“Audi Magazine” named best customer magazine

· Mercury Awards: the highest honor yet in corporate publishing for a carmaker

· Circulation of Audi’s customer magazine at 8.5 million copies worldwide

INGOLSTADT, Germany, – The customer magazine for the brand with the four rings took home a total of 11 honors from this year’s Mercury Awards – one of the world’s most prestigious competitions in corporate publishing. This makes Audi the company to win the most awards in the automotive communication category in the 23-year history of the major U.S.-based competition.

Audi Magazine entered 15 categories, taking on a total of 103 competitors in seven countries – and was honored in ten categories. A particularly impressive feat was that the Mercury Awards jurors also decided to present the Audi customer magazine with the Grand Award – a special prize for outstanding achievement – selecting Audi Magazine as the year’s “best of custom publications.” In addition, Audi received two silver medals for innovative design and for especially ambitious articles on environmental issues.

“We redesigned the magazine in 2008 and selected a much more radical layout structure, supported by a very bold new Audi typographic style. Thematically, we’re oriented exclusively on the Audi brand world,” said Lothar Korn, Head of Marketing Communications at AUDI AG.

According to Korn, the magazine’s graphic and journalistic style is on a par with that of leading lifestyle magazines. The consistently high rate of ad bookings is proof of that, as Korn emphasized: other premium brands prize the magazine as an exclusive platform for their advertisements.

The magazine, which employs only well-known journalists, photographers and graphic designers, is one of Audi’s most important customer retention tools. It is also strongly linked with the online portals www.audi.com/de and Audi tv. “We’re operating a successful cross-media publishing program here. With a magazine, TV and website, we’ve achieved deep integration of all multimedia platforms,” Korn said.

Audi Magazine is issued four times each year, in 77 countries and 24 languages. A total of 8.5 million copies of the customer magazine are distributed throughout the world – with content being adapted for each respective country. Along with AUDI AG, the Hamburg-based agency loved GmbH is also responsible for the magazine’s concept.