Aardman market and industry trends

Property rights – Property rights are the rights that people have regarding how their property is used. In most
countries, property rights give people the right to sell, rent and delegate property. Intellectual property refers to
works or ideas and people can have intellectual property rights over ideas and things like copyright, patents and
trademarks give people those rights. Intellectual property rights help to prevent people from stealing and/or
replicating

▪ Things you write or create

▪ The way your Product looks
▪ The name of your Product

More than one person can have intellectual property rights and they can
transfer intellectual property rights to others, which can be done by
selling them. Intellectual property rights can also belong to a business. If
someone is self-employed, they will typically have intellectual property
rights over what they create unless they have a contract which states that the person who asked you to create
your work gets to have intellectual property rights over the work you created. For example, Aardman uses their
intellectual property rights to trademark the characters that they create.

Product diversity – Aardman has helped produced films, TV shows,

adverts, music videos, online games, interactive media, Apps and
idents. They have produced films such as “Chicken Run” with Pathé
(2000), “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit” with
DreamWorks Animation (2005), which won the Academy Award for
Best Animated Feature in 2006, “Flushed Away” with DreamWorks
Animation (2006), “Arthur Christmas” with Sony Pictures Animation
(2011), “The Pirates! Band of Misfits” with Sony Pictures Animation
(2012), “Shaun the Sheep” with StudioCanal (2015) and “Early Man” with British Film Institute (BFI) (2018).

They also helped produced adverts for companies and organisations such as DFS, Change 4 Life, PayPal, Yoplait,
Innocent, Chevron, Danone, Clarks, Nivea Men, Topps, Playstation, Alzheimer’s Research UK, FIFA, Funky
Pigeon, Sainsbury’s, Braun, Persil, Chupa Chups, National Accident Helpline, Surf, McDonalds, Admiral, Coca
Cola, Benadryl and Booking.com.

They have helped produce TV shows such as “Shaun the Sheep” (2007-
present) with CBBC, “The Amazing Adventures of Morph” (1980-1981)
with the BBC, “Angry Kid” (1999-2007) with BBC Four, “Creature
Comforts” (2003-2007) with ITV, “Timmy Time” (2009-2012) with
CBeebies and “Chop Socky Chooks” (2008-2008) with the Cartoon
Network.

They have helped create interactive media and online games for companies and organisations such as the BBC,
the Tate, Intellectual Property Office, British Council, Disney, The Roald Dahl Literacy Estate, The Eden Project
and Pan Macmillan.
Rights and Brand development – At Aardman,
they have a Rights and Brand development sect of the
company, which deals with Licensing and Publishing,
Product Development, TV/DVD and Digital Sales,
Brand Marketing and Live Events. They are experts in
looking at the potential of Aardman Products. They deal with decisions such as the global supply of Aardman
products, social media, events organised by Aardman, merchandise and partnerships.

If people want to use images and/or video clips from Aardman, they can contact the People at Aardman who deal
with permissions to see if Aardman will let them use their assets or not. The Brand Marketing and Licensing
teams determine the value of Aardman products and product campaigns. The Attractions & Live Experiences
department are experts in making live experiences by Aardman immersive for families. The Rights and Brand
development sect also provides TV, DVD, digital and publishing licenses.

An example of a Rights and Brand development agreement was in 2016, when Aardman partnered with Lund
Gruppen to create Shaun the Sheep Land at the Skånes Zoo in Sweden. Another example was when in 2018,
Hopster Studios came together with Aardman to license its productions “Clever Brenda”, “Two Minute Tales”, “The
Little Toymaker” and original music videos “Hopster Jam”.

Outsourcing – In terms of business, outsourcing is when a business hires another party to do services for that
company that is usually done by the company’s own Employees. The reason why outsourcing happens in some
businesses is because it can save the company money. Jobs might be outsourced to other countries where the pay
is lower than the company’s native country, but when jobs are outsourced to other countries, this causing more
unemployment in the company’s native country. For example, Ford Motor Company (FMC), American Express
(Amex) and Microsoft are examples of big companies who outsourced jobs to India, where its government gives
companies lower interest rates.

In 2011, Aardman said that it may move the company to

another country because even though animated films receive
between a 15-20% tax credit, animated TV doesn’t receive
any tax credit. If they were to move, they might move to
countries such as Canada, Ireland or France as all these
countries receive support from their government for
producing animated TV shows. Aardman seems still be
producing animations at their Headquarters in Bristol.

