Special Feature - Dean Weller - Generation Media

The Dean and I

Publisher John Baulch met with Dean Weller, founder of Generation Media, to talk about his enduring passion for the toy and media industries, and why specialist media companies will always have the edge in the toy market.

Despite the fact that we both started working in the toy industry around the same time (1980/81), I have never conducted a personal interview with Dean Weller… until now. We met at the company’s Bloomsbury office to talk about the ever-evolving media landscape and Generation Media’s role at the very heart of the intersection between the toy and media worlds.

Dean is nothing short of a modern media icon – indeed, he won a ‘media legend’ award earlier this year (which he describes as an “incredibly proud moment, but a bit of a double-edged sword – are they saying I’m on my way out?!”).

With the support of his trusted team, Dean built the largest global independent media operation in the toy sector – a business Dean describes as “the ‘expert’s expert’. We recognize toys as a specialist market – and specialist skills get the specialist results that specialist companies are looking for. For a media company, if you don’t know toys, you won’t do as good a job as someone who does; we drill that into all of our teams from the outset. The market we’re in is individual in scope and scale; you don’t go to a general agency to get the results you want.”

Dean has come a long way since he worked on his first-ever toy account – Palitoy - back in the early 1980s, when a young John Harper was Marketing director. As Dean recollects: “I worked on the Star Wars brand, at a time when you couldn’t give them away. You could buy them for £1 in Tesco – they’d be worth thousands of pounds now!”

Dean has spent a grand total of 45 years in toys, has attended 40 London toy fairs, and his enthusiasm for the toy business is evident: “I have met some amazing people and worked with some fantastic products along the way. I’ve been very lucky; for me, it’s a busman’s holiday. I love toys and I love the toy industry. I am an avid collector of toys and am privileged to have connected my passion for toys with my passion for media.”

The toy market has clearly changed over the past four decades, but arguably the media market has seen even greater change, as Dean explains: “Back in its heyday, TV was everything, especially in the UK & USA. I would guess around 95% of most toy companies’ budgets were spent on TV. I started out as a TV toy expert, planning campaigns that sold A LOT of toys. That’s all changed now. If 10% of the budget is spent on TV, I would be surprised.

“At its peak, advertising on GMTV could reach around 25% of UK kids in one go. That would enable you to establish a brand and get the playground talking the very next day. That’s almost impossible these days; there is no temporal cohesion, kids aren’t seeing ads at the same time.”

Generation Media itself is 18 years old, and Dean is supported by a loyal management team, including Lisa Morgan, Jon Chambers and Lauren Whyman, who have all been with the company for over 15 years, as well as Alex Taylor-Smith (13 years) and Clive Green (8 years). Dean admits: “I couldn’t have done it without the people who have been with me on the journey. It’s amazing that people have stayed with us that long and developed their careers and forged new roles – I had worked at seven companies by the time I was 25 in an attempt to progress my career! I’m grateful to have found people who have enjoyed the ride as much as I have.”

Dean loves an analogy, and when I asked him to describe the continuing evolution of Generation Media, he turns to one of his passions to explain it: “I love space - we’re on a mission. We’ve already reached the moon, now we’re setting a target for Mars. How do we get there? It’s important to continually invest in great people, keep them engaged, making the journey epic and one they really want to be on. Investing in training and development is money very well spent.”

This investment in people can be seen in Generation Media’s status as an Employee Ownership Trust. Every team member is a shareholder and 51% of the company is owned by the staff. As Dean explains: “We didn’t have to get outside investment, we’re bringing them on a journey through ownership. We win as a team and lose as a team. We’re the only media company in the UK to have this ownership structure. We’ve also been recognised again this year by the IPA as a CPD Gold agency – the highest standard you can get. Everyone is incredibly proud.”

Another facet Dean has been proud of is the way the company has established itself as the specialist media agency for the toy market, and how its in-depth knowledge of media has helped toy companies to expand their own businesses: “We started as experts in the domestic market across England, Wales and Scotland; we soon discovered no one was paying attention to Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which made up around 8% of the market. We worked hard to convince toy companies it was worth investing in Ireland, and it paid dividends.

“There is no toy focused media company like us anywhere in the world; obviously we’re strong across Europe with a presence in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Portugal, but we’re now represented in 50 countries across the globe, including the USA and Canada.

“Toys is unlike the majority of other markets, as everything revolves around Christmas. Getting companies to advertise outside the Christmas period can be tricky; we’ve worked hard with our partners to demonstrate the importance of establishing a brand in the consumer’s mind before sales kick in. People are not robots: you don’t see something in an ad and go straight out and buy it the next day. I look at it as building up credit in the Bank of Knowledge.”

One of the key issues that toy and media companies have had to confront in recent years is the inescapable fact that kids are getting out of toys at an increasingly early age. But as Dean points out: “What is a toy? Is Nintendo Switch a toy? Some would say not, and yet…”

Another major issue is media fragmentation, but Dean sees that as much as an opportunity as a challenge: “We’re at the most exciting, but most complex time in the company’s history. That gives us recruitment challenges - we need to find people who are into the granularity of media buying beyond TV, who understand how to get the best out of TikTok, Snapchat, Meta and other social channels.

