MSN, BermanBraun Interactive and Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S., publisher of ELLE, Woman’s Day and ELLE DECOR brands, have partnered to launch a new online lifestyle experience focused on style, beauty, relationships and home décor. The new site, which will launch in the first half of next year, will present a wide range of accessible content in an aspirational and innovative visual package. The design, programming and operations of the new digital brand will be spearheaded by BermanBraun and HFM U.S. MSN will lead the advertising sales efforts along with HFM U.S. on selected accounts.
BermanBraun and MSN, earlier this year, created and launched Wonderwall.com, which has become one of the top celebrity online news destinations reaching an average of 9.5 million unique users and 225 million page views a month in the U.S. since launch. Wonderwall.com has proved to be popular with advertisers and has achieved substantial success, compelling MSN and BermanBraun to extend their relationship and bring in HFM U.S., which has deep experience in establishing women’s brands on multiple platforms. The new lifestyle site, similar to Wonderwall.com, will be distributed through MSN and promoted on HFM U.S. Web sites and magazine properties. MSN will lead the advertising sales effort along with HFM U.S.
The lifestyle online category currently reaches an average of 100 million people every month, which is more than half of the online audience in the U.S. MSN Lifestyle is highly successful, averaging 7.3 million monthly unique users and 86 million monthly page views over the past 10 months. The new site will be designed to appeal to the highly valuable adult female audience, ages 25–49, building upon the existing MSN audience. This category of users is increasingly spending more time online and looking to the Internet for information on a range of topics. Adult females online are valuable to advertisers, as they tend to be affluent, educated and married with children, and drive many purchasing decisions for their families.
“Lifestyle is one of our top priorities because of its growing popularity and strong appeal to the adult female audience and advertisers that wish to reach them. We see a great opportunity to expand on our current lifestyle offering by delivering a new experience that is unique to the broader lifestyle category,” said Scott Moore, U.S. executive producer, MSN. “We’re excited to build on our proven model with BermanBraun, adding the category branding expertise and panache of HFM U.S. to deliver a compelling new lifestyle experience on MSN.”
“HFM U.S.’s vision is to build strong leading brands,” said Alain Lemarchand, president and CEO, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. “We believe that the strengths within our relationship are complementary, and together we can create an online destination that will be a unique and compelling experience for women.”
“We are thrilled to be in business with a world-class partner such as Hachette,” said principals Gail Berman and Lloyd Braun. “We look forward to building on our relationship with MSN and creating an innovative and unique lifestyle experience.”
