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CASE STUDY

I have been fortunate to work with many outstanding creative teams across a wide variety of leading media companies and arts organisations.

Their challenges have been everything from complete technical and cultural change through to tailored strategic advice.

This showcase highlights just a few of those projects.

The Penny Hoarder

Penny Hoarder

The Penny Hoarder is an American personal finance website based in St. Petersburg, Florida. Owned by Taylor Media, The Penny Hoarder publishes multimedia content about the different ways people can make and save money. For the second consecutive year, the Inc. 500 recognized The Penny Hoarder as the No. 1 fastest-growing private media company. The magazine also ranked the digital publisher 25th fastest-growing private company overall on its list. The Penny Hoarder has 15 million unique monthly page views and 4.9 million Facebook likes.

Start To Finish Workflow

The project was to simplify the workflows in order to improve efficiency and increase productivity but also to unify their ways of working across departments. To identify a new culturally suitable workflow tool that could be used throughout the business along with a replacement asset management solution that integrated with the workflow system and their publishing engine. Working primarily with the editorial web and social teams at the Penny Hoarder this quickly spread to all departments.

Sean has been an invaluable resource for us throughout our transition to a new workflow. He led process-mapping for our creative departments, asking questions that helped us see our own work in a new light and identify opportunities to gain efficiencies. Sean has been thoughtful, reliable and efficient throughout the process. I placed a lot of trust in him, and I respect not only the ideas he has brought to our table but also his pace in implementing his recommendations.

Alexis Grant

Executive Vice President

Hearst UK

 

Hearst UK

Hearst Magazines UK is the largest digital magazine publisher in the UK with an online audience of 16 million unique users per month. Through 21 brands, they reach one in three adults in the UK and speak to 22 million fans and followers on social media. Hearst UK also meet 1.3 million customers every year through their network of events. Their brands include some of the world’s best known titles – Cosmopolitan, Digital Spy, ELLE, Esquire, Good Housekeeping Country Living and Harper’s Bazaar.

Editorial systems

My work with Hearst UK was primarily to implement the editorial, production and advertising workflows across all brands. This involved putting together a talented team to manage both the technical and cultural changes required. It also included the implementation of a digital asset management and rights management solution. Also the introduction of digital editions for all magazine brands.
Working with Sean at Creative Workflows and being able to draw on his experience across the media and creative industries has been invaluable in helping us identify process, systems and cultural changes that have helped us to improve our business.
James Naylor

Technology director, Hearst UK

Wigmore Hall

 

Wigmore Hall

The Wigmore Hall is a leading international recital venue that specialises in performances of chamber music and song. Based in the heart of London it is a venue that is impressive yet intimate enough for recitals of chamber music. With near-perfect acoustics, the hall is celebrated across the world and features many of the greatest contemporary artistes. Today, the hall promotes over 500 concerts a year and broadcasts a weekly concert on BBC Radio 3, attracting several hundred thousand listeners as well as a worldwide internet audience. The hall also promotes an extensive education programme throughout London and beyond.

Workflow & Process Mapping

Working closely with the talented staff at Wigmore Hall we mapped all significant roles and responsibilities along with detailed workflow of creative and business processes. From these sessions we identified scope for improvement within both cultural and technical areas. By bringing the right people together it was possible to plan new and more efficient ways of working as well as identifying important system requirements.

We’re extremely happy that we engaged Creative workflows Ltd. Sean worked across the entire organisation, with great tact, discretion and care, extracting complex, overlapping workflows from staff at all levels and not only presenting them back to the senior staff in clear diagrammatical forms, but separately highlighting quick wins, duplications, hinting at priority fixes, suggesting solutions and ways of working and giving us the foundation we needed to build new systems to support the way we work in the digital age.

Richie Warburton

Director of technology, Wigmore Hall

Page Lizard

 

Page Lizard

Page Lizard is a mobile publishing platform which empowers content creators to author once and distribute across apps, webviewers, social and media channels. Page Lizard’s Webviewer enables you to create digital editions that format perfectly for mobile, tablet and desktop. Built in fully responsive HTML5, their Webviewer is the modern answer to the old Flash page-turners.You can author editions in pure HTML, as replica pages or both.

Strategy and growth

Working with the Page Lizard team was both challenging and fun. Project objectives ranged from overall digital strategy through to carrying out a series of media industry presentations. Work often involved meeting with senior publishing staff at both consumer and business to business publishers. The aim was always to raise awareness to changes in significant media channels and how to best take advantage of these new opportunities.

Sean has been invaluable thanks to his extensive knowledge and experience within publishing. He understands the whole process of managing change both technical and cultural levels. He’s a strategic thinker and great communicator – which really helps bring everyone together and motivate them to achieve the goals.