“And we’re under greater pressure to produce results than ever before,” Dean adds. “It’s essential to tie media activity into sales. That’s why we’ve started working in partnership with Circana to track what is happening at retail in response to campaigns. It used to be far more straightforward; when I was buying TV, I could measure a four year old’s TV viewing habits without hindrance. You can’t do that with social media.”

This change led Dean to personally invest in a research company – Giraffe Insights. Dean has no doubt that was the right move: “Outside of Generation Media, it was the best thing I ever did. It has allowed us to conduct our own research into kids under 13 and understand their behaviour online. Giraffe operates completely independently; it has its own offices, and it even has clients that Generation Media doesn’t work with.

“Collaborations with research and insights companies like Giraffe Insights and Circana are going to be one of our strongest weapons in key markets. We are fully committed to taking Giraffe internationally to bring research expertise to the global kids’ market.”

Taking the business from a domestic to international operation is by no means a ‘one size fits all’ approach, as Dean points out: “There are some major sociological differences in different territories. For example, the USA is a continent; there are 50 States, some liberal, some conservative. In liberal States, kids tend to be older than their years and are more open to messaging on social media. In conservative States, kids tend to be more under family control, use iPads a lot less and are generally younger than their years. We see that in Germany too; it’s a very conservative market, a boy of 10 is akin to a boy of eight in the UK because of the social structure.”

Retailers have always taken an interest in toy companies’ marketing activity, and Dean believes this is one area which has seen tremendous improvement in recent years: “Modern retailers definitely understand what ad opportunities are around far better than their predecessors. Companies aren’t pressured into doing things that might not be right, as they sometimes used to be. In the old days, toy companies knew that if you didn’t have 400 ratings, you couldn’t get a listing with certain major accounts. Now buyers tend to be younger and are on social media themselves, so they understand the complexity of a modern media plan.”

In addition to its toy business, Generation Media has also made significant inroads into the gaming sector, as Dean outlines: “We’re really motoring in that space. In the same way that we are No. 1 in the toy space, we want to be No. 1 in the gaming space. I’ve always had a passion for playing video games, in the same way I am passionate about toys. I worked with Electronic Arts when the company was first set up; I met the three founders and was asked to work on the Pinball Construction game. A love of video games runs in the family: my son Greg Weller is now working with us as Partnership Head on the gaming side, he used to be Marketing Lead at Rockstar Games in Australia. All of this has allowed us to get into the market with credibility. We’ve worked on some amazing launches for the likes of Bethesda and Bandai Namco. With gaming, it’s all about the launch – you can’t launch something twice. Generation Media is also the only UK media company that runs a video games conference; Game On was a huge success for us this year, and we’re looking to build on that next year.”

If all this suggests a smooth journey from day one, Dean is honest enough to admit that isn’t the case: “It wasn’t always straightforward. I had a rocky start setting the company up. I was working at Mediacom and left the company when it was downsizing. Having been put on six months’ garden leave, I was worried that I would be forgotten. But after two weeks, the phone started ringing. It was actually Peter Brown who got me out of garden leave; he was setting up K’Nex in the UK, and he asked if I would help him to launch it. That was the stimulus to set up the company. Our first three clients were K’Nex, Leapfrog and Smoby. I would like to give a special shout out to Peter, and of course Simon Hedge: without Peter, I don’t think I would have started this company up. He was an innovator, a structured risk taker, and importantly, he was loyal and had massive integrity.

“It's scary to set your own thing up, but I have a passion for toys – so why not make a career out of them? I’ve seen the company grow from just me to a business with over 60 people – it’s been an incredible journey, and I’ve loved every minute. There have been plenty of highlights along the way; the proudest moment of my professional career was receiving a Lifetime Achievement award from the Toy Trust.”

And what about the future? “Generation Media and Giraffe Insights are going to kick on, the companies will continue to grow. I am very much still here for the journey, and I’m still hugely excited by what we’re doing. Of course, I will pass the baton on to my team when the time is right, I don’t want to be working full-time in my seventies. I will probably become chairman in the next eighteen months, but I very much want to carry on being part of the toy, gaming and media industries.

“I still have the same passion for toys that I always had. I am a huge games fan too, and have played Magic: The Gathering since it launched nearly 40 years ago. It runs in the family – my youngest son took part in this year’s European Championships for Asmodee’s Star Wars: Unlimited card game.

I couldn’t leave without asking Dean for his thoughts on AI. I am not a fan (putting it politely), but as ever, Dean takes the glass half full perspective. “AI is going to be the biggest thing in media planning and buying – it’s mind-blowing what AI can do. It’s going to have a major impact on agency composition, and on the kind of people and tech you’ll need. As a business owner, I can see cost and efficiency savings, but it will definitely be a challenge to recruit the right experts in this field. I believe that investment in this kind of tech will help us to measure and benchmark ROI in future, which will be hugely beneficial.”

I suggest it’s potentially scary on a number of fronts, but Dean takes a different view: “It’s exciting, not scary. You can’t hold back the future, nor should you want to. And, ultimately, I’ve got to believe that it will free people up to spend more leisure time.”

You can’t help but admire Dean’s passion for his craft, and his enthusiasm for making the most of new technologies to improve the way his businesses run. Many experienced operators in the world of toys pine for simpler times, but Dean seems to thrive on pushing boundaries and exploring new horizons - and you suspect that’s why his businesses remain at the forefront of their fields.