How will DC Thomson capitalise on brands like the Beano and Dandy?

I’m responsible for the Consumer Entertainment division’s brand marketing (i.e. our consumer magazines, comics and other children’s titles), which a new function within the business. There was/is already a great deal of “marketing” activity in the business throughout consumer entertainment but DCT wanted to introduce leadership at the centre, working alongside our excellent editorial teams, to better manage and develop our brands moving forward. This will involve taking more of a brand-led approach than in the past and more focused, long-term planning on our brands. Key to this is bringing the various strands of marketing together, looking at brand-prioritisation within our portfolio and working closely the respective editorial teams to ensure all aspects of the brand are consistent. The creativity, enthusiasm and drive from our teams has massively impressed me – as you would expect, they really know their audience, as evidenced by our recent 6 nominations for PPA Scotland Magazine of the Year awards.

What are your key audiences?

DC Thomson has a large stable of titles that appeal to a wide age-range across the UK, from the 6 and 7 year olds who start off reading The Beano and The Dandy through Shout, My Weekly and to The People’s Friend, which has an average aged reader of 70. Our titles are also read further afield in the U.S., Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and Australia, where the People’s Friend sells an astonishing 30,000 copies per week!

Why has the company decided to follow a more commercial route and license its long established cartoon characters like The Broons and Oor Wullie?

The heritage these brands have and the affection that the likes of The Beano, Dandy, The Broons & Oor Wullie are held in, means they naturally offer a range of commercial opportunities and partnership possibilities. However, as befits brands belonging to a family-owned and run company like DC Thomson, we’ll be looking for partners who share our ethos and approach. We already have over 60 licensing agreements in place across a range of our IP, including Dennis the Menace, Desperate Dan as well as our retro Beano, Dandy and Jackie brands. This month, The Broons have launched an assault on the music charts CD with EMI, entitled “The Broons Family Album” – a 5CD set including over 30 No. 1s by The Broons’ favourite artists. Expected to be Scotland’s Christmas No. 1, it’s already sitting in the Top 20 album sales.

What opportunities will this open up for DC Thomson?

We want to increase the footprint of our brands but do so in a relevant way for each of them. A good example is the Dennis & Gnasher animated series, which is shown on CBBC channel in the UK. Dennis & Gnasher's peak episode this year had the 2nd highest share of Children out of the 10 000+ different programmes screened on CBBC this year and this isn’t a one-off. Our average share consistently beats rival programmes, especially in the key demographics. This series has proved an asset for CBBC too, as it continues to beat the slot average, with particular strength in male demographics. On average Dennis and Gnasher attracts over 15% share of boys aged 10 - 15 which is 6 share points more than the slot average. Notably Dennis and Gnasher's success is not just limited to the male audience as still scores well above the slot average for girls. It is now airing in the USA too on the Hasbro-owned “The Hub” channel and in India on the Disney XD channel. We are excited by the opportunities and the prospects of further series. However, in a declining market for publishing products, our challenge/opportunity is to marry the success of Dennis & Gnasher on TV with the unalloyed heritage of The Beano brand to ensure we remain relevant to children who expect to see their heroes across a range of media.

The Dandy has also been overhauled, and is heading in a new direction. Why was this decision made?

Consumer insight. Helenor Gilmour heads up our Consumer Insight Department which has a superb ongoing research programme we call DCT Youth Insight. This uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative approaches and provides regular and detailed insights into the lives of target consumers. Moving The Dandy back to a weekly comic, changing the format and removing the cover-mounted gifts, were all as a result of the editorial team and Consumer Insight working together. DCT Youth Insight tells us what actually makes kids laugh - slapstick, grossness, silliness, exaggeration, wordplay, visual humour, and role reversal being top of the list. We also carried out research into readability and educational development to ensure that The Dandy doesn’t ever patronise. The Dandy is a comic that kids can read, understand and enjoy – 100% funny. When we teamed that insight up with the involvement of Harry Hill, and his surreal but family friendly world of poking fun at celebrity, we knew that it could be a winner, and make the Dandy more topical than ever. After a PR pitch exercise, we worked with Stripe Communications to get the message out to the media in the week of the launch. Although we were confident that The Dandy and Harry Hill coming together would be newsworthy, the results of the media push were fantastic with 97% positive coverage across the broadcast and print media spectrum - a real testament to Juliet, Morna and the team at Stripe for a lot of hard work at short notice! The initial sales results too, are extremely promising; substantially increased sales across the big retailers and wholesale groups with a great critical reaction too. Even some of those celebrities we’ve featured in the first few weeks, such as Lord Sugar and Shane Ritchie and Jessie Wallace of Eastenders have contacted us to express their delight at being parodied in The Dandy. There’s a lot more to come from the longest running continuously published comic in the World!

You’re developing the fan clubs online - do you think that such membership schemes could survive without going online?

It’s all about relevance. Increasingly, our consumers (both children and adults) want to interact with our brands across a mix of channels, including publishing, TV and digital channels. Transitioning the Beano club to an online model means we can make it accessible to more people and also let them experience the exclusive benefits of club membership faster but there will always need to be a balance between online and offline features of any membership scheme. At the end of the day, our core business remains the printed comic or magazine.

Are you a Beano or Dandy man?

I read both (honest!) The penetration of these brands was such that while children bought or subscribed to one or other of them, they often read both because they would swap them with siblings and friends. I’m delighted to have two iconic children’s brands in my portfolio and I’m aiming to re-kindle the friendly rivalry that was the hallmark of what was known as “The Fun Factory” (DC Thomson’s 2nd floor comic department) back in the 40s, 50s and 60s.

What else can we expect to see in the coming months?

A great deal. Following the re-launch of Shout magazine and the launch of www.shoutmag.co.uk last month, the company will be launching 2 new children’s entertainment brands websites in December. We’ll also continue to look at appropriate digital channels for all of our consumer entertainment brands but will be launching an iPhone/iPad app in conjunction with one of our new websites soon. 2011 also sees Dennis the Menace celebrate his 60th anniversary, Commando celebrate 50 years and we also have the 75th anniversary of The Broons. Finally, we are set to launch at least 2 new magazine titles in 2011, for the children’s market.