CBeebies series, Yakka Dee is looking to take the next step on its consumer products journey, welcoming two high profile industry consultants to help drive it to the next level.
Rachel Bardill and Liz Keynes – both well known and respected family and children’s brand strategists – have come on board to further drive awareness for the preschool show, which has a dedicated audience watching over 140 episodes across a number of territories and a YouTube channel that has amassed over 1.35 million subscribers and more than 1.2 billion views.
Rachel has extensive experience in the kids digital media landscape and has developed products, games, video, social content and brand franchises for some major kids brands. She will be leading Yakka Dee’s new phase alongside Liz, a strategy specialist in identifying and growing children’s brands for the long-term whose previous blue-chip clients include Aardman Animations, Acamar Films, Lupus Films, Magic Light Pictures and TG Entertainment.
Together, the team will develop a comprehensive franchise strategy that will take Yakka Dee into new markets, platforms and activations to further grow awareness and engagement so Dee can continue to encourage kids and enhance language acquisition for young children.
“Language acquisition is a pre-requisite for all children as a building block for other learning skills such as literacy and numeracy and yet many young children struggle with it for multiple reasons, sometimes neural, sometimes physical as well as the huge number of children who are learning English as a second language,” explained Liz. “Dee can be a language learning ambassador with huge potential reach as she engages, entertains and empowers children to help them cope with early language acquisition skills, her unique connection with children is so exciting to explore in other applications and partnerships as we start to broaden the opportunities to engage, while still keeping the heartland of language acquisition a really positive and fun experience.”
Rachel added: “The potential for Yakka Dee! to grow is powerful. It’s already a trusted brand with a strong audience on CBeebies and YouTube. Our goal is to build on that success and develop Yakka Dee! into a multi-platform franchise that engages both kids and parents across the full ecosystem. The world of kids media has changed and as a team we will take this brand into the future.”
Katie Simmons from King Banana TV, continued: “We’ve always known the potential for Dee. We want to make sure she is reaching as many children as possible to help improve lives; speaking and communication is the foundation of everything from learning, building relationships, expressing thoughts… Yakka Dee! engaging children in more ways is such a positive step.”
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