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Honesty, relevance, clarity and choice is an award-winning combination

An elegant solution to the perennial digital v print argument has won Network Rail’s new magazine a nomination as Best Corporate Publication in the not for profit and public sector.

The CorpComms awards spotlight work that is delivering a clear return on investment, and Network Rail’s achievement is the stuff of a comms team’s dreams: more trusted, higher impact communications for less sweat and tears at almost half the budget.

beetroot and Network Rail have replaced two established publications  – a company-wide magazine and a tabloid newspaper – with one integrated digital and print channel, which promises readers honesty, relevance, clarity and choice.

“It is no co-incidence that the print version fits in the pocket of a high-vis jacket – the frontline uniform.”

Our solution is a format and grid that’s ready-made for hosting and viewing online.  As well as being sent to a list of subscribers, a desktop icon is pushed via an alert notification to iOS devices.

Pages retain their shape on tablet screens, and can be viewed as complete spreads on desktops, while the grid columns also equal the width of an iPhone screen. Digital uptake rose from 5,400 launch issue visits to more than 12,000 for the second issue.

It is no co-incidence that the print version fits in the pocket of a high-vis jacket – the frontline uniform.

Network is the only internal publication on the shortlist, which includes stakeholder magazines for the National Trust, NHS and British Heart Foundation. It follows two awards for excellence from the Institute of Internal Communications in 2014.

Paul Russen

Paul Russen is senior designer / studio manager at beetroot