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The same pdf (portable document format) computer file that goes to the printers is used for the internet version where the pages turn with a click of a mouse or remote control button. Pages can be enlarged and moved around, which can be very useful for older readers. “This is a development very much in the employee welfare tradition of the original Reckitt and Colman family businesses.” said John Davis, the newsletter producer. “The printed version will continue but we need to know the speed and extent to which the older generations are adopting the new communications technologies.“We started an e-mail edition last year and find the 80-90 year olds are using it as well as the 60-70 year olds. It’s especially popular with overseas readers – one regularly e-mails back from Chile four hours after we’ve sent it to say he’s received, read and enjoyed it days before his posted copy arrives.” A “digital supplement” to the first iContact (October 2008) demonstrates one of the advantages of internet publishing. The main 12-page newsletter contains an article on an exhibition in Hull’s Ferens Art Gallery with photographs of three paintings from Reckitt & Colman collection showing factory scenes by the painter Walter Goodin. Ten other landscape paintings from the company collection, which would not normally have warranted reproduction, have been added in the four-page digital supplement. The computer magazines, as might be expected, were among the first to adopt the Flash.PDF type of publication but the Reckitt Benckiser Pensioners’ Association believe they are among the first employee publications to use it and probably the first pensioner newsletter. Mark Caswell of Independent Web Publishing of Woodhall Spa, Lincolnshire, who are converting and hosting iContact, said: “This technology is rapidly being taken up worldwide by publishers and individual companies to publish the full range of publications ranging from newspapers and magazines through to brochures and catalogues. “Everyone now has instant access to the Internet and people are used to swiftly obtaining the information they need. Internet users can read on-line publications by turning the pages, download them as a PDF or just print the pages that they want to read – which has fantastic environmental benefits. Furthermore, they are far cheaper to produce than conventional print media as there’s no printing or postage costs, and they are innovative and easy to use – which is great news for senior citizens as in addition to “turning” the pages using their mouse or keyboard, readers can zoom in, search for specific words and click on hyperlinks which take them straight to specific web pages.” |
Pensioners from a British company, which has just celebrated the 100th anniversaries of two of the world’s first employee magazines, can now flick over the pages of their latest newsletter on-line while their postal copy is still rolling off the printing press. The 4,000-plus worldwide members of the Reckitt Benckiser Pensioners’ Association, who used to make and sell brands like Dettol and Colman’s Mustard, can click on to a 
