Bauer Media adds digital offerings of Cleo, Dolly and Shop to Marina Go’s portfolio
Bauer Media has handed the digital assets for young women’s titles Cleo, Dolly and Shop to Hearst-Bauer Media general manager Marina Go, with Go explaining the decision is in an effort to strengthen the company’s young women portfolio of titles online.
Speaking to Mumbrella, Go said she was appointed by Hearst to run the Hearst brands because of her digital background. Go was previously the CEO of Private Media, she launched Women’s Agenda and has also been the publishing director at Independent Digital Media.
“That was the starting point of me looking after the digital assets for Hearst and print which is different to the other publishers in the business who only look after the magazines because the digital business is split,” Go said.
“Cosmo is a Hearst brand, as my role as general manager for Hearst, I get to retain the digital assets of Cosmo but we as a business have been developing a young women’s strategy,” explained Go.
“It’s particularly important in the digital space that we have a very strong young women’s strategy and because Cosmo is the strongest brand in our young women’s portfolio at the moment it just made sense for me to look after the young women’s portfolio online.”
The digital assets for Cleo, Dolly and Shop remain part of the Xcel business with Go wearing two hats with the new responsibility.
“The Xcel team work in another building so I walk down there and sit in on the strategy meetings with the digital team and then I come back here and I run the business,” she said.
“I literally am wearing two hats. It’s the sort of role I guess over time as things grow we might have to have someone else do the hands-on day-to-day of it but at the moment because we’re still developing our strategy for our digital assets across the Hearst and young women’s group then for me to be a little more hands on with that is quite important.”
Go rejected any speculation Cleo, Dolly and Shop’s digital assets had been handed to her because publisher Sebastian Kadas was not performing.
“I work very closely with Sebastian and he looks after the brand’s in print and we work really closely together because it’s important that the brand is consistent online and offline. We have strategy days together to talk about the brands,” she said.
The focus on the young women’s portfolio follows on from Bauer Media launching its To Love network, with the Homes To Love network launching yesterday.
“Even though it feels as if the world of digital media and brands has been going for some time now we are really having to develop and grow constantly our brands on line and the strategies we need to implement in order to be successful,” Go said.
“The early priority for the business has been to get the To Love network up and running and that’s been very successful and the company is very pleased with how that’s going.”
When asked if the focus on the young women’s strategy in the digital space was in response to the growth of strong competitors such as Mamamia, Go said it was more about ensuring the titles remain relevant to its audiences.
“We have very strong competitors in the digital space but it’s less about that and more about the fact that we have strong brands, arguably stronger brands then anyone else that’s launching at the moment, and what we’re looking at doing is making sure we remain relevant to those consumers,” she said.
“In the young women space there is an increasing appetite for daily news online but we do know that the trust around that information is still really information and there isn’t anything more trustworthy than a strong brand.
“We know for example that Comso resonates for young women, we have 2.5m unique browsers for Cosmo every month, it’s one of the biggest young women brands online in the country. We never have reached more women in the history of Cosmo then we have now with our digital footprint.
“We know we’re doing something right online so now I’m looking at the rest of the portfolio and looking at what we need to do to make Cleo, Dolly and Shop increasingly relevant to its audience online. That’s what I’m focusing on right now.”
Miranda Ward
Go will be speaking at next month’s Publish Conference speaking on a panel discussing how to build businesses for success. For more information on the Publish program and for tickets click the banner below.
Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.
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