Bright side of Archant Life
With booming sales and rocketing subscription numbers Archant’s magazine businesses are bucking the national publishing trend of dwindling circulation figures.
Archant Life produces 53 glossy county and city lifestyle magazines, of which 25 are paid-for and which span almost the whole of England. They also produce three niche French titles for Francophile readers – France, Living France and French Property News, and have just held their first France Lifestyle Show.
Subscription volumes for some of the former Advent stable of titles, taken over by Archant Life last year, have shot up almost tenfold, with leader Staffordshire County Magazine increasing its subscription rate by a whopping 994%.
Overall paid-for circulation numbers have also been booming with particular success stories at Hampshire Life up 34%, Berkshire Life up 57%, Warwickshire Life up 153%, Worcestershire Life up 93%, Shropshire Life up 106%, Staffordshire County Magazine up 209%, and Herefordshire Life up 134%.
Nick Jones, director of audience growth at Archant Life, said: “All of our magazines are doing well on subscription growth which is really important because it means we have a guaranteed circulation each month.
“We have also concentrated on our in-store magazine displays and promotions. Our overall magazine growth at Life is around 12%, which is very good compared to the national magazine trend which is down around 5%.
“We are doing well because we do things differently. We have a circulation team that really concentrates on boosting our sales at supermarkets and retailers through display units and local promotions when a magazine features a local town or village. We work very hard on relationships with the major retail groups and they support us when we want to do promotions.
“There are not many other publishers that do all that, and that’s why our titles are the market leaders.”
Staffordshire County Magazine is one of Archant’s most booming titles. Since being acquired from Advent Media last year, it has seen a 209% increase in circulation and subscription rates have shot up by 994%.
Editor Joanne Goodwin said: “When Archant Life acquired Staffordshire County as part of its new Midlands portfolio last year, paid-for sale was very low. The brief was to give editorial content a complete overhaul - to redesign the magazine, to raise the profile of the publication with readers and advertisers, and to sign up movers and shakers as contributors.
“The result is a magazine that promotes the county, its people, places and producers, and which is now considered the leading county mag in Staffordshire despite a difficult, packed market place.
“Latest figures show we are selling 2.5 times the number of copies sold by our main rival – the long-established Staffordshire Life magazine. The circulation team is doing a tremendous job in installing high-visibility units into supermarkets the length and breadth of the county and getting into many new outlets – approaching 400 at last count.”
Meanwhile Lancashire Life is still the largest selling county magazine in the UK, selling an average 23,428 copies per month, with subscription rates up 12% on last year and now accounting for 22% sales.
Editor Roger Borrell said: “Lancashire Life has a tremendously close following in the community – almost like the relationship people used to have with their local newspaper. The fact that we put the emphasis on the positive things about the county means we are welcomed into many homes – more than any other county title.
“Until the middle of 2006, the circulation had started to slip but we relaunched with a modern design and new typefaces and improved the content to make it much more of a good read. This not only led to us being voted UK Regional Magazine of the Year, but improved sales.
“We finished 2007 on a plus and we hope to do the same in 2008. I think a major factor is the tremendous presence we have in the news trade. You can’t go into a supermarket or newsagents without being met with a battery of Lancashire Lifes. It’s a great testament to our circulation team. Finally, we have competition in Lancashire and while it’s a pale shadow of Lancashire Life, it drives us on to do bigger and better things.”
Nick Jones - Director of Audience Growth
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