‘Scoop’ Magazine: marketing a socially conscious literary magazine for children
Magazines for children have come a long way since the trashy technicolour of the 2000s. Featuring diverse and original content from an impressive list of contributors, including Malorie Blackman and Neil Gaiman, Scoop magazine (aimed at boys and girls aged 7–13) is marketed as distinctly literary and socially conscious. Using Scoop as a case study, how are such products positioned in the market, and how do digital formats lend themselves to a type of marketing distinct from that of traditional children’s book publishing?
Scoop is available both digitally and in print, and ‘aims to offer children a way into ideas and subjects through the very best story-telling, design and illustration.’ Children’s publishing is unique because you aren’t marketing to your ‘ideal reader’ (IngramSpark, 2019) — you’re marketing to adults. Certainly, the language used to market magazines for kids speaks directly to parents, often positioning the product as a gift. Chief executive of Ad Results Media, Marshall Williams, tells us that “[Parents] make a formidable audience if the right message is presented to them.” (Financial Times, 2018) In the case of Scoop, the marketing is angled towards it being more upmarket or ‘high-brow’; it even offers kids the opportunity to be ‘junior editors’, propelling them into the literary world way before they’ve written their GCSE paper on Of Mice and Men. By not being curriculum-led, the magazine positions itself as separate from school but nevertheless speaks to a target demographic of educated, middle-class parents who will likely select it for its intellectual value.
The magazine is thematic, its most recent theme being ‘Activism’. Past themes have included Black History Month and Feminism. By placing social responsibility at the forefront of what is ostensibly a product for entertainment, the content appeals to the target parents far more, as well as marking a shift in the way we regard children’s capacity to absorb heavyweight intellectual issues. Social responsibility is not yet fully entrenched in the curriculum, but marketers of children’s products can instead target parents keen to instil such values in the home. Additionally, Scoop’s big-name content creators are featured prominently to grab the attention of the parents who will recognise them — a fail-safe way to guarantee credibility.
A distinct advantage of using the magazine format to deliver content is that it circumvents many of the gatekeepers in traditional publishing; this is especially profound when marketing content for children. Generally, a combination of online and traditional marketing is most effective when positioning children’s books (Beditz, 2018), but a crucial element of taking a book for children to the market is actively selling through libraries and schools. Whilst Scoop is stocked in some retailers, it operates largely as a subscription model and digital product, and a majority of sales are made online. The same can be said for Scoop’s most recent iteration as a podcast. Although still in its infancy, the children’s podcast market is an area of rapid growth and this is largely a result of targeting the parents — the decision to present a podcast to a child lies with them, after all, often either to distract children or provide them with something that doesn’t involve looking at a screen (Financial Times, 2018). By altering its business model to target parents directly, Scoop is able to better operate independently of library/school sales, which normally are indispensable in the early days of marketing (Inglis, 2021) and can often prove to be a particular sticking point for many children’s authors in terms of access to libraries (Beditz).
Here, the concept of a children’s literary magazine is somewhat unique, driving its sales by appealing to the parents directly and using a subscription model to place the product directly through letterboxes and into the hands of its audience.
Bibliography
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