Name: Genay Genereux
Publisher: Encore Media Group
Brief History about the publisher and yourself:
Encore is celebrating our 50th anniversary this year! We publish programs for arts venues in both Seattle and San Francisco. We also work with other clients to create customized publications, such as Seattle’s Pride Guide Magazine, Seattle Arts Dealers Association Magazine, and Seafair Magazine. The newest addition as of January this year to the Encore family is WhereTraveler Seattle! We’re excited to add this publication to our mix –it’s fun to have reminders of all the cool things Seattle and the Pacific NW has to offer!
We have a team of 19 who do everything from sell advertising to design and create publications in addition to all things editorial, website, social media, distribution, and marketing related. We print around 150 publications in a given year for 25 different clients.
I am the Accounting and Office Manager and have been with Encore for 6 years. I also lead our internal MagHub Team which works to help our employees use MagHub more each day. We also work directly with the team at MagHub to resolve issues and challenges we are facing.
How long have you used MagHub? We started working with MagHub in 2017.
How long had you used MagHub when you attended the forum? We have come to the last two forums. We were a year out from our initial launch.
What was the best part about the forum? I really appreciate the community and collaborative aspect of the forum. It’s always good to hear from other people in your same industry who are also working towards big wins or struggling to make things happen for their team. These conversations aren’t just about using MagHub – although that focus is always there. We are using the time to figure out how to use a system to help our people be more successful in their endeavors. Sometimes that resolution comes from a how you leverage a feature in MagHub. Sometimes, that comes from hearing how someone else has resolved a situation with other means.
The forum is a great way to know what they are already planning. I also appreciate that the MagHub team asks for feedback from their users. They use our feedback to make their product more successful based on how we, the users, utilize the system.
What was your biggest take away from the MagHub Fall Forum? I asked my team who also attended the forum what they said:
“The impact one person can have on the direction they take in their updates.”
“I think the biggest thing was being able to talk to other users and discuss how they use it and get ideas. Plus being able to have face to face to get our ideas heard.”
“One benefit was meeting people from other media companies who are in a similar position with MagHub. The time to network and come away with some client contacts was very valuable.”
What would you say to another publisher about attending the forum? Our team has walked away each time with even more tools and resources for Encore’s success. Knowing there is a greater MagHub community out there, going through the same trials, tribulations, and successes is encouraging. And knowing that there are other publishers out there that have some fantastic skills and solutions that are willing to share what they have learned.
