The Juno Company is well on its way to creating a “transmedia” brand, or one that crosses different media from DVDs to iPhone apps and web videos. The company is built around a cartoon character, a girl named Juno, and her loved for classical music. Like any good brand, the property starts with an emphasis on quality.
The story of San Francisco-based startup and the opportunities before it is a good case study for entrepreneurs who want to take something creative and turn it into a cross-media franchise. The company is still in the beginning stages of this journey, but it is talking to a lot of big entertainment companies that could take its beloved character — a big-eyed girl with pigtails and a love for music — into the mainstream.
The Juno videos, apps, merchandise and accompanying eBooks are the brainchild of Belinda Takahashi, (pictured right, no relation to me) a musical prodigy who first started doodling the character when she was a child. For the past eight years, she and her husband Adam Adelman, a former financial analyst, have cultivated the main character, (named after their own daughter) making musical animated shows in the tradition of Baby Einstein, the videos that play classical music and visual imagery to babies in the hopes they will become geniuses. The setting for the story is Harmonia Springs, a world made of musical experiences.
Takahashi and her husband created Juno Baby and Juno Jr., two properties that try to instill a love for music in children, but with more emphasis on the rich musical nuances that Takahashi, who had three different piano teachers at age six (and none of them knew about the other). She started doing piano competitions at age 10 and played at Carnegie Hall at age 12. She went on to become a music professor, and she believes children can absorb more musical learning than people give them credit for. Her target is kids ages two to five.
“I was working on avant-garde music for adults, but when my child was born, my audience changed,” Takahashi said. “Baby Einstein was an inspiration, but I wanted to create music for children that was not watered down, that took advantage of the child’s ability to hear rich textures and harmonies.”
The DVDs collected eight different parent-related rewards for kids education products. That put the company on the radar of Barrett Cohn, an investment banker at Lehman Bros. who was raising a youngster himself. In contrast to Baby Einstein, Cohn said, “We don’t claim to make your child smarter. We believe your child is already smart.” Cohn adds, “We give the kids broccoli with cheese on it.”
About two years ago, Cohn (pictured right) met with the founders, joined them as chief executive, and led a $2.5 million investment in the company. That gave them the capital to market the products and expand into a variety of multimedia. Because the founders had been building content for so long, they hit the digital world running.
In a partnership with developers PadWorx Digital Media, they have launched three successful iPhone apps, two of which have been in the top 25 ranks. Those apps generate revenue through sales of virtual goods within the games. Today, they are announcing a new eBook called The Day the Music Stopped (it goes live in March). The app is an interactive experience, built around music. It will sell for 99 cents on the iPad, iPhone, and iPod Touch.
“We decided to create a new media company for children, built around beautiful creative work like Sesame Street and the Muppets,” Cohn said. “We are a 360-degree media company.”
But The Juno Company plans on being a hybrid firm, combining both digital and physical products. Cohn said the company will sell toys and DVDs in retail stores as well as delve into TV, online entertainment and other media. On the company’s web site, you can also buy apparel, gift sets, books, and CDs based on the Juno Baby and Juno Jr. franchises.
Now the company has 12 full-time employees, but Takahashi and Adelman do all of the creative work still. Takahashi does her best thinking while playing the piano. But she acknowledges that it’s a big workload and now her team needs more creative help.
They’re in the midst of crafting a television show. Cohn said the company is raising a new round of funding now. The company is creating a game engine with richer media for more beautiful games. The goal is to create content that can be viewed anytime, anywhere. Cohn said the company expects revenues in the high seven figures for 2011.
It will be interesting to watch how the company maneuvers a market full of competition, which includes the likes of Disney, Pixar, Nickelodeon and Sesame Street. Cohn said the company uses scrappy tactics such as marketing via YouTube videos (like the one below), Facebook, and alliances with retailers. Moms who love the product and blog about it have been the biggest source of virality.
Cohn said the company also has some unannounced partnerships. Cohn sees that the technology world is moving fast, while older media and entertainment moves at a slower pace.
“But all of us need each other in order to reach the widest number of users,” he said.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odajt0PFTNA&w=640&h=385]