INTERVIEW: Creator Keith Chapman on ‘Paw Patrol’ and Its Multi-Billion Dollar Success, His New Animation ‘Ozi,’ Self-Love, Living Your Dream + More

Keith Chapman is the genius behind Paw Patrol the series and the brand, which is kind of a big deal; it’s the No. 1 most successful preschool show in the world. Chapman, a British children’s TV icon, is also the mind behind another infectious hit series and brand, Bob the Builder. Paw Patrol has been one of the best-selling licensed brands for merchandise globally, earning billions, even surpassing Disney’s Star Wars, Frozen, and Mickey Mouse at one point. Since 2014, Paw Patrol has generated 10 billion in global retail sales, generating more than 1 billion annually.

The Spin Master Entertainment series that airs on Nickelodeon has been the most-watched show for kids age two to five since it launched in 2013. Globally, it airs in more than 170 countries in 30 languages, reaching 350 million households. Fans simply adore not only the irresistible theme song but the series’ narrative, which focuses on six animated first responder puppies with special gadgets and vehicles that swoop in each episode to save the day.

Chapman has since sold the IP for Paw Patrol so he is not directly involved in Paw Patrol: The Movie releasing August 20 through Paramount, however, we thought it would be brilliant to chat with the incredible creator that has had not one, but two unbelievably successful billion-dollar brands. We were fortunate to have Chapman speak with Glitter from his home and quiet life in Monaco; he enjoys his anonymity and prefers for his brand characters to be the global stars. Read on to find out more on how Chapman got his start, his amazing achievements with Bob the Builder and Paw Patrol, his new animation Ozi which is in the works starring voice actors, Donald Sutherland, Laura Dern, Djimon Hounsou, and Amandla Stenberg, and a little bit on self-love and living your dream.

GLITTER: It’s really great to be chatting with you. Can you tell us about your current role in the Paw Patrol brand as its creator?
KEITH: I’m really thrilled to be talking to you. As a creator, I sell my IP to production companies around the world, that’s my normal business model. But I stay on board as a creative consultant, usually up to the end of series one, so the first fifty-two episodes, and then move on to my next project. By that time, they usually have so many people involved on the production line, with Spin Master, the toy team, the Director, the scriptwriters, Nickelodeon, Viacom, etc, that I’m not really needed anymore. So I take a backseat. On the movie, they kept me informed, sent me the script, the designs, the animation tests, and gave me updates. And also a link to watch the movie which is awesome! I get a share of the backend which, if you do get a breakout global hit, can be substantial.

That allows me to live in Monaco for a while and have the life I lead. It also allows me to work on other projects because coming up with ideas is what I love doing. I have tons of ideas that I work on and try to sell. Sometimes I stay on board as a producer, so I have much more of a say in the creativity. My new animated family movie, Ozi, is one of those projects, together with one or two preschool shows. 

With Paw Patrol, I assigned the IP to Spin Master. It was fantastic to hear they were making a movie, which is essentially a marketing exercise. It’s a big-budget movie but it keeps the brand fresh, putting it up there at the top alongside brands like SpongeBob and Ninja Turtles as an iconic brand. I think it is becoming the most successful preschool show in the world. Bob the Builder was huge for me; I believe it has generated five billion dollars in sales. But Paw Patrol has actually doubled that in less than half the time. It’s become a huge brand for Spin Master, who have done a brilliant job taking a good idea and turning it into a great one. I can only heap huge amounts of praise onto the people who work on it; the production team, Guru Animation in Toronto, the Viacom licensing team, they all do an amazing job. They really are the best in the business.

The idea for Paw Patrol worked for both boys and girls alike. Usually, a show like Bob the Builder might be skewed towards boys, or another show of mine, Fifi & the Flowertots, was created especially for girls. But with Paw Patrol, we got lucky. It appeals to both boys and girls who have a wide range of toys and associated merch to choose from.  

The other reason it’s become so big is that usually, with a preschool show, you normally get a two to three year age span watching. With Bob the Builder, Thomas the Tank Engine, and Peppa Pig, for instance, the sweet spot is around two to four or five years olds. But with Paw Patrol, the appeal goes from two to seven-year-olds and even older, which is extraordinary. So it has a very wide age group of both sexes watching. 

GLITTER: Paw Patrol has surpassed the NFL, Disney’s Star Wars, Frozen, and Mickey Mouse in sales at one point, can you share more on this?
KEITH:  To give you some sense of the scale of it, Frozen 1 took around 1.45 billion box office and is the most successful animated movie of all time. Frozen 2 is second biggest with 1.3 billion. Steven Spielberg, his entire movie catalog has grossed around 10.5 billion box office. That’s everything, E.T, Indiana Jones, Jurassic Park, Jaws, all those great movies. Paw Patrol has almost matched that as one brand and will overtake it soon, which is phenomenal. But I can’t say for sure that it will ever happen again. 

