Some great news to start with. We were delighted to be recognised at the PPA Awards 2026 in the ‘cover of the year’ category. For our client, Boundless, we created a fun summer cover with a Where’s Wally?-inspired execution by gifted illustrator Harry Bloom. The fold-out colouring-in sections entertained kids, while the nostalgic references hit parent and grandparent audiences with aplomb. 

It was a rare moment of simultaneous, authentic, cross-generational appeal.

It’s rare because we know that trying to please everyone with a single execution is risky. We’ve all learned that better long-term engagement comes from speaking directly to specific audiences. 

Cross-generational, crowd-pleasing illustrations aside, when it comes to speaking to younger audiences, staying relevant can feel like a relentlessly uphill task. They move rapidly through content types as they learn and grow and maintaining relevance as a media title is tricky. The average marketing lifespan of a target consumer in this sector is only 18 months.

One success story with younger audiences though is Nat Geo Kids, which achieves a lifespan of 4-5 years. In a recent industry panel, the team at Nat Geo revealed how they do it.  

Do you have a children’s proposition? Here are 3 proven and tested tactics for extending your tenure:

1. Create a birthday club. Send young members a personalised message and a gift (think online store voucher or a free screen saver). With parental consent, when a young person signs up for the club, they submit their birthdate. So now you can place them in the lifecycle. 

2. Understand where your member sits in the product lifecycle, and keep them better engaged with age-targeted content. This way, you retain relevance and can start to nudge members towards more interactive and self-led actions, which means that you can extend that relevance without creating a new product. 

3. From this, you can upsell into the next product tier, meaning there is a natural progression rather than a cliff edge once they hit the current product ceiling. 

As ever with creative ideas, the simple, most direct ones are usually the most effective.

If you’d like to chat about our children’s membership development framework or view our case studies, please drop me a line at clair.atkins@ourmedia.co.uk. 

And scroll down for a nosey at the Our Media and Boundless teams celebrating their award, on what was a really fun night.

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