Category: Industry Voices

What made you want to work in publishing?

I’m not a publisher by trade, I’m an environmental scientist. About 20 years ago the UK government was funding projects to work out the environmental impact of different sectors and the publishing sector was one of them. I was contracted to look at the publishing industry- we had to quantify all of the resources used and all of the waste produced. This was done in partnership with the PPA and I’ve been working with the PPA and its members ever since!

What do you think has driven publishers to become more invested in sustainability recently?

There are several factors that are driving publishers to really think about sustainability solutions. One is a realisation that we’re very close to a number of tipping points in terms of sustainability, and if they as businesses don’t act then who is going to act? Alongside that there is pressure from their readers, customers, and employees. Some people I’ve worked with have said they want to attract the best and brightest talent and that talent is asking about sustainability. There is also a degree of regulatory pressure, but I guess that isn’t so strong with publishers versus other industries. Also of course investors – they’re looking for sustainable investments.

It’s taken a while to get people to start to take action but now industries including the publishing sector are trying to make up for lost time and are taking it very seriously and wanting to find the right way forward.

What inspired you to come up with the carbon calculator? Can you explain how it works?

Publishers realised that what you can’t measure you can’t manage, so they wanted a way of understanding what the footprint of certain titles was. It was about trying to provide insight into what drives the carbon footprint of magazine publishing. And then to target actions to reduce that footprint.

We’ve tried to make it as intuitive for publishers as possible. Questions such as what type of paper you use, what are the dimensions of the magazine, what distribution channels does it go down etc. We try to make it speak publishers’ language as much as possible, making it a publishers' tool rather than a carbon footprint expert’s tool.

What does the word sustainability mean to you?

I think when we talk about sustainability there is a temptation to exclusively think about carbon footprint, but sustainability is a lot more than this. There are a lot of environmental and social challenges in the world from soil degradation to overfishing to modern slavery. It’s a broad term that’s all encompassing that can be hard to get your head around. It’s good we can package that up in smaller bitesize chunks like doing something about our carbon footprint first and foremost because that’s the most pressing challenge. There are other things like looking at single use plastic, sustainable forestry. Sustainability is made up of lots of environmental and social challenges and it’s really hard for a publisher to take on the entirety of sustainability in one go – you need to break it down into bitesize chunks.

It's important when we’re talking about sustainability to make sure it’s a genuine underlying principle of the business not just an afterthought or something we’re saying because we think the market wants it. It’s got to be something that drives the business and underlies the culture and philosophy of the business. And that might mean making something that businesses have to make sacrifices – it’s a short term pay for a long-term gain.

What is one thing publishers can do to lessen their carbon footprint?

For publishers that have printed products – and I know that isn’t all members of the PPA, the one thing they can do to reduce their carbon footprint is to reduce unsolds. That continued focus on minimising the unsolds can have a big effect on carbon impact. It’s about reducing material that doesn’t even end up being consumed.

Recent environmental reports have painted a rather bleak picture for our future, do you think there is time to make a difference?

Yes but time is running out. We need urgent action and that means investment. There is time but the solutions that are emerging, they need to be scaled up very quickly.

What is your ideal vision for a more sustainable world in 10 years time?

First and foremost, it would be a world where we don’t rely so heavily on fossil fuels for our power. Fossil fuels have to be phased out and rapidly. Alongside that, a change in thinking. There have been a number of economic studies that show the pursuit of economic growth is unsustainable. So we need a different way of measuring success, not just for individuals but for businesses as well. Growth for growths sake isn’t sustainable. A different economic model is needed, one that promotes quality rather than quantity.

And of course, it’s not sustainable that we have such vast quality of life differences in the world. We need to be able to give people in the developing world the same chances we had, and the same opportunities for living a rich and fulfilled life.

What’s on your radar?

Cop26 and what comes out of that is going to be quite critical.

For some of my other project work and through RISE (Research Institute of Sweden), I get exposed to emerging technologies that could play a part in a more sustainable future. I like to keep an eye on those technologies and see what’s coming, and where we can revolutionise supply chains, and industries to offer more sustainable futures.

If you would like to join the PPA's Sustainability Action Group (SAG) please get in touch with our Public Affairs Intern, Sebastian Cutthill at sebastian.cutthill@ppa.co.uk or Michael Sturges at michael.sturges@ri.se

What made you want to work in publishing?

I’d like to pretend it was always my goal but the truth is that I landed here by happy accident! I was inspired to explore a career in publishing by my cousin, Sian, whose first job was with Penguin Books. I’ve always been an avid reader, love to write, draw, design and make things – publishing allows me to do them all and get paid for it.

Chart your career from the start to where you are now.

I landed my first job – as editorial assistant at Redan (independent publisher of mostly-licensed children’s magazines) – in 1995, after completing a post-graduate diploma in publishing. Armed with a scalpel and a set of markers, my job mainly involved photographing artwork on a huge flat-bed camera, cutting and pasting pictures and words onto cardboard templates and marking up colour guides for the repro houses. I loved it! I stayed there for about 6 years (during which time the scalpel was superseded by QuarkXPress), rising quickly to editor and then managing editor, and learning everything I needed to know about creating, printing and publishing magazines.

From Redan I went to BBC Worldwide to edit their children’s factual and educational magazines portfolio, then onto Eaglemoss in 2004, as development editor. There I learned the art of the partwork and helped devise and launch collections in partnership with brands including Roald Dahl and the Royal Ballet. The role married creativity with meticulous planning – the collectibles, cover themes and editorial features for a full series of 60 issues would be mapped out well before launch.

