Name: Duncan Tickell

Job title: Chief Revenue Officer with P&L responsibility for most of Immediate’s non-circulation revenues, insight and corporate comms.

What’s going on at Immediate right now?
Things have never been more exciting, or busier, than in recent months. We’ve seen a resurgence in demand for special interest magazine brands as consumers have more time to spend doing the things they love.

Immediate’s mission is to bring happiness and fulfilment to our consumers through their passions, and demand for content in specialist areas like food, entertainment, gardening and cycling has never been higher.

You could see this in our last set of ABC results with our total circulation rising by an impressive 9% overall with particularly strong year on year growth for both BBC Good Food and BBC Gardener’s World magazines.

In digital it’s been a great story too, our websites now regularly attract well over 60m uniques every month, delivering all-time high reach for many of our brands, including the UK’s most valuable, Radio Times, that continues to flourish in print and digital.

And we’re making sure we seize this opportunity of rising consumer demand, finding new ways to connect with our readers to ensure we sustain this growth.

In print we’re doubling down on subscriptions, we’ve grown our file to over 1.2 million paying subs and continue to invest to grow this even further.  In digital our expanded reach is delivering record advertising and eCommerce revenues, allowing us to develop new ways to grow reach and develop new commercial opportunities. In the last few months alone, we’ve built scaled podcast audiences and we’re creating new video opportunities too. There really hasn’t been a more exciting time from a business perspective in all my days at Immediate since we founded the business in 2011.

But, all that aside, without doubt, the most exciting thing going on right now is working back at the office and seeing colleagues once again.

We’re piloting a voluntary return to the office for those, myself included, who’ve found productivity impacted when working from home. In the last couple of weeks, it’s been fantastic to see colleagues again, sparking creativity from the incidental conversations and human interactions we’ve all been missing in lockdown.

The pinnacle was last week when we had approximately thirty of the team attend a hybrid quarterly catch up in our auditorium, socially distanced of course, made even better with a presentation of Magnetic’s latest attention research.

I can’t wait until restrictions ease further and I can extend these interactions to peers across the Magnetic family and clients too. The last thing my waistline needs is more calories after lockdown, but on this occasion, I’m prepared to take a few lunches for the team over the weeks ahead.

Which magazines have helped you / your family get through recent months?
Unsurprisingly, like the average reader, I’ve found Radio Times, BBC Good Food and Olive essential reads to help make the most of the time we’ve been locked down. Beyond these obvious one’s we’ve enjoyed others too. The Week Junior has been invaluable in keeping my two boys well informed, sensitively, throughout this difficult year. And for me, Private Eye’s humour and satire has delivered enough laughter to keep me sane….just!

What are you most looking forward to as things start to open up again?
Beyond the lunches mentioned above it’s getting back to The Emirates in the vain hope that home support can lift The Arsenal out of our current malaise.

And, as an eternal optimist, I genuinely think, in every sense, that things will only get better in the weeks and months ahead – bring on the rest of 2021.