Home Marketers The Media And Retail Deals Behind The Peppa Pig Franchise Expansion

The Media And Retail Deals Behind The Peppa Pig Franchise Expansion

SHARE:
Peppa Pig

Peppa Pig is everywhere.

Whether or not you have children, you likely know the little girl pig from the kid’s cartoon show. But the Peppa media franchise is just getting started.

The program was acquired by Hasbro in 2019, and it’s become a YouTube and streaming hit that’s spawned toothpastes, toys and all sorts of merchandise, not to mention theme parks.

So how does a show like that keep growing?

Well, it takes data, distribution and a newborn pig.

The rebrand

Shows for prekindergarten-age kids are immensely important parts of consumer culture.

That’s partly about the numbers. Nielsen’s latest 2025 streaming program ratings has “Bluey,” another animated kids show, as the most-watched show of 2025 (2.5 billion minutes ahead of No. 2 “Grey’s Anatomy”). But there’s something even more important that makes a hit kids show a valuable enterprise.

A kid’s favorite character is “the No. 1 entry point for preschoolers into brands,” said Esra Cafer, SVP of global brand strategy and management at Hasbro, who oversees the Peppa Pig franchise, among other Hasbro lines like My Little Pony. The company has tested this with preschoolers.

Kids fall in love with the character, play the character at home and “want to eat the pot of yogurt with their favorite character on the lid.”

To that end, Peppa Pig has orchestrated a major brand expansion. Literally.

Subscribe

AdExchanger Daily

Get our editors’ roundup delivered to your inbox every weekday.

In May, the Peppa franchise added a new character, the baby pig Evie.

Mummy Pig, as the mother is known, did her own pregnancy announcement live on the YouTube podcast “Not Gonna Lie” with host Kylie Kelce. The “gender reveal” happened on Walmart’s site, along with the prerelease of a set of toys exclusive to Walmart. “It’s a comprehensive relationship” with Walmart, Cafer said, rather than a pure media or marketing deal.

Morwenna Banks, the voice actress behind Mummy Pig, “knows Mummy Pig probably better than you know anyone in the world” and can absolutely field questions on the fly in character, Cafer said.

It was new for this campaign to “break the fourth wall” by putting Banks on podcasts and other media as Mummy Pig, she added. But it was part of a strategy to create more direct and life-like connections to families almost as actual celebrities who can have a voice with parents.

“Mummy Pig is real, James,” Cafer joked. “She’s real.”

Pigging out on new media

One way to grow a children’s brand is to sign a hybrid audience and exclusive merchandise deal with the world’s largest retailer.

But Hasbro is also pushing Peppa Pig into new and data-driven media channels, with whole new charts to top.

The program cut its teeth as a YouTube pioneer, Cafer said. But there are plans for FAST channels, like parts of TV packages carried by certain smart TV manufacturers, which would stream ad-supported episodes. In April, Peppa moved its tentpole mobile gaming app to Netflix, and last year it created a podcast on the Amazon-owned Audible streaming audio platform.

The big plans being made now by the Peppa Pig team, Cafer said, are for the big retail and consumer events like Prime Day and the Thanksgiving shopping period in 2026.

“You’ll see this bigger family and these bigger feelings come to life across the Peppaverse,” she said.

Must Read

Monopoly Man looks on at the DOJ vs. Google ad tech antitrust trial (comic).

2025: The Year Google Lost In Court And Won Anyway

From afar, it looks like Google had a rough year in antitrust court. But zoom in a bit and it becomes clear that the past year went about as well as Google could have hoped for.

Why 2025 Marked The End Of The Data Clean Room Era

A few years ago, “data clean rooms” were all the ad tech trades could talk about. Fast-forward to 2026, and maybe advertisers don’t need to know what a data clean room is after all.

The AI Search Reckoning Is Dismantling Open Web Traffic – And Publishers May Never Recover

Publishers have been losing 20%, 30% and in some cases even as much as 90% of their traffic and revenue over the past year due to the rise of zero-click AI search.

Privacy! Commerce! Connected TV! Read all about it. Subscribe to AdExchanger Newsletters

No Waiting for May – CES Is Where The TV Upfront Season Starts 

If any single event can be considered the jumping-off point for TV upfronts, it’s the Consumer Electronics Showcase (CES), which kicks off this week in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Comic: This Is Our Year

Comic: This Is Our Year

It’s been 15 years since this comic first ran in January 2011, and there’s something both quaint and timeless about it. Here’s to more (and more) transparency in 2026, and happy New Year!

From AI To SPO: The Top 10 AdExchanger Guest Columns Of 2025

The generative AI trend generated endless hot takes this year, but the ad industry also had plenty to say about growing competition between DSPs and SSPs. Here are AdExchanger’s top 10 most popular guest columns of 2025 and why they resonated.