I joined Egmont as Group Editor in early 2010 overseeing the editorial teams responsible for some of their branded pre-teen titles. At this point in children's magazines the covermount really had become king, and I spent at least as much time discussing the design and packaging of the ‘free’ gifts as I did the content. By this time I had two children aged under five and was struggling to get the right work/life balance. My eventual solution to this was to quit my job and take my chances as a freelancer.

Luckily I wasn’t short of work. I continued to work with Egmont, freelance editing a variety of titles and I worked with Eaglemoss as a consultant on a number of new collections. I also took on the role of Project Manager for World Book Day – an annual children’s literacy campaign. The latter was immensely rewarding (and challenging!) and offered me the opportunity to develop digital skills and learn more about children’s book publishing. Planning and executing a multi platform event for young adults was a personal highlight.

In early summer 2015, I received a call from Kerin O’Connor (CEO of The Week at Dennis) who invited me to meet up with him to discuss a new project. That new project was The Week Junior and in September 2015 I joined Dennis as the launch editor, tasked with building a team and getting the magazine out into the world. The Week Junior launched two months later. Fast-forward six years and we’ve won numerous awards, smashed all our targets and our circulation continues to grow.

Now, as Editorial Director I oversee The Week Junior portfolio. This includes the weekly magazine and the digital edition (launched last spring), its sister title TWJ Science+Nature (launched 2018), the two podcasts (The Week Junior Show and Mysteries of Science). We’ve also published a number of annuals and puzzle books, and in March 2020 The Week Junior launched in the US, where it is matching the success of the UK edition. I work closely with the brilliant publishing teams on both sides of the Atlantic. It’s an exciting time for the brand – there’s a lot going on – and I feel very lucky and proud to play my part in its success now, and into the future.

The Week Junior launched a wellbeing section back in January – why was it important for you to support children in this way during national lockdowns?

The mental health of young people was an increasing concern even before the pandemic and we had regularly run news stories and features on the subject since launch. But of course Covid-19 and all the challenges it has brought have further amplified these issues. One of the objectives of The Week Junior is to help children to develop resilience through knowledge and understanding of world events. It’s a natural extension for us to help them to understand themselves a bit better too – and to provide them with some key tools and strategies for managing their mental health and dealing with adversity. My hope is that the information that we provide on the Wellbeing page will give our readers solutions to some of the problems they are likely to face now, and in the future, building their confidence and bolstering their emotional resources.

What was the inspiration behind launching the Summer Reading Challenge?

Encouraging children to read for pleasure is at the heart of The Week Junior: it’s proven to have huge benefits for wellbeing as well as contributing to myriad other positive outcomes. Given that many of our readers would likely be spending their summer holidays at home we really wanted to offer them another way to escape – through books! We wanted the campaign to be simple, achievable and easy to communicate, so we settled on challenging children to read three books, rate them out of three stars and review them in three words. We’ve always had a good relationship with children’s book authors and publishers (we have a weekly Book Club page in The Week Junior) so we knew that we could rely on their support to create a buzz around the campaign too. So far it’s been a great success. Last year over 1000 children got involved and we’re well on our way to even more this summer.

There is a strong tone of environmentalism across TWJ and TWJ Science and Nature magazines. Is this an editorial decision or something that has been encouraged through feedback from your readership?

Environmental news stories have always played a key part in our editorial mix – both on the news pages and within the Animals and environment section of The Week Junior, and throughout TWJ Science+Nature. Stories about climate change, plastic pollution and endangered animals are never far from the front pages of newspapers and we know that our readers are passionate about protecting the planet and keen to know what they can do to help. We endeavour to combine clear, common-sense reports on environmental problems with examples of small ways in which children can contribute to finding solutions. We are also acutely aware of the anxiety that can result from reading about the climate crisis so we are very careful to balance the bad news with more positive stories and to never suggest that children are solely responsible for solving the world’s problems. That said, we really do love hearing from children who get in touch to tell us about their environmental efforts– and we value their feedback on ours. It was a series of complaints from subscribers that fast-tracked our decision to ditch the plastic wrap back in 2019 in favour of mailing copies out ‘naked’ – which I believe was an industry-first.

Across the print magazine and The Week Junior Show podcast, how do you make sure your tone is accessible and informative, without being patronising?

We’re not teachers or preachers so we simply imagine we’re having a conversation with the readers. We anticipate their questions and consider what context or explanation they might need to make sense of a story. We avoid dry, technical terminology and focus on communicating clearly and engagingly. Fundamentally, we treat our readers with the respect they deserve – we take their curiosity (and their opinions) seriously.

The Week Junior’s subscribers rose by nearly 22,000 in 2020, do you think the events of the last year and a half have given people a greater appreciation for magazines?

I’m sure there is a degree of that, but more importantly I think people have gained a greater sense of the value of news from trusted sources. The past 18 months have been really tumultuous for our readers and their families. I think the weekly delivery of The Week Junior not only provided some calm to cut through all the noise, it also created punctuation to each week, a small comfort and something that could be relied upon at a time when all other routines had been upended. I hope that the relationship that so many new subscribers have built with us as a consequence of that, and their confidence in our ability to inform and entertain their children will continue well into the future. We’ve had a lot of lovely feedback from parents, teachers and children –and that’s really boosted team morale too. Everyone has worked so incredibly hard so it's very rewarding to hear that our efforts really do make a positive difference.

What’s on your radar?

