A sea change in shipping content

Merchant Navy Training Board

The Merchant Navy Training Board (MNTB) is the shipping industry’s central body for promoting and developing sector-specific education, training and skills.

It works across the UK to champion maritime education, while studies at nautical colleges or universities will be based on an MNTB framework.

CPL has partnered with MNTB over the years to produce promotional booklets for Careers at Sea – the arm of the organisation that helps promote seafaring and roles at sea – as well as training course guides, posters, postcards and logos.

Donna Stevens, MNTB operations manager, spoke highly of the design and production teams at CPL, and the work that’s been created.  

‘The Merchant Navy Training Board has been working for many years with the team at CPL, and we have always found them to be extremely professional. They have a great flair for design, and pay careful attention to detail.’

UK Chamber of Shipping

The UK Chamber of Shipping is the trade association and voice of the UK shipping industry, and has more than 180 member companies from across the maritime sector. It works with government, parliament, international organisations and others to champion and protect the industry on behalf of its members.

Throughout the past 16 years, CPL has worked with the Chamber to produce its annual review. In 2015, the UK Chamber’s communications output underwent a fundamental transformation, changing its historic inward focus on organisational activity to a more outward-looking, issues-based approach.

During this period of change, the Chamber decided to move its annual review away from a traditional, report-type publication and instead concentrate on thought leadership – looking at issues, strategy, setting the agenda and, more importantly, leading and shaping that agenda.

CPL listened, and rebranded the annual review as the Journal, which focused on providing engaging and relevant content, rather than simply reporting past activity. The updated design reflected the Chamber’s new-found positive and confident voice.

Today, the highly regarded title continues that trend, evolving year on year. CPL’s collaboration with the Chamber has also grown, and we have produced bespoke video animations and booklets to support its work.

Jonathan Roberts, communications director for the UK Chamber, praised the 2018 version of the Journal and the work carried out by the CPL team. 

‘Once again, we are extremely happy with the Journal,’ he said. ‘It looks great, the design is superb and CPL has done a great job. We’ve already had a few comments along the lines of “the best one yet”.

‘Thanks to the CPL team for their hard work; they all deserve to be as proud of it as we are.’

BIMCO (Baltic and International Maritime Council)

BIMCO is the world’s largest international shipping association with more than 2,100 members across the world. It provides a wide range of services and works with industry experts to produce modern contracts tailored to specific trades and activities. 

CPL has been working with BIMCO since 2016 to create its quarterly digital magazine, BIMCO Bulletin, which highlights the work of the organisation as well as featuring industry issues, analysis and insight.

From creating initial designs and templates through to sub-editing copy and putting together the optimised digital publication, the team at CPL is always on hand to steer the Bulletin in the right direction.

Each issue is also complemented with an animated GIF that helps promotion via social media and drives online traffic.

CPL’s creative team also recently put together an animated video highlighting SmartCon, BIMCO’s system for editing contracts. Metrics showed the video was one of the most popular pieces in the magazine, while page views and session duration for the issue were higher than the average expected for a website, demonstrating how video helps drive audience engagement.