Saban Brands, LLC has added four senior executives to its management team.

Nina Leong will serve as senior vice president, licensing and will be responsible for overseeing all current licensed products and programs, as well as developing partnerships with new licensees on behalf of the company’s properties.

David Shuman has joined as vice president of finance, overseeing all finance and accounting functions related to Saban Brands across all intellectual property investments, including oversight of the television and movie production entities.

Rami Yanni has been named senior vice president of business and legal affairs and will be responsible for all contractual, intellectual property and compliance matters for Saban Brands.

Kirk Bloomgarden has been appointed senior vice president of international licensing and will oversee the expansion of overseas business.

Media investor Haim Saban is moving into brand management and licensing, The New York Times and others are reporting. The Saban Capital Group will devote $500 million to Saban Brands, a new company dedicated to acquiring entertainment and consumer brands and exploiting them through retail, television, and film channels.

Elie Dekel, former licensing and merchandising executive at 20th Century Fox, will lead the new effort.

“As media and consumer options become increasingly fragmented and proliferated, our underlying thesis is that properties that resonate with consumers today will only become more meaningful over time,” says Saban.

Haim Saban Goes Into Brand Management [NY Times]

Big Tent Entertainment has announced the appointment of Lisa K. Weiner as director of brand development.  Lisa brings more than 20 years of experience in licensing, brand management, sales, and marketing to Big Tent Entertainment.  In her new role, Weiner will look to help maximize all Big Tent Entertainment’s brands in licensee sales and at retail, including Domo, Discovery Kids, TOKYOPOP, and the Telemundo brand.

JAKKS Pacific executive Jeremy Padawer  is taking on a new role as executive vice president of marketing for JAKKS brands. Padawer was formerly senior vice president of Marketing for Boys Entertainment brands. In his new role, Padawer is  responsible for product development, marketing, new business, intellectual property, and entertainment content development for JAKKS, including girls, dolls, activities, preschool, vehicles, seasonal, construction, boys entertainment, electronics, and pets. Padawer’s new role is not inclusive of JAKKS’ divisions, Creative Designs International (CDI), Tollytots, KidsOnly!, and Disguise. Padawer joined JAKKS in 2003 and has successfully grown the entertainment brand marketing division worldwide. Padawer was responsible for the business management and product development of all action figure and collectible brands, including Ultimate Fighting Championship, Pokémon, Club Penguin, and new initiatives with Lucas, Marvel, and Warner Bros.

Stephanie Sperber has been named president of universal partnerships and licensing (UP&L) for Universal Studios. Under Sperber’s leadership, UP&L has secured innovative promotions, licensing agreements, and corporate alliances across all divisions of Universal Studios with brands and corporations including American Express, Burger King, Kellogg’s, Cartier, Xerox, Sharp, Coca-Cola, Best Buy, Toyota, Volkswagen, Hallmark, and more.
UP&L is a unique entertainment marketing division that provides a single point of entry for global brands looking to access Universal content and platforms, including theatrical promotions, product placement, traditional and digital licensing of current and library titles, retail promotions, and long-term strategic partnerships.
Sperber has led UP&L as executive vice president since its creation in 2009, joining the studio’s retail focused Consumer Products Group with the division known as Universal Studios Partnerships (USP).
Before joining Universal, Sperber was executive director, marketing at Turner Broadcasting, overseeing the brand marketing for Hanna-Barbera Productions. During her tenure she managed the consumer launches of numerous television shows as well as the re-launches of classic cartoon brands including The New Adventures of Jonny Quest, The Flintstones, Scooby Doo, and The Jetsons.

Cookies aren’t rocket science, until they are.

As Sesame Workshop has expanded its presence in social media with its @sesamestreet Twitter account, five of its characters—Big Bird, Elmo, Abby Cadabby, Cookie Monster, and Grover—have occasionally commandeered the feed to post some of their own thoughts. Last month, Cookie Monster wrote about how the moon looked like a giant cookie, and wondered how he could join the space program… prompting a response from NASA telling him and others how to join.

That’s the wave of the future, and that’s what Daniel N. Lewis (not pictured) has come to Sesame Workshop to ride. Yesterday, the company announced that Lewis has been hired as its new director of New Media Communications. A veteran of Wikia, Inc. and ArmchairGM.com, Lewis called his new job “pretty incredible.”

The goal, he notes, is to drive traffic between Sesame’s television shows, website, and presences on Twitter and Facebook. “We want to make it a 360-degree view,” he says. The presence is mostly targeted to adults to loop them into Sesame’s current initiative, be it features on the show itself or causes that cross all the company’s touchpoints, like a recent drive to raise awareness and give comfort to children who have lost a parent. “We can do funny stuff,” Lewis says (and Cookie’s tweets come to mind), “but we also have a serious side.”

For more on Sesame Street, visit their website or visit the Sesame Workshop home page.