The question I constantly ask myself is “how can we be better?” That applies to what we’re already doing and what more we could be doing. The Week Junior has gone from being the small new kid on the block to a burgeoning global brand. That brings both challenges and opportunities to grow and expand. As a team we have no shortage of ideas for new products and extensions – so the biggest challenge always is to prioritise time and resources smartly and strategically. At the same time I am trying to work out (along with the rest of the world) what the future of work looks like and what that means for creativity and collaboration in the longer term.

What magazine do you stockpile?

I have an ever-increasing collection of Conde Nast Traveller magazines. Every issue offers a chance to escape – and it’s been even more of a treat during the past year of lockdowns and limited opportunities to travel. I like planning imaginary journeys and losing myself in photos and descriptions of fabulous far flung places.

What led you to work in publishing?

To be honest I didn’t really know what I wanted to do when I left uni. I was pretty good at the sciences at school, and read Chemistry with Physics at university, but the lack of real career guidance meant I finished uni a bit lost about what was next. I ended up working for VNU Business Publications after a recruitment agency friend convinced me to go for an interview. I got the job and loved it and the rest is history.

Chart your career from the start to where you are now.

I started off in recruitment sales and worked my way up the commercial and marketing career ladder to where I am today. I have been incredibly lucky to have had some amazing managers across a range of businesses who have seen my potential and given me a path to keep reaching it. Don’t get me wrong, it hasn’t all been smooth sailing; we all have to deal with career challenges and difficult situations, but I have always worked hard enough to get to the other side.

Outside of work, what are your passions?

I’m a keen badminton enthusiast who is still hoping that this sport will lose its geeky image and one day be cool. I absolutely love cooking new-found recipes for family and friends; Swahili inspired coconut chicken curry is a particularly popular dish and I have learnt all the family Kenyan recipes from my mum, who incidentally is hands-down the best cook in the world. I love travel and I’m a big fan of European city breaks – currently dreaming about a return trip to Rome, for the history but also the pasta and gelato.

What magazine would you stockpile?

I am currently renovating my house and am absolutely obsessed with getting inspiration from every home and décor magazine going on the supermarket shelves. I also adore Vogue. I still have the November 2017 edition, which was the first one edited by the amazing Edward Enninful. More recently, I was super excited (as was my network) to see the edition featuring Malala Yousafzai on the front cover. She is such an inspiration, and the photo was stunning. It was so uplifting to see a Muslim woman portrayed with such strength.

What’s on your radar? (something industry related that is keeping you awake at night)

It’s the big things that often feel like no matter how much you do, it’s never enough: Social Mobility; The need for a better inclusivity; More women in leadership; Less plastic in the sea. I try and remind myself often that it isn’t always about fixing the whole problem but making a difference to the small part of the world that you can affect.

What made you want to work in publishing?

I’ve always loved magazines and reading. My experience lay in the music industry, and the film and TV industry before that, so publishing was a great next step within the entertainment and content industry.

But more than that, I love working for companies that are applying technology to improve consumer propositions and the fact that Readly had developed an all-you-can-read digital service for magazines, like Spotify had for music, was the clincher for me. Teaming tech with entertainment was the perfect fit.

Chart your career from the start to where you are now…

I started my career off in the music industry licensing music into film, TV and adverts. I then got into commercial partnerships between brands and music at both peoplesound.com and Warner Music, before switching industries and joining LOVEFiLM and then Amazon Video, where I headed up partnerships. After stints at Yubl, a social media/messaging app, and Easyfundraising, an affiliate shopping platform, I joined Readly.

As Global Partnerships Director at Readly, what is your strategy when it comes to choosing and developing partnerships?

We look for partners that want long-term, always-on partnerships that provide significant reach, but who can also market the Readly service to their customers across many touchpoints. We ideally want to be one of a few partners the brand collaborates with, rather than hundreds, and it should be a good brand fit. For example holidays and reading go hand in hand so partnerships with airlines and holiday operators work well. People love reading about fashion and seeking out recipes so likewise fashion and retail collaborations are also a good fit.

A lot of success can depend on the partner's team too – if they have KPIs to deliver success to partnerships that often makes a huge difference on how the partnership develops over time.

How do partnerships help drive subscribers?

Partnerships help us reach customers we might not find via other marketing channels. They also tend to be more cost efficient than other channels as we pay the partner on performance, either via a revenue share or CPA, if there is payment involved. We give the partner an extended free trial of Readly for their customers and then help the partner market the Readly service in the best possible way, which drives their customers to take up the trial and hopefully become paying subscribers.

What values do you keep in mind when choosing partnerships?

We’ve welcomed 26 new brands to the Readly partnership programme in the last quarter alone – that’s in addition to the 100+ who joined last year. We look to work with similar minded progressive companies who share the same values or audience.

What excites me most is the diversity of our partners. Pretty much every consumer-facing sector is represented, from large companies like McDonald’s to FMCG brands including Diet Coke and more recently we’re moving into travel, health, fashion and finance.

At first glance, it might look as though these companies are wildly different but what they have in common is a passion for the customer experience and a commitment to enhancing that experience through innovative partnerships.

How important is sustainability when your considering which companies to partner with?

Sustainability is becoming more and more important to companies and it’s certainly on our radar as we consider partners, especially as Readly helps consumers reduce their carbon footprint. We won’t work with brands such as tobacco, alcohol or anything too risque!

Having a strong sustainability offering isn't the number one consideration for us as our main goal is subscriber acquisition but it is certainly an important consideration.

