Magazine shortlisted for national publishing innovation award

Published by

Nicky Godding

Business & Innovation Magazine, which launched just one year ago, has been shortlisted in the 2018 Professional Publishers Association (PPA) Awards.

The Professional Publishers Association (PPA) represents around 220 companies, ranging from consumer magazine publishers to business-to-business data and information providers, customer magazine publishers and smaller independent companies.

This magazine has been shortlisted in the Publishing Innovator Of the Year category.

The winners of this year's PPA Awards will be revealed at the awards dinner on June 27 at Grosvenor House.

Barry McIlheney, CEO of the PPA, said: "With nearly 400 entries from more than 70 different companies, just to get onto the PPA Awards shortlist is a major achievement in itself.”

Nicky Godding, Editor of Business & Innovation Magazine, added: “Our magazine has a clear aim: To give regional businesses a bigger platform, online and in print, to showcase what they do to a wider audience. Our message is ‘regional knowledge helping build national and global opportunities’. We are absolutely over the moon that the PPA, a hugely respected organisation, has put us on the shortlist, and for being as innovative as the companies we write about."

Business & Innovation Magazine is the flagship bi-monthly magazine published by NK Media Ltd and also available on-line.

NK Media Ltd publishing company was established in May 2017 by Nicky Godding and Kirsty Muir. Nicky is a highly experienced b2b magazine editor and Kirsty is an exceptionally talented advertising professional.

The team identified a gap in the market for a quality regional business publication.

Business & Innovation Magazine is read by business professionals within large companies, owners and senior managers of smaller companies and those working in the further and higher education to broaden their knowledge of the region. 8,000 copies are published. 6,000 are posted to NK Media Ltd’s unique database of senior managers, company directors, entrepreneurs and business influencers across the region. 2,000 are given out at events and provided to key locations across the region.

Regional businesses might not always sell their products or services locally, but that’s often where their supply chain begins, and when everyone’s fighting to employ skilled people, the businesses with the biggest profile will find it easier to build an effective workforce.

Rather than serve up the usual content of generic advice columns from regional lawyers, accountants and other professionals, which is what most business magazines do, Business & Innovation Magazine publishes unique content drawn from editorial research. It mixes regular content covering key geographical regions and industry sectors, with in-depth features on relevant topics. The magazine is highly visual – the founders have invested heavily in good design and quality print, and the magazine always uses high quality imagery across its editorial pages.

Supporting the printed publication is the magazine’s website. This is more than just a regional business news website, it supports the magazine’s intention to offer a research resource to all businesses. Every issue of the magazine is archived on the website. Each in-depth feature and keynote interview is also individually accessible and easy to locate.

The aim of this is to integrate online news with the flagship publication.

Nicky Godding

Nicky Godding is editor of The Business Magazine. Before her journalism career, she worked mainly in public relations moving into writing when she was invited to launch Retail Watch, a publication covering retail and real estate across Europe. After some years of constant travelling, she tucked away her passport and concentrated on business writing, co-founding a successful regional business magazine. She has interviewed some of the UK’s most successful entrepreneurs who have built multi-million-pound businesses and reported on many science and technology firsts. She reports on the region’s thriving business economy from start-ups, family businesses and multi-million-pound corporations, to the professionals that support their growth and the institutions that educate the next generation of business leaders.