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British Airways
Title: Zone, fr8, bafr8
Target: 30,000 business owners and managers
Key aim: To create an integrated approach
Pagination and frequency: 22 pages, B2C monthly
Format: Saddle-stitched A4 magazine
British Airways' testimonial
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British Airways World Cargo (BAWC) operates against a background of change within its own business, having invested £250 million in a new freight handling facility at London Heathrow airport to speed up the movement of cargo around its global network and save time and money for customers.
BAWC asked Atom to produce a communication tool aimed at the owners, managers, executive decision-makers and export clerks in logistics and freight forwarding companies – particularly small to medium-sized – throughout the world. Secondary audiences included manufacturers, shippers, trade organisations and the press.
The goals were to:
- Raise awareness of the BAWC brand
- Help the company to build a relationship with its customers
- Promote a professional and consistent image of BAWC worldwide
- Give readers a magazine to which they could relate
BAWC wanted a magazine that adhered to its design guidelines, which describe British Airways' 'personality' as: British, successful, professional, insightful and warm.
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Extensive research data provided by BAWC, carried out six months before the review, showed that the messages British Airways World Cargo needed to communicate varied markedly between the different global markets.
Using business and related topics as the main subject matter, Atom developed clearly defined and segmented communication strategies to reflect BAWC’s new focus of operational efficiency, reliability and dependability rather than network and capacity.
In strategic terms this meant:
- Communicating with key clients globally, and building relationships with high-level, significant-spend clients who would respond to serious coverage of their industry and business issues
- Getting closer to operational and implementation personnel in the UK market
- Building relationships with key markets abroad, starting with Germany, and increasing the network to include other markets, such as the US, in the future
Creatively this was achieved by:
- Developing editorial content that provides information, opinion and authority through a blend of news, features, in-depth examination of logistics, interviews with industry leaders and light-hearted articles. To achieve this, Atom recruited and used journalists who specialise in logistics, transport and business-related topics
- Promoting BAWC’s role as a leading player in logistics management by addressing topics affecting the whole industry, rather than concentrating solely on company and customer news
- Tailoring editorial styles for each publication: sourcing editorial from throughout the world to reflect the global readership, and written in an editorial style suitable to particular markets
The key ideas
Atom developed three targeted versions of BAWC’s customer magazines, to three clearly distinct audiences:
Zone, a global, English-language publication aimed primarily at the owners, managers and executive decision-makers in logistics organisations: heavyweight industry, business, personal development issues.
FR8, a UK-only publication to build relationships between BWAC and the key audience of export clerks. Atom developed a magazine that was witty, snappy, bright and fun and portrays BAWC as a partner in readers’ job function and career development.
BA FR8, this was a German version of FR8.
All three magazines use the same design grids, colour ways, format and paper stock to help establish a strong and familiar feel across the publications. A light matt paper was used to give a sense of modernity and was also to deliver the best value in terms of fulfiment costs.
Taking the magazines online
To support the customer perception of the brand proposition, we needed to develop closer communication with key groups in the audience. As elements of the brand include recognition, customer focus and proactivity, we felt that it would help the magazines to be developed online as soon as they were launched, for the global audience in particular, with a second phase of online development to follow after the first six months of magazine publishing.
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Six months after the launch of the titles, readership research with the global audiences tested the effectiveness of the magazines in meeting the client’s brief. Atom conducted its own interviews with sales, marketing and customer services personnel in Frankfurt to assess the impact of the German magazine on the German market. Anecdotal evidence, primarily via unsolicited feedback from readers shows that the magazine is well received.
General feedback
"Congratulations on Zone, which is possibly the best airline cargo magazine I’ve read in more than 30 years in the airline forwarding industry – it’s well produced and contains plenty of truly interesting material."
Geoff Lord, Danzas AEI, Australia
"I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate you and your innovative team for the new look given to Zone. The quality of the articles has been enhanced too."
Jacob Abraham, SMSA Express, Saudi Arabia
"I would like to thank you for your excellent reporting. I think that more people should read this magazine as the editorial skills are a blessing!"
Romesh Samath, Sri Lanka
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