What’s on your radar? (something industry related that is keeping you awake at night)

The industry is moving towards digital, which has been accelerated by COVID – there's now no physical copies of magazines or newspapers in aircrafts or in waiting rooms anymore – so finding ways we can better partner with companies and offer Readly access, such as airlines, coffee shops or hairdresser chains, is something we're currently engaged with.

What magazine would you stockpile?

When I was younger it was always Mixmag _as I used to DJ (more hobby than professional!), so enjoyed all the music reviews but now it is more likely to be a tech mag like _T3 _or car mag like _Top Gear.

Find out more about Readly here.

What made you want to work in publishing?

Magazines have always been a treat. Whether it was buying Smash Hits with my pocket money as a child or picking up the summer bumper edition of _Cosmo _before a girls' holiday, they have always been something I've looked forward to reading.

I think magazines can offer something that no other platform can: an opportunity to truly switch off. This past year has seen me glued to some form of screen at all times, and when I’ve made the conscious effort to step away from this, I’ve chosen to read the latest issue of House Beautiful (I'm a sucker for all and any types of home improvement advice), and it has given my tired, lockdown brain a little treat.

I also think the gravitas of the brands was a big pull for wanting to work in publishing. Four years into my Hearst UK career, and I'm still proud to brag about our brands when asked what I do for a living. It’s hard not to feel excited when they are big household names we’ve all grown up with and that continue to evolve and serve a new generation of readers.

Chart your career from the start to where you are now…

I would be lying if I said I left school at 18 with a clear idea of where I wanted to go or what I wanted to be. The truth is, I fell into a degree in Advertising & PR at the University of Lincoln. However, it was the best accident because I absolutely loved it.

Leaving University facing a pretty poor job market meant I found part-time waitressing work in-between a summer internship at a PR agency. Over the next few years, I secured a couple of jobs as a Marketing Assistant. At the time, I was still learning how the industry worked and what all the various roles entailed, but it gave me a good understanding of brands.

It wasn’t until I started at SAY Media (at the time a global publishing company that offered a platform to professional publishers) that I truly started to get an insight into the world of media and publishing. A small, vibrant office in the heart of Fitzrovia, I entered as their “Girl Friday”, helping the sales team with proposals, running the office and assisting the Creative Solutions team with ideas – it really was a great way to experience a bit of everything. Then, guided by a wonderful mentor Carla Faria, who went on to head up the Foundry at TI Media, I started to try my hand at partnerships.

SAY Media’s responses were heavily rooted in influencer campaigns, we managed many influencer websites, so it made sense that we also worked with them on advertising partnerships. Again, this was a great opportunity to be creative, learn how to use insight to fuel ideas and try my hand at talking with media agencies. So, for the next few years, I stayed with SAY, learning the ropes of Creative Solutions, booking campaigns and being introduced to the phenomenon of media lunches!

When the role at Hearst UK came up, I was apprehensive about joining such a large company. From leaving University, I had only ever worked in small teams and Hearst UK was a global beast with a sprawling central London office. Nonetheless, I was up for the challenge and joined amidst a re-structure with James Wildman taking the helm as CEO. The thing I’ve realised about a big company is that the potential is vast. We’re not just a publisher, we’re an events company, we’re data scientists, we’re social gurus, we’re designers and much, much more!

Explain what the role of Creative Solutions Director entails?

I oversee a selection of media agencies, working with a variety of brands and helping them craft award-winning, metric smashing, powerful partnership campaigns that span our entire portfolio. Every day requires wearing a different hat – one day I can be working on a beauty brief and the next I'm trying to launch a new car to the market with a bang. Think of us as an in-house creative agency, we get given a brief for a product, and we have to try and develop a creative solution from our brand's tone of voice. That could be anything from a series of digital articles, engaging social videos, print cover wraps or a one-off bespoke event.

What kind of information can you leverage from data and insights that help you inform creative brand decisions?

Every solution we develop has insight and data at its core. We can’t understand a brief or its audience unless we have taken the time to look at the insight. It’s from good insight that we can build the best creative ideas.

For example, a few years ago, I worked on a brief for a fabric conditioner that was trying to make a fundamentally boring product interesting to a millennial generation. They told us that their product made clothes last longer because it protected the fibres in the fabric. From that, we tapped into a sustainability angle – if your clothes were lasting longer, you didn’t need to invest in the fast fashion industry so frequently. We also knew from our audience insight and data that the millennial readers of _Cosmopolitan _and _ELLE _were big into their sustainability and what’s more, they were actively looking to be educated on how they could be doing more.

It was here that the Comfort Swap Shop was born, a five-day pop-up shop in the heart of Soho that we created in collaboration with Oxfam and The Princes Trust. Its purpose was to encourage people to bring in pre-loved clothes and swap them for another item, all of which had been lovingly cleaned using the Comfort fabric conditioner. Without insight, we wouldn’t have made that sustainability link, and we wouldn’t have created the successful campaign we did.

What kind of insights was the Proud to be Me initiative in response to?

The past decade has brought with it a flurry of positive movements for the LGBTQ+ community. We’ve seen legal rights come on leaps and bounds, and popular culture has embraced the community like never before. We are now working with advertisers to help provide them with innovative ways of connecting with the LGBTQ+ community all-year round, whilst still recognising that Pride is a major moment in the calendar. It’s really important we create an environment that truly supports the community 365 days a year.

After talking to our colleagues on our LGBTQ+ & Diversity and Inclusion committee, it became apparent that there was still a long way to go despite the progress. Our insight unearthed that the LGBTQ+ population are less satisfied with their lives compared to the general population. We wanted to understand why this might be and, after some more research, discovered many contributing factors, some of which were: a worryingly high harassment level, with 2 in 5 having experienced verbal or physical harassment because they were LGBTQ+; there was also a lack of appropriate representation, with over 72% feeling that representation in media and advertising was tokenistic; another prominent thread was 'support' – those within the community didn’t feel supported in their community or workplace.

