Within the scope of its licencing strategy for the multi-medial pre-school-programme brand KiKANiNCHEN, m4e AG brings further strategic partners from the publishing and home-entertainment sectors on board.

The licence programme for KiKANiNCHEN, the new – and recently distinguished with an international design award – pre-school world of the KI.KA children’s channel, will continually be expanded through the Grünwald-based brand management and media company m4e AG within the scope of its underlying marketing strategy. With the renowned publishing houses of Carlsen Verlag Hamburg and arsEdition Munich, two significant partners in the publishing sector have been acquired. Berlin‘s Universal Music Family Entertainment will then be responsible for the home entertainment marketing segment (Audio/DVD).

In future, KiKANiNCHEN’s publishing programme will be developed and distributed by two renowned publishers, whose products will not only complement each others’ but who will furthermore plan trade launches and trade events together. Carlsen Verlag will publish KiKANiNCHEN mini-books within the PIXI series, colouring books and colouring pads, Buggy Books and story books that include for example bedtime stories. The KiKANiNCHEN books by arsEdition will offer above all activity themes (including songbooks), Play & Learn, as well as puzzle compendiums, all of which will be supplemented with picture books and a friends-album.

All these books will however have one thing in common: in terms of their content, they will all reflect KI.KA’s high media-pedagogic demands. Thus, children exclusively receive content that is in harmony with their development potential and with the requirements of this young target group: exciting and humourous stories, characters and songs – without any advertising, and nothing which might be too demanding or frightening.

“With our books we support and strengthen the learning opportunities that Kikaninchen develops in his dialogues with Christian. Whether it is a matter of titles within the children’s activities sector, for instance our ‘letters and figures fun’ with Kikaninchen, or with stories that encourage social aptitudes – we focus on products which are fun for our children to play with, which at the same time offer an increased pedagogic value. Thus we perfectly fit into the world of KiKANiNCHEN”, explains Michael Schweins, executive of arsEdition GmbH.

This wide-ranging publishing programme will be presented for the first time at the Frankfurt Book Fair in October 2011.

Universal Music Family Entertainment expands the KiKANiNCHEN product range in the music and home entertainment sector and will bring an album of songs onto the market before the 2010 Christmas season representing its first audio product. As early as Spring 2011 the first DVD with purely KiKANiNCHEN content will then be published. Further audio and DVD products shall then follow at regular intervals.
Andreas Maaß, label head of Berlin’s family entertainment label says of these developments: “KiKANiNCHEN will set new standards in the pre-school sector. We are proud to be involved in the market introduction and further development of this format with a group of top-class partners, and we are very pleased to further intensify our longstanding and extremely successful partnership with KI.KA.”

Along with their toy-manufacturing partner – the SIMBA DICKIE GROUP – these partners now represent the strategic foundation of KiKANiNCHEN’s licence programme, upon which further meaningful categories will develop.