Jem Shaw has a varied background including marketing, illustration, web development, and music. He previously worked for 8 years with Classic Air Force, a vintage aircraft collection, where he took on many roles including developing their website, designing museum displays to increase visitor engagement and time spent, editing their magazine, and organizing their air shows. The closure of Classic Air Force left him wanting to work with other museums. He has a lifelong passion for vintage aviation sparked from childhood.

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Jem Shaw
This is a (relatively) brief profile of Jem Shaw,
who would probably describe himself as a
marketing consultant. But as that label doesn’t
mention illustrator, web developer, published
author or mediocre musician, some further
explanation seems appropriate.
It’s been put together because he’s keen to work
with one or more museums or vintage collections
since the closure of Classic Air Force took away
that vital fillip of joy in one’s subject that any
creative needs in order to stay sane.
Marketing carpet tiles, replacement windows or overseas investments may pay the bills but they do
little for the soul.
For the Love of Vintage Aviation
Among my earliest memories is one of standing in the back garden of a modest house in Erdington,
staring up at a daily air show. Nearby Castle Bromwich provided endless entertainment in the form
of Spitfires, Ansons and the whistling Vampires and Meteors. Inside, my father had stocked our
shelves with Aircraft of the Fighting Powers, and I would sit for hours looking at those magical fold-
out plans and dreaming.
When, in 2007, the opportunity arose to work with Air Atlantique Classic Flight (later Classic Air
Force), those dreams finally crystallised. There followed eight of the most trying, but undoubtedly
the most rewarding, years of my business career. I found I could apply almost everything from my
somewhat eclectic skillset to a subject that has always been close to my heart. And along the way I
discovered a few new capabilities that I didn’t know I had.

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Web Development
I was forced to discover this skill alarmingly
early in my relationship with the Flight. My
youngest son, a talented web developer,
had been commissioned to develop a highly
sophisticated Internet platform. He
suddenly became seriously ill1
, potentially
leaving CAF without a key element of their
business. I had to learn high-level web
application programming, and learn it fast.
Over the following three months I built a full
client-managed web platform, complete
with e-commerce and a sophisticated flight
booking system. It worked, coping with
traffic in excess of 1,500 visitors a day and
handling bookings for flights from multiple
airports for eight highly disparate aircraft
types. It went on to handle high-volume
event ticketing and even a pop concert.
The aircraft information on the site was sufficiently complete and accessible for it to consistently
share the top two spots on a worldwide Google search with Wikipedia for almost every aircraft in
the collection. We even kicked the mighty Wiki to number two on several occasions!
1
He survived an emergency operation and continues to improve

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Museum ‘Stickiness’
I’ve long believed that visitors judge the value of a destination like a museum by the length of time
they spend there. When Classic Air Force opened in Newquay it was widely criticised on TripAdvisor.
All of the reviews were along the lines of ‘Very small collection. We were only there for ten minutes,
after paying £10 for entry.’
Two solutions were suggested, either to add to the collection or reduce the entry price. The former
of these struck me as expensive and the latter as failure. I asked for the opportunity to increase
visitors’ dwell time. I designed a series of information panels, shaped like aircraft wings. They looked
great, but it was their content that made the difference. Each one followed the same format:
Photograph and Information
Nothing particularly unusual here, other than that the main photograph always showed the
aircraft in flight, and the information was engaging, not just a specification sheet.
High Interest Story
I spent time looking for the most surprising or entertaining stories for each type, such as the
three Ansons that fought off a flight of 109s. I was looking to bring the aircraft to life as
flying machines, not just museum exhibits.

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Notable Person
This is an important bit. Each panel featured an
important person from the aircraft’s history. So the
Anson spoke of Roy Chadwick, the Hunter of Neville
Duke and so on. These tied in to the “passport” booklets
I designed as the museum’s tickets. Each visitor received
a facsimile East-German passport, in keeping with the
Cold War theme of the collection. Each member of a
party would find that their passport identity was that of
a different person, whose history could be learned from
the aircraft panels.
To work in tandem with the main information panels, I also designed a number of children’s boards.
These featured cartoons of selected aircraft, giving each one a character. The kids were given activity
sheets that related to these boards, keeping them entertained throughout the visit. I came up with
this idea as an alternative to expanding the site’s rather limited children’s play area. I’m not a huge
fan of museum play areas as they split the party – Mum is sentenced to watching the kids while Dad
and the eldest son have to hurry round the exhibits. I prefer entertaining the party as a whole, and
this worked like a charm.
The direct result of these relatively low-cost initiatives was to increase average visitor dwell time to
nearly two hours and to move CAF up to second place in the region’s TripAdvisor ratings.

