So what makes busy executives shell out nearly two thousand dollars to hear their own peers speak? My curiosity was peaked. I went to New York to check out the second annual BrainCamp.

Going Undercover
The first day started out with an 8:30 a.m. breakfast, where I greeted familiar faces and met new ones. The entire event took place on the seventh floor of the Coleman Conference Center, a few blocks from Times Square. The elbow-rubbing included top-level executives, presidents and CEOs of a varied group of companies including Cartoon Network, Warner Bros. Feature Animation, Discovery Channel, Mattel, MGM, Universal, Harper Collins and Nickelodeon. I counted 35 people in the room, and a few others who made brief appearances (Viacom's headquarters are nearby, so there were a lot of people stopping by from MTV and Nickelodeon).

We settled into seats at round tables facing a podium, chalkboard and two TV monitors in an intimate, very air-conditioned room. Howard Leib and Fred Seibert warmed up the crowd, saying BrainCamp is like "the best kind of cocktail party," and encouraging an open dialogue during the event's frequent breaks.

The first presentation was given by several people involved in Nick Jr. and its hit pre-school series, Blue's Clues. Nickelodeon president Herb Scannell started things off by filling us in on the history of Nick Jr., the brainchild of Brown Johnson. The pre-school program block was launched in 1993 with what Johnson said are three main principals: "problem solving, partnering and planning." Reeling with excitement from a glowing article in the previous day's New York Times ("Move Over, Big Bird: A New Blue Dog's in Town"), Angela Santomero and Traci Paige Johnson, two of the three co-creators of Blue's Clues, described the rules which were broken with the series and the intensive research and testing process used in the show's ongoing development. We were shown a split-screen tape of kids watching the show. The kids talked to the TV, pointed and jumped around in a manner that was anything but a passive television viewing experience. While the show's interactive nature may seem like an idea whose time has come, Nickelodeon took a big risk, admitted Scannell, by agreeing to air one episode a week: the same episode every day, five days in a row. The risk has paid off with record high ratings, a consumer-induced merchandising campaign and an expansion which includes a web site, a magazine and CD-Rom games coming in the fall from Humongous Entertainment. The next day I visited the Blue's Clues production studio and was amazed by the fact that the entire show is animated and composited in Adobe After Effects software, by a relatively small team of artists. But this is another story...

The second presenter was Michael Silberkleit, chairman of Archie Comic Publications. He talked about the rebirth of the Archie Comics property which is "still going strong" after 57 years. They have one weekly and six daily comic strips in syndication, an animated series in production and a live-action feature in development, as well as several ancillary projects in the works such as a chain of family restaurants and a new pop music group (remember "Sugar, Sugar"?). Admirably evergreen though the Archie property may be, however, I found Silberkleit's presentation to be dry and out of touch with the present state of the entertainment industry.

A delicious buffet lunch presented an opportunity to meet and greet. Leib, Maini and Seibert make it their duty to introduce everyone. Next, Rhino Records vice president of strategic marketing, Neil Werde talked about the growing kids music business, revealing such interesting tidbits as "the kids [music] business is still 60-70% cassettes, not CDs" and "competition is driving prices down like in the video market." Rhino recently struck a deal with Nickelodeon to release product based on Nick properties, such as "The Best of Nicktoons." Licensing deals like this have been the key to Rhino's success. Their product line includes more than 40 titles based on animated properties: from Schoolhouse Rocks to The Simpsons to Hanna-Barbera theme songs. Another strategy lies in packaging, and what Werde calls "product bundling." In a big department store, "it's better to be in the action-figure aisle than the audio aisle," he noted. So, Rhino is packaging its audio products with toys to get better placement in stores.