Brand
Strand Development
Taylor
Herring have managed and maintained the profile and positioning
of the programme’s brand strands including;
The Richard & Judy Book Club - This regular strand has become
a publishing phenomenon in delivering overnight success for featured
titles - which has now been dubbed ‘the Richard & Judy
effect’. Their Book Club created the top two best selling
paperbacks of 2004, Lovely Bones (which has sold 1 million copies)
and Star of the Sea by Joseph O’Connor, which saw a 350%
sales increase and is the best selling book of 2004 to date. Cloud
Atlas (2004 title), which was written by David Mitchell, went
on to win ‘Richard & Judy’s Best Read’ at
2005’s British Book Awards. Just one week on it had sold
26,000 copies. The strand has also caught the eye of a whole host
of big names, including Richard E Grant, Sir Trevor McDonald,
Nigella Lawson and Sir Bob Geldof, who all appeared on the previous
series as guest reviewers. According to recent figures in a survey
conducted by BML (a book specialist research agency), Richard
& Judy’s Book Club has turned us into a nation of bookworms,
with 1.4 million viewers stating that they were now reading books
that they wouldn’t have done otherwise.
Richard & Judy also launched a competition for aspiring novelists
in November 2005 titled ‘How To Get Published’ - with
the unique prize of a publishing contract with Pan Macmillan Books
and a £50,000 advance. One of the books has been short-listed
for the prestigious Whitbread First Novel Award and there is even
a chance it could beat celebrated authors such as Salman Rushdie
and Nick Hornby to the Whitbread Book of the Year.
First launched in November 2004, Richard & Judy’s Wine
Club, aimed to debunk wine snobbery and ensure everyone gets more
enjoyment out of wine. Viewers are invited to raise a glass and
‘taste-along’ at home. To launch 2005’s six-week
programme strand we staged a National wine tasting press event
at Channel 4 with journalists across Arts & Media, TV, Showbiz,
News and Entertainment. A six-page cover feature was also secured
with Observer Food Monthly. To date - over 150,000 viewers have
purchased a case of Richard & Judy wine.
Nigel Slater from Observer Food Monthly said: “Richard
& Judy are doing for wine what they have already done for
books – opening a difficult TV subject up to millions of
viewers.”
ResultsSince
September 2002, viewing figures for Richard and Judy’s teatime
show have steadily increased, and now regularly attracts audiences
of up to 3 million viewers.
In January 2006 Channel 4 recommissioned Richard &
Judy for a further two years.
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