Larson-Juhl is the world’s leading supplier of picture frames and the organisation had been producing a quarterly magazine for its UK customers for eight years. As part of this year’s rebrand, it was decided 4walls needed a new look and feel. Although the magazine was previously well-received, it was very conservative in its editorial with a traditional group of contributing experts. 4walls now needed a contemporary design-led style with a much bigger focus on imagery. Editorial strategy was adjusted to 25% showcasing a wider variety of artists/framers, 25% industry news/trends, 25% best practice advice and 25% new products/promotions. Other considerations included the need for content that was suited to amplification across organic social media and CRM activity to maximise engagement potential.

One Black Bear’s creative team came up with a new design and layout – which has now featured across three issues to date. 4walls was recently endorsed in a reader survey where the percentage of respondents claiming to read each issue jumped from 77% (in 2018) to 91.8% in 2019 – a fantastic increase! The balance of content also got a huge approval rating.

Pauline Hutchinson, Larson-Juhl marketing manager, believes 4walls has been critical to the business’s success: “In an industry that is still very traditional, an inspirational magazine printed on quality stock is still what many customers want. One Black Bear has evolved 4walls with a fresh approach that has strategic rigour and fantastic creativity. The new look 4walls adds value for our customers, gives us a USP, helps to communicate everything we have going on from a marketing perspective and, most importantly, especially through its amplification via emails and social media, helps us to sell more products!”

4walls has been shortlisted in the 2019 CIPR Midlands PRide Best Publication category.