13th May 2008
Media Week
Media on Trial - allboutyou.com
Review by Mark Tomblin
This new website is, on paper, quite a smart idea.
Take six magazines - including some of the best-known names in UK publishing, such as Good Housekeeping, Prima and She - and create one portal for readers.
In effect, it’s a type of “matrix publishing”, which allows people to access the content by magazine or by subject.
The problem with an idea like this is that these magazines are powerful brands in their own right and “All About You” isn’t such a powerful brand.
The stronger a brand is, the greater the loyalty and sense of ownership that readers feel.
Indeed, you could argue that this is one of the cornerstones of the periodical publishing business.
So, allaboutyou.com is perhaps a more combustible proposition than the initial brainstorm might have suggested.
A glance at the chat threads on the site suggests that this is not so far from the mark.
While I admire Hearst Digital’s desire to make the portal as cutting-edge as possible, one would have to say that initial user reaction is not perhaps what the publishers would have hoped for.
Sadly, space does not permit me to quote this reaction, but I urge you to visit the reader blogs, where the gap between Hearst Digital’s dream and the actuality is made painfully clear.
That’s the trouble with brands - sometimes people really do make them an integral part of their lives. When that happens, we mess with them at our peril.
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