ASBO Magazine are an incredible media business, founded by the Mayor of London’s office and the D Foundation – it is the only publishing house in the UK that offers young creatives the opportunity to work on a high fidelity bi-monthly magazine, focusing on youth culture and young creatives. ASBO is a magazine created by young adults, for young adults.
Suzaku Consulting are incredibly proud to have helped this uniquely-placed media outfit to deliver multiple staged transformations over 2025. And, we continue to do so. In summary, we have helped ASBO deliver:
- transition to google workspace
- access to new creative tools such as Canva, and discounted Adobe Creative Cloud
- new main-website which is sleek, and absolutely ASBO
- new store-website which ASBO is leveraging to sell its magazines to a global audience
- onsite technical support for their London offices
- a secure, self-hosted CRM solution comparable to Salesforce
- support with finding grants and new funding sources as the business grows
This article is an in-depth case study running through each of the above in turn, detailing the need and how we delivered the transformation.
Google Workspace
ASBO Magazine and its associated brands have historically used the email-service provided by their hosting-provider. While this solutions was sufficient when the magazine was founded, the Head of Brand at ASBO found that it was causing challenges:
- training new staff took longer
- lack of collaboration tools hindered production
- external and disparate Instant Messaging (IM)
- lack of AI integrations
- clunky and slow IT systems was costing money
Our solution was to offer an industry-standard, lightweight but incredibly powerful collaboration suite. This enables ASBO to instead have powerful end-to-end tools, including Google Workspace, Google Cloud Engine, Single-Sign-On and a range of web-applications connected to Google Services. Google Gemini has provided further transformation, meaning ASBO don’t pay a penny more for the world’s most powerful AI platform.
This has been transformational for ASBO Magazine, ensuring their staff can join the operation and just crack-on with their job. Previously new joiners could be wasting weeks learning clunky systems.
User-onboarding has become much-simplified, including working with freelancers and creatives who wish to featured in the magazine. This is incredibly important as the business does win grant funding regularly enough for compliance to become a concern, especially with larger grants from Creative England.
ASBO Magazine now have no challenges working with creatives across the world, from fashion designers to up-and-coming music bands, back-of-house staff supporting the magazine, video game designers and freelance journalists, and much more. All of these stakeholders use Google.
ASBO Magazine now has a competitive edge working with a modern collaboration suite, one which is extensible and familiar, ensuring the time-to-market for all of its published work is much shorter.
Instant messaging was a major challenge for ASBO, consumer tools were simply not suited to such a large operation hundreds of creatives per-issue of the magazine. They are now using Google Chat, especially the Spaces feature, to ensure that the Head of Brand and Lead Editor have total visibility across the business.
Using Google Chat has translated into much less stressful experiences with going to print, including when decision-makers are on-the-go. The management at ASBO Magazine can now run the organisation from anywhere in the world with an internet connection.
Finally, ASBO was being held-back by old and clunky IT systems which proved unreliable and were showing their age. This was a major concern for them given that, as a growing and internationally recognised publishing house, there would come a tipping point.
Instead of waiting for an emergency, where looming print deadlines would not be matched by their hosting provider’s IT systems, the move to Google Workspace has enabled ASBO Magazine to be futureproofed, with no more stress about whether IT works.
Canva and Graphic Design
A major requirement for ASBO Magazine was being able to efficiently design mock-ups which they could then pass to the Head of Brand for approval, before engaging freelance designers. This was incredibly difficult before, with ABSO instead having to trust each bi-monthly magazine’s lead graphic designer to adhere to its brand guidelines.
No longer. ASBO Magazine have ready-access to Canva and discounted Adobe Creative Cloud, meaning that there is an in-house capability to direct the core vision and brand going forward. This is saving ASBO Magazine thousands of pounds every issue because it cuts out the noise, letting the business focus instead on production-ready designs.
ASBO Magazine is a high-fidelity, expressive publication. This means they have competing demands from stakeholders: specialist printers, logistics companies, record companies, universities across the UK and the creatives themselves. Instead of leaving the magazine in the hands of external graphic designers who produce work to varying quality, ASBO Magazine has taken control of its design procedures.
There are now few, if any, delays when going to print and ASBO can instead focus on producing its high-quality magazine and investing in new creative talent.
ASBO Magazine’s new website(s)
ASBO Magazine have been able to spin up a range of ‘web applications’ with our assistance, this is primarily using WordPress as a CMS. This has enabled ASBO to build a sleek, modern and on-brand website and web-store, serving global audiences.
- Main site
The previous ASBO Website was a legacy site designed by a team of young creatives in 2015, it was dated and a bit of a lumbering beast. The website itself contained multiple full-HD video files, meaning it was slow and not mobile-friendly, and larger than 70GB in size.
Suzaku Consulting advised ASBO to change the site, rebuilding it from scratch while the older site is archived for posterity as part of an academic project. This was heeded, and ASBO now have a new unique offering for digital publishing. This is a website built from-scratch, with a standard set of web-frames being heavily adjusted to speak to ASBO’s audience in accordance with its brand guidelines.
Paired with an in-house graphic design capability (see above), ASBO now have a website which reflects the unique format and style of its main publication. It has instant brand-recognition.
2. Web-store
The previous website held an integrated WooCommerce element. This slowed the main site down significantly. WooCommerce is a large suite of tools and was, for a time, a non-functional element of the previous ASBO website.
We have instead created a separate web-instance for ASBO’s e-shop, ensuring that people can buy the mag across the world without it distracting from the creative energy of the main site.
