Cartoon Network: An era before Social Network

There were two things that made it worthwhile being a kid in the 90s – colour TV and the Cartoon Network! Even today, fondly reminiscing our favourite characters and shows makes us break into a smile, such is the nostalgia that cartoon network evokes within us. Sigh!

Most of us are professionals today, in fact, as business students, we thought you might find it interesting to learn how Cartoon Network tapped into our hearts and minds?

Let’s hop onto our time machine, shall we?

It all began in the year 1992, when businessman, Mr Ted Turner created Cartoon Network, the first-ever channel to show cartoons exclusively, round the clock and throughout the week. The channel curated the choicest content by acquiring MGM’s library, Fleischer Studios and by buying out Hanna Barbera productions. This meant that Cartoon Network was now showing everything from Looney Toons to Dexter’s Laboratory.

However, despite their popularity, their sluggish growth left them scratching their heads in despair! So, the executives at the network put on their thinking caps, and decided to tie up with its sister channels, TNT and TBS which already had established their viewership. Such was the success, that the very next year, in 1993, CN emerged as the “the fifth most popular cable channel in the United States”! 

When CN released the show ‘What a cartoon!’, an assortment of short stories eventually birthed spin-offs, of the all-time favourites such as Johnny Bravo, The Powerpuff Girls & Courage the Cowardly Dog. With these wildly popular shows, CN grasped the lion share of both the US & the Indian markets.

Okay, now how about we think of Cartoon Network during the late 90s? Do you remember what was popular after our beloved classics like Johnny Bravo and Powerpuff Girls? Yes, you got that right! Noddy, Oswald, SpongeBob SquarePants and Pingu.

Things hit a rough patch for CN when two powerful competitors arrived on the scene and brought in not just great content but also their modern animation style and that too in the local languages. CN was threatened by these novel competitors so, it released its own localized channel, Pogo.

1999 saw the dawn of the era, of Hindi-dubbed shows airing on CN, namely, Scooby-Doo, The Flintstones, The Jetsons, The Mask, The Addams Family et cetera. CN started to dub the international content into local languages like Hindi, Tamil & Telugu and even began producing homegrown shows.

This was also the time when CN decided to draw references from the Indian culture with shows like The Adventures of Chhota Birbal (2003-2004), The Adventures of Tenali Raman (2003-2004) & Akbar and Birbal (2006).

Now, in 2000, the network launched a new channel, called ‘Boomerang’, which began to showcase the classic cartoon content from the Warner Bros. library. The channel underwent a massive rebranding in 2015, with the intent of establishing it as a flagship channel, adjacent to CN. Boomerang was loved because of its original content, which were mainly reboots of popular shows such as the Looney Tunes and Scooby-Doo, which were well received by the audience.

Hey, do you miss the show ‘Ed, Edd n Eddy’? No?

Well, how about ‘The Grim Adventures of Billy and Mandy’ or ‘Codename: Kids Next Door’? You sure must miss those?

Here’s the thing. The new shows that CN started to release in and after 1999 were perceived to be confusing or poorly made or culturally misplaced and were not relatable. Another problem was, that around the same time, anime was making a mark in the industry. The 2000s saw shows such as Shin Chan and Doraemon being brought to India by the rival channels, Hungama and Nickelodeon. CN realized they were lagging behind big time because what CN was showing was very forgettable and out of context like Ed, Edd n Eddy or Foster Home for Imaginary Friends.

And as if things couldn’t be worse, in a bid to catch up with the market, CN started to release poor quality animation with mismatched dubbing, this move cost them many viewers who lost interest. The only somewhat memorable show was Dragon ball Z.

The 2000s were lush with experimentation and growing niches. Hungama shifted to showing adult anime and captured that market. Nickelodeon and Disney channel branched out to reality shows and live-action shows. Disney had extremely successful live-action shows. I’m sure we’ve all heard of Hannah Montana, Suite Life on Deck and That’s So Raven.

Now, one would think that the network would have slowly but surely recovered but no!

