Chartered Accountants ANZ

Acuity is the bimonthly member publication for Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand (CA ANZ). Reaching a guaranteed 91,196 members in 100 countries, 74% of all members have opted to receive it.

CA ANZ engaged us to refresh Acuity as it wasn’t fully meeting member needs. There was also an inefficient approach to digital publishing, resulting in lower engagement, and a lack of quality advertisers.

We conducted extensive audience research (including Roy Morgan and CA ANZ member insights) and created new sections across all channels designed to meet members’ needs and reinforce brand values.

Print relaunch
The challenge was to reflect the needs of professionals at different stages of their careers, in many countries and across different sectors – while also delivering the CA ANZ brand across both Australia and New Zealand (two separate publications). Our approach included:

• New content pillars to allow a broad range of topics to be covered in-depth: Thought Leadership, Insights, Expertise and Community
• New design with a new masthead, fonts and grids to deliver international best-practice for a business publication. We contracted leading photographers and illustrators to create premium visual storytelling and we created a new colour palette that more strongly references CA ANZ’s brand
• New contributors: We created a roll-call of leading writers, adding expertise to every issue
• New technical information: We devised a way to design excel source information to support features and topics with accurate, hard data

Digital relaunch
The previous workflow was hampered by silos: the print team produced content and sent it in PDF form to a separate digital team at CA ANZ. We established a “one content team” that manages all content across all channels with improved and increased outputs.

Our approach included:

• acuitymag.com: We developed a strategy based on SEO and brand goals. We now manage the entire process, create web-only content and have increased frequency
• EDMs: We redesigned templates to optimise for time-poor members. We’ve introduced arresting imagery and strong headings to break up text
• Social: We now manage all Acuity channels (LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter). We’ve increased output and introduced new video features. We developed guidelines for best-practice posts and monitor and optimise our content

• 87,958 members choose to receive the magazine
• 73.17% agree that Acuity magazine adds value to their membership*
• 21,421 opt-in email subscribers with an open rate of 41%
• Page views to acuity.com increased 17% YOY
• LinkedIn organic impressions increased 38.6% YOY
• Twitter organic impressions increased 27.3% YOY
• Double-digit advertising growth YOY
• Members highly respect and value the magazine: “Acuity is a badge of honour – people leave it on their desks so others know they have the designation.” – Rachel Grimes FCA ANZ

*CA ANZ Reader Survey, April 2020