Nuts invented the men’s lifestyle weekly sector when it launched in 2004. Never before had a publisher been audacious enough to believe that young men would enjoy a weekly print fix of all the things they enjoy the most: girls, sport, news, games, humour, gadgets and gear.
Today Nuts accounts for one in every two men’s lifestyle magazines sold on the UK newsstand, and its desire to continually innovate has never waned.
We’ve led the way in the men’s weeklies sector in delivering a range of added value innovations: split covers, stickers, stitched-in cards, multi-variant editions. And we knew, with the huge success of cinema hits like Avatar and Clash of the Titans, that the 3D experience was at the forefront of our readers’ minds. The timing was perfect to bring 3D to our 800,000 weekly readers.
Of course, the challenge of bringing a truly compelling 3D experience to a weekly magazine is monumental. Once we’d hit upon the idea we needed to move fast, planning the complex logistics and calling on every element of the publishing process – from editorial to marketing, publishing to production – to re-engineer their normal systems to take account of the challenge.
The special 3D glasses were sourced from global 3D specialists American Paper Optics, and needed to be supplied in good time to be tipped onto the cover.
Meanwhile editor Dominic Smith and his team focused on which elements of content would be best suited to the Nuts 3D treatment. Unsurprisingly girls were high in the mix but Dom and his team also sourced fantastic first-look game images from the up-coming id Software video game Rage, as well as truly powerful double-page news imagery that Nuts is rightly famous for. And while editorial was developing the right content, our marketing team were also charged with pulling together a supporting campaign with very short lead times.
To create the full 3D effect we chose to partner with 3D Images. The technological processes required to create really powerful and high quality 3D images meant that we needed to complete the issue several days earlier than normal – which had very clear impacts not just on the production schedule for that issue but for the previous and next.
And it wasn’t just the technology processes which needed to be accommodated – the 3D-issue also marked the first time in Nuts history that the whole issue was outsourced for the glasses to be tipped onto the cover.
It’s a real testament to the whole team that we were able to pull this off without a hitch, deliver a truly innovative experience to our readers – and achieve double digit up-lift in sales!
