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Not many people can legitimately claim to have furthered their career by being a snogger. But Justine Southall can.

The group publishing director of the Young Women's Group at The National Magazine Company looks back on her time as a snogger with some affection.

Having launched her career with Carlton Magazines' Options, when that title was bought into IPC Magazines, she moved to take an ad controller role across IPC's teen mags. "Those magazines were very of their time. They were photozines, full of storylines about young love. And consequently we became known as 'the snoggers'," she says, with a smile of remembered relish.

Southall's career has moved on significantly, of course, from her teen snog days. It has seen her take prominent roles across a range of magazines and businesses that have helped shape the modern publishing landscape. At IPC, where she spent 10 years, she helped hone the fashion and young women's titles. She doubled the ad revenue across Marie Claire in three years and launched Marie Claire Health & Beauty.

Lured to the BBC, she ran the commercial activity for the Lifestyle Group and worked on new projects. Then she stepped in to set up and work through the launch task on Eve, BBC Worldwide's controversial women's lifestyle monthly. Latterly, she's spent the last year taking NatMags' Young Women's Group in hand, shepherding Company, Zest and She through significant rebirths against a wider advertising backdrop which has not, to say the least, been vibrant.

energetic and entrepreneurial

"The great thing for me coming to NatMags was that this is a big company, but has a fantastically entrepreneurial spirit. We're privately owned and the company culture is very much about being energetic and entrepreneurial. If I say words like "caring" it makes things sounds fluffy, but that would be missing the point. We value talent, and we grow it. There's very much a community feel, which I favour."

"Energetic" and "entrepreneurial" are clearly two words that could be used to sum up Southall herself. She remembers from her time at the hallowed halls of the BBC, people in that august environment would recognize her coming towards them down the corridor by the speed she was moving. Mind you, that could be saying something about BBC Worldwide too. But more of that later.

Perhaps Southall's most controversial activities in her short time at NatMags have concerned its young women's monthly title, Company. She freely admits that when she arrived it was "languishing a bit" and that the arrival of Condé Nast wunderkind Glamour had an impact. She says there have been ongoing editorial improvements, but the task had to be to get the title into more hands.

"That was fundamental,"
she says, and thus the audacious cover price slashing to
match Glamour's budget-price-for-premium-product strategy. "The price policy is a form of sampling, of course. But the reality is that if consumers don't like it, they won't come back. And we've been watching sales rise with amazement. Add that to the typical promotions for the summer and sales have been through the roof. But there are always certain truisms in publishing - and it doesn't matter how much money you throw at a product if it isn't very good."

The magazine's ABC figure to June 2002 stood at 312, 157 - a year-on-year hike of 39.9%.
She also adds that sometimes copying can be the sincerest form of flattery.

"The Company editorial team are immensely proud of their success throughout 2002 - fantastic ABC, fastest-growing women's mag, biggest Bachelors event ever. But the icing on the cake has to be that the November issue of New Woman so closely emulated our May issue, which was at the time our biggest-selling unpromoted issue this year. With the uncertainty at Emap, it's flattering for them to pay us such a compliment - using the same cover model Tess Daly in a similar shot plus virtually identical cover sells and a supplement about available, attractive, single men.

"With all the editorial innovations we're planning for next year, it will be really interesting to see which ones reappear" she adds cheekily.