GLITTER: With the changes in streaming and retail stores, do you think that there would be challenges to try to duplicate that success again?  
KEITH: I think it’s getting harder and harder because as you say, there are so many outlets, so many preschool shows being broadcast around the world. Everyone has upped their game since Bob came along in 1999. (He’s now 22 years old!) Since then, the Australasian, Asian, and South American studios are all now producing world-class work, so you’ve got a great standard of animation all over the world. Many still use western writers for the story element, so they are very busy at the moment. But everyone is pitching great shows and broadcasters have thousands of show concepts to choose from.

So it’s really tough to get your show green-lit right now, even with more outlets. I’ve got another one of my ideas showing on Netflix right now, also produced by Spin Master, which is the follow-up to Paw Patrol. It’s called Mighty Express, a fantastic show about trains, superbly animated by Atomic in Canada. But the kids have to find it, navigate their way through to find it amongst all the other kid’s shows. 

It remains to be seen whether a show on Netflix will have the licensing success that broadcasters like Nickelodeon have had. It’s early days for them but they’ve started their own in-house licensing division and they have ambitions to do it and I hope they do. Disney are the masters at it, so everyone should just be copying their model really. 

GLITTER: I want to take it back a little bit. Can you expound on how you got your start, where you’re originally from, and growing up; did you happen to stumble into art, or were you always artistic?
KEITH: I was always drawing cartoons and doodling from a very early age. I knew as a kid that I wanted to work in something to do with art. I was born and grew up in Essex but when my parents took a pub in Norfolk, I started art college in Great Yarmouth on the east coast of East Anglia, not far from Norwich. I did four years of graphic illustration and advertising and left with a Distinction and a job in advertising as a junior art director. 

An art director’s job is to come up with ideas, along with a writer, so working as a team. I got to work on products for all age groups. I had to put my brain into the mindset of teenagers buying pizza, old age pensioners thinking about health insurance, mum’s buying fish fingers, toddlers buying toys. It was all about finding the USP, the unique selling proposition of that product, finding the big idea. It was great training for me and I use those skills for what I do now. 

I continued drawing cartoons in my spare time; cartoon strips for newspapers, greeting cards, caricatures, anything to earn money at weekends and at night to supplement my art director income. I had three boys in my first marriage and having kids, as anyone knows, is expensive! At night I would tell my boys bedtime stories that I’d made up. One of those was Bob the Builder. 

I was then offered an amazing job working for the legendary Jim Henson. So I changed career and went to work in the TV/ Film world as an Art Director, working on Jim’s great shows, The Muppets, Muppet Babies, Fraggle Rock. I also got to see how his movies were made; The Dark Crystal and Labyrinth with David Bowie. I was in heaven, working with brilliant people in a highly charged creative environment. 

A few years later I got my lucky break. I met Peter Orton, who headed up Henson International Television. He left when Henson decided to close the London office and move back to the US. He started HIT Entertainment, which became a successful children’s TV producer. I was able to show Peter my TV ideas and thankfully he optioned Bob the Builder straight away. This was my turning point. 

HIT developed the idea into a stop-frame show and secured a BBC commission. The series launched in 1999 and within a year had become the biggest preschool show around. The theme tune became the biggest selling single in 2000, topping the British Christmas singles chart. It crossed over from preschool into the mainstream and even adults were dancing to it in the clubs. It was sung everywhere. Bob became very famous. 

I’d gone back into advertising when Henson closed its doors, but when I started to receive some serious royalties, I decided to leave advertising behind and concentrate on creating kid’s stuff. That’s what I’ve been doing now for the past 21 years. 

I started my own company, Chapman Entertainment, bought an office block on the river Thames and created my next show, Fifi & the Flowertots. We developed another show, Roary the Racing Car, and co-produced other shows; Raa Raa the Noisy Lion and Little Charley Bear with James Corden narrating. They were wonderful brands, all doing really well. But in 2008/9 the wheels came off when the global financial meltdown hit us. Interest rates soared, people tightened their spending and stopped buying toys. Our L&M income dried up. The banks called in their overdraft and we had to close down. The banks had first charge on the brands and sold them to Classic Media who then sold onto Dreamworks, where the brands now sit. 

I was left with my big office which thankfully I owned so the administrators couldn’t kick me out. It was here that I sat and created my next show, Robbie’s Rescue Dogs, which became Paw Patrol. Spin Master had asked me to pitch with other creatives and studios around the world. The brief was for a boys adventure series involving emergency vehicles incorporating amazing transforming toy technology which Spin Master had developed. My idea involved rescue pups rescuing and helping those in need. Their kennels transformed into really cool vehicles and off they went on their missions. 

