In 2021 Magic Light Pictures’ new pre-school series, Pip and Posy, launched on Channel 5’s Milkshake! and Sky Kids on demand. The 52 x 7-minute CG animation was inspired by the hugely popular picture books from award winning illustrator Axel Scheffler. Magic Light wanted to assess and understand how the new content was received by audiences.
Objectives The objectives of this research were threefold:
Measurement We used our proprietary panel TRP Surveys to contact panellists with children aged 3-5 years. At this age, parents generally control the content that is viewed in the home. Each parent watched 2 episodes of Pip and Posy before answering key questions. We purposely ensured the questionnaire was relatively short (around 8-10 minutes) to achieve optimum results with minimum drop-out.
Reporting We created a concise yet engaging report outlining responses to the questions and disseminating the key findings.
We found that while parents thought overall that Pip and Posy would be favoured equally by their children (see chart below), when analysed by gender, parents thought boys would be more likely to favour Pip and Girls Posy.
We also compared Pip and Posy with other pre-school shows in the same genre and found that Pip and Posy was well liked regardless of child’s gender, unlike many competitor shows.
Outcomes Parents overwhelmingly liked the show (91%). Magic Light were able to use the analysis to quantify the reasons for the show’s success and provide evidence outlining audience appeal that would be used in licensing conversations and for future re-commissioning with broadcasters globally.
Parental agreement with key statements such as ‘I would be happy to see a wide range of themes reflected in the stories’ and ‘I would recommend Pip and Posy to my friends’ supplemented existing reporting with additional insight on the reasons behind the success of the book to TV adaptation.
