Obtaining better economic benefit through derivative toy products is attracting more and more attention of the people from animation and comics industry and audio-visual industry. From 6th to 8th of last month, the Ministry of Culture and the government of Guangdong province held “China International Exposition of Audio-Visual Industry 2007” in Guangzhou. During the meeting, the Market Division of the Ministry of Culture, the Culture Office of Guangdong province and the Guangdong Toy Association (GDTA) joint held the “Interactive Forum on the Development of the Animation and Comics and Toy Product” in which the representatives from more than 100 enterprises of animation and comics, toy and audio industries communicated with each other. The meeting was presided over by  Lin Ziping, section chief of the Culture Market of Guangdong Culture Office. Many people have given excellent speeches at the meeting, such as Liu Qiang, chief of Network Culture Department of Culture Market of Ministry of Culture, Li Zhuoming, executive vice president of GDTA, Fu Tiezheng, vice chairman and administrative vice secretary-general of Cartoon Committee, CTAA, as well as many other people engaged in the toy and animation and comics industries. The followings are summaries of part guests’ speech:

The Cognizance Standard of the Animation and comics industry is in Drafting

Liu Qiang: “In the recent years, the development of animation and comics and game industry is like a raging fire and walking from the edge of economic field to a distinct place and has become one of the important supporting industries in the development of the national economy. The animation and comics products itself owns large market room. Toy is an after-product of animation and comics’ product and an important makeup of the industry chain. It is also the juncture of the two industries which relating to the construction of the endogenous system of self favorable development.”

In his speech, Liu Qiang reviews that, although animation and comics and game industries in our country are developing rapidly, there exist many problems need to be solved at present. For example, in the policy guidance, the conjunction between the toy production industry and the upriver products still needs to be strengthened. Art present, the animation and comics products producing enterprises’ recognition for consumers is not enough. For example, the average age of Japanese consumers is 32 and in our country, that is under 12. Liu Qiang said, the convening of the “Interactive Forum on the Development of the Animation and Comics and Toy Product” is to fulfill the national No. 32 document and pursue the age for after-product of Chinese animation and comics. Especially the toy industry is regarded as the promoting and driving road of animation and comics industry to get through the bottleneck problem of the development of animation and comics industry to realize the conjunction of industries. Liu Qiang introduced that, in order to promote the better development of the animation and comics industry, we are studying and drafting out the cognizance standard of the animation and comics industry. He added that, they attempt to put the producing and selling enterprises of derived products of animation and comics into the range of driving and promoting. In the aspects of financing, tax, payment and discount, we will support and encourage the qualified enterprises.

Animation and comics and toy industries make mutual-benefit hand in hand

Li Zhuoming: “As we all know, among the authorized and exceeded products of animation and comics image, the return of toy is the biggest. The combination of these two will share bigger fruit. The solid strength of Guangdong toy industry is enough to strongly support the development of the animation and comics industry.”

He held that, animation and comics industry is a kind of industry that full of originalities. And the study and invention of toys also needs originality in order to meet the demand of the market. Therefore, the combination of these two industries will benefit to the mutual promotion and development. The facts show that toy is not only an important derived product of animation and comics image, but also the main origin of income of it.

To the present guests, Li Zhuoming said that, with the launching and implementation of the adjusted regulations of the national process and export trading policy, processing for overseas order, which comes with little profit, had dropped behind the demand of the development for powerful toy enterprises in Guangdong. A lot of toy entrepreneurs have realized that independent innovation and self-brand can make the enterprises develop better. With the further restructure of the toy industry, toy enterprises that want to develop to animation and comics industry will be increasing all the time. These enterprises with strong economical power all completely need the authorization of the animation and comics image to long develop their own brand toy products. Therefore, if the people of the animation and comics industry can all catch this opportunity to cooperate with the toy industry at once and exert respective advantage, it will mutually benefit the two industries’ development and make the animation and comics and toy industries an in-exhaustive gold mine.