The crisis for CN continued to prevail. Mr Stuart Snyder became the new president and changed the values held by the former CN president. The former president of CN had stated that CN would never do live-action but as Snyder took command, CN started airing live-action (like Tower Prep). These failed one after the other. Most didn’t have even a following season and didn’t last for even 2 months. Whilst, on the other hand, Nickelodeon had Drake and Josh and Disney had Hannah Montana. And all CN had, were heart-breaking failures.

Having learnt their lesson from these failures, CN again began playing old classics and shows like Ed, Edd n Eddy. Then came another blow - the Indian Government-mandated kids' channels to only have PG content. CN was forced to forsake the classics and released newer shows like Chhota Bheem and the Mighty Raju.

On that note, have you seen Chhota Bheem? Bet your nephew and nieces have. Possibly even played the Chhota Bheem game and bought a Chhota Bheem t-shirt or school bag.

The tables finally turned. As kids, our favourite cartoons were only TV shows. We never had a chance to play with figurines or dress up as Powerpuff girls. All we could do was watch our show on TV.

But aren’t things different now? CN was quick to foresee that kids will mostly be on their phones, watching videos and playing games. No more were they bound to the television for satiating their need for cartoons.

Therefore, at the turn of the decade, CN made a huge strategic decision. CN went beyond the idiot box and introduced the CN app that gave kids and parents too, a chance to watch full episodes anywhere and play Cartoon Network games. CN leveraged multiple platforms beyond just conventional television episodes. It is expanding its digital and mobile content with new shows, returning shows and mobile and console games. CN proudly boosts its magnanimous portfolio of 44 apps and 400 free to play online games by converting its original shows like Ben 10 into games. Well, the kids were on the phone and now, so was CN!

The big move was taking their brand online and marketing it to kids on all the digital platforms. With technology and creativity, CN had interactive marketing campaigns with initiatives like The Powerpuff Girls avatar maker with 12 million avatars created in the first week of the launch. CN became not only popular with the kids, but the cartoons got so huge that Disney and Nickelodeon followed in the footsteps of CN shortly thereafter.

As a kid, we wished that we could’ve met our favourite cartoon characters. The 90s wasn’t the time for that – today is!

Continuing their strategy of being where the kids were, CN has now become proactive about reaching their target markets. The marketing in CN is no more about asking the kids to ‘tune-in’. Today, CN is tuning in to market exactly where the kids are – at schools. 2019 saw the 14h edition of their School Contact Programme. This programme targeted engagement with 1 million children from 1100 schools across 13 major cities including Delhi, Mumbai and Pune. The hype of meeting some cool cartoon characters is second to none.

If this wasn’t effective enough, CN held legacy cartoon characters in their hands like Powerpuff Girls, Ben 10, and Tom & Jerry. The target market for these were millennials so CN tied with The Souled Store, POPxo, and Myntra who work with designers like Nandita Mahtani and Manish Arora for highly selling legacy cartoon merchandise.

Our nostalgia for Cartoon Network characters speaks volumes for our love of their cartoons back then. Do kids feel the same way today?

We know kids have changed. The themes, the music and the preferences have changed. We’re living in a pandemic. Today, Ben 10 along with other cool characters is singing the rap song to “Be Clean, Be Cool”. CN released a rap song to raise awareness about health and hygiene which featured iconic characters from shows like Ben 10, The Powerpuff Girls, We Bare Bears, Adventure Time and Teen Titans Go!

These songs are in both Hindi and English and across YouTube, social media and all of Cartoon Network. With the lockdown regulations announced in Mid-March in many countries, it showed a surge of around 58% and lead to rescheduling the release of a few of their titles. 

Through CN’s journey, we get insights into the fall and rise of the brand once again all with the sheer power of effective marketing. The content is still Chhota Bheem but CN is now proactive. It reaches every place kid go before they go there. This is targeted marketing to fit consumer needs – be it the tiny tots at schools, the middle schoolers on online games and videos or the nostalgic millennials at The Souled Store.