The Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) wanted to improve their online presence (which was represented by an online monthly update TS Today and email newsletter TS Bulletin) while relaunching their quarterly magazine TS Review as a bi-annual title and at the same promoting the message to existing and potential members that they represent ‘the voice of the trading standards profession’.
The magazine was already in print and this needed to continue to give members a tangible, expertly created product, but the content website would need to take the lead in communicating to a wider audience. We suggested a brand consolidation under the title Journal of Trading Standards (since ‘trading standards’ was much more recognisable than ‘TS’) with the print magazine tackling the big topics in the profession and the website allowing a more direct and immediate conversation with the audience. Trading standards is an extremely wide topic and all of the many areas it covers are important. We developed a wide menu structure, broken down by type (updates, analysis, opinion, video) in order to give equal billing to the fourteen subject areas we launched with. We supplemented short and long-form text content with video interviews and developed a social media presence around the site to help promote it out to a wider audience.
There were a number of targets for the new title: CTSI members; the wider trading standards profession dispersed across the UK, key stakeholders in governmental and other public sector bodies; and a broader audience of interested professionals and businesses.
We continue to grow a social media presence around the site to help promote it out to a wider audience through content marketing in text and video format.
