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Customer magazine
Customer magazine
Olympus User
Olympus User
Olympus User was the customer magazine for Olympus UK. This glossy full colour quarterly magazine featured articles on photography, step-by-step guides to photographic techniques, interviews and competitions. I worked with publishers Archant Dialogue as a freelance consultant editor and regular contributor. Links to some of the articles I wrote can be found below. Scroll to the bottom of the page for a case study.
"Working together during the past four years has been a real pleasure..."
Zoe Francis, Archant Dialogue
Case study
Case study
The Olympus User re-launch
The Olympus User re-launch
Olympus User was re-launched in June 2005 when, after being produced in-house for almost 20 years I handed the magazine's production over to an external supplier.
As the then publications manager for Olympus UK, I recognised that only a specialist contract and customer publisher would have the skill sets we required to produce a professional quality magazine with varied enough content to satisfy our broad customer base. They would also be able to offer a high level of service that would be difficult to match in-house. As no one in the organisation had recruited a magazine publisher before I devised and implemented my own three stage selection process.
Over 20 members of the APA (Association of Publishing Agencies) were invited to submit samples of their magazines. From these, 11 agencies were asked to quote for producing an identical magazine to the then current Olympus customer magazine. I asked them to do this so I would have a level playing field that showed how expensive each company was relative to the others.
The three most competitive companies were then asked to pitch for the new magazine, creating layouts and feature ideas of their own. Each contender was given identical resource CDs containing photos, logos and texts, corporate identity guidelines and reader survey results. Being meticulously even-handed meant that I was able to choose the most suitable publisher from over 20 alternatives and be confident that they would charge a competitive price.
This impartial approach was much appreciated by the agencies I saw. More importantly, after the re-launch the new team behind Olympus User was given a huge vote of confidence from its readership. Statistics from a 2008 readership survey included:
78% of respondents said that the content was neither “too technical”, nor “not technical enough
95% of respondents said that the magazine either very or quite interesting
94% rated the design and presentation of Olympus User as either Excellent or Good
74% kept their back copies to refer to later
Respondents read an average of 82% of each issue
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