The animation and comics industry parts with the toy industry at present

Fu Tiezheng: “Toys ‘Made in China’ are everywhere in the world. Till now, China has been recognized as powerful county of toy production all over the world. But because of the lack of independent brand, we must change from Made in China to Created in China. We not only act as powerful country in making as well as in creating! The so-called ‘Created in China’ is to create culture as well as brand. Establishing Chinese own cultural band is the only way to truly open the door of Chinese cultural originality industry.

Fu Tiezheng says that it is easy to solve this problem. Animation and comics industry cooperates with toy industry and change the animated and comic image into toy products to enter the market. Now the toy dealers have good market channel but no brand. So the cooperation of the two industries will have a better developing space in the future. Fu Tiezheng regards that, the present domestic situation is that the animation and comics industry parts with toys. Therefore, the two industries should hand in hand to realize the change from powerful country in making to creating. The detailed can be carried out in the following three steps: making cultural brand; maintaining cultural brand and promoting cultural brand. Fu added that, government claims that in 5 to 10 years time, the production value of the animation and comics industry would stand 1% of the gross national economy which means that there is a market space of 100 billion RMB. The combination of the two industries has a very wide market prospect.

Animated and comic image contains huge market benefit

Li Yong (general manager of Guangzhou Jiangtong Animated and Comic Products Research and Invention Co. Ltd.) indicated that, in 2007, the gross value of the global animated and comic product as well as its derived product is 500 billion USD, only secondly to IT industry. There are more than 5400 animated and comic products making units in China and the scale of domestic animated and comic market is 20 billion RMB among which 70% profit comes from the derived and surrounding products. The animated and comic image could bring us huge market benefit and we can see this point from the experience of the abroad famous merchandisers. Coca Cola Company promoted “Qoo” beverage in 1997 and in December of 2001, this beverage came into market in Hangzhou and Xi’an. It is nearly over one night, “Qoo” product and image swept the beverage market of the two places. Although the price is higher than its rival by 20%, it stably took up the top place in local beverage market at once. It is obvious that animated and comic image is such a big drive for product marketing. Li Yong reviewed that, domestic cartoons are also very popular if they have originality. For example, their company’s first original cartoon series-Zhu Bajie, has created high audience rate of 4.19% when it is played in CCTV.

Toy is the biggest share in the industry chain of animation and comics

Hu Yong (the marketing majordomo of Auldey): The animation and comics industry has make one by one oracle of famous toys: Gundam, Transformers……the toy industry is the biggest share in the whole chain of animation and comics industry. Now toy manufacturers have already supported and entered the animation and comics industry in different ways. Auldey Animated and Comic Toy Co. Ltd is right an active promoter of domestic derived toys of animation and comics. Auldey’s first self-funded video animated and comic product “Blazing Teens” has very distinct effect when it is play in domestic and strongly promote the marketing of toy products. At present, toys of animation and comics driving stand over 70% of Auldey’s sale. How can make the animated and comic product combines with the toy better? Hu Yong regards in his speech, the animation and comics making units should respect the merchandisers and market as well as attract and borrow useful experience and method of the abroad development of animation and comics industry. The most important is that we must know what products the children like and the roles of the manufactures in the chain of animation and comics industry. Besides, the problems that how the media treats the commercialized cartoons also need people of the industry to actively face and solve.

Domestic animated and comic products is lack of commercial factors

Zhou Min (general manager of licensing of Guangzhou Ruishi Cultural Developing Co. Ltd) said, “”We are a toy enterprise at the very beginning. Many years ago, the head of the company introduce abroad cartoons and played them in China and at the same time exploited and sold the derived products of cartoon images. Extreme Dinosaurs, Macross and so on were introduced by us. We regarded acting abroad brands as a flat and exploited the developing way of animation and comics industry. “

The company now has prepared to invest to make animated and comic product with independent intellectual property rights. “After running Ultraman and other animated and comic images in market, we basically understood the demand situation for animation and comics industry of Chinese market.” Zhou noted that, at present, domestic market currently saw severe lack of commercial factors for products. The understanding of the market demand for derived products when creating is not enough and the construction of industry is not reasonable. There exist defects in industry chain and the return way is too narrow. At the same time, the protection of intellectual property rights is not enough.