The ZAG Company continues the expansion of its senior executive team with the appointment this week of licensing veteran Helena Perheentupa to the newly created role of vice president of licensing for Central, Eastern, Northern Europe and Russia.
Perheentupa formerly worked with Mattel’s operation in Germany as head of licensing, overseeing brands such as Hot Wheels, Barbie, Fisher-Price, Matchbox, and UNO in Europe.
Perheentupa will now lead licensing and business development efforts in much of Europe and Russia for the ZAG Heroez brands while managing the company’s regional licensing agents, including CPLG (GAS), J&M (Benelux), Planeta Junior (CEE), and Saks (Russia).
“Europe has been and continues to be a hugely important region for ZAG, and Helena’s ‘boots on the ground’ appointment will ensure that we are driving new business and supporting our licensees, retailers and promotional partners for ZAG’s portfolio of brands including of course our flagship brand, Miraculous – Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir, our newest property, Ghostforce … and a soon to be announced new IP,” says Julian Zag, executive vice president of global operations. “Helena is a well-liked and well-respected industry executive and we’re thrilled to welcome her to the team.”
ZAG is a rapidly expanding entertainment conglomerate that has grown to global stature since being founded by Jeremy Zag in 2009. ZAG is currently involved in a major launch of its new Miraculous toy line from Playmates, which is tied to a number of streaming and film releases around the world.
The Miraculous phenomenon continues to expand and enrich its offering with new content for television, new categories for consumer products and new exposure throughout the digital world. The company says new content for TV, new business deals and new digital performances are at the heart of a global development and licensing strategy for the franchise.
In terms of TV releases, on Dec. 18 Disney+ launched the first release of the movie Miraculous World: New York United Heroez, which from the outset was immediately among the top performing titles on the streaming platform, echoing the success Miraculous experienced in other countries, as: Brazil, France, Germany, Spain, UK and US. In the USA, in September 25th the movie première recorded the best performance ever of the entire week in the Girls 6-11 target audience.
United Heroez is a group of superheroes developed by ZAGtoon for a variety of TV series and stories on other platforms, and has proven popular for consumer products as well. The term Miraculous in the story refers to magical jewels. Worn as jewelry, they have the ability to transform their wearers into animal-themed, super-powered beings.
ZAG inked a key deal in 2020 for the new Playmates toy line distributed in Italy by Bandai which saw almost all the products sold out in a few weeks.
Miraculous is also newly available on TikTok, the social media platform that has grown its user base incredibly rapidly in 2020. TikTok will expand the brand’s presence on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Tumblr—whose 12 official accounts, which include dedicated accounts for the series’ main characters–currently boast five million followers in total. The new TikTok channel will unveil never before seen footage, including music videos with choreography for kids and young adults to replicate at home and record themselves performing the dances; split screen videos sharing script and storyboards with the corresponding animation; short videos from the TV series reflecting seasonal events; characters speed drawing; promotional videos/teaser trailers; ‘making of’ videos; gaming previews and special VIP invitations to discover new digital experiences by the new ZAG Games & Interactive Experiences division, and more.
During 2020, ZAG says Miraculou has grown its digital reach by 178%*. Miraculous attracts over 15 million subscribers across its nine official YouTube channels, currently available in eight languages. With a total 22 billion views, fans have collectively viewed more than 300 million hours of content. Recently posted video clips of the series’ credits have been viewed by more than 350 million people around the world, and the exclusive 2D animated shorts based on the series “Miraculous Chibi,” which initially launched on YouTube Kids, has over 500,000 followers and over 100 million views. The Miraculous Chibi shorts have subsequently been made available on partner channels across the world. Additionally, the Miraculous theme song for season two, performed by Lou and Lenni-Kim from The Voice Kids France, garnered 400+ million views worldwide since its YouTube debut in November 2018, and Jeremy Zag’s “The Wall Between Us” French song, based on the series and performed by Miraculous’ duo Lou & Lenni-kim, released September 2019, achieving 40+ million views on YouTube.
“With a powerful global brand and strong fan engagement and activity, extensions in digital amplify the magnitude of the fans, and help engage new audiences,” said Jeremy Zag, Founder & CEO, ZAG. “We continue to create new content across social media, and TikTok is going to be a great vehicle for us to share different types of content and reach out to fans across all demographics.”
Most recently, the animated TV Movie Miraculous World: New York: United Heroez has been broadly acclaimed in the United States (Disney Channel), Brazil (Gloob), Germany (Disney Channel), United Kingdom (POP), and France (Disney Channel and TF1). The feature is due to be broadcast in additional countries in 2021 with a launch on Disney+. ZAG and ON kids & family have also begun production on the theatrical feature, Ladybug & Cat Noir: Awakening (US$100M+ budget), which is planned for release worldwide in fall 2021 or at the beginning of 2022, alongside seasons four and five of the series, which are also currently in production.