How to launch a magazine
I’ve said it before, but I’ll say it again: I love magazines. They are an effective and engaging way to build a community and such a pleasure to work on. Editing and producing ROAM for Kuoni was my highlight of 2024. Here’s how I did it…
Yesterday I went to The Face exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. It was thrilling seeing my small son standing in front of the wall of covers. As a young girl growing up in Devon it felt like we were completely cut off from “culture”. Bands never seemed to come any further than Bristol. Magazines like The Face, Smash Hits, Mixmag, Vogue – they gave me an inspiring insight into the world beyond our village. And the world seemed wildly exciting. I wanted nothing more to move to London and be a magazine editor. Now I live in London and I am a magazine editor. That’s a buzz right?
But magazines have had a bit of a hard time lately. For want of another phrase, they get bad press. But, for me, there is nothing like the look, the feel and the smell of a new magazine. And I still believe in magazines as an effective means of communication, a way to build community, a source of inspiration, and – to be crude – a tool to sell. More than that they can change culture. Just look at The Face.
Incidentally my client told me today that our new magazine, ROAM, has already proved itself effective. She said, “We did a 50:50 test on a cold audience. Half got the magazine and half got the tactical sales booklet. The conversions were significantly higher with the magazine – that’s really encouraging for more inspirational piece driving larger bookings.” They have already decided to go to two issues a year.
So how do you do it?
For ROAM, I put together a brilliant team of freelancers to relaunch Kuoni’s new magazine. Everything was to be new – the font, the content, the title, the pagination. For me the key ingredients are always the right people for the right job, working as closely to the client as possible to make sure you are really bringing their vision to life, and getting to know the audience – they are a brand’s number one asset.
We decided to use Kuoni’s customers and their incredibly knowledgeable experts to their best advantage by authoring all the content in the magazine. We wanted to use real voices to showcases just what sets them apart. Of course, they had a helping hand from a team of sensitive copy writers who interviewed our contributors and spent time perfecting their voices and bringing their stories to life.
We had a few challenges along the way – the new brand positioning and look and feel wasn’t signed off when we started work. But we overcame this by working really flexibly and adapting our our own tone of voice and look and feel as we went along. It was a really fun process, pushing and pulling back and then pushing again. The end result is fun, bold, bright and really daring. A huge step away from Kuoni used to be. It’s such a strong vision for the brand – who wanted to capture attention of a new younger audience who previously may have thought them out of reach. I love it. But more importantly the client loves it and the audience love it too.
When I’m working on a magazine the first thing I do it brainstorm with a client and spend time getting to know their commercial objectives and it there are any brand partnerships we need to consider. Once I know these I spend time on my own working out how we can editorialise these. A content plan, flatplan, and schedule all follow. I’m always learning from my mistakes too. I’m really close with my client so I thought I could project manage the job as well as edit it. But a really good project manager is key to protecting relationships and keeping things running on track.
One of the ways I like to work is as closely to a client as possible – there’s no “us and you” approach. Instead we fit seamlessly alongside brands internal teams, working for the same objectives.
If you’d like to talk about a magazine for your brand, please do reach out, no matter how big or small.