Online to Offline Expansion Strategy of Digital Contents: A Case study of Chinese Digital Animation Boonie Bears

Abstract

<Boonie Bears> has been one of the most successful digital animation products in China since 2012. The reason why we focus on this animation series is that the IP holder Huaqiang group make the animation a bigger business through combining it with “space business” in offline. This article tried to analyze <Boonie Bears> case as a strategy of expansion from online digital content to offline space business and license merchandise, based on case study research methodology of Dr. Robert K Yin. I summarized two theories of online and offline cross marketing and transmedia storytelling as the research framework. And I made a conclusion of 5 strategies of <Boonie Bears> for its expansion from online to offline. The result of the research shows as below. First, the players widened the audience and customer pool via multimedia expansion. Second, they took transmedia storytelling as the expansion strategy rather than traditional OSMU. Third, all the media contents are enough to be understood and are able to be entry point of content consumers. These are the way of product portfolio planning. Fourth, media contents of online and offline are related each other and are planned to make bigger contents world. Fifth, digital contents were empowered to be used as marketing activities for offline goods in the process of marketing funnel. Those results imply that digital content products that aim Chinese market should be designed considering online and offline transmedia expansion. And further, the way to Chinese market should be a transmedia storytelling strategy rather than traditional (or simple) OSMU strategy especially in the media channel acquisition.