So you already have a customer magazine but the people who are putting it together are driving you nuts. They just don’t get it. We hear this all the time. Basically this boils down to one or more of the following:

Magazines are a costly business but some companies can hemorrhage money from your bottom-line faster than Victoria Beckam. If your publishers are spending more time at lunch and driving their new Range Rover, than attending to your needs, then we need to re-look at the strategy. Are hidden expenses, mysterious and questionable new fees and extras pushing your monthly /quarterly bill through the roof? If the actual budget bares no resemblance at all to the original business plan then something is very, very wrong. At LUXE our costs are transparent and outlined before we go ahead. All third party costs are signed-off by you.
So they promised 150gsm paper and it feels more like toilet paper. They used the same stock photo three times in the same feature. (And thought you wouldn’t notice if they flipped the image). The writing is appalling and the text is fll of mistkes.  They promised lavish photography but the visuals are so out of focus your 5 year old could have done better.
They promised to build in mechanisms to measure how many of your customers respond to the magazine and how. They also promised to responsibly calculate a feasible Return On Investment.  But you haven’t seen anything yet.


You have to meet your deadline but they seem cavalier about sticking to theirs and they do not share the same sense of urgency. Deadlines are critical and the fundamental benchmark by which performance is judged. The best magazine on the market is no good if its late.
You are not kept in the loop with regards to changes, costs, strategy and personnel until it is too late to do anything about it. There are no regular briefings or meetings designed to keep you informed and every time you call for an update, your account exec has changed.
If you currently have a customer magazine being produced by a local company, go through the five elements mentioned above and give each of those elements a score out of 20. One being useless and 20 being excellent. Total them all up. If your publisher scores less than 75% that means you are disgruntled with a quarter of what they do. So for every R400,000 you are paying them R100,000 of that is wasted. Ask yourself: What are you doing with them when you could be with LUXE MEDIA.

LUXE MEDIA now