User:Tina.hart
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[edit] Association of Publishing Agencies
APA – the Association of Publishing Agencies, is a non-for-profit trade body that represents approximately 90% customer publishing industry.
APA is headed up by Patrick Fuller, CEO, and Julia Hutchison, COO. The support team are Carly Osman, Marketing and Events executive, and Tina Hart, New Business and Research executive.
APA promotes the customer publishing industry and supports its members in whatever way it can. Aside from coordinating 9 committees, running two annual awards ceremonies, organizing numerous seminars, setting up partnerships with affiliate members, selling in research to publishers and clients, and running the ICPF (International Customer Publisher’s Forum), the APA run a new business consultancy -APA ASK, the only existing full agency search and selection service operated by an association.
APA prides itself on its close relationships with members. Unusually for an association, less than a third of APA’s income is generated from membership fees, and the rest is raised independently by APA. Its success as an association can be measured by the fact that it has doubled its membership in the past three years and now represents nearly all customer publishers in the country.
Customer publishing, also known as ‘contract publishing’ refers to publications produced by publishing agencies of behalf of clients who are brand owners, including companies from sectors as far ranging as automotive, retail, and financial services to charity, public sector and travel and leisure amongst many others.
Boasting the accolade of being the fastest growing media sector in the UK after the Internet, the customer publishing industry has thrived in recent years with the sector now worth an estimated £788 million after seeing a 16% growth in 2006 and continual growth in 2007. The number of UK customer magazine titles was estimated at 1,300 in 2006 and 2007 has seen at least one new customer title launched every day for the first 6 months of the year.
Moving with the digital revolution, many customer publishing agencies now offer integrated work for their clients to meet the demands of publishing editorialised brand messages through websites and other digital formats in conjunction with their printed publications.
As well as serving as a great customer engagement and retention tool, customer publications have been shown to boost brand recognition and loyalty in addition to aiding sales uplift. Ongoing research from [1] shows that consumers spend an average of 25 minutes reading customer titles, and that nearly a quarter hold onto their customer magazines for over a month.
More and more big brands are recognising the worth of having a customer publication as part of their marketing portfolio with those enticed to the medium in the past 18 months including: Bang and Olufsen, Sony, Audi, Chestertons, Shell and Royal Bank of Scotland.
With further research reporting that 78 per cent of consumers prefer to be communicated with via a customer magazine compared to any other marketing media and big international brands investing in customer publications, there’s no doubt that the trend for growth in the sector is set to continue into 2008 and beyond…
The top 5 Association of Publishing Agencies (APA) customer publishing agencies by turnover, according to figures published by Brand Republic (2007) are John Brown, Redwood, Publicis Blueprint, Seven Squared and Redactive Media Group. Well-known titles include Sky the Magazine, Waitrose Food Illustrated, LandRover Onelife, Camouflage, 33 Thoughts, Toni & Guy, Ikea Family Live.
16:30, 20 March 2008 (UTC)Tina.hart (talk) APA main website: [1]
Facebook page: [2]
Creative Awards microsite: [3]
