Publications Rousseau, a Canadian leader of automotive magazines, has chosen multiple-media.com to build a large-scale B2B portal in replacement of its current web site. The publisher thus wishes to develop an online presence for each of its 20 specialized products and take advantage of the Web’s potential to strengthen its relationships with a clientele of decision-makers.

With 20 magazines in both official languages, Publications Rousseau (PRA) is a leading publisher of Canadian periodicals aimed at professionals and managers that are active in the automotive aftermarket, i.e. car parts and accessories manufactured by third-party suppliers.

The PRA portal, which is to be launched this fall, will offer access to four Web sites, built along the same categories as the company’s four types of offline publications: automotive repair, auto body repair, tires and fleet management. Just as their offline equivalents, the PRA portal and web sites will have a distinctive upscale brand image and possess their own identity, with, for example, news, videos, tips and advice, and search engines that will scan large databases.

Publications Rousseau mainly selected multiple-media.com because of its usability expertise and its proven capacity to empower its clients in terms of online publishing.

B2B portals too often neglect usability, as if user-centric designs were for consumer sites only”, said Renato Cudicio, president of multiple-media.com. “However, that is a misconception: it is a well-known fact that for most managers, ‘Time is money’, and this makes them an extremely demanding group of users. Publications Rousseau has decided to take this characteristic into account, and in my eyes this is a pragmatic approach that is a guarantee of success.”

PRA has also asked multiple-media.com to design and implement a technical infrastructure that will support the publisher’s “technical emancipation”, so that it can update online content parallel to its real world publications.

To begin with, the multiple-media.com team assigned to the project will design the portal from an operator’s point of view, taking care to adjust the characteristics of PRA’s new communication tool to the publisher’s capacity to exploit it successfully. Once the technical platform is in place, the publisher’s team will use MMCM, multiple-media.com’s proprietary content manager, to manage the portal’s ongoing content updates. This will put Publications Rousseau in a position to gradually integrate its online publishing activities with current business processes.

Developed by communication specialists, for communication specialists, MMCM is the ideal tool for companies like Publications Rousseau, who wish to carry out dynamic Web communication strategies by themselves. Of course, PRA will always be able to rely on the Montreal Web agency’s online marketing expertise.

Publications Rousseau
Publications Rousseau is a leader in Canadian automotive magazines. Established in 1993, this publisher specializes in periodicals covering topics relating to automotive repair, auto body repair, tires and fleet management, as well as in relevant events.

multiple-media.com and MMCM
Created in 1997, multiple-media.com offers integrated Web strategy, content and application development services. The Montreal agency differentiates itself by the excellence of its client services, the reliability of its solutions, and the high quality of its productions, which efficiently blend communication and technologies. MMCM, multiple media.com’s powerful proprietary CMS, allows non-technical users to build and maintain multilingual Web sites and portals in real time.