News Release

ADFAST RECEIVES BEST PRACTICE AWARD FROM
TRADE ASSOCIATION FORUM

The Newspapers Society's artwork transmission system, AdFast, has won the Commercial Initiative Award at the Trade Association Forum's Best Practice Awards 2003. The awards, which were announced at the TAF Annual Conference in London yesterday, attracted entries from over 80 trade associations. AdFast is an internet-based artwork transmission system for sending artwork files as PDFs (a widely accepted compressed file format) to print publications. Launched by the Newspaper Society in summer 2000, it is now the fastest growing artwork transmission system in the UK, receiving over 1,000 files per day.

Rob Fogwill, AdFast technical support manager (left) and Sandy Park, AdFast Director (right).

The judges' report said that AdFast had, "reduced costs significantly and helped to develop an expanded market for national advertisers in the regional and local press. The project involved substantial investment by the association and a bold adaptation of new technology to the commercial advantage of the industry in an approach that is revolutionary rather than evolutionary."

AdFast was the first of a series of initiatives to improve the way the regional press is planned, sold and administered to attract more advertising revenue from national customers. It is available at no cost to agencies, advertisers and prepress companies who send artwork to the regional press and provides them with a single point of access to the industry. Publishers benefit from improved pre-press workflow and spend less time correcting faulty files or waiting for artwork to arrive. AdFast represents a major investment on the part of regional and local newspaper publishers and continues to be developed in close collaboration with agencies and repro houses. It has now been made available for use by national newspapers and magazines.

David Newell, director of the Newspaper Society said: "AdFast was an ambitious project which was reliant on the hard work of the people involved. The AdFast team is to be congratulated on this achievement which recognises how their commitment has translated into clear commercial benefits to our members and their customers."

Introduced for the first time this year, the Best Practice Awards have a three-fold purpose:

- To foster the search for excellence
- To recognise and reward achievement
- To encourage the communication and adoption of best practice.

The panel of judges for the awards comprised Professor Justin Greenwood, Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen; Alastair Macdonald, author, The Business of Representation; Andrew Maiden, editor, Association Manager; Dr June-Alison Sealy, Head of Sectoral affairs, CBI; Rosa Wilkinson, Director of Policy, Business Relations, DTI.

www.adfast.co.uk

Notes to editors: For press information on AdFast contact: Martha Leary-Tanner on 020 7636 7014 or e-mail martha_lt@newspapersoc.org.uk

For AdFast technical support contact: Rob Fogwill on 07774 191992 or e-mail rob_fogwill@newspapersoc.org.uk

The Newspaper Society, the voice of Britain's regional and local press, represents around 1,300 daily and weekly, paid-for and free, newspaper titles in the UK.

The Newspaper Society is a member of UK Publishing Media: an £18 billion alliance of newspapers, magazines and books, which collectively represent one of the largest investors in the rapidly-expanding information society.