Media in Focus - Happy Child

Your Name: Yvette Vignando
Name of your Media Brand: Happy Child
Target Market: Women/Parents aged 29-45
Launched: 2009/2010

See Happy Child's MediaScope directory listing

Tell us how & why you started happychild.com.au?

I launched the happychild website on 1 July this year but I had been publishing a happychild parenting ezine for well over a year before that. I changed careers from law to executive coaching in 2000 and since then I have worked and specialised in the area of emotional intelligence.

Having children was the catalyst for my career change; one reason was because I needed a more flexible professional career. But the real motivation for me was the epiphany I had while reading Daniel Goleman’s bestseller Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ. I knew immediately that the emotional and social skills described in that book were the strengths that I most wanted our children to develop. I could also see the huge potential in the workplace and in schools for the teaching of emotional intelligence skills. At that time the term “emotional intelligence” was hardly ever used whereas now it is in all business literature and taught as part of MBAs all over the world. I started with offering coaching to executives and used www.eidevelopment.com to contribute to the family income as we raised our family. However, I have also been offering workshops to schools, and the happychild website is the culmination of my dream to do something that could contribute to the social and emotional wellbeing of children. Of course, I also plan for it to become a profitable business and continue to build the happychild brand across a diverse range of media.

Can you give us an overview of happychild.com.au, your market position and forward plans?

happychild.com.au publishes high quality and highly readable information for parents about raising their children with emotional intelligence. Parents learn from each other and from experts so we are also proud to have a number of interesting and clever parent bloggers on the site including Australian actor and author Sophie Lee, ABC broadcaster Carol Duncan, Publisher Sally Collings and Smith Family Director Arun Abey just to name a few. We have also just launched a parenting bookstore which is also hosted via a branded store on ABC Shop online. Longer term, there are plans to add Forums to the site but this will depend on our view of the popularity of that medium. Because we have been building the content and brand, we have not focused on seeking advertising sales yet but that is our next big focus – I am determined to keep the website free and to do this we need to diversify the income streams for the website. Video content will also increase on the site but I will keep those plans a bit quieter for now …

What benefits do you offer advertising buyers and marketers?

I guess the primary benefit is access to a large and growing niche of parents who are concerned about their children’s general wellbeing, happiness and future. The vast majority of readers are women and although I would love more male readers, the reality is that women are doing the vast majority of the thinking and engaging with parenting information online. I know that women are becoming the main household decision makers – I read about a study by Mastercard indicating that across the Asia Pacific the female household decision maker is typically aged between 31 and 45 years old and working. The audience for happychild is exactly this demographic. I guess the other clear advantage I believe happychild has, is that in the area of parenting it has the potential to grow into a strong brand because of the quality and diversity of information being published, and advertisers and marketers have the opportunity to grow with it.

What is the best & worst thing about being an independent media publisher?

Best – creativity, flexibility, autonomy, the satisfaction from seeing your business grow, being able to also support others doing good things for parents and children and receiving incredible support and encouragement from the online community.

Worst – long hours, funding challenges and the occasional self-doubt at midnight when you are too tired to blog!

Tell us about your advertising sales structure?

We have only just started this process – watch this space. However, we have designed happychild to comply with standard IAB guidelines for online advertising.

Can you offer any advice to someone starting a new commercial media
business?

I could talk about this all day so I will restrict my answer to a few key points:

-draw up financial projections for a number of different scenarios and stay flexible

- use the power of social media but be sure to remain authentically you

- use independent writers and contractors and treat them as well as you can afford to

- pay for a superb web developer and designer who have developed sites similar to what you have in mind

- seek mentors.

Where do you get your advertising and marketing information from?

I of course look at Media Scope! I also read links shared on Twitter all the time and read BRW. In addition I read other online industry newsletters including Digital Ministry and eMarketer as well as relevant articles in Smart Company, just to name a few. I ask a lot of questions of my network online and offline and learn so much from other people.

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