Embracing what makes us different

If you want to know what the nation is really thinking and feeling, then just dip into the world of magazines. 

At Readly, we analyse the impact of individual magazine issues and covers. Above are just a handful of the strongest over recent months. The Cosmopolitan cover, which features the magazine’s first non-female cover star in 35 years, also won the public vote in the recent PPA Cover of the Year Award 2020. 

Mental wellness, working from home and the economic impact of the pandemic – these are all big themes. Yet there is an even deeper sense of change afoot in so many aspects of our lives. And nowhere is that change better seen than in the issues of diversity and inclusivity.

Diversity extends beyond gender and ethnicity, both of which are, quite rightly, front of mind for us all at the moment. Diversity includes age: the importance of having a mix of experience in any team is often undervalued. Diversity digs deep into personality types and values, which can bubble up in practical issues such as work-life balance, flexible working and workspaces.

For Readly, we have another key dimension of diversity which is nationality. With offices in three countries and a consumer presence in 50 markets, we deal with this dynamic on a daily basis. There is some truth (and often a lot of humour in recognising that truth) in the national stereotypes which are often quoted about Brits, Swedes and Germans: all represented in our workforce. 

I love the fact that we can pick and choose the best practices from each market. Agility, new concepts and ideas come in abundance from Sweden; efficiency and solid processes are best put in place by our German office; and we get creativity and excellent communication from the UK team.

Yet the key factor pulling everything together is a company mission: the sense that there is a “common good” and a shared purpose. That purpose must be clearly articulated and ripple through every process and activity. For Readly, our mission is “bringing the magic of magazines into the future”: driven by the consumer and shaped in association with our publisher partners. 

Through this, speed of execution increases as the friction between departments is reduced. This creates a joined up approach with more creative solutions as people pool ideas and challenge accepted norms in a more open way. We are prepared to fail and learn from our mistakes without recrimination. And all this has been feeding through into hard metrics such as higher employee engagement, reduced staff turnover and accelerating sales growth.

These improvements have been seen in every area of the company. Yet nowhere more so than with our publisher partners.

Firstly, the way in which our clients run their publishing operations differs markedly from country to country. This is due in part to culture, but is also shaped by local market conditions. Germany still has a robust single-copy, retail, print channel. By contrast, the UK is moving more rapidly into subscription-based digital platforms as the newsstand comes under intense pressure. Sweden is somewhere between the two, with generally a more open and experimental approach to publishing.

Secondly, we work hard to diversify the inventory of brands we have in each territory. This summer we partnered with Swedish publishing houses Egmont Publishing and Aller Media to create English language editions of their popular interior titles Hus & Hem - Scandinavian Interior and My Residence. Our data shows that 10% of subscribers read foreign titles and we wanted to experiment with this, connecting our readers with our publishers across markets.

It is only when you dig into the magazine repertoires of specific readers that you see how individualistic each consumer actually is, in whichever country they live. Many brands in the repertoire are predictable and clustered around dominant interests, whether those interests are fashion, sport or wellness. 

The diversity of content found in the magazine business allows individual readers to pick and choose and create their own personal brand inventory which expresses who they are, what their passions are and what defines them as people.  

So, these are all reasons why diversity in all its dimensions is baked into our company culture. We know full well that we haven’t got it 100% right. But one thing we have learnt, is that there are some important – and sometimes surprising - factors that the team need to take on board to make diversity work. These include self-awareness; the ability to listen and understand where each other is coming from; mutual respect and trust; a sense of humour. And a good dose of humility – not a quality that many management books have at the top of their lists!

So, the bottom line for Readly is that diversity matters - as do magazines. Magazines are our passion. Bringing magazines into a digital future is our mission because magazines themselves capture the diversity we seek to mirror in the way we run our business.