Nuts – the brand licensing story

In January 2004, IPC Media launched Nuts and invented a new genre in publishing: the men’s weekly magazine. Under Phil Hilton, BSME’s Editor of the Year, Nuts quickly became a publishing phenomenon, winning Launch of the Year (BSME), Best New Product (Marketing Week) and Magazine of the Year (PPA). Nuts is delivering success across both copy sales, with circulation at 304,785 per week (ABC Jan-Jun 2006), and advertising.

The Nuts brand team has subsequently extended the brand through innovative and successful launches on both online and mobile platforms. Following the launch of the brand on these non-traditional platforms – the next question for the brand team was, could a successful brand licensing programme be developed and what product sectors should be targeted?

As a result, a strong brand licensing programme has been started, with products being developed across a variety of sectors relevant to the lives of the target audience.

A licensing initiative of this nature fulfils a number of key objectives: increasing awareness of the brand and widening its presence at retail, increasing interaction with consumers, creating new promotional platforms and generating new revenues. This article outlines how this has been achieved.

All brand licensing programmes within IPC are managed by IPC+ - a service division within IPC dedicated to developing new revenue streams from IPC’s brands and content across international publishing, syndication, image management, rights and intellectual property. In 2005, IPC appointed Global Brands Group as its sole licensing agency worldwide, across a number of key brands. The company are experts in international brand management and provide innovative retail solutions, integrated marketing programmes and focused brand licensing programmes. From our experiences, we have learnt that successful licensing has four main strands:

1. A clear strategy is key
A key learning point, gleaned from the brand licensing programmes run to date, is that a clear strategy, based on the strength and uniqueness of the magazine brand, is essential. This strategy must be created and owned by the key brand stakeholders, to ensure ongoing commitment and consistency in the programme.

In the case of Nuts, there were three stakeholders: the Nuts brand team, IPC+ (the IPC service division) and Global Brands Group. All three worked together to establish clear objectives for the Nuts licensing programme, and this 3-way interaction continues to be key to successful programme development.

2. Build a solid base: focus on the sectors key to the magazine brand
With a high profile and high frequency brand such as Nuts, that has the potential to influence consumer behaviour very quickly, it could be tempting to explore the widest breadth of licensed products in an attempt to maximise revenue. But, in order to build a sustainable licensing business that has the longevity to match the parent brand, it’s really important that the programme is planned and focused. It’s a three-step process:

* establish the core strengths and values of the brand
* decide how these values can be best translated to other product sectors
* schedule the product launch plan from there

Core content areas in Nuts are news, sport, girls, cars and gadgets. But it’s the quality of execution in these areas and the unique editorial tone that makes Nuts the market–leader. Nuts is fast, funny, friendly and entertaining. Men love its accessibility and ability to entertain them every week, and even though it’s weekly, the magazine has the reproduction values of a monthly. Consequently, our first challenge was how to ensure that both the quality and humour of the magazine brand could be successfully reproduced. This challenge was met by IPC+ and Global Brands really immersing themselves in the brand, establishing style guides with the Nuts brand team and deciding which product areas and which elements of the magazine would be most suitable for exploitation. The first area we decided upon was books.

3. Build from ‘first-removed’ products and provide value
‘First-removed’ products are licences that are closest to the magazine brand - basically printed products. This isn’t a rule; it can depend on the brand – IPC recently launched Livingetc HOME, a homewares range, before any print licences – but it’s a good guide and one that has worked particularly well on Nuts.

Three book licences were developed with Carlton Books: the Big Book of Nuts, Nuts Joke Book and Nuts Pub Ammo.

The Big Book of Nuts gives readers the best content from the magazine in the core content areas mentioned earlier: the best girls, fast and exciting cars, jokes, true stories, weird and wonderful pictures and funny and fascinating facts to impress friends with! New content has been created for the book too, and, priced at £9.99 in hardback, it’s good value and a great gift!

The fast and funny tone of Nuts made the Nuts Joke Book a natural licence, while Nuts Pub Ammo reflects a key editorial franchise. Each week, Nuts collects essential information for men to entertain and impress with. Fascinating facts drive conversation, especially in the pub and this book is crammed full of them. Its published in paperback, fits in the pocket and is always on hand (and useful for pub quizzes!).

While the books were natural brand licences, they all reflect the core values of the Nuts brand and, crucially, bring new value to the market: each gives the consumer something different. This is a key test in any brand licence and one which is easy to lose sight of. Magazines brands have an intimate relationship with their readers, but you need to keep asking whether you are bringing new value to the market with your brand licence.

This is illustrated by the calendar licence we developed. Yes, it does have pictures of … girls … but it’s focused on ‘Real Girls’, a segment UK men are resolutely interested in, which the magazine is synonymous with and which calendars haven’t catered for.

3. Use magazine content in different formats
The next stage in the programme used core content areas, but in different formats and in a way that provides men with something new. The content is … yes … girls and also pub ammo.

Firstly, personalised greeting cards. Working with Remind4U, we created a service where users go online, choose an image for their card, personalise the front cover, write a message for the inside and then let the service deliver the card through the post to their friends. It’s a great way to celebrate birthdays, cheer someone up or provide invitations to events. The Nuts branding provides instant recognition and, with content from the magazine, was simple to set up.

Our final licence on Nuts enforces the principle of ‘follow your readers.’ Working with the games company Revolution, we developed a pub quiz game using images and content from the magazine. It’s been a great success: debuting in June, it almost immediately became the second most popular pub quiz game and we’ll keep adding to the content and game mechanics. It also shows the value of a committed, entrepreneurial team. Nuts marketing came up with the idea (following those readers again), found a potential partner and asked IPC+ to negotiate commercials.

The brand licensing programme on Nuts is a good illustration of solid ground work paying off. Global Brands spent time analysing categories and working with the brand team to determine priorities. Those priorities were determined by the core values of the magazine brand and by continually asking what value would be given to consumers. In this, it’s been critical to work as a team across all disciplines and success is measurable in terms of new revenue streams, and, really importantly, an increase in brand equity in the market: the Nuts brand has secured more presence at retail as a result of being available in new product formats. In an ever more competitive magazine market, this is a very valuable added asset to the overall brand. Magazine brand licensing can deliver a win-win result on profit and brand benefits!