All of this insight led us to a crucial question: how can we help raise the life satisfaction of those within the LGBTQ+ community? And so Proud to be Me was born – an always-on, editorially-driven initiative that asks us to level up our representation within our magazines, increases our support in the areas that matter and grows an army of allies who will help to uplift the community within society.

How have you seen audience and consumer data and insight change over the last year?

Our insight & research team are constantly running new projects, and the past year especially has seen us monitor the changing reaction to the pandemic amongst our readers. One thing that has become very clear is that the expectation of brands is changing. Consumers now want advertisers to play a more integral role. They want brands to support, show empathy and give back. Whereas in the past a brand could blend into the background on cultural issues, now staying quiet isn’t an option. We’ve seen the emotions of our audience naturally peak; undeniably, a feeling of anxiety has led the charge. As restrictions are easing, they are looking to brands & advertisers to support them in getting their fitness, wellbeing and mental health back on track.

What’s on your radar? (Something industry related that it keeping you awake at night)

I think social mobility needs to be on everyone’s radar. It’s something that Hearst UK as a company is driving forward with. We have a fantastic representative in Farah Storr, EIC of ELLE UK, who sits on the UK’s Social Mobility Commission, a public body supported by the Cabinet Office and whose objective is to ensure that circumstances of birth do not determine outcomes in life. There are three main areas where exclusivity is most prevalent: Law, Politics, and the Creative industries. To maintain originality within the creative industry, we need to ensure we are employing original thinkers, those who can offer a different perspective to the run of the mill. The way you get those types of people working for you is to open the doors of possibility to a much wider net than currently exists. If we can broaden the opportunities within publishing across the UK for young people, we can organically make our workplaces and our output more diverse and inclusive.

What magazine would you stockpile?

I’ve already given away my addiction to House Beautiful. However, my last house move brought to light a hidden obsession for Stylist. Back in the day, when the 9-5 commute was a thing, I would always try and hunt one down before jumping on the tube!

*What made you want to work in publishing? *

I fell into my first proper job at EMAP Metro, working on the launch of more! magazine straight out of school. It was such a confident, lively place to work and so much to learn from geniuses like Dave Hepworth. Everyday I’m inspired by my colleagues at Immediate Media where our audience centric, data-led approach is balanced with strong editorial instinct.

*Chart your career from the start to where you are now. *

During a ‘gap-year’ job at Gruner & Jahr I met fashion stylist Jo Bell who took me on as her assistant at Emap Metro’s more! I worked my way up to Beauty Editor, then moved to Looks as Deputy Editor. I then joined IPC Media in the mid-90s as Editor of Wedding & Home. Following that, I transferred to Sydney in 2001 where IPC had a joint venture with Time Inc and spent almost two years there editing Bride To Be and launching 25 Beautiful Homes. I then returned to London to launch olive magazine at BBC Worldwide with a brilliant team headed up by Orlando Murrin. In 2015 I became Editor-in-Chief of BBC Good Food and was part of the management team who sold the brand to Immediate in 2018. I’m now Group Editor-in-Chief across olive and Good Food.

What has the past year looked like for the BBC Good Food and olive brand?

We saw record stats online and subscription growth, brought on new talent in line with our commitment to Diversity and Inclusion and, by bringing the olive and Good Food content teams together, created a more cohesive, high-functioning team across the Food Group. We envisaged 4 stages of the crisis – Panic, Boredom, New Normal and Hardship – we adapted our content accordingly to provide comfort and guidance; encourage Britain to feel connected through cooking, keep children well-fed and entertained, and help manage anxiety. The team created, tested and photographed reactive recipes in their homes and uploaded in record time. On bbbcgoodfood.com, newly published content brought in 723k page views in the first two weeks of the lockdown. We reached record page-views of 215million and 52.8M users (April) and the site had its biggest traffic day with 8.7m page-views in one day. We launched webinars, a new personalised cookbook, several new podcast series, and a new BBC Good Food Together Facebook group which now has over 75k members.

Can you explain a bit about the thinking behind the olive rebrand?

Working closely with olive’s Commercial Director, Simon Carrington we have broadened the magazine’s appeal for a core print demographic with relevant content and design that enhances our digital output. Last year we brought olive and BBC Good Food’s Content Team together within a hubbing structure so that we can apply learnings from market leading Good Food to support and grow the smaller brand. Three new areas of focus Cook, Discover, Unwind speak to and evolve the brand’s curiosity and passion for trying foods from around the world and has introduced a new interiors focus reflecting the home as haven.

What plans do you have for 2021?

Continuing to offer useful, ever-more personalised content. Our customers are unique with different tastes, lifestyles, dietary restrictions, and goals so to protect our number one status we to need meet the needs of our audience as individuals. A 360-degree view of the customer allows us to deliver the right message to the right person at the right time. Further developing the careers of the talent we work with. As the market leader it’s our responsibility to give a platform to new voices, as well as the more established players we are known for. There is still work to do to ensure we better represent our existing audience and attract new audiences. Food should be about bringing everyone together, exchanging ideas and stories. We will strive to make our content better, richer, more relevant to how we live and eat today.

What’s on your radar?

I’m fascinated by the impact of social media on mental health. A colleague recently introduced me to the Blindboy Boat Club podcast which explores such topics in highly-intelligent, personal and irreverent fashion.

