The client
Nationwide Building Society is one of the top three savings providers and mortgage lenders in the UK and the largest building society in the world.
The challenge
In 2009, Nationwide Building Society made the business decision to outsource its flagship publication, Live, for its 19,000+ employees.
The solution
At a time of great change for the Nationwide, there was a desire from the executive team to get ‘added value’ from Live in terms of a strategic communication role, but without losing the brand identity and popularity of the magazine.
Sequel worked with the internal communication and change team at Nationwide to develop three alternative directions for Live and over a period of weeks ran a number of focus groups, road testing those ideas with staff.
The groups were facilitated by Sequel. We then collated the results and produced a summary report for the Nationwide team which formed the basis of a discussion about ‘new-look Live’. Taking on board the comments from the focus groups, and after conversations with senior members of the Nationwide team, Live was re-launched in Autumn of 2009.
The value
Six months after launch, a second series of focus groups was run to ascertain reaction to the new-look magazine (together with a printed and online survey) and tweaks were made to both content and design. The results from the survey were positive and the magazine also won two awards in the 2010 IOIC Awards.
The popularity of the magazine, and the Live brand, enabled Sequel to recommend to Nationwide an extension of Live to an online sister publication, which launched in early 2011.