The challenge
English Heritage identified the need to reset its member communication programme to ensure it aligns with its new brand vision of ‘Creating New Connections’. This included its 68-page Members’ Magazine, with more than 600,000 copies sent three times a year, and Kids Rule!, a 16-page children’s magazine distributed to those with family memberships.
This presented Sunday with an exciting opportunity to reimagine and reappraise the publishing programme to ensure that it supports English Heritage’s challenges for the years ahead.
Our solution
We recommended a new content strategy, focusing on creating new connections between members and England’s heritage.
A key element of the strategy was a revamp of the members’ and kids’ magazines. We wanted to be bolder and braver, and to engage and surprise audiences with each issue. We wanted to create real moments of personal connection with English Heritage. And we wanted to win over hearts and minds by enriching readers’ experience, by showing passion, people, places and expert knowledge.
So, we introduced a raft of changes. We restructured the flow of the magazine, introducing clearer editorial sections and navigation, improving pace and adding surprise elements and more entry points on every page. We also improved the differentiation between features with bolder visuals.
When it came to storytelling, we looked for meaningful angles, with editorial threads that speak to different audiences. Importantly, stories had a modern-day context – real, relevant and relatable. The English Heritage story is spun into different audience motivations, such as architecture, food, gardening or wellbeing, which invites readers to think about heritage in new and deeper