What magazine would you stockpile?

Elle Deco and CN Traveller

What made you want to work in publishing?

I've wanted to work in publishing ever since I was young. I always loved reading and would have loved to be a writer because to write the stories that I loved was the ultimate dream to me as a kid. Then I discovered journalism was a possible career path in high school and I was lucky enough to have teachers that supported and encouraged me in my interest. I never lost this interest during my undergraduate course, and obviously not during my masters in Publishing. Writing and telling stories have been something that I have always loved; all journalism and publishing is storytelling, and that’s where my passion lies.

Chart your career from the start to where you are now.

During high school I did a couple of work experiences at different magazines and even at Glasgow City Council’s Media Office. I studied English and Legal Studies at the University of Aberdeen, and was heavily involved in the Dance Society, Glee Club and The Gaudie student newspaper. I then went on to do an MSc in Publishing at Edinburgh Napier University and then went to the Beano comic where I have been for over two years now. My role has evolved from an Editorial Assistant to a Content Producer. In 2020, I won a Rising Star Award (formally known as the Print Futures Awards) which funded editorial and marketing training courses as well as a membership for the Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders where I am now an Intermediate Level member. I’m very passionate about the publishing industry and supporting publishing hopefuls trying to get into the industry, so I became a Co-Chair of the Society of Young Publishers Scotland for 2021/22.

The Beano has been shortlisted for two of our new categories at the PPA Awards: Children’s Magazine of the Year and Subscriptions Strategy of the Year. What have you been doing over lockdown to support children?

Beano supported kids through lockdown with lots of initiatives, and I may miss some because I wasn’t involved with them. But we did provide reprint pages from the archives for the Courier (one of DC Thomson’s local Dundee newspapers) for their daily Children’s Corner for kids to have more things to do in lockdown. We also produced six Golden Beanos which are completely free and available to download as a PDF to give kids more LOLs during lockdown. All these pages were handpicked stories, jokes and puzzles from our archive too – being a weekly comic for 83 years means that our archive is a massive resource tool for these kinds of initiatives! Our team in London also worked with Save the Children to help make children’s birthdays in lockdown just as awesome as those not spent in lockdown with their Beano Lockdown Birthday Bash kits – the money raised from the packs went to Save the Children. In the comic, we created a series of original stories with Young Minds, a children’s mental health charity, to help children look after their mental health during the pandemic – especially wearing masks, social distancing, and worrying about the world opening up more. But I think the main thing we did to support children was to keep the comic going and give kids a place to live vicariously through their favourite characters when their own lives were so curtailed by restrictions.

What was the response to your campaign, Britain’s Funniest Family?

This was our second year of running this kind of campaign but due to lockdown and kids spending more time at home with their families, we decided to make it Britain’s Funniest Family. With popular funny family-man, Romesh Ranganathan on board as head-judge, the response was an incredibly positive one with so many families sending in their videos, and then millions voting for their favourite! Our aim (working with Young Minds) was to help lift people’s spirits throughout lockdown through laughter and fun, which would hopefully decrease the levels of anxiety too. We’ve run the third iteration of this campaign again this year with Britain’s Funniest Class – the shortlist was just announced and you can vote here.

Can you briefly explain how your subscriptions strategy was approached over the last year and how it has been successful?

Because we were in lockdown and non-essential shops were closed, our emphasis lay in encouraging people to get a subscription to get Beano delivered to their door, with lots of deals for new subscribers who now couldn’t always get it from the shops. As a result of the great subscriber offers, we now have more subscribers than newsstand readers, which when combined means we are reaching over 45,000 children a week. Within the content of the comic, we complemented this by increasing the activity pages we had in the comic to give kids more to do – helping to beat lockdown boredom for longer. So more colouring in pages, more crafts and experiments, more board games, more word-searches – you name it, we had it in! Over the summer and autumn, we also had exclusive subscriber-only competitions and activities on the paper wrap that we send the comic in, which makes our subscribers feel even more special.

How is The Beano’s content of 2021 different to the content of 2020?

When the pandemic hit, our main aim was to continue to get the comic out as normal – it was Beano as usual at Beano Towers. While we were careful to stay away from stories about colds and flus, we didn’t want to change the content of the comic too much as we believed that we should keep Beano a safe space for our readers where they could escape the anxieties of the world and just enjoy their favourite characters. Laughter and keeping people’s spirits up was important, and that is still what we are concentrating on today. So I don’t believe the content has changed that much between 2020 and 2021. However, we have introduced some new characters into Beanotown – the Chandra family, who own the joke shop, and have brought back our favourite detective, Angel Face. We update our roster of characters very regularly to make sure that we are reflecting the reality of our readers today, both in the stories that we tell and in the characters we use.

What’s on your radar?

I think one of the things that I think about is the change in emphasis that I’m seeing from newsstand to subscription-based magazine business models. It changes the content that is being produced and can be more carefully curated to the readership rather than necessarily being about shock factor or based on ‘big names’. This is a trend that I saw before the pandemic, but it has been accelerated because of it – almost every young person I know just buys everything online, so are spending less time on the high street. But it’s not a bad thing – being able to properly curate and specialise your content to your readers will make for a better reader experience. The pivoting and innovation that happened during lockdown needs to continue for more magazines to continue to survive. But there will be some rather amazing magazines that can’t survive without a newsstand, and that makes me sad.

What magazine would you stockpile?

