Fairfax launches website for mothers
Fairfax Media has extended its reach into the online parenting sector with the launch of Essential Kids.
Fairfax, which already runs Essential Baby through the Essential Baby Network, wants to target mothers with children aged 4 to 12 with the new platform.
Essential Baby editor-in-chief Amber Robinson will also oversee Essential Kids.
The site will compete with Pacific Magazines’ Practical Parenting, which runs on the Yahoo!7 platform, and ACP Magazines’ Mother & Baby, which runs on NineMSN.
The site will feature mother bloggers Justine Davies, Kylie Orr and Sharon Alger, child psychologist Dr Kimberley O’Brien, nutritionist Dr Joanna McMillan, author Maggie Dent and technology writer Nick Broughall.
GM of Essential Baby, Melina Cruickshank, said: “As a respected and authentic online parenting community, Essential Baby mums have been connecting and sharing with each other for many years.
“Our mums join us when their babies are first born and stay connected as their families evolve. We have built Essential Kids as a direct response to their changing needs as their children have grown older with us. We know our mums are very loyal to our community so it’s been an important project for us.”
Essential Baby was one of Fairfax’s better online acquisitions, if anything I’m surprised it’s taken them this long to build on that success.
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Nothing for fathers? Single dads? Same sex parents? The 20th century certainly is an elusive thing to Fairfax Media.
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Hi Richard,
I’m the editor across Essential Baby and Essential Kids. We have a dedicated dads section on EB called ‘Being Dad’ (a partnership with the Book/DVD franchise of the same name). We also recently added a dads chat area to our popular forums.
We also frequently run stories featuring diverse family types. Just last week on EB we featured a beautiful mum who is fighting for