Graham Duffill

CEO, Page Lizard

Burda Style

 

BURDA STYLE

BurdaStyle is the biggest German media company in Fashion and Entertainment, producing its brands on multimedia platforms – as print product, through every digital channel, and with selected events. With its luxury magazines Elle, Elle Decoration, Instyle, InstyleMen and Harper’s Bazaar as well as its premium magazines Bunte, Freundin and Donna, BurdaStyle reaches some ten million consumers.

360 WORKFLOW

The project was to start the process of moving Elle magazine to a more integrated workflow that brought together print, digital and commercial teams. It was as much a cultural transition as it was technical. By challenging old concepts and historic ways of working it was possible to establish more efficient workflow, removing bottlenecks and reducing repetition of effort.

Cost savings were made and expansion into new digital channels were achieved.

Sean working with us was a very welcomed boost for everyone’s morale. It was inspiring to work with him and to get all new insights into the publishing process. I was very impressed with his transparent approach to communication and to taking everyone in the team seriously.

Dörte Lange

Art director

PCS Ltd.

PCS Ltd.

PCS is a market leading UK based publishing software developer that has been reinventing the nature of publishing for over four decades. A member of the Claverley Group, owners of the Midland News Association and Channel Island publishers, Guiton. Their many clients include the Newsquest media group with hundreds of regional and national newspapers. PCS’s Knowledge system helps produce more than 150 million publications per year with asset stores of many millions of articles and images.

Guidance & Knowledge

My work with PCS was primarily to help with the tailoring of Knowledge (their end to end publishing solution) for the consumer magazine market. This developed into a more strategic partnership with guidance through to individual publishers along with business presentations to the media industry groups.

PCS Sales Director, Iain Smith, said “we are delighted to be working closely with Sean as we start to target magazine publishers. As our successes in the newspaper sector continue, we are re-focusing on magazines to assist with the overall growth of PCS and are thrilled we will be able to tap into Sean’s expertise to boost our approach”.

Iain Smith

Sales director, PCS Ltd.

Publishing Brands

A few of the many brands I have designed workflows for

  • All about soap

  • Best

  • Coast

  • Company

  • Cosmopolitan

  • Cosmo girl

  • Cosmo hair and beauty

  • Country Living

  • Elle

  • Elle decoration

  • Esquire

  • Good Housekeeping

  • Harper’s Bazaar

  • House Beautiful

  • Homes & ideas

  • Inside Soap

  • Men’s Health

  • Prima

  • Psychologies

  • Real people

  • Red

  • Reveal

  • Runner’s world

  • She

  • Triathlete’s world

  • Women’s health

  • You & your wedding

  • Zest

Testimonials

Sean was the go to person for any fresh thinking and platform innovation. I worked with Sean and his dedicated and loyal team on various projects across a broad portfolio of brands. His ability to communicate and simplify new technologies is a talent and his passion and enthusiasm unrivalled. Sean has great vision when it comes to making the creative process more efficient, coupled with a commercial eye for helping to establish new revenue streams.

Zoe Jobson

Head of Partnerships & New Business Development, Immediate Media Co

Sean has a vast knowledge and understanding of editorial systems and production work flows, he was instrumental in bringing reprographics in-house and improving production workflows with a pioneering move to a Digital Asset Management solution. Sean has excellent project management skills and is able to get the very best out of the teams he works with.
Andrew Tunley

I.T. Director, C. F. Roberts

More testimonials

Allan Tinkler
Allan Tinkler Advertising Director, Hearst UK
Sean has been one of the main driving force in establishing all of our brands digital editions. His deep knowledge of advertising workflows from booking through to delivery has been critical in developing this exciting new area. Sean’s ability to identify key strategic partners has opened up the whole area of taking in enhanced interactive advertising leading to a new revenue stream. Sean has a way of making the most complex task appear clear, achievable but without sugar coating the possible pitfalls! Our advertisers are excited to be part of this expanding business area and Sean has been key to making this possible.
Lindsay Nicholson
Lindsay Nicholson Editorial Director, Good Housekeeping
Sean Brigg’s skill in developing editorial content for digital platforms are unsurpassed. He easily communicates with non-technical staff to produce quality digital products.
Victoria White
Victoria White Editor, Company magazine
It was great working with Sean on the launch of Company Weekly Edit. An expert in what works for different types of consumers across different platforms, Sean was a huge asset for us as we ventured into a new field of content production.
Emma Dally
Emma Dally Group Director of Books, Hearst Magazines UK
Sean has always been a joy to work with, and is great at coming up with ideas and bringing them to fruition. He is very organised and incredibly resourceful, rising to every challenge and always keen to find a solution to any problem. One of the things I particularly admire about Sean is his ability to communicate with everyone on both sides of the digital divide and to explain the workings of one side to the other. This is a real talent.

Whatever size your business, whether you are a design team, a publisher or an arts organisation my experience and knowledge will help you achieve your goals.

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+44 (0) 7725 759 700

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Creative Workflows Ltd.

Co. Reg. 09722413 (England & Wales)

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