Chronicle Media’s staff are certainly organised and work as a team, although you’d be advised to stop short of suggesting they’re also incredibly, utterly devious… And if you recognised those famous lyrics, you may be excited about the return of The Wombles ahead of their 60th anniversary in 2028.
In September, Chronicle announced its deal with The Wombles Operations to oversee two new YouTube channels for the classic British brand: one offering vintage episodes of the 1970s and 1990s TV shows, and the other with new animated and live-action content focused on arts, crafts, cooking and gardening – as well as environmental issues.
At the TellyCast Digital Content Forum today, Chronicle Media’s Oliver Lewis and The Wombles’ Alex Treharne talked about the strategy behind all this, interviewed by The Drop editor Andy Fry.
The project benefitted enormously from the fact that The Wombles is a fully-consolidated brand. “We own all of the IP rights to The Wombles, which is very rare,” said Treharne. This is also no accident: a lot of work has gone into consolidating those rights in recent years – not just the TV shows but books, merchandising and more – while “avoiding taking any bad deals” that would undermine that consolidation.
In the last two years, the work has shifted to content production, with Treharne inspired by Bake Off and The Traitors to focus on making “cross-generational content that will appeal to family viewing”.
“We knew if we could build an owned audience, and understand inherently who our audience was and what they wanted from us… we could deliver something better to that audience than we would be delivering if it was mediated through a load of agencies and through a load of other stakeholders who had disaggregated interests,” he said.
“They’ve recognised that real-time feedback with the audience is the only way to collect quality data that informs your content-production strategy,” added Lewis. This is the key to the YouTube strategy for The Wombles: it’s about understanding that audience, rather than chasing virality.
“The best way to think of how we see ourselves at Wombles HQ is sort of like an owner of a football club. But a good one! We see ourselves as stewards of the brand,” said Treharne.
“The key thing for me and for us is that we protect the underlying brand value for the longevity of the brand. If the brand is to be here in another 60 years, that only happens if we don’t fuck it up! And the way we don’t fuck it up is by trying to make a series of better decisions… and ultimately we believe in retaining the rights, so you don’t have to mediate those decisions.”
Lewis offered more praise for The Wombles team and their willingness to “release early-stage content” rather than be overly cautious with its evolving digital strategy.
“We’ve got nowhere near the amount of money it would take to make two series of Peppa Pig or Bluey. Nowhere near that! But we’ve made a lot of content, and we’ve decided to fund that ourselves, because ultimately that will allow us to control distribution,” said Treharne.
“Inevitably some of that content won’t work, which is fine, and some of that content will work, which is great,” he added, while stressing the importance of also educating new audiences about the brand.
“It’s about how do we platform The Wombles as a brand on YouTube? How do we platform The Wombles as a brand on TikTok?… And being brave as brand custodians about the decisions we’re making. We’re not going to be making a 60-minute escape-room episode just because that’s trending. How do we retain the underlying value of what we are?”
Lewis finished with a message to other rightsholders who want to be wombling free in the digital-first sphere. “Start experimenting with the back catalogue, because not everything will resonate, but some things you assume won’t resonate will have value with an audience,” he said. “You can reach these points of understanding, and then invest again.”
