UD Trucks: Reaching a global audience

The story:
UD Trucks (until January 2010 known as Nissan Diesel) is one of Japan’s four largest truck manufacturers. Like the other Japanese truck makers, UD has traditionally mainly focused on the domestic Japanese market, although the brand has long been present in markets including South Africa, Australia and Southeast Asia.

This is now rapidly changing. The Volvo Group (not the automobile manufacturer of the same name) acquired UD Trucks in 2007. Today UD Trucks is being integrated into Volvo’s portfolio of global truck brands.

There was therefore a very strong need for a way to carry the UD Trucks story to markets around the world. The vehicle would be a global customer magazine; Next Inc. was decided as the producer in 2011. The resulting publications is Roads, published three times per year.

The magazine’s ambition is to provide UD Trucks’ customers with relevant and interesting stories from all over the world. Next draws on a broad network of writers and photographers around the globe, and has created original feature stories featuring Australia, Singapore, Korea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and other countries.

The magazine is published in three versions: one for Australia, one for South Africa and one global version, which is distributed to all other markets.