Mergers and acquisitions – Mergers and acquistions

(Also known as M&A) refers to the transactions that take
place when two companies are involved together. A merger
is when two companies or organisations form as one
business or an organisation. An acquisition is where one
company buys another company which is usually smaller and
it becomes a subsidary of the first company, which then
becomes the parent company.
Examples of acquisitions in companies include BP buying Standard Oil in 1987, Vodafone Group buying AirTouch
Communications in 1999, JPMorgan Chase & Co buying Bank One Corporation in 2004, Heinz buying Kraft in
2015, Dell buying EMC in2015, AT&T buying Time Warner in 2016, The Walt Disney Company buying Twenty-
First Century Fox in 2017 and Microsoft buying LinkedIn in 2016. Aardman acquired Nathan Love, which is a
New York based animation studio like Aardman in 2015. David Sproxton, who is the co-founder of Aardman said
that the reason why Aardman bought Nathan Love is because they wanted to build a business in New York for so
that an American agency could benefit Aardman.

Aardman’s accessibility policy – Aardman makes sure that their website is accessible to as many People as
they can. For example, they try and provide what is called a “graceful transformation”, which according to W3C
which states rules such as separating structure (This means how information is structured logically like
chapters for example) from presentation (This means how information is provided like braille or a
text-only presentation) and creating documents that can rely on more than on type of hardware.

Aardman states that they make sure that their websites content is readable
and that the People can understand where the titles are. People can suggest
improvements to their accessibility policy by emailing the company. They have
stated that they know not all of their videos have alternate content and that
they did not intend on this happening.

A lot of webpages on the Aardman website use a white background and dark
text, which is a good decision because text is more readable when the background is a very different shade than
the text colour. Most of the text on the website looks like it is a decent size, however the text at the end of most
of their webpages looks like it may be hard to read for some so they should change the text size if they can.

Current international and national market trends in animation – The biggest markets for animation are
in the United States, Canada, Japan, China, France, Britain, Germany and Korea. Most parts of the animation
industry are growing at a rate of 5% each year. In 2015, the total net worth of the animation industry worldwide
was $2.44bn and in 2017, this number was $2.54bn and this number is predicted to be $2.7bn in 2020. Streaming
animated content made $2.4bn in 2017 and this amount is growing by 8% year over year. In 2012, the demand for
animation skills in jobs grew by 25% compared to 2011. The 3D animation market worldwide was estimated to be
$11.46bn in 2016

In 2010, Aardman made £53,500,000 and at the end of 2012, Aardman had made £22,300,00, which was a big loss
compared to the previous year when they made £66,800,00. At the end of 2013, Aardman had made £18,700,00
and the films “The Pirates! In An Adventure With Scientists!”, “Arthur Christmas” and “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse Of
The Were-Rabbit” were part of this profit. At the end of 2015 Aardman made £23,600,00 and this number
increased to £26,300,00 at the end of 2016.
Aardman’s major competitors – Aardman is well known for producing stop-
motion animations but they have also helped produce productions which are
computer animated and they do have competitors when it comes to animation.
Some examples of large animation companies include 20th Century Fox
Animation, Pixar, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Warner Bros. Animation, Sony
Pictures Animation, Studio Ghibli, Illumination Entertainment and DreamWorks
Animation.

When Aardman helps produce computer animated productions, they tend to

team up with other studios such as when they teamed up with DreamWorks
Animation to create “Chicken Run” (2000), “Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the
Were-Rabbit” (2005) and “Flushed Away” (2006). Even though the computer
animated industry is very popular, stop motion films are still being made by
Aardman.

For example, Walt Disney Animation Studios has made a total gross of $1,821,990,432 from eight feature films
whilst Aardman made a total gross of $333,777,831 from eight feature films. Even though, Walt Disney Animation
Studios made more money from the same amount of films, Aardman was still able to make money of their films
which shows that the company is still successful despite their competitors.

Product development cycle – The process of developing

a product is shown as a cycle known as a product
development cycle. There are six stages and they are the
design concept, technical feasibility, product development,
product validation, full production and support. In the design
stage, you would need to ask questions such as whether
there is a current demand on the market for what you plan
to produce, what the positive aspects of your product are
and how competitive your product type is.

In the technical feasibility stage, you need to consider the

technical and financial limitations and questions such as which
items to make the product are more cost effective, the
requirements that the country your consumers come from
has for and whether you will meet those requirements. In
the product development stage, a prototype of the product is made and you will need to ask questions such as
what the pros and cons of the product are, does the product work in the way you expected it to work and can
the product be improved?

