Beano Studios unveils 'kid-first' consultancy for brands
Beano Studios, the production studio tasked with taking the Beano brand worldwide, has launched Beano for Brands – a "kid-first consultancy".
Beano for Brands will leverage the media company's insight into its 5 million strong young audience / DC Thomson
Beano for Brands will leverage the media company's insight into its 5 million-strong young audience to offer qualitative data insight and market research services.
It will also offer strategy consulting and content creation for brands, as well as orchestrate partnerships across Beano's digital portfolio or white-labelled for brands' own use.
There will be a particular focus on assisting brands in the creation of engaging "kid first content" like video games, quizzes and animation.
The division will be overseen by Iain Sawbridge, chief content and digital offer at Beano Studios. The marketer said it was "a natural next step" for the 80-year-old brand "from a comic to an international multimedia studio".
Beano Studios has previously worked with the likes of Stella McCartney and Ted Baker on fashion tie-ups. On the content side, it recently teamed up with kids' mental health charity YoungMinds to produce myth-busting videos about topics like dealing with anxiety and starting secondary school.
At launch, it's not known who Beano for Brands has enlisted as clients, but Sawbridge said: "We’re working with a range of brilliant brands who came to us to tap into our content creation abilities – and were then intrigued by just how much more we could offer them because of our wealth of insight and award winning creative and technical skills."
The proposition will be officially launched tomorrow at Beano's ‘Five Million Rule Breakers’ event – which looks at how six to 12 year olds are "changing the rules of digital behaviours, content and creativity" for brands.
The launch of Beano Studios two years ago has paid off in spades for Beano publisher DC Thompson.
The company’s flagship property, animated series Dennis and Gnasher: Unleashed, launched as the highest-rated show on the BBC kids’ channel CBBC, while live-action magazine show So Beano will soon launch on pay-TV provider Sky’s children’s channel Sky Kids.
“We’re unashamedly on a mission for world domination,” Iain Sawbridge, chief marketing officer of Beano Studios, tells The Drum.