That is such a hard question! I have a top two for different reasons (not including Beano) – Dancing Times and Somewhere: For Us. I have danced since I was five so obviously Dancing Times is for me. I get so excited every time it comes through my door. I made a #MyFavouriteMagazine video for the International Magazine Centre all about why I love this magazine – and it even got a comment from the editor itself (fan-girl screams!), but the nicest thing was that my dance teacher spoke to me about how she loved getting her issue of Dancing Times when she was training in London. It brings people together through their love of dance. My second one is Somewhere: for us, a Scottish indie magazine for the LGBTQ+ community in Scotland (and beyond). Beano Studios did a collaboration on their Issue 2 cover, and I just had to have a copy. I am an ally to the LGBTQ+ community (or I try to be – I’m always learning) and I just love reading this magazine and learning more about the community. And it goes beyond a magazine, you can buy prints, postcards, badges – they even run a set of awards! And if you become a member, 20% of your membership goes towards their new LGBTQ+ funding scheme – Funding for You.

What made you want to work in publishing?

My father is a magazine publisher in the states. I’m proud to have navigated my career back to something I grew up around and love. I love editorial, I have profound respect for journalists and the dedication to the craft.

Chart your career from the start to where you are now.

I started in Unilever’s global press office, then moved to SABMiller and Diageo before coming to Conde Nast in 2018. I’ve covered corporate and consumer communications across a multiple brands and countries.

How is the press office of today different to the press office when you started at Condé?

We aim to be proactive not reactive.

What has been the highlight of your career so far?

Edward Enninful’s TIME magazine cover. It was a really proud moment for me after working with him for three years and seeing all the hard work go into the magazine.

Recently the Vogue Billie Eilish cover was published and it was fantastically received – can you tell us a bit more about the reaction?

It went global so quickly – Billie’s post is now the fastest post in history to hit 1M likes and from a press perspective it garnered 250 articles in one hour. I’ve never seen such an immediate positive reaction, and I was thrilled with the press.

*Can you explain a bit more about you and your teams thinking when it comes to events? *

We look at events from a pre, during and post event press perspective. It’s important to amplify an event through red carpet, backstage and after party photos. But it’s equally important to build up to an event and some events have legs long even after they finish. For example, GQ Men of the Year. The coverage is never ending!

What’s on your radar?

I think a lot about measurement and evaluation and what tools you can use to measure impact and success of a PR campaign. When I first started in PR it was all about ££ value of the campaign, now it's more nuanced than that. You have to think about target audience and what channels reach them. It's more about the targeted impact than blasting out press releases to everybody which makes measuring a PR campaign even harder for clients. I always start with outcome and plan communications activities to achieve that.

What magazine would you stockpile?

Definitely British Vogue. I keep them all!

Chart your career from the start to where you are now.

If I’m honest, I entered the world of publishing a little by accident. After taking on a sales job at Centaur, I secured my first major publishing role in 1994 at Emap’s Q magazine. Here, I worked on iconic brands such as FHM, Heat, The Face and Arena for 8 years and was hugely fortunate to work in the halcyon days for magazines through the 90’s! I then launched Word magazine at the independent publisher Development Hell before heading back to mainstream publishing with The Week at Dennis, and then finally as publisher of The Big Issue. My business partners and I then came together to launch content marketing agency TRUE 212 in 2012 which we still run today.

Can you explain what TRUE 212 is and how it came to be?

My business partner Ben Martin and I set out to combine our experience in digital and ‘analogue’ publishing as well as our networks to create an organisation that would help “brands to become publishers”. Ben’s roots were firmly in the world of digital and mine in print media. Together, we set out to help brands develop content for their own channels with the same values as a commercial publisher. For 5-8 years we were a full-service content marketing agency, working with well-known brands such as Picturehouse Cinemas. But we wanted to build even more value into our business. We wanted to own a media brand and a piece of propriety technology too.

Explain how LOYAL AI fits into the TRUE 212 platform and how it works?

LOYAL was born out of a set of challenges we were experiencing on a personal level, as our editorial team became steadily more remote. We were convinced there was an opportunity for technology to solve some of these challenges. In pursuit of the solution, we developed a detailed plan for an AI-driven journalism tool that we pitched to the Google Digital News Initiative. After securing an R+D seed fund, we built out an engineering team that began to develop the core technology behind the tool which harnesses the power of machine learning (ML) to assist journalists in their workflow. TRUE 212 helped incubate the platform and then the brand of LOYAL as we moved from concept through to beta version and now finally a launched product.

What gap are you trying to fill with LOYAL?

Being immersed in the publishing industry meant that we had first-hand experience of the pain and inconvenience journalists face when researching articles on a daily basis. We spotted a gap in the market for a journalism tool that could assist journalists, free up time, and speed up the process of filing articles. We wanted to give journalists more time to craft their stories, especially as we move into a world of the hyper news cycle publishing. Our aim with LOYAL is to help journalists keep up with the pace while delivering quality journalistic output.

How would a journalist or publisher effectively utilise LOYAL?

For the individual, freelance journalist we offer a curated database of 600+ trusted news sources that they can search in real time without having to leave their document. For publishers, we found that many have struggled to unlock the value of their archives, so LOYAL has an archive search solution that employs the same core, ML technology to resurface related articles and content that can assist in SEO linking strategies and domain authorities. Our vision is to democratise these technologies, enabling all publishers and journalists to access our tools wherever they work.

What does 2021 hold for True 212 and LOYAL?

A successful launch of the LOYAL brand and platform is key. Our ambition is to forge collaborative relationships with publishing organisations across the world and help to support the fast-growing area of AI in Journalism. For TRUE as a whole, we are looking forward to working with new and existing clients to assist them in creating entertaining and engaging content for their customers.

