Q&A: Jeffrey Dunn plots HIT's course for the next five years

Heading into MIPCOM with a stronger development team and the goal of hatching new IP, HIT Entertainment CEO and president Jeffrey Dunn brought KidScreen editor Jocelyn Christie up to speed on his plans for the indie preschool specialist. Just six months into the job, Dunn is putting his 13-plus years of experience at Nickelodeon, where he launched its international consumer products business and co-created Noggin, to bear on planning the company's next phase of growth.

How would you describe HIT's current market position?

I think we are the largest and the best of the independent kids producers.

What would you say the company's current strengths are?

We have great global heritage properties. We have a terrific licensing group, and we have a pretty cool network investment in PBS Kids Sprout.

Looking back at the past five or six years, what would you say has been the biggest area of growth for HIT?

Factually, it's the growth of Thomas and Friends into a mega-business. Thomas has become the number-one preschool boys brand. In 2003, he was the third-largest brand in the company - today, he's the largest.

Where would you like to take HIT in the next five years?

We want to be more brand-driven. We have great properties, but we haven't thought about them as brands so much as TV shows. I'd also like to see us have more properties, and I suspect we will be even bigger internationally than we are today.

Also, our channel investments will be in very different places, so Sprout and JimJam will be real networks. And in five years, I think we'll be leveraging our CP expertise to be a licensing player beyond our own business.

How do you plan on getting there?

1.We're going to reorganize and add a brand management function. So we'll see actual brand managers who have responsibility for a property across all lines of business. We'll create P&Ls and measure the profitability of brands going forward. We've got a lot of big anniversaries coming up (in 2010, there's Thomas's 65th, Bob's 10th and Barney's 25th), so there's a lot of good stuff to be planned.

2.In terms of adding more properties, we're significantly increasing the size of our development team. HIT has been more of an acquisitor than a developer of IPs. While we're still open to acquisitions, we're going to put energy and effort behind building our development capabilities. That involves a bigger development budget and more people in London and the US. We haven't been doing much in the way of US development. Karen Barnes, the producer of Barney, is responsible for US development, but it hasn't been a big priority for her. We're going to make it one and build an incremental team around her.

3.To enhance our international footprint, it's about potentially opening up some offices beyond London. We're focused on countries that make sense for us. For example, France is taking on Thomas for the first time, so that country makes sense. We're also looking at putting some more energy and resources behind Spain, and we're going to be doing a bunch of things in Eastern Europe.