Riding the crest of a wave
Cornwall Life was named as Product of the Year in the Archant Awards held earlier this year in London, just four years after its launch. It was due recognition of the innovative and forward-looking Archant Life team in Totnes.
Cornwall is known as England's California and the Archant Life Totnes team are certainly riding the crest of a wave after scooping the prestigious Archant title back in January.
The award judges said: "The development of this title has been dramatic. It is one of the strongest in the Life portfolio and has established itself as a 'must have' in Cornwall."
They are not wrong. The title was only launched in 2004 with a couple of speculative issues against strong competition from no fewer than six titles including the long-standing Northcliffe title Cornwall Today, the foodie Inside Cornwall and the traditional Cornish World, written partly in Cornish.
Last year, Cornwall Life went bi-monthly with editor Jennie Wilkinson appointed to take over from launch editor Malcolm Twigg. Such was progress and response that this April the title went monthly.
Jennie, an NCTJ-trained journalist, joined Archant Life from Country Living magazine four years ago and her progression from editorial assistant to full-time editor, has mirrored the success of Cornwall Life.
"We used the successful Devon Life brand and formula to extend into Cornwall," said Jennie. "We are famous for our beautiful landscape fronts. They are distinguished, distinctive and up-market. The title is aimed at people over 35, people who have disposable income to spend on beautiful homes and interiors. We celebrate everything beautiful about the county and are quick to support the local community."
It is a mixture which readers of many Life county titles all around the country will be familiar.
"It is an escape, a coffee table type magazine, sedate and non-controversial," said Jennie. "We shout out about how great Cornwall is to live in and to visit on holiday."
With an editorial ratio of 60%, Cornwall Life normally runs to around 156 or 164 pages.
The content covers a number of different topics including: out and about; fashion, health and beauty; arts, literature and antiques; gardens and interiors; places, town features; countryside and heritage; business and charities; motoring; food and drink; property; competitions and reader offers.
"We work within a set overall framework but we have flexibility to change this around," said Jennie.
People are key, as in most publications: "People love to see pictures of themselves in the magazine," said Jennie. "We try to vary the pace with features about people such as a local stand-up paddle surfer and a female free diver for example."
Based over the border at Totnes in Devon, Jennie visits Cornwall for a lot of events and has a number of regular contributors within the county.
Photographs are a very important part of the magazine and are supplied by freelance photographers and writers and sourced directly and from picture libraries.
The Cornwall Life website was launched last June as an addition to the brand and is looked after by regional web manager Richard Moncad.
Jennie uploads selected content from the magazine and uses it as a great marketing tool: "We are trying to get the forums going as we carry no letters within the magazines themselves, but it has been a slow start. One success so far is getting ideas from people responding via the website."
Cornwall Life is one of a portfolio of five county magazines produced by the Archant Life team in the South West, led by Regional MD Anita Newcombe.
The division started four years ago when Archant Life bought the well-established Devon Life magazine. The team now extends to around 50, mostly in the Totnes office, with a few located in Dorset and the odd home-based worker.
Devon Life is the biggest title with an ABC in excess of 16,000. Dorset and Somerset Life both distribute 12,000 copies and Cornwall Life around 10,000. Hot off the launch pad is Wiltshire, which Anita is hoping to get to up to 12,000 copies.
One thing that sets the South West team apart is the fact that they do almost all of their sales on the phone, with only two field sales executives (in Dorset) and no sales managers at all.
"It works very well," said Anita. "Once a sale is made, it is handed over to copy chasers and the production department and we keep sales costs right down. Our yields are still going up and property yields are very good.
"The property section is at the front of the magazines because it is an important part of the product and readers love seeing the finest houses for sale throughout the county.
"People love looking at beautiful, fabulous houses, sometimes just one per page. The estate agents love it and compete with each other for prominence and number of pages taken.
"They advertise to gain instructions, for brand positioning and to sell houses. When they visit big houses to gain an instruction they say they see our magazine on the coffee table and know it is the right place to advertise."
Anita knows the value of the personal touch: "We have lots of loyal staff, several with over ten years at the business. We also have 'ambassadors' based in Cornwall – freelancers who attend events for us, write them up and take pictures.
"The social diary pages in our titles really get people to engage with them. Our managers network extensively and attend many receptions, launches and charitable events to raise our profile."
Making sure that all departments are pulling together, keeping editorial, sales and production in harmony and ensuring that all the titles get to the printers on time, is group production manager Julian Rees, and his team. The production department designs and lays out all editorial and ad pages, using templates and is also responsible for subbing and proof-reading the pages.
"April was our busiest month ever," said Julian, "and we handled around 1200 pages." Adverts are 25% supplied, 50% repeat and 25% new and around 1,000 a month are handled.
"We use the Ad Taker system and Media Planner to page plan titles and can drag and drop ads into place," explained Julian.
The magazines are printed in Yorkshire and the West Midlands and pages are sent to the printers online as PDFs.
"Archant is a great place to work," said Julian, "and we could not have grown like we have without the company's backing. We believe that we cover the largest geographical area of any Life division from Swindon to the Isles of Scilly.
"My team get a great deal of job satisfaction from getting the magazines out at the end of the month and seeing their names on the flannel panel. Working for Devon Life is a big thing round here."
Making sure that the magazines reach their readers is regional retail sales manager Jonathan Nicholas and his colleagues. He sells copies of the titles in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, even Korea but a much bigger market place are the service stations on the M5 motorway, from Bristol southwards. At Exeter services they sell 90 Devon copies and an amazing 1200 Cornwall copies.
County shows and other events are another key opportunity for Jonathan as are cross-promotions with some Archant Specialist titles and the Daily Telegraph among others.
Devon Life is now the biggest selling magazine in the county, even bigger than FHM and, back in August 2005, it claimed a national record after selling an astonishing 1464 copies of its August issue at a single outlet. The record sales were at the Somerfield store in Kingsbridge, and represented the highest number of copies of a monthly magazine ever purchased at a single high street retail outlet, within a single month.
But the Archant Life team in the South West are certainly not resting on their laurels as the Wiltshire magazine launch in April demonstrates.
It was led by editor Malcolm Twigg, who has launched no fewer than five magazine titles: "We have had good initial sales and the feedback from readers has been astonishing, saying how much they need a magazine despite our competitor Wiltshire Life already being there," he said.
Anita said: "The launch filled a gap in the map which was rather annoying to Life MD Johnny Hustler. Because we were surrounded by our other county magazines we were able to sell against those.
"In our very first issue we sold more advertising that the existing county title did, so we were very very pleased with that."
Click here to see a video feature on the team behind Cornwall Life.