What’s on your radar?

Technology and digital transformation is going to deliver publishers the ability to do what they do best: create fantastic content and editorial. The digital subscription models publishers have managed to develop over the last five years have allowed them to begin to own their destiny again. They need to find an independent voice in order to explore and develop content that enriches their audiences.

What magazine would you stockpile?

Definitely Word magazine. Although it’s sadly no longer with us in print, it’s still very close to my heart. And of course The Week – it’s print publishing genius!

What made you want to work in publishing?

My role and expertise very much lies in the optimisation of digital customer experiences. So for me, one of the most diverse and exciting places to work is in the publishing industry. It’s such a unique industry, because the business model is made up of so many different revenue streams and KPIs, ranging from affiliates and advertising, all the way through to subscriptions. I love taking what I know about digital experience optimisation and applying it across the subscription customer journey, from creating initial awareness on the digital product, all the way through to how do we retain these subscribers.

I also love that magazines were something we all enjoyed growing up, and however many years later, we’re still enjoying magazines in the exact same format, in pretty much the exact same way. They’ve really stood the test of time.

Chart your career from the start to where you are now.

After finishing my degree in Marketing in 2011, I went on to work at IBM on their graduate scheme, where I was selling their customer analytics solutions. In 2014 I moved to a company called Qubit, where I was selling their A/B testing and personalisation platform. A year later I realised that selling wasn’t for me. But from working at Qubit I found a new passion, which was the world of A/B testing and optimisation, which before Qubit I’d never actually heard of!

In 2015, determined to start a new career path focusing on optimisation strategy and consultancy, I moved to Daydot, who back then were known as House of Kaizen. I started as an Optimisation Manager where the first client I led was News UK (The Times and The Sun) and I supported on other publishing clients, such as Hearst Magazines and Immediate Media. In 2016 I started to manage a team of Optimisation Managers and then in 2017 I became Head of Optimisation, which is the role I’m doing now.

What are the benefits of publishers being subscription-first rather than prioritising advertising?

There are many benefits of taking a subscription-first approach, but I'd say the four main ones are:

o Creating an engaged and loyal subscriber base secures long term recurring revenue and fuels other revenue streams through cross and up sell strategies.

o You can accurately and reliably predict a key revenue stream. When someone subscribes, they have either made an upfront revenue commitment (E.g. 1 year subscription) or based on average churn rate, you can estimate revenue per user, if they were on say a monthly rolling subscription. This predictability is key, as we’ve learnt from the last year!

o Subscription businesses are inherently more flexible. You can change and experiment with your offering based on changes to the market and consumer needs.

o You will see much greater returns on CAC (Customer Acquisition Costs), as by increasing subscriptions, you increase revenue, and therefore profit margins too.

What other revenue generating strategies do subscribers help to fuel?

The probability of selling to an existing customer is 60-70%, while the probability of selling to a new prospect is 5-20%. Therefore, a key revenue generating strategy for subscribers is cross and up sell. That could be cross-selling to other services, such as an event, or a sister publication, as well as up-selling to a subscription which has more features, for example up-selling from Print to Print and Digital.

Additionally, by creating brand advocates, your subscribers will also fuel referral revenue. And not only that, customers referred by other customers have a 37% higher retention rate, and themselves are 4x more likely to go on to refer their friends. The chain reaction is really impressive!

Finally, if you engage subscribers in the right way, you will also see them visit your digital site more. This organically will have a positive impact on your existing advertising and affiliate revenue.

What kind of customer insights do publishers need to look at to drive subscriptions?

To unlock substantial subscription growth, publishers need to be customer-centric. This goes beyond Google Analytics and instead combines a range of methodologies to develop actionable customer insights, which should then fuel decisions made at a business and tactical level. Some of the key insights that publishers need to uncover are:

• The Psychographics – Moving beyond demographic data to understand the attitudes, interests, personality, values, opinions, and lifestyle of your customer.

• The Needs & Motivations – You need to understand the needs of your customers and their motivations for visiting your publication, from the very first brand interaction, through every stage of the customer journey.

• The Barriers – Understand how customers are behaving during the customer journey and identify what the barriers to subscribing are. Typically, these barriers will fall into two categories: Friction and Anxiety.

• The Hooks – Understand what persuaded customers to subscribe and the value they see in their subscription provides really useful insights to help shape your acquisition experience and value proposition messaging.

How is the post-pandemic customer journey different to the pre-pandemic customer journey?

As publishers begin to focus more on subscription revenue, a key change that we started to see during the pandemic, and we’ll continue to see more of, is the introduction of paywalls and datawalls. Requiring visitors to subscribe or provide data to view content, has had a huge impact on the awareness stage of the customer journey.

At the other end of the funnel, we have retention. For many brands, especially those who primarily sell print subscriptions, retention has previously been overlooked. Publications are now realizing that as and when the world comes out the other side of this pandemic, the needs and habits of customers will change again, and that it’s incredibly important to be developing meaningful long-lasting relationships now. Starting with the initial onboarding of the customer.

What’s on your radar?

Something that’s been on my mind for a while is how AI (artificial intelligence) can help assist the work we do for clients. Some clients and prospects I’ve spoken to are interested in AI but unsure how to integrate it into their way of working.

What magazine would you stockpile?

I’m really enjoying Women’s Health at the moment. I subscribed over the Christmas break, driven by the standard over-indulgence (Covid did not get in the way of that!), combined with a desire to focus more on my own health and wellness, highlighted by the pandemic.