the beginning of one of the 20th Century’s most striking literary success stories. Authored by then BBC television cameraman , Paddington’s first outing started a seven-decade journey that has seen him grow to become one of the world’s most recognisable and well-loved characters.

With the bear from Darkest Peru now appearing on products that “Taking care of Paddington range from tote bags to English tea (not to mention numerous means staying in touch with episodes of his own television series), Paddington & Company is the organisation dedicated to looking after the worldwide his fans, wherever they are. licensing rights to Michael Bond’s hugely popular creation. Meltwater Buzz does a great job of helping us listen, connect Thanks to Meltwater Buzz, Paddington and engage with those people around the world.” & Company now benefits from: Karen Jankel A powerful suite of social media marketing solutions that Managing Director help the team to track everything from fan interest to of Paddington & Company licensing issues

An easier, more efficient way of scheduling and delivering Paddington related content to his fan base

A tool that works internationally, delivering an easy to read www.paddingtonbear.com overview of relevant issues from around the world

Better understanding of Paddington’s fan base and how and where to engage them online

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A bear called Paddington gets closer to his fans with a little help from Meltwater Buzz

The Background When you’re looking after the licensing rights for one of the world’s most adored literary characters, keeping the fans engaged and entertained is only half of the story. For Karen Jankel, Managing Director of Paddington & Company, knowing everything there is to know about and where he’s popping up online is a full-time job. Paddington & Company is a London-based company that looks after the worldwide licensing rights for Paddington Bear, the much-loved and hugely recognisable literary creation of author Michael Bond. Bond, who wrote A Bear Called Paddington – the first book to star the character back in 1958 - gave up a career as a cameraman with the BBC to focus on writing in what became one of the world’s biggest literary success stories. Since it was published, A Bear Called Paddington has been followed by a further 12 Paddington novels as well as several series of picture books and stories in other formats, bringing the total number of Paddington titles to more than 150 over the course of more than Paddington and company five decades. “I think it’s fair to say that we didn’t rush to jump on the social media bandwagon,” says Karen about Paddington’s eventual journey to the The success of the bear from Darkest Peru doesn’t stop at the online world. “Paddington as a character has a very specific ‘voice’, printed page. Today, in the wake of an equally successful television and we needed to reflect that just as well online as Michael Bond career, Paddington’s likeness appears on everything from teapots does in the books and as the original television series did too. We to tabards, posters to pens. “We support the Paddington brand in a took our time to think about how best to do that on the various social number of ways,” explains Karen, “but we have to be very proactive channels.” on two fronts. One is making sure that Paddington is being used in the right way and by licensed vendors, and the other is creating When Paddington did make it onto Facebook and Twitter, Karen content and engaging his huge fan base across the world.” realised that the company needed a better way of staying in touch with his fans. “There are only two of us looking after Paddington’s To help make those challenges easier, Paddington & Company Pages and Tweets for him, and tools like Google Alerts don’t uses Meltwater Buzz – a suite of social media marketing tools necessarily pick up all the conversations that you might want to be that enables businesses and brands to streamline the process of part of. We needed something that could cut through the noise and turning social conversations into customers and customers into bring us the relevant stories that we could act on.” life-long advocates. The suite provides a powerful range social media monitoring, engagement, publishing, and management Having used Meltwater News – a sister tool that monitors print and capabilities—capabilities that enable businesses to focus on their online media coverage – for some time, Karen was receptive to a social initiatives and activities instead of their social software. demonstration of what Meltwater Buzz could do for Paddington.

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“It was a worthwhile meeting – we quickly realised that this could Please look after this bear really help us do more to understand and engage Paddington’s fans Meltwater Buzz doesn’t only come in use as a way of engaging online, as well as picking up on important news” she explains. Paddington’s audience and tracking relevant news. Karen notes that One recent example of Meltwater Buzz in action culminated in it has also become a vital brand management tool that allows the a major award win for Michael Bond’s bear. “We found out via company to keep track of instances in which his likeness may have Meltwater Buzz’s ‘Listen’ module that Paddington had been been used without permission. nominated for an award as the ‘Favourite Ever British Animated “We have a number of worldwide partners who produce a range of Character’. That was really big for us, and we were able to share the official merchandise in territories across the world,” says Karen. “As news with Paddington’s fans on Facebook. They all got behind it, and with any popular character, sometimes Paddington’s image does get I’m delighted to say that he won!” ‘borrowed’ and put onto products that aren’t made by our licensed If Meltwater Buzz was instrumental in helping Paddington & partners. We need to know about that.” Company to pick up on the news, it was equally useful in terms of Karen notes that – rather than large-scale piracy – this tends to be communicating the win. “Voting for the award was public, so when smaller, isolated events. “Most people do it in all innocence, not really it became clear that Paddington was going to win we were able to realising that despite the fact that they love Paddington, they can’t prepare and schedule the news via the Meltwater Buzz ‘Engage’ create and sell products with him on! module,” continues Karen. At the same time, we can’t afford to set a precedent and so we Engage, a core part of the Meltwater Buzz offering, allows users to do need to get in touch and explain why they can’t just do that. manage a ‘social inbox’ that pulls in updates from around their social Meltwater Buzz has become invaluable in helping us spot those ecosystem. With the capability to communicate messages back out incidents when they happen.” from the platform, Karen was able to update all of Paddington’s fans on the news that he’d won - no matter which channel they were As well as helping to protect Paddington’s likeness, Meltwater engaged on. Buzz also helps Karen and the company to shape their outbound merchandising strategy too. “It has definitely made it easier for us “We used the Engage module over Christmas 2011 too,” she to track demand for various products in different territories. If one mentions, “uploading and scheduling 24 pictures of Paddington that product line is available in one country but not another for instance, we released as an advent calendar for his fans. Meltwater Buzz made we sometimes pick up via Meltwater Buzz that people are unhappy that easy, and much less time consuming than it would have been to that they can’t get hold of that specific item where they live. manually upload and publish each image. It’s very easy to use.” “We’re then able to go to our licensing partners in that country and talk to them about the possibility of bringing that product to Paddington’s fans there. That’s great for us, and it’s great for Paddington’s fans too,” she concludes.

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© 2012 Meltwater Group. All Rights Reserved. Paddington Bear™ ©Paddington & Co Ltd 2012 Meltwater and the stylized logo are among the trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Meltwater Group in the United States and other countries.

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