Taieb will report jointly to Nickelodeon VP and Viacom Consumer Products MD Jean–Philippe Randisi and MTV France MD and GM Thierry Cammas. Taieb was previously Licensing Director at European licensing agent MPG Partenariat.

Randisi says, “Laurent's expert insight and relationships within the French market, in addition to his knowledge of Nickelodeon's properties from his years as our partner licensing agent, CPLG, make him the ideal choice to further extend our consumer products business in France which is already the second biggest in Europe.

"Working in close collaboration with our newly launched Nickelodeon channel in France and terrestrial partners, Laurent will identify opportunities to grow Nickelodeon's hit properties such as Dora the Explorer and SpongeBob SquarePants across new categories, as well as enhancing retail partnerships” .

Nick adds that Dora the Explorer has achieved success across Europe since the property’s mass consumer products launch in 2005; in France it became the fastest growing toy license ever for Fisher Price, and the number two toy property overall. In 2005 alone, more than two million Dora the Explorer books were sold in the market and the premiere issue of the property’s collectible magazine & CD-Rom sold more than 550K copies in the first 12 days of issue.

Viacom says that this appointment underlines its commitment to leveraging the global scale of its consumer products business and accelerating the expansion of licensing and merchandising activities throughout Europe, especially in key markets such as France. It also marks an increased partnership across the MTVNI channel, programme syndication and consumer products businesses in the region.

Cammas said, “With the new MTV Networks TV channels portfolio strategy in France (Nickelodeon, MTV, MTV Pulse, MTV Idol and Game One), allowing MTVNI to deepen its connection with French audiences, and the huge success we have already witnessed in the consumer products arena, we are perfectly placed to aggressively build on this positioning. Laurent is a well respected veteran of the consumer products business with an extensive knowledge of the market, and I’m thrilled to have him on-board at this exciting time.”

Taieb’s main responsibilities at Nickelodeon and Viacom Consumer Products and MTVNF will be to manage all local consumer products activities, including tentpole events, development and coordination of the organisation’s retail presence, plus management of day-to-day relationships with agents such as TF1 Licenses (SpongeBob SquarePants) and CPL. Working with MTVN France, Taieb will raise the company’s profile, grow sales and leverage relationships with major partners, including toy, home video, video game and promotions partners, in conjunction with category heads in London.