‘It was like meeting the Pope’: how Peppa Pig became a £1bn global phenomenon
Fifteen years ago, a strange pink farm animal arrived on our TV screens. Today, Peppa Pig has her own theme parks and devoted fans around the world. What is the secret of her success?
If the story of the Peppa Pig franchise were a Peppa Pig episode, it would start with the doodles of three dejected daddy pigs who are about to quit animation. But then, in a heart-warming twist, the trio would make some nice new friends and we would leave them, rolling in mud – and enormous piles of money – at their modest central London studio. The title of the episode? Global Domination.
“I think I’m still in denial,” Neville Astley says at the “Elf Factory”, where he and co-creator and director Mark Baker lead a team of 16, alongside Phil Davies, Peppa Pig’s producer. The nickname for their studio was a joke. “But people now imagine we have gold-plated offices and command thousands of animators,” Davies says. He prefers to describe Astley Baker Davies, their production company, as “the little solicitors’ firm we formed”.