The product validation stage is where techniques for manufacturing are developed and how valid the product is
for the market. You should ask questions such as how long the product will last, will the packaging for the
product stop it from being damaged and does the product support your warranty period. In the full production
stage, your product has been made and Consumers can now buy your product. You will need to ask questions
such as how your product compares to the same product type from competitors, is your product better than the
competitors product, does it last longer to the competitors product and will it be more successful than the
competitors product.
The support stage is to keep making sure that your product has its potential value. In this stage, you may want to
make small improvements to your product and if your product has failed, you need to ask questions such as what
caused the failure and how can you correct the failure. Aardman will probably use this cycle and for example, the
senior game Designer will need to be involved in the product development cycle as they have repsonisiblites such
as creating the idea for the game and being responsible for its creation.

Diversity of techniques – Although they are most famous for

producing claymation, they have helped produce animations of
different types. The types of techniques Aardman has used
include 2D, 3D, Computer generated imagery (CGI), live action,
animation, Paper craft, puppeteering, augmented reality (AR) and
stop motion.

The reason why they have used so many different techniques is

probably because they know that these techniques are in demand and using these techniques will make the
company bigger. Some of their productions use more than one type of these techniques. An example of a 2D
animation that Aardman produced was for the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children
(NSPCC) called “Talk PANTS”.

An example of a production by
Aardman that used multiple
techniques was the video
“#ShareTheOrange”, which featured
Actor Bryan Cranston for
Alzheimer’s Research UK. The video
used live action, CGI and stop
motion techniques. An example of
Aardman using the Paper craft technique in their productions is the “Stories of Better” advert for Toyota and the
advert also used stop motion as well. The most successful techniques Aardman has used were stop motion and
3D because their most successful productions such as “Chicken Run” and “Flushed Away” either used on of these
techniques.

Aardman’s main Customers – Most of Aardman’s productions are suitable for children to watch and a lot of
Aardman productions are targeted towards children. The most successful productions by Aardman are targeted
towards children and their most successful production was the feature film “Chicken Run” which grossed the
highest out of all of the other films Aardman helped produce. Children are not the only ones who like Aardman
productions as there are adults who like Aardman productions as well.
Some of Aardman’s productions are actually targeted towards
adults like for example the #ShareTheOrange video that they
helped produce, which was made to explain dementia although
children could probably watch this with an Adult as it is
important to raise awareness about dementia.

Other examples of Aardman productions being targeted towards

adults were the adverts for the National Accident Helpline, British Gas, Swedbank, Amigo loans, Nivea Men, BT,
Admiral and PayPal.

The production type with more productions targeted towards adults

were adverts and this is probably because Adults probably watch
more adverts than children do as Adults are the ones buying
products. Aardman have also produced adverts where the advert
targets both children and adults such as the adverts for Change 4 Life
and Playstation.

Sequels in production – In October 2016, Aardman announced that

there will be a sequel to the 2015 film “Shaun the Sheep Movie” titled
“Shaun the Sheep Movie: Farmageddon” and that they will be working with
StudioCanal, who helped produce the first film. They started working on
the film in January 2017 and it is expected to be released in 2019.

Richard Starzak, who was a Director for the first film will be directing
the sequel and one of the first films Producers Paul Kewely will be
producing the sequel. The first film made a total gross of $106,209,378 so it is a good idea for Aardman to create
a sequel since it should make a similar amount of money to the first film.

In April 2018, Aardman announced that there will be a sequel to the 2005 film “Chicken Run” and Peter Lord and
David Sproxton will be the executive Producers of the film, however it will not be coming out soon. Aardman will
be working with StudioCanal and Pathé. Sam Fell will be directing the sequel and he was also a Director for the
2006 film “Flushed Away” which Aardman helped produce, however the casting has not been announced yet. The
first film made a total gross of $224,834,564 so its sequel should hopefully make a similar amount.

Nathan Love – Nathan Love is an animation studio based in New York

City, New York USA and it is a subsidary of Aardman Animations. Nathan
Love was founded by Joe Burrascano in 2007 and Aardman acquired the
studio in 2015. They have around 11 to 50 Employees and they have
employed people such as Jon O’Hara as their Executive Producer, Tim
Probert as a Prolific Illustrator, Jim McKenzie as a Director and Designer, Eric Cunha as CG Director, Ellen Su as
a Director and Designer and Anca Risca as their Creative Director. The Duo Native to Noise has also worked
with them.
They have used techniques including 3D, 2D, CGI and live
action to create their work. They have produced work for
companies and organisations such as Kellogg's Froot
Loops, Nestlé, Sprite,Crayola, National Geographic, Baskin
Robbins, Barbara's Puffins Cereal, Adidas, Kraft Foods,
Kodak, Hellmann, Guiness, Kellogg’s Krave™, Federal
Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), Nickelodeon,
Chevrolet, Maynards, United Parcel Service (UPS),
Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Captain D's, Bank of
America, NBC Artworks and Chobani.

By Annie Magner.