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 The release of the feature film
based on the animated children’s series about a
group of rescue dogs who protect their
community, will be backed by an “eight figure”
marketing blitz, with 1,800 TV ads across
channels like Nickelodeon. It involves
partnerships with almost 200 companies - from
Kellogg’s cereal to Best Western hotels - on
tie-ins for toys and other products, many of
which will come with a free trial of Paramount+.
The strategy is the highest-profile example of a
game plan ViacomCBS has developed to build out
its kids’ franchises - including “SpongeBob,” “iCarly,”
and “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” - and use
their success to help become a credible
competitor in the war for paying streaming
subscribers at a time when consolidation in the
industry is leaving the company at a
disadvantage.
“Disney is the gold standard in terms of really
creating and monetizing franchises,” said CFRA
analyst Tuna Amobi.
“ViacomCBS is looking to do the same thing, but
they haven’t been as aggressive in terms of
actually getting an early start and pivoting
into streaming and taking some of the
potentially game-changing actions that we’ve
seen from other companies, especially with the
way COVID affected the industry. So the ‘Paw
Patrol’ film could be a litmus test in terms of
going day-and-date streaming and theatrical.”
Friday will mark the first time ViacomCBS has
debuted a film in theaters and on Paramount+
simultaneously, a decision the company announced
in June. According to executives, it assessed
the likelihood of parents bringing their
unvaccinated children to theaters amid rising
cases of the COVID-19 Delta variant.
In the near-term, ViacomCBS’ family films will
likely debut theatrically and on Paramount+ on
the same date, via a very short theatrical
window followed by a Paramount+ release, or skip
a theatrical release altogether, said Brian
Robbins, the president of Nickelodeon, the
ViacomCBS kids’ channel where “Paw Patrol”
debuted as TV series in 2013.
The “Paw Patrol” film, the first theatrical
spinoff of the TV show, has among the most
tie-in products and global retailers of any film
the company has distributed, said Pam Kaufman,
President of ViacomCBS Consumer Products.
It is also the first time ViacomCBS is using the
full force of its properties and partnerships to
drive people to Paramount+, the streaming
service it crafted from the merger of CBS and
Viacom. Many of the consumer product tie-ins
include a free one-month subscription to the
service, which costs $5 per month with ads and
$10 per month ad-free.
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 The marketing push around the
film “is not just in service of Paramount+,”
said Robbins. “This is in service of the
franchise of 'Paw Patrol' which, in turn, as
that franchise grows, so should our streaming
service.”
New franchise content is crucial to Paramount+
subscriber growth, executives say, because it
helps drive new subscribers, who then stay on
the service so their children can watch older
franchise content, like the six seasons of “Paw
Patrol” currently available on the streaming
service.
ViacomCBS is also betting on its “Star Trek”
franchise, among others, premiering its
first-ever animated “Star Trek” series for
families - “Star Trek: Prodigy” - later this
year on Paramount+, followed by a second viewing
window on Nickelodeon.
 Yet for “Paw Patrol: The Movie,” success across
consumer products sales, box office tickets and
new streaming subscribers is far from
guaranteed. Families may prefer to stay home
rather than go to movie theaters or shop at
brick and mortar stores that are promoting the
film in their aisles. A preschool film has a
limited audience compared to multi-generational
offerings from Marvel and others.
And on streaming, ViacomCBS is among the
smallest of its peers, with 42 million total
streaming subscribers compared to Disney’s 174
million. Even as ViacomCBS is seeking organic
growth, non-Executive Chair Shari Redstone has
sought partners as Discovery and Amazon bulk up
through their acquisitions of AT&T’s WarnerMedia
assets and MGM, respectively.
On Wednesday, ViacomCBS and Comcast announced a
joint streaming service, SkyShowtime, that will
launch in smaller European markets next year.
“You want to create a virtuous cycle of content
creation and monetization, and I wouldn’t say
that ViacomCBS is the gold standard of doing
that yet, and that’s probably one of the
strategic rationales of the CBS-Viacom merger:
to create more scale and create more
franchises,” said Amobi.
(Reporting by Helen Coster in New York; Editing
by Kenneth Li and Nick Zieminski)
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