Southern Enterprise Awards 2021

63 | Southern Enterprise Awards 2021 Sep21161 Absolute Brighton, a magazine publications and media group operating out of the stunning coastal city, focuses on uplifting and empowering local businesses. Above all else, its attitude is one of community service and fostering growth within its local region, and it looks forward to expanding this out to other areas in the future, making itself a diamond in the Sussex news and media scene. It increases the reach of small businesses, allows professionals a promotional space, and expands its own influence with every publication, emboldening its commitment to keeping its magazines free for local people. Operating out of a multi-media publishing house based in Brighton, Absolute Brighton was founded in 2015 and is responsible for the creation and distribution of one of the most loved business and local news titles in the region. Fundamentally, it shows its love for Brighton by allowing the area’s professionals and companies a place to reach out to their desired market segments, using its own growing reach to expand into the wider Sussex region and gaining more ground by the day. Currently, its cross-publishing platform is responsible for the publication of 4 magazine editions per annum – one per season – each of which contains 200 pages worth of local interest, stories, and lifestyle. By doing this, Absolute Brighton brings its readership closer, creating a network of businesses and consumers in the local region that all share a common space between the pages of this magazine. Furthermore, it is free to pick up across Sussex, and can be found in any of around 300 different restaurants, bars, pubs, coffee shops, hair salons, hotels, spas, and more, including the Goodwood Group, Amberley Castle, Bailiffscourt, and Pelham House. Furthermore, Absolute works tirelessly to create the highest quality product that is available online as well as offline, shown by its recent pivot to publishing on ISSUU, a global online magazine platform that allows it to champion its smallest businesses whilst attracting its highest profile clients. Through this, it has successfully secured corporate relationships with clients from independent corporate professionals to enterprise level businesses, using each of these Best Regional Luxury Lifestyle Media Publication 2021 connections to empower the smallest businesses it partners with. This has gained it significant goodwill amongst the Sussex corporate ecosystem. Moreover, it was the first print magazine in the UK to incorporate interactive ads into its publication using AR technology, QR codes, and an App in order to scan the printed page and provide a direct pathway to the client’s advertised product or service. Hoping to help its market gain traction after lockdown, it is looking forward to using these methods and its friendly, informative writing style to promote various LUX destinations, and is currently working towards the unveiling of its eco-tourism title ‘Indian Ocean Magazine’, slated for release in 2022. In this manner, when a client approaches Absolute Brighton for advertising space, they can always expect diligent and comprehensive service that will help them put their company’s best foot forward. Its exemplary and highly professional staff each take a consultation- style approach, each of them creating an end product that looks like something a customer would be happy to pay for, despite the lack of price tag for the end reader. Due to this, the quality of the writing and the design is something that all manner of professionals have come to appreciate, making exemplary use of the space on the page in order to produce layouts that promote local professionals in innovative and eye-catching ways. Of course, within the success story there has also been challenge that Absolute Brighton has had to persevere through. With the outbreak of Covid-19, it had to bring its ad-space sales to a halt. Critically, whilst this was a hard choice, it worked with each client so that this wouldn’t negatively impact them, offering rolled payments or payment holidays whilst it continued to publish its Sussex, Maldives, and Seychelles titles. It also turned its attention more to the frontier of online publishing, reducing print runs in order to funnel more effort into social media and its online platform. This has all been made possible by the laid back and creative group with a culture of friends and family that forges its backbone, each of whom proved a crucial team member and source of inspirational tenacity throughout the pandemic. In essence, Absolute knows that in order to thrive, it must do so as a cohesive unit, and so has adapted itself to be able to handle the hurdles it is faced with in a sophisticated and collaborative manner. It will continue to do this long into the future, excited to see how the local area it loves grows and develops alongside it in the coming years. Company: Absolute Brighton Contact: Simon Darcy Abbott Website: absolutemagazine.co.uk