In 2002, when Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen were just sixteen and had starred in barely a dozen movies, JCPR was approached by their global licensing company Dualstar Entertainment. The girls were a huge success in their homeland, but wanted to grow their brand globally; as the girls grew up and their images inevitably changed, the brand would have to keep pace with them.

JCPR's part in globalising the franchise and strengthening the Mary-Kate & Ashley brand is not simply a standard celebrity campaign based on getting the girls seen in the right magazines. It has involved hard-hitting media relations and a carefully executed PR strategy. The central focus has been as much about protecting and empowering the brand as promoting it.

Jackie Cooper, Founding Partner at JCPR, explains: "JCPR has managed the negative media, restricting the impact, and protecting Ashley and Mary-Kate and ensuring that commercial and business partners understand the reality rather than the propaganda."
Indeed, the transformation from cute kids into stunning women created a new PR challenge. While the girls' sophistication, wholesomeness and global success are central to the brand, and have been reiterated and massaged to let them hold their position as everything tween girls love, they must also make an impact on their own age group - the fickle teenage audience and those with purchasing power - mums.

Crucially, Ashley & Mary-Kate are not just child stars - they are a formidable global brand, and remain so under JCPR's aegis. The best-known child stars from yesteryear, like Shirley Temple and Macaulay Culkin, could never boast such a diverse range of entrepreneurial achievements as these successful young women, who have expanded from film and TV into fashion, fragrances, and even entertainment software. Mary-Kate & Ashley have been named the "Most Powerful Young Women in Hollywood" by the Hollywood Reporter and they even made it onto the Hollywood Walk of Fame at the age of seventeen, the youngest stars yet to appear there. With the girls now in their early twenties, the highly profitable industry that has grown around the two businesswomen is a powerful PR success story.
Their career outside the US proves that well-crafted PR strategy can work wonders. JCPR's brief was to build on the brand's momentum, maximise levels of idealisation, and protect and develop a more personalised and loyal following - firstly in the UK, and then across Europe, Australia, and Mexico. Girls between 12 and 18, pushing to discard the shackles of childhood and become stylish and successful are at the heart of the target audience - and, thanks to JCPR's careful strategy, their pre-teen audience continues to idolise them. As the girls reach adulthood, they are successfully attracting a more mature following by introducing new products in areas like apparel, beauty and accessories, without abandoning or alienating their tween following.

Despite the brand's constant flux, JCPR has ensured that messaging has been both consistent and far-reaching. A devoted press office was set up to hero the brand and develop effective product placement. The girls are continually portrayed as smart, confident, creative, friendly, cool, responsible, happy, ...and, above all, positive. They make few public appearances, these usually being restricted to carefully selected meet-and-greets, but on these rare outings they can show themselves at their best.
Their fresh and lively personalities, as portrayed in a wide range of films like 'Winning London', 'When in Rome' and 'Our Lips are Sealed', have spread their glossy and wholesome images worldwide. They have galvanised the support of parents, who prefer their daughters to follow positive role models rather than bad-girl teen alternatives like Avril Lavigne. Their P.M.A. (Positive Media Attitude) have ensured the young womens' popularity and newsworthiness, and JCPR has maximised this by arranging for them to write regular columns in magazines, and setting up themed press previews to showcase their new collections and launches.

Jackie Cooper, continues: "We conceived a non-traditional PR strategy avoiding all celebrity and tabloid references and positioning, not the girls, but the brand, the business, the commercial acumen via broadsheets, business journalists and direct to CEO presentations and it was this that attracted retail partners (ASDA) to buy into the brand."

Even before their 18th birthday, they'd already been elevated to 'Beautiful People' status, and the doe-eyed icons now appear regularly on the front pages of celebrity, fashion and women's magazines. Since early adulthood, they have been listed in Forbes' coveted Celebrity 100 list of the world's hottest entertainers and athletes, where they were previously ranked Number 1 among the world's child stars.
But writing in magazines or having a profile written about you in a magazine, are child's play compared having a whole issue devoted to you. JCPR helped launch the special Mary-Kate & Ashley issue of the BBC's Girl Talk 42-page publication in 2005; it sold over 70,000 copies in the UK, also attracting new fans and securing and anchoring the existing fan base in France, Germany and Spain. JCPR protected and grew the brand presence across Europe. In 2004 and 2005 the brand generated $1.4 billion in retail sales and is expected to exceed this in 2006.

Since the girls turned 18 they became executives at Dualstar and, with their background of being a winning brand in their own right, they are ideally placed to introduce new entertainment phenomena such as the Disney Channel's The Suite Life with Zach and Cody, a new brand aimed at pre-teen boys which is already proving to be a big hit.

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen have already secured an enviable reputation as fashion icons, actresses, designers, producers, and businesswomen. With JCPR's continuing support, Ashley, Mary-Kate, and Dualstar look set for sustained growth across countries, sectors and demographics.