Cameo wants the kids entertainment industry to know that it’s open for business as it aims to become a hub for brands and creators looking to engage young fans.

Since launching in 2017, the online platform has carved out a solid market niche for itself as a service that lets consumers buy short, personalized video messages from celebrities running the gamut from skateboarding legend Tony Hawk to OG rapper Snoop Dogg.

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Its business really took off during the pandemic, when stuck-at-home consumers flocked in droves to Cameo as a way to reach out and connect with friends and family. Today, the platform has a roster of 50,000- plus personalities, who have delivered more than four million Cameos and live calls to their fans around the world.

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But the reach of these messages is exponentially bigger than their sum total, says Cameo president Arthur Leopold, given that 85% of them are shared on social media or otherwise distributed to friends by their recipients.

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A number of TikTok celebs, voice actors and stars with kid appeal are longtime residents on the platform, including Scott Innes (the voice of Scooby-Doo) and Ernie Sabella (who voiced Pumba in The Lion King).But kids entertainment brands were noticeably absent until more recently.

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The platform added popular YouTuber Blippi in 2019, and then cut a deal with Universal to offer messages from The Boss Baby in October 2021. The success of those launches has piqued the company’s interest. “We want to partner with more studios and IP holders,” says Leopold. “Kids content is a big opportunity for us.”

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The company is primed for growth right now after securing US$100 million in funding this past March. And breaking into more niches and fandoms is high on its priority list, according to Leopold. Cameo is also introducing new features that will give kids a wider variety of options for connecting with the characters they love, such as live events with 10- to 15-minute streaming experiences and live video calls.

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Outside of mascots at live events, there aren’t really many opportunities in the market for personalized interactions, explains Leopold. “On Cameo, brands and characters can say something directly to kids, and that kind of engaging experience can turn a child into a fan for life.”

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This potential for building long-lasting fan relationships is a big reason why Toronto’s Guru Studio chose to bring its flagship animated series True and the Rainbow Kingdom onto the Cameo platform in June.

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Guru had already been receiving requests from parents wanting True to speak to their kids in personal videos. But at the time, there weren’t many kids brands on Cameo, and animated characters were even rarer (with the exception of a few big brands such as Mattel’s Thomas & Friends).

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The studio saw an opportunity to meet an existing demand while also building a new type of consumer product that could mark key milestones in the lives of kids, says VP of marketing Daniel Rattner.

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True is one of the first animated characters to be featured on Cameo, where families can order short videos in which the namesake character wishes kids happy birthday, celebrates their milestones (like school graduations), or just says hello. The videos are about a minute long, and Guru charges US$25 for each one (with Cameo taking a standard 25% on all transactions).

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