Talking the right language

Whatever industry you are working in, it is likely that your trade association has at some time or another been criticised for being ‘stuffy’, ‘boring’  ‘a talking shop’ or ‘not at the cutting edge’. Some associations (our industry excepted obviously) deserve every brickbat that is thrown at them  – I know of one chief executive of for instance, who had to rewrite his constitution to allow his new president to set foot in her own Members Bar.

But I think such criticism can be a bit unfair on the folk who work there, paid and unpaid. Let’s face it, the very nature of much of the work - arranging, then sitting through innumerable committee meetings, trawling through reams of legislation, going over the fine detail of standards – is going to seem boring to the outsider. It really is dull, but it is definitely worthy too.

So in that context, we should give a hearty cheer to the refrigeration contractors’ association of Australia who have decided they need to be more relevant to the engineer members, who are mostly young and male. For more see, the related file on the right hand side. So what they have come up with is a trade magazine that talks the same language as other men’s magazines.

We are watching it with great interest – as you would imagine, since we have just relaunched our own RAC Engineer – but I would be fascinated to know whether you thought we could do it here.

If you have any more questions, feel free to send them to me at andrew.gaved@emap.com.

Andrew Gaved
Editor
RAC magazine

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