3. CRM
ASBO Magazine were actively looking to adopt a new Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system to spur on further growth and to better manage its relationships. Instead of purchasing an unwieldly solution such as Salesforce, often needing software-developers to ‘make it yours’, we recommending an easy to use CRM hosted on WordPress.
ASBO Magazine are now using CiviCRM, providing a fully-featured and mature suite of tools to manage contacts, run campaigns and operate arts-related grant applications. CiviCRM is highly configurable, but also works as an off-the-shelf solution. Once again, easily run on WordPress.
These websites have been transformational for ASBO to ensure it provides a highly-optimised digital representation of its unique brand. This means ensuring creatives are presented in accordance with ASBO’s brand guidelines, and that an effective and beautiful shop lets it sell copies of the magazine.
ABSO also has a fully-functional CRM which costs them less than fifteen pounds a month to operate, regardless of its size and scale over the coming years.
Support for London offices
With offices across London, ASBO Magazine work with high-intensity print deadlines which mean IT needs to work the first time around.
Onsite support is also a critical element for ASBO, given its unique vision and thousands of creatives it works with on a yearly basis. This translates in a presence both at back-office locations, as well where the heads of the business are travelling, for example to photo-shoots and gigs.
While Suzaku Consulting provide a 9-5, Monday to Friday, Service Desk to ASBO Magazine – it can be hard to deliver one’s vision over the phone. As such, our consultants are often at their HQ in South London to ensure that IT systems are aligned with the particular working patterns of the business.
ASBO Magazine benefits from extensive onsite support for its London offices, both for ad-hoc visits as well as for project delivery. This enables ASBO to spur on its work with young creatives across the UK.
CRM solution comparable to Salesforce
We have mentioned CiviCRM previously, but it is worth exploring in greater detail here.
The brief:
- cost-effective but fully featured CRM
- total ownership of data, given ASBO work with thousands of freelancers
- email campaigns which scale
- email templates with significant customisation
- extensive reporting across all CRM functions
- easy connections to Google Workspace
- contact-level and company-level organisation
- easy to deploy and adopt, with minimal ongoing training needed
The requirements listed above were very specific, and it honestly took Suzaku Consulting a few days to identify an appropriate solution which is both off-the-shelf but also highly configurable i.e. futureproofed.
We advised against using Salesforce as it has a particular way of doing things, often requiring tens of thousands of pounds being spent to actually customise the solution. It is a large and unwieldly solution, suited to enterprise with dedicated teams to operate its various functions.
Instead of recommending SuiteCRM or JetPack CRM, we opted to recommend CiviCRM for three reasons:
- it’s suited to a mixture of B2B and B2C communications
- it takes less then ten minutes to install, and only two hours to configure
- it is, like SuiteCRM or JetPack, a proven CRM used by thousands of organisations across the globe
A proven, cost-effective but fully-featured CRM that can compete against larger solutions such as Salesforce. We met the brief, and ABSO are now using CiviCRM – and loving it.
CiviCRM is unique in that it is actually operated by a charitable organisation, this pairs well with ASBO’s founding organisation (the D Foundation) which is an incorporated charity. It ensures ASBO can focus on social value as well as being its unique self.
Grant Funding and Growth
ASBO Magazine is a high-performing publishing house, working with thousands of creatives throughout the year to produce a beautiful magazine. They are going from strength to strength, and naturally such a large operation needs funding.
GrantFinder
Accessing creative grants is a great help to ASBO, given the unique platform it provides for young creatives across the UK.
Paired with Google Workspace and Google Gemini, ASBO are actively taking up new grants to ensure it can continue its essential work in music, fashion and gaming within the UK arts scene.
Organising grant applications has become much easier as ASBO now have a central platform to operate the organisation.
Direct sales
With its new website, ASBO Magazine is able to sell its magazine globally. It has already begun sales in the U.S. and across mainland Europe, just a few weeks after its relaunch.
ASBO now has the capacity to expand its offering to readers and fans of the mag, both by continuing to offer its magazines online as well as merchandising.
Media partnerships
Founded by the Mayor of London once the D Foundation was set-up, ASBO magazine has extensive support across the UK government. This public-private media partnership is continuing to expand with UK institutions such as universities, events businesses and record shops.
ASBO Magazine are actively working with organisations which wish to advertise on its media in order to access a direct line to 18-30 year old creatives across the UK.
Building the team
ASBO Magazine work with thousands of freelancers through its main publication, it punches well above its weight in terms of publishing houses.
The core team as ASBO Magazine is five people, and growing still. With new technology systems and the ability to more readily recruit talent across the UK, ASBO Magazine is now able to steadily grow its teams without suffering the growing pains a less-prepared business would.
ASBO Magazine is leveraging technology to expand its offering and continue to advocate for young creatives across the UK. Suzaku Consulting are with them every step of the way, ensuring technology will never be a hinderance to their vision.
In short
ASBO Magazine offers an unmatched opportunity for young creatives across the UK to cut their teeth. They were held back for years by ineffective IT systems, those which didn’t reflect the strengths of the organisations and were costing it excessive amounts of money nonetheless.
Instead of selling random guff to ASBO, Suzaku Consulting undertook deep listening to draw up a transformation strategy which could be implemented over six months. This enabled ASBO to transform without major disruption or change fatigue.
We are incredibly proud to have saved ASBO magazine tens of thousands of pounds already, while delivering absolutely everything they wanted and needed. They are now going from strength to strength, and are even more able to advocate and represent young creative talent across the UK.
All it takes is a little skill, a keen ear, and a steady pair of hands. ASBO are in a much better place than they have ever been, we are proud to have played our part in that.