BABTAC
Members Magazine ← Back to the portfolio
Brief
Vitality is the bi-monthly magazine for the 11,500 members of the British Association of Beauty Therapy and Cosmetology (BABTAC).
The beauty industry may have a reputation for being ‘fluffy’ but the Vitality readership is mostly made up of business owners and either mobile or salon-based self-employed therapists. BABTAC’s research suggests that this audience’s primary concern is boosting their business, reading the magazine to keep abreast of industry issues.
BABTAC came to us in the summer of 2014 with a membership magazine in need of a refresh. We were asked to both improve the reader experience and create better opportunities for advertisers.
Strategy
Due to the popularity of the magazine, BABTAC did not want a full re-launch but instead asked for evolutionary changes. These involved changing the page size to standard A4, sharpening the design and striking a balance editorially between new ideas put forward by the publishing team and feedback from members on favoured elements.
We have also concentrated on Vitality’s role as a trade magazine. For instance, recognising that salon owners place orders for Christmas stock early Autumn, we treated the September/October issue that arrives late August as the Christmas issue.
Results
The feedback from members, advertisers and BABTAC management on look, feel and content has been excellent. Colin Webster, General Manager BABTAC and CIBTAC says: “I am thrilled with the new look of Vitality. We’ve listened to what our members want and the improvements we’ve made are proving to be a big hit. We are looking forward to working with CW as Vitality continues to evolve.”
As the first four issues we produced included legacy advertising from the previous publisher, no-one expected us to achieve 100 per cent of our advertising revenue goals before our fifth edition. In practice, we achieved it with our third edition and as a result the client’s long-term aspiration of going monthly is likely to become a reality much sooner.
