BEANO TOONS

Client
Beano

Brief
Create animated comedy content for 7-12 year old audience.

Approach
I co-created, wrote and directed Beano Toons, a series of original animated shorts that became Beano’s most-watched digital series on their site and YouTube. Produced by a tiny team of two, it was aimed at 7 to 12 year olds and played a big part in Beano’s digital strategy ahead of the relaunch of the Dennis the Menace TV show.

The shorts tapped into themes kids loved at the time, including football, dinosaurs, superheroes, silly comedy, mobile phones, witches, wizards and monsters. I was also surprised by how tuned in kids were to world events, and some of our most popular episodes ended up weaving in political themes as well

Results
Beano Toons was a 70-episode digital animation strand that became a cornerstone of Beano’s refreshed output. On YouTube it delivered over 25 million views in total, averaging 359k per film. While most shorts performed between 70k and 200k views, the series produced several breakout hits: Blocks vs Bricks reached 8.4M, Kid Cops hit 3.4M, and Pokémon Go Crazy drew 2.6M.

This made Beano Toons one of the brand’s most successful digital-first initiatives, proving kids’ appetite for fresh, short-form storytelling and helping secure the Broadcast Digital Award for Best Original Web Channel. The campaign was part of a wider digital strategy that grew Beano.com to over 2 million annual visitors, delivered 2.1 million monthly views, and helped drive a 10% rise in comic sales by 2018.