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Meet with a creator of Robocar Poli

A police car showed up at Seoul Character Licensing Fair 2011! This is a children traffic safety exhibition booth with Robocar Poli. Robocar Poli, created by RoiVisual and EBS, is an animation for children on air of a transforming Robocar rescue team that saves friends living in Brooms Town, a beautiful island, from dangerous accidents.

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ByungGook Jung the minister of Ministry of Culture, Sport, and Tourism and DongWoo Lee the CEO of RoiVisual are talking at the traffic safety exhibition for children where was the first tour area. As a sole exhibition booth, it boasted the biggest size of 661㎡ and various exhibitions and events for children.

'The traffic safety story with Poli' is a project for children who like Robocar Poli to teach essential safety information easily and entertainingly. It is planned as a part of Hyundai Automobile's global social contribution project for spreading correct traffic safety culture. It is made by RoiVisual and will be distributed to the world via Hyundai Automobile's global network.

Here's an interview with DongWoo Lee the CEO of RoiVisual for more and deeper information of Robocar Poli which is playing a big role at Seoul Character Licensing Fair 2011. His warm attitude on the interview was so impressive.

Q. Robocar Poli has been grown so fast and has also ranked 1st on popular search words. What do you think about it?

A. It is hard to give my thought on it. It is lovely but the word 'lovely' itself does not explain everything. So could you please ask me other questions please?

Q. What are you expecting from participating Seoul Character Licensing Fari 2011 co-hosted by KOCCA and COEX?

A. This fair is a very unique case to us. Other companies usually focus on promoting their own characters but we, of course we do promote our characters too, rather contribute to public welfare.

Robocar Poli is both a police and a rescue team and also both a car and a robot, right? So Hyundai, an automobile company, suggested us a traffic safety campaign with the Poli character in order to generate industrial synergy. The public welfare team from Hyundai and we set the nonprofit booth here and let children experience the traffic safety and audiovisual education. I believe we are the first companies of contributing the public welfare.

Q. I see. That's a very good purpose. I can see a lot of hands on facilities around the 'Robocar Poli traffic safety campaign for children' booth while most of others have only exhibitions.

A. Yes, that's right. I wanted a place where parents can relax and let children sit down and draw something because they usually have a difficult time of looking after their children and standing all the time in such places like here.

Robocar Poli was actually designed from the parents' side, so we could not help considering their positions that are well influenced by children and Poli.

I wanted to make an exhibition area where the parents can relax and play with their children by focusing more experiential facilities than others.

Q. I would like to know the relationship between Hyundai and Robocar Poli since there used to be a false report about it.

A. We are partners. Hyundai can improve its brand image with our character and we can get a help in marketing skill from Hyundai. For example, a DVD called 'Poli's traffic safety story' is going to be given away to all the elementary schools and kindergartens over the country. Since we solely cannot implement such business, it was feasible thanks to the conglomerate Hyundai who volunteered the social contributing role together.

Additionally, Hyundai can take advantage of Poli with its brand promotion strategy since the DVD would be out all over the world in their languages later.

To us, it is very healthy relationship since we are looking forward to invading the global market with Hyundai as the animation would be released all over the world later and we are contributing the public welfare.

The false report was totally due to a mistake since Hyundai is such a big company. It's been resolved well.

Q. You said you are willing to enter the global market. How many countries are you aiming?

A. It is somewhat early to say because we have just broadcasted it in Korea for about 3 months, but I can say that we have been asked from most of the countries.

Getting requests from two from France and two from North America is like considering love calls from EBS(an educational channel) and Tooniverse(an animation channel) at the same time. We are currently reviewing which companies we should work with from various angels.

Q. What is the future plan?

A. Poli was inherently designed for those who range in age from 4 to 7 in consideration of lack of content for them. It is happening just not in Korea but also in the world that the ages after Pororo which is 4+ years old has not many things to watch so they are watching stuffs from the school. We hope all the kids to grow rightly through not only educational but also dynamic action oriented contents and be protected in a safe environment.

Most of today's children grow independently therefore they don't know what to do when something goes wrong. So we hope to help them learning problem solving skills steadily and by themselves.

I guess its animation movie would be released after 3 years. We are actually offered and probably would set to go on soon. I believe Poli would be well known in the world as a Korean content.

Q. Thanks for the interview.

A. No problem. I appreciate it.

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