From Character to Franchise: How Paddington Became a Licensing Powerhouse
What does it take to turn a familiar face into a global brand?
Since 2018 The Paddington licensing programme has multiplied. Sales surged, new partners have signed on, and the world’s favourite bear has found his way into fragrance, gaming, retail, new entertainment treatments and fashion.
This wasn’t luck. It was the result of a strategic creative reboot—and six years of careful stewardship by Copyrights and lately Studio Canal Kids and Family. Skew played a part in laying the strategic groundwork and providing a creative toolset that flexed through an astonishing period of growth.
This is the story of how strategic creativity helped enable measurable returns.
A fragmented brand with global recognition
Paddington was an adored brand in the UK but following the massive success of the 2014 movie ‘Paddington’ the fan base for the bear exploded around the world. By 2017, the brand’s identity was becoming a victim of its own success and was feeling a little… stretched. You can see from the 2018 Gap ranges that retailers at the time needed to work with Copyrights to fill in some brand gaps on their own, picking styles from the books for when the Movie identity might cause consumer confusion.
At a time when many of Paddington’s new audience was familiar with the Movie first there were inconsistent visual cues across categories, regions and age brackets. The core brand equity was diluted with retail sometimes filling in brand gaps and in need of creative tools to guide their efforts.
This is a common problem for IP owners. The more beloved the character, the more divergent the creative becomes over time. And that divergence can cause consumer confusion, slow decision making and even stall commercial growth.
The brief: build a brand architecture that works
Skew was tasked with creating a Master-brand system to support long-term growth. That meant:
- Unifying a heritage, movie, infant and a new pre-school treatment
- Offering clarity for partners
- Making future storytelling easier
- Codifying and communicating the brand’s heart
Our starting point was a full creative audit. We mapped every licensed product, visual identity, and marketing execution. Then we built a reference grid to understand how different cues had been used—and misused.
The strategy: three pillars and five asset kits
What followed was a brand-centred creative strategy built around clear, repeatable storytelling cues.
The three narrative pillars.
These formed the brand’s emotional and tonal core. Without revealing anything too specific, you should be able to surmise that Paddington’s brand DNA has elements of Britishness, his origin story, tolerance and the kindness shown to him by his adopted family and the charmingly naive, fish-out-of-water humour that his new situation leads to.
Asset kits for every audience.
From 2018 we added to the existing movie guide and structured the brand into four additional visual kits, giving partners age-specific tools
- Franchise (the Master-brand)
- Since 1958 (Classic or Heritage)
- Baby (Infant)
- Pre-School TV (The Adventures of Paddington)
These kits offered scalable visual systems while preserving integrity. From tone of voice to colour hierarchy and typographic rules, every decision was built for both control and flexibility.
Licensees could now work faster, with easier approvals and better outcomes.
The result: a franchise with commercial stretch
Since the franchise brand project, the Paddington programme has accelerated with two additional movies (and fourth in the works) , the launch of the multi BAFTA award winning ‘The Adventures of Padding’ animated series all supported by a 360 degree approach to licensing, consumer products and services.
This growth has been driven by the talent of scores of creative teams in media, marketing, product, interactive and retail. All coordinated by the brilliant crew at Copyrights and then Studio Canal Kids and Family. Bringing it all together visually, our identity system has flexed and bent to accommodate new expressions of the brand over the last six years. Here’s a just a few highlights that show how the identity flexed over time.
Toys
Rainbow Designs and Paddington go back a long way. They’ve built out a full product line around him, from the heritage feel of ‘Paddington Since 1958’ to ‘Paddington Baby’ and Movie-related ranges. Of all the global Paddington licensees, Rainbow DesignsPaddington stands out for showing how a franchise can speak to very different markets without losing shape.
With the movies driving sales and a franchise strategy sharing brand equity, UK Paddington merchandise hit £24.7 million in retail sales, up 121 percent on the first film and 127 percent on the second. With new SKUs landing, Rainbow Designs is forecasting more double digit growth through late 2025 (According to the wholesaler ‘Baby Brand Direct’).
