The client
Essex County Council administrates an area of 1,300 square miles and a population of over 1.3 million people. It is the second largest shire county in the UK, with over 38,000 staff. Its Local Area Agreement is the largest in the country, dispensing over £1.6 billion of funding and including 120 partner organisations.
The challenge
Sequel was appointed by Essex County Council to review and renew its all-employee print publication, previously called INSX. Our role was two-fold: to advise on a radical re-launch of the magazine and to deliver the publication.
The solution
Initial discussions with the internal communication team resulted in the development of a strategy and visuals for the magazine. We recommended that these were presented to Essex’s existing Employee Council, which meets regularly to ‘road test’ new ideas across the organisation. The feedback from that meeting, which was generally positive, was used to produce another set of visuals which were then shared with representatives from audience groups across the authority. This buy-in from the audience was important.
The result was a new name, Zest, together with a new look and content which was more relevant to Essex. In conjunction with the launch of the print magazine, Sequel worked with the client to produce a new weekly email newsletter, 7 Days.
Both publications scored well in internal surveys but by 2010 it was obvious that the public sector cuts would impact Essex’s communications spend and Sequel was called in to advise on next steps. The decision was made, regrettably, to cease production of the print magazine but we advised strongly that 7 Days was ‘beefed up’ to replace some of the lost content. In the Spring of 2011, 7 Days was re-launched with added features.
The value
Sequel continues to advise the Essex team on how the organisation can get maximum impact and engagement from limited budget.