Bruce Ritchie Email and Phone Number

I launched Bike Australia into the market in January 2013. After having managed a large title like Men's Health for so long, this was a chance to get back to the coal face. Aside from using an external art director (working via the company's FTP site), I performed all major roles on the magazine: staff writer, sub-editor/fact checker, product tester/reviewer, production editor, website editor.The magazine was born out of an opportunity that existed in a market already populated by established players. While the competitors focused largely on the elite and professional cyclists, Bike Australia was a lifestyle magazine aimed at the boom in recreational road riders, with every story aimed at improving their riding, fitness and skills.Part of this role entailed travelling throughout Australia to deliver brand presentations and explain this positional strategy to prospective advertisers.

After editing Men's Health for exactly 10 years, I approached management with a strategy to develop the brand beyond the magazine. My sense was that the print magazine market had peaked and that alternative revenue streams had to be investigated and implemented to maintain growth. In cooperation with US licence holder Rodale Press I launched the first of these brand extensions - a series of higher-price-point 180-page bookazines, each based around one of the magazine's editorial pillars. Though initially published twice yearly, their strong sales and high profitability saw this frequency increased to quarterly. Sibling stablemates Women's Health and Prevention quickly followed our lead and began publishing their own titles in the same format.Again working with overseas Rodale partners, this time in Germany, I also launched a quarterly series of SIPs called MH Coach, which delivered service journalism in a Q&A format. Different format, different booksize, different price, but again, this proved to be a profitable exercise.The other main launch of this period was Bike Australia, outlined above.On a corporate level, during this time Men's Health acted as Pacific's guinea pig for the migration of magazines to digital platforms, including iPad. I investigated several existing options before we settled on Adobe and their DPS system. After we'd ironed out the kinks, the rest of the Pacific stable came on board.I was also heavily involved in discussions with senior management as Pacific introduced its Contributor Agreements, aimed at simplifying ongoing rights issues as our digital offerings continued to expand.Lastly, I oversaw the somewhat unique situation of having the magazine's website controlled by our joint venture partner, Yahoo7! In addition, during this period, Men's Health experienced enormous growth in its Facebook audience, as well as launching on Instagram and Twitter.

Re-positioned Men's Health as a lifestyle magazine, rather than a muscle manual - an approach subsequently adopted by our US licence partner, Rodale Press. Utilised a unique, second-person editorial voice combined with humour and a service journalism approach to turn Australian men's publishing on its head: in short order, we overtook Wheels, Australian Penthouse, Ralph, FHM and Zoo to become the biggest-selling men's magazine in the country.Successfully(!) survived the transition of ownership from Murdoch Magazines to Pacific Magazines, ultimately establishing Men's Health as the most profitable (in terms of margin) performer in the Pacific stable.Developed an overseas MH idea into the MH Man, a search to put a reader on the cover. When this expanded to include a celebrity component, I recruited Larry Emdur from owner network Channel Seven, to take part. (Not unreasonable, as by then I'd appeared on The Morning Show countless times...) His participation saw the competition deliver the highest result in terms of PR dollars of any event in the magazine's history.Utilising my experience as a motoring writer, Australia became the only Men's Health in the global network of 40+ editions to include a regular lifestyle column on cars. The result was that automotive swiftly became the most lucrative segment of our advertising portfolio.