Shelley Macintyre – SVP of Marketing at BBC Studios – on Bluey brand plans, movie opportunities and the ‘Let’s Play Chef’ theme

Shelley, it’s great to connect. You’re coming up on your first year with BBC Studios. Where were you before, and how’s this first 12 months been?
I was in consumer product goods for 20 something years in big organisations. I spent my first 15 years at Unilever and Coca-Cola – classic consumer product goods marketing, brand front and centre, brand drives the business…Then I made a conscious shift into a start-up environment. I went and joined 10 blokes in a garage at Sipsmith to make gin! We sold that business and then I joined a D2C start-up called Allplants and really honed my craft in D2C… And how I’ve ended up here is quite a mystery to me!

Ha!
Someone approached me about the role that was on offer here and said my profile was what the team were looking for. I did query: ‘Why didn’t they go to someone from Netflix or Disney or Universal?’ because I literally knew nothing about TV and media. They said: ‘That’s kind of the point – we have this world-class content creation business and we want to marry that with world-class brand building.’ It was quite a gift to come into an organisation and not know how it works because I can come in with fresh eyes, leave my ego at the door, be curious and try and connect the strategic dots.

“We have a view on the next 100 years for the brand.”

Despite your lack of TV experience, have you found there’s parallels to marketing something like Coca-Cola and pushing something like Bluey?
It’s all the same stuff. It all comes back to understanding your audience, care and listen to them.

Let’s dive into Bluey. What do you think is its USP?
Bluey is extremely special. The team has done an extraordinary job to build it to the multi-billion dollar business that it is. It’s reached a multi-billion retail sales value today, which for a brand that’s seven years old is remarkable.

There are some things core to Bluey that make it incredibly timely. I’m working with the team on how we make it timeless as well as being timely. It’s a very endearing, beautiful piece of creative work and it’s timely because in this very volatile, uncertain world, parents care about having a healthy happy family. There are lots of things in society that are endangering that, but Bluey shows an aspirational, wonderful, positive world that’s all about the emotional development of children. People get different things out of it – they can either see their own family within it, feel nostalgic about their own childhood, or it might represent the childhood they wish they had but they didn’t. Because of that, Bluey has become a true multi-generational brand.

A key part of the marketing strategy behind the brand are annual themes. What is this year’s theme, and why adopt this strategy?
It’s really important when you’re building global brands to be able to hang your hat on a core idea that will show up across every touch point. It helps the brand feel consistent, congruent and not chaotic. It’s been empirically proven that consistency over time is one of the greatest builders of brand equity.

The theme for this year is ‘Let’s Play Chef’ and it really celebrates those moments that you’re with your family cooking. Children love to get their hands in the bowl, mix things around, shove it in the oven and plonk it on a plate! We launched a music track and video called Burger Dog, so that’s super exciting.

We’ve also got two new original digital series that will be launched under the Let’s Play Chef theme. And Moose, our master toy partner, is launching a supermarket that allows kids to play with food and role-play as a chef. Let’s Play Chef speaks to the power of role-play in healthy emotional and social development.

You’re also engaging with influencers on Bluey. How have you approached that kind of outreach?
Influencers today are content creators. Our industry is there to propagate and satiate the thirst of the fandom, and to do that you have to give them more content. We need to look at our brands as content creation vehicles and good quality content engages the fandom.

We primarily focus on content creators who are going to engage our core audience, so four-to six-year-olds and their parents. Sometimes the content is there to appeal to the parents, so that they can then be inspired to play with their children, or compelled to show their children content that’s entertaining or funny. We have a number of Let’s Play Chef things coming out, and we’ve also got some really fun things around dancing.

And our fans are content creators as well. You know Bluey has gone into the zeitgeist when you give over your brand and other people are making stuff with it. There are things that we can control as the content curators of Bluey, but people are also out there doing their own thing, re-imagining Bluey in the way they want to. That’s when you know you’ve got a huge hit on your hands.

Bluey has resonated globally. Are you finding different aspects of the brand prove popular in different territories?
It’s important when building global brands to start from a universal understanding of the audience. Everyone has this need to be loved and belong in a healthy family, so no matter what market you come from, that resonates. Then, on a marketing level, we pull down into what that means for an Australian audience, an American audience, a Chinese audience… And to a large extent, it’s all quite similar.

The Asian markets are slightly different because of the priority they place on learning the ABCs and 123s. Emotional development is perhaps not so much part of the conversation as it is for more western cultures, but we’re still seeing that aspect of Bluey intrigue and delight that market. But it means how we might activate aspects of Bluey in China might look different to how we do it in the US. The US and Australia are definitely the most advanced markets in terms of the breadth of awareness and how that pulls all the way down the brand funnel into wanting to buy products.

What partnerships would you point to where a values match between Bluey and the licensee has proven a core tenet of the collaboration?
We are building the next Mickey Mouse in Bluey, I’ve no doubt of that, and we have a view on the next 100 years for the brand. The brands that get to that stage have appeal across all generations, so it’s really important when thinking about our strategic partners is how they play a role in getting us there. A good example of shared values is the launch that we announced with LEGO. Both brands are coming from a place of wanting to promote play in a healthy way for early years and onwards development.

Then we also announced the Parks and Cruises deal with Disney, where there’s shared values around family, magic, entertainment and stimulating creativity. There’s a lot of shared values across all of our partners.

Before we wrap up, a Bluey movie is in the works. How do you see that opening up new opportunities for the brand?
Absolutely there’ll be new opportunities. I’ve been privileged enough to have a peek into the creative direction and the writer’s room and there’s lots that we can be doing. You know the care and craft that Bluey creator Joe Brumm has applied to the TV episodes… Take that and raise the bar – that’s what you’ll get with the movie.