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Magazine Editorship
The Classic Air Force members would occasionally receive a small magazine, entitled The Meteor.
This was produced sporadically when someone found the time, and was a decent example of a
typical club magazine. Its production stopped altogether in 2013 and I was asked to take it over.
From that day forward it was produced on time every quarter, its page count doubled and its writing
and production values moved up to rival the likes of FlyPast and Aeroplane. Word got round and, for
the first time in years, membership started to grow. A healthy correspondence grew with members
and at last we had involvement and a relationship with our supporters. The articles came to the
notice of the mainstream magazines and I’m now writing articles for wider publication.

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Air Shows
One of the main Classic Air Force USPs was that most of the aircraft
were still flyable. So why, I asked frequently, did we never stage an
air show? I was told that they were too expensive and complex,
and that the collection was too small to make an attractive show.
Persistence paid off and we finally staged a small display in the
Autumn of 2014. It was a huge success, soon to be followed by an
even better event when we aired four of our veteran jets on an
event I named ‘Vintage Whine’. Their success allowed me to
organise further shows at Coventry in 2015.
I recognised from the outset that we lacked the resources to fill the
sky with aircraft. We weren’t in the Duxford/RIAT league, and if we
billed our shows in the same vein then we were doomed to
disappoint. Instead I put together small, themed events with an
intimate, close to the action feel. They worked, and we found that
our gentle, modest little productions were punching way above
their weight on the display circuit.
And what was my involvement in them? Quite simply, everything,
from being the CAA-nominated organiser to local authority liaison,
traffic management, design, advertising, ticketing and even
providing commentary on the days.
The End of it All
Towards the end of 2015, CAF’s founder, Mike Collett, took the decision to retire from vintage
aviation and to close down the unique and much-loved collection he’d assembled. While that’s
opened the door for me to devote time (far more profitably!) to my other clients, it’s left a massive
hole. I daily recall the challenges and rewards of beautiful, historic machines and being involved with
the maddest, most demanding, frustrating and deeply missed friends with whom it’s ever been my
privilege to work.

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A Brief History of Shaw
The Early Years
Other than the benefits of a grammar school education and a passable degree in physical chemistry,
there’s not a great deal of relevance to be found in my formative years. In fact it’s not until 1975
that we find the first stirrings of a marketing bent.
I’d joined Dunlop as a very junior part of their
Denovo marketing team. Denovo, in case (like
the rest of the world) you failed to notice its
existence, was “The safest tyre in the world”,
being able to cope with a catastrophic blow-out
without loss of control.
My job, in addition to occasional brochure
modelling in small Italian cars, was to blow a
one-inch hole in the sidewall at 70mph and then drive through a slalom. This was relatively
spectacular, after which the presentation by the marketing manager was inevitably an anti-climax.
He and I hatched the scheme of creating an audio visual experience using Kodak Carousels, two cine
projectors, a reel-to-reel tape recorder and a pair of record decks. So it was that we accidentally
stumbled upon – and possibly invented – multimedia.
1980s
Some years were spent finding out what I’m not good at – notably being one form or another of
sales representative – before I found myself as a director of the north-east’s largest marketing
agency. During one particularly important pitch I put together a basic multimedia presentation using
the all-new Harvard Graphics. The audience was spellbound and the seed sown in the seventies
finally put forth shoots.

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1990s
Now that the PC revolution was finally under way I set up as a one-man multimedia agency in my
garden shed. I created digital mailshots that my clients sent out on floppy disk, almost single-
handedly paving the way for the mountain of Spam that now fills our inboxes. I remain unashamed.
With the advent of the CD-ROM I moved into
retail multimedia, developing the ground-
breaking interactive documentaries invented by
FlagTower and several award-winning
educational products for Marshall Cavendish.
Demand was building and I teamed up with an
ex-boss from my old life to set up Magnetic
Media, later MagMed, one of the very first multimedia agencies. By the end of the nineties we
employed over thirty people.
2000s
While producing retail multimedia like Animal Safari and Science Lab for Marshall Cavendish and
Gardeners’ World for the BBC, we continued to develop marketing products for corporate clients. I
wanted to develop this full-service marketing offering and, in 2000, split very amicably from
Magmed to set up my own agency in Stafford. Toad Marketing grew to become the area’s largest
and leading full-service marketing organisations.
Business presentations were a particular speciality and so, frustrated by the shortcomings of
PowerPoint, I set about inventing something better. The result was Configurative, an exceptionally
powerful and flexible presentation platform.
Dreams of No-Empire
My early years as an independent consisted of working away in my garden shed, dreaming of leading
an organisation with premises and staff. By the time the new century arrived, and my sixtieth
birthday loomed, I found myself leading such an organisation and dreaming about being back in my
shed. And there, figuratively, is where I now find myself – and I couldn’t be happier. I’ve never been
the best of delegators, and so I love doing it all – from building websites to designing marketing
materials, from writing for magazines to writing my stories and novels. At last I can choose what I
want to work on and have fun dealing with people who share my interests.
It would be an exaggeration to say that every day is a delight, but I’m getting damn’ close.

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Contact Details
Mobile: 07837 081 072
Email: jem@jemshaw.com
Websites: www.jemshaw.com
www.books.jemshaw.com