I had another lucky break. Spin Master chose my idea and Paw Patrol became my second global breakout hit. So now, my challenge is to find the next big idea!

GLITTER: Can you tell me about your honorary doctorate from your art college?
KEITH: My art college closed down and amalgamated with Norwich University of Art. They invited me to become an Honorary Doctorate which of course I accepted. I used to go there to give talks to the students. There is a terrific animation department there and it was nice to give something back. I’ve been very fortunate, with my shows being both critically and commercially successful. Bob won a Bafta and many awards. Paw Patrol has won, even more, several Canadian Screen Awards and others. I’m still an EP on the show so I get sent my own statues, which are like the Oscars. It’s nice to win awards but I’d rather have commercial success any day, which you need to build a global brand. 

GLITTER: You have a new animation project, Ozi?
KEITH: Ozi has been a passion project of mine for the past 10 years. It’s about a young teenage orangutan who, separated from her parents as a baby and raised in an orangutan orphanage, sets out to find them as a teenager and ends up saving her rainforest world from destruction due to deforestation. It’s a coming-of-age movie, a David and Goliath, a small girl against the might of big powerful industries. She becomes the voice of the forest.
We finally found investment and it’s been in production now for the past 18 months, due to be completed in the summer of 2022. The stunning and breathtaking animation is by Mikros Animation Paris. Coincidentally, Mikros Canada have animated the recent Paw Patrol movie, which also looks terrific. 

We’ve managed to secure the voice talents of Donald Sutherland, Laura Dern, Djimon Hounsou, and Amandla Stenberg, a brilliant young Hollywood actress who is the voice of Ozi. We also have Indonesian actors and RuPaul playing one of the crocs which is going to be fabulous. It’s a very diverse cast. On the producer side, we have the legendary Mike Medavoy, and Appian Way, Leonardo DiCaprio’s company. We have signed an Indonesian composer so the film feels really authentic. 

We have teamed up with some amazing orangutan charities as well who will benefit from the movie if it does well. They are raising young orphaned orangutans just like in the movie and releasing them into safe tracts of land. Many of our actors and producers are keen environmentalists and it has been wonderful to have them come on board this project. 

GLITTER: It’s wonderful to see children’s smiling faces looking at your work and just bringing them so much joy. How fulfilling is that?  
KEITH: It’s one of the rewarding things about what I do. Originally I created stuff for my own kids to make them laugh at bedtime. But now wherever I go in the world I see kids watching my shows, playing with the toys, wearing the clothes and the backpacks, reading the books, and even having birthday parties with the TV show themes. I see a giant inflatable Chase from Paw Patrol at the New York Macy’s Parade, and thousands of people watching the theatre shows, all cheering and singing to the songs sung by the characters on stage. I do have to pinch myself. And I’m totally anonymous, I can just sit there and watch with everyone else, which is really cool. 

GLITTER: This is a little bit of a different question. We started a self-love campaign at Glitter Magazine in 2015. Self-love and self-care have become buzzwords in the industry after we launched it and we asked hundreds of celebrities to talk about what self-love means to them. Your work is just so inspiring, and you’re reaching children very young with so many life lessons. What does self-love mean to you? You have children, so coming from the point of view as a father.
KEITH: I would say, for me, it’s about believing in yourself and knowing you are unique and that you have a voice. Everyone has creativity inside them, even if it’s been locked away. Somebody might have a story they want to write or a picture they want to paint, but they’ve not had the confidence to do it. 

Everyone just needs to believe in themselves, to unlock that creativity. It’s the greatest thing we can teach kids, to express themselves creatively. It’s the thing that moves the world forward. We need someone to design the car, or the rocket, or the clothes, or the building, or invent the device. Others can build it but first, you need the spark. It’s like you Nikki, you started your magazine. You had the idea, then jumped through many hoops along the way to make it happen. Despite the challenges that might have stopped you and people saying, “Oh, you’ll never succeed.” But you listened to your inner voice and that is what I do. I don’t listen to negative people, for me its only positive. Anything is possible. You have to believe in your own self-worth and I think kids need to be given that confidence. All kids are capable of doing amazing things, they just need to find that thing, the thing that they love doing. For adults, switch your mindset into thinking about the life you want and the job you want, the place you want to live. If you believe it and work at it, it will happen. For me, everything I have wanted and dreamt of happening has miraculously come true.

GLITTER: Very nice. Thank you so much for taking time out. It was really a pleasure to chat with you and hear about your success and your drive, and your new project.
KEITH: Thank you. Really nice talking to you.