Common sense – spot the difference

Common sense – spot the difference -

An excellent perk for anyone banking with Royal Bank of Scotland is the superb free magazine, Sense, which rivals any news-stand glossy in terms of photography and writing quality. It’s not exactly exclusive, though. Customers of NatWest, owned by RBS, get a great magazine, too. Also called Sense, it has the same cover picture and largely the same features inside. In the issues I perused, sponsorship deals dictate that the RBS version has a feature on golf, while the NatWest one goes for cricket. In the food section, Andrew Fairlie waxes lyrical for RBS customers while Nigel Slater does the same for their NatWest counterparts. It’s all nice work for publisher John Brown, which produces both Senses for RBS Group. It’s good for the readers, too, because economies of scale doubtless mean they get a better mag, featuring bigger names, than they would otherwise. But it does feel slightly odd to see both versions – which must happen in a fair few households. And it must be a nightmare for whoever has the job of ensuring that no logos or corporate slogans creep into the wrong publication.

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