Reach has been acquired by The Beans Group
15. Apr, 2012 
10 Comments
The Beans Group, owners of youth media giant studentbeans.com and morebeans.com, has bought Reach Students.
Reach’s website, blog and other assets, will be integrated into an exciting new site from The Beans Group over the next few months, which I will edit.
Youth Marketing Strategy, last year’s popular conference event, will run again and will retain its independent ethos, reflecting ideas and best practice from across the whole of the industry. (We already have some great speakers lined up, including from MTV, Spotify and The Guardian).
For me, as founder of Reach, this acquisition is a big deal so I’ve written a blog post about it. Because some people who have followed our output for a long time – this newsletter is now 10 years old – or have worked with us, may be interested to know more…
Success story
studentbeans.com is a huge success story in our market. From launch just a few years ago, it has taken off like coke from a bottle full of Mentos and has soared to some height: half a million unique visitors a month, an active database of 250,000 students, three strong revenue streams and a team of 30 young staff working across editorial, production, sales and marketing.
Earlier this year I met up with co-founders James and Michael and was knocked out by both their focus and vision. They have big plans, and that includes developing a high quality youth marketing resource for clients that provides insights, ideas and tools.
Insights and ideas are of course central to what Reach does. We discussed the potential of working together.
As someone who loves the world of youth marketing, enjoys sharing experiences and discussing trends and opportunities, a merge into The Beans Group has two major attractions.
First I get support to take this activity much further than ever before, with investment and a mandate to make it the sole focus of my job.
Second I get to freely utilise The Beans Group’s resource. If I want to find out how many students are using Twitter or which mobile platforms they prefer, I can run a survey tonight and get the results published tomorrow.
The future
For a youth marketing geek like me this has major appeal. Already I’ve been drooling over analytics and become fascinated by conversion statistics for different offers. And I get the chance to share the insights over the coming months.
So Reach has become part of The Beans Group and we are working on lots of new content that will make youth marketing easy for professionals.
I am now based full-time in London and am looking forward to getting out and about, reconnecting with people in the industry and meeting more brands and agencies.
If you fancy a coffee, have some news or are interested to know more about what The Beans Group does, then don’t hesitate to get in touch.
So, thanks for your interest in this – and stay tuned. If you liked what Reach did, you’re going to love what’s coming next.
Congrats Luke!
Congratulations Luke, I’m sure this will an exciting new chapter in the Studentbeans tale and I look forward to working with you.
Chloe
Thanks Wil! See you soon
Thanks for the kind comment Chloe
Excellent! – best of luck!
Congratulations – sounds really exciting!
Thanks Katie and John!
Dear Luke, just heard the exciting news and wish you and the team at The Beans Group all the best in this very promising collaboration!
Hello Luke, Glad all your hard work has paid off and you get to devote more time to Reach.
Hope it goes really well for you.
Joseph and John A – thanks a lot for your comments.