Magazines matter, so Caxton launches TV channel
Before the announcement Anton Botes, general manager of Caxton Magazines, said, “Caxton is very bullish about its magazines and brand.” He also revealed the three pillars which underpin the media group’s business: client facing, solutions and, at the top of the agenda, innovation.
Explaining how the idea for Caxton TV came about Clive Vanderwagen, head of client strategy at Caxton Magazines, said, “We looked at how magazines still matter. They are an emotional buy. But we wanted to put our money where our mouth is and expand our great content further through the creation of Caxton Television.” He went on to say that when Caxton says television, it is not only on the big screen but also through videos for the internet and mobile phones.
The first programme created under the Caxton TV banner aired in the last week of April. It was called Bona Mo, a creation that was associated with Bona Magazine. This particular magazine was chosen as a tie in because it was the easiest to roll out as it is uniquely South African. Bona Mo, which was paid for by Unilever, has already seen positive results with Unilever seeing a massive increase in entrants into the competition which it promoted through the programme. As with the Bona Mo campaign, going forward HB Pictures is partnering with Caxton to produce the video content.
Vanderwagen explained that a partnership with HB Pictures was important because venturing into video content is expensive, but it is necessary. When asked why HB Pictures was chosen as a partner, Vandervagen said they came in with the most competitive price when requests were put out for quotes.
For the Bona Mo campaign, Debbie McIntyre, head of insights at Caxton Magazines, said the idea was to run content across multiple platforms including Bona Magazine, social media, Caxton’s website and TV. Future campaigns may also run using this approach. However she added that, “to run every single campaign across every single platform is expensive so most of the time we will tailor content for the most suitable platform”. However the production of video by Caxton is not completely new. The media group had previously created videos for Clover and Knorr.
