#MobExAwards highlight: How Pants Bear went from a children’s education platform to a sticker sensation

The COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with changes to YouTube’s “Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA)” regulations, made it difficult for Pants Bear to launch its new edutainment show of the same name.

Furthermore, it only had a limited budget to work with as it was still a start-up. While the show started to gain a steady following on YouTube, it was nowhere near enough to break through the clutter of edutainment brands. 

Pants Bear decided to pivot the brand to market it on users’ phones instead. Working with Industria, it tapped on the increasing demand for stickers and GIFs in chats by launching profiles on GIF platform GIPHY , and sticker platform Tenor, which was met with resounding success.

Pants Bear’s ability to explore beyond the scope of its product and pivot it to target the masses impressed the judges and secured it the gold award for Best Use of Social at MARKETING-INTERACTIVE’s MobEx Awards 2021. 

Challenge 

On top of COVID-19, the changes to COPPA made it an especially rough start for Pants Bear to launch its new children’s entertainment and education brand of the same name. As it was still a start-up, it only had a limited budget to fall back on – and this was further cut in half because of the pandemic. 

Pants Bear wanted the show to become the new global standard in early childhood content, and to show a brand dedicated to children’s happiness and wellbeing. 

The show features an eponymous bear who lives at Bearry Mountain with his family. His name comes from his iconic green pants, which he wears wherever he goes. The show follows Pants Bear as he embarks on a new adventure each day, and shares his learnings with children along the way. 

Pants Bear premiered on YouTube in 2020 after more than a year of planning and preparation. The show had managed to gain a steady following on YouTube, across several markets, including Singapore, Japan, Malaysia and Australia – with a fraction of its budget to spare. 

With more than a million views and over 3,000 subscribers on YouTube, Pants Bear had made its first dent in the universe. But this was not enough to break through the clutter of the many edutainment brands out there. 

To that end, Pants Bear wanted to pivot the brand using social creativity that would bring the brand to where everyone spends most of their time – on their phones. 

Strategy 

One thing Pants Bear understood well was: Three to five seconds is the new three to five minutes. Its underlying strategy throughout the initiative was to pivot and expand the brand to encapsulate stickers and GIFs while tapping into the growing mobile messenger use. This would allow the brand to reach out to its audience in new ways. 

Pants Bear discovered that mobile and messenger use had been steadily increasing, with the pandemic driving even more interaction on the messenger platforms. 

The company also learnt from Facebook Analytics this year that more than 100 billion messages are sent every day on messenger platforms, with 63% of people across generations preferring to message over having to email or call. This provided a key insight that was later used to pivot the brand and reach not only the Malaysian market, but across different audiences around the world. 

From its studies, Pants Bear knew that it had a global resonance in entertainment, with a global net sentiment being 80% positive across audience groups. The show and its characters also have a cute element which broke beyond the parent and child segment, and was even favoured by teenagers in Japan and the US. 

To maximise the show’s visibility, Pants Bear worked with Industria to tap on the increasing usage of chat and messenger. With existing limitations on the usual channels, Pants Bear had to think outside the box and use a platform that would allow it to gain a presence on as many mobile devices as possible. Hence, how the idea to market Pants Bear on GIPHY and Tenor came about.

Execution 

Pants Bear set up profiles for the show on GIPHY and Tenor while simultaneously creating sticker packs, GIFs and even short GIF stories using the show’s existing animation library – filled with character designs and reactions. 

The stickers and GIFs were then uploaded on the respective profiles. Pants Bear ensured every unique sticker and GIF was available on messenger platforms, social media, and more. 

The stickers were tagged with trending keywords used by the global GIF user base, based on GIPHY insights. The stickers themselves were contextualised based on the different reactions and moments it wanted to capture. 

The profiles went live once Pants Bear had more than a 100 stickers ready. To get the GIFs trending, and in the public eye, the company used keyword optimisation. Similarly, tagging was used to get relevant stickers in the hands of people who wanted to use them most. 

Research on current trends and popular GIFs were conducted regularly to ensure Pants Bear would be within the first five results for any given searches, “incepting” their communications. 

Results 

In just 24 hours, one Pants Bear sticker had garnered more than 30 million views overnight. Another 24 hours later, a different sticker was trending among consumers – from Singapore to Stockholm. Meanwhile, Pants Bear gifs had been trending on GIPHY for days, with over 64 million views. 

In less than two weeks, the show’s GIPHY channel had over 160 million views, crossing every local and even global brand accounts in visibility; with even more GIPHY views than the official Pokémon channel. 

Even the slow Christmas months turned out to work in the company’s favour, with Pants Bear’s Christmas and New Year’s wish GIFs garnering over 10 million views collectively.

Additionally, the show’s Christmas special on YouTube garnered 30,000 views, along with a 133% increase in watch time and a 4% increase in the subscriber base. Pants Bear also received two distribution partnerships from the US. 

By early January 2021, the brand had garnered a whopping 318.8 million views with seven stickers making the global top five, not only on GIPHY, but on Instagram story filters as well, where Pants Bear stickers were actively used to enhance Instagram Stories. 

Leading into March 2021, Pants Bear’s official GIPHY account passed the two billion views mark, with Tenor hitting over one million lifetime shares. 

The monetary value of the campaign alone due to the views was equivalent to US$2 million in media spend. Given the brand’s recent rise in popularity, Pants Bear has also started work on a fully fledged mobile sticker application for iOS, due to release this year.