Apparel
Apparel has grown from a children’s focus to family and grown ups over a wider spread of price points. From Movie branded collections at Zara from 2022, to a ‘Adventures Of’ led Paddington Collections for F&F Clothing at Tesco from Blues Group in 2023 and from Aykroyds for Tu Clothing at Sainsbury.
Then there’s a beautiful Franchise brand led co-lab with Cath Kidston and Paddington at NEXT. A cross category activation that covers womenswear, accessories, home and Children’s is a masterclass in combining the best of two brands that make the product greater than the sum of its parts. The product launched in 2024 and is still going strong.
Bringing us back around and right up to date with a new collection at Zara in 2025 featuring a fresh new characterisation of our favourite bear.
Interactive
In Interactive we’ve seen a Movie branded Roblox game: ‘Mission Marmalade’. Launched in Nov 2024, developed by Feenix in a partnership brokered by Player2. According to Feenix the game broke the one million visits mark in the first month with players spending 146,845 hours exploring Paddington’s world.
More recently Crayola announced ‘Adventures of’ Paddington joining their Create and Play game from summer 2025.
Experiential
Movie led and Franchise Brand endorsed, “The Paddington Bear Experience” in London launched in 2024 selling 80,000 tickets in 6 weeks. More experiential activations are planned for the 2025 with a large-scale play experience inspired by “The Adventures of Paddington” TV series in Hong Kong’s largest retailtainment landmark, 11 skies.
“Thank you, Ma’am. For everything.”
Sometimes marketing genius is in not commercialising a moment at all. In June 2022, just a few months before the death of Queen Elizabeth II, Paddington appeared in “Queen Elizabeth and Paddington Bear Film” as part of the celebrations for The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee.
The film was loved by pretty much everybody with a heart. Without making any kind of commercial noise around the appearance, this short film cemented Paddington into the cultural fabric of the UK and possibly around the world.
Why mention this here? I think this is the point at which the Paddington brand overtook any one execution of its story. The Paddington brand became bigger than the Movies, TV, game, experiences or book and truly became a franchise. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that at this point the needs of the brand identity started to push at the limits the goals set out for it in 2018.
Prestige Collaborations
With that greater maturity Paddington began reaching into commercial areas that perhaps weren’t considered back in 2018. In July 2024 Jo Malone London launched “Orange Marmalade Cologne”, a Paddington x Jo Malone London colab that went on to become a blockbuster success.
Now that the is bear is known by almost everyone, the need to transfer equity from the movie to other parts of the brand becomes less of a priority.
Launching under the same publishing inspired identity as the Gap range from 2018 it went on to win the Creative Collaboration award at the Walpole British Luxury Awards 2024 and the ‘Ultimate Launch’ by The Fragrance Foundation Awards in 2025 - known as the Oscars of the fragrance industry.
This collab pointed the way to tweaks to the identity that are now underway.
What made the Franchise identity strategy work?
Here’s what we learned about driving brand growth through strategic creativity:
1. Preserve the emotional core
You don’t need to reinvent the story. You need to understand it - and express it consistently.
2. Audience Segmentation
A single look wasn’t working for babies, collectors and gamers. But tiered assets let each group understand the brand
3. Link product launches to media moments
Studio Canal Kids and Family are underestimated in the world class job they do of aligning consumer products with film trailers, game drops or seasonal events that drive growth. But most importantly they plan and execute tentpole promotions and partnerships in-between
What have we learned?
- Brand building isn’t about one big moment. It’s about creating the right system - and letting that system grow.
- Creative strategy becomes real business value when commercial bravery meets careful brand stewardship.
- The Paddington brand story shows how visual coherence and storytelling helped unlock scale without losing soul
At Skew, we’re proud to have played a part in that journey. And bringing us right up to date Skew has been a part of a new strategy that’s beginning to unfold with the relaunch of the Paddington store at Paddington Station.
Sporting a fresh new identity developed in house by the team at Studio Canal Kids and Family, Paddington is entering a new phase. With a Musical starting in November 2025, a fourth film planned and a new TV show in the works we can’t wait to see where the brand goes next.
Want to make your brand easier to license, partner or grow? Start with clarity.
If your brand is ready to grow, we’d love to talk.
Selected References
https://licensinginternational.org/news/new-paddington-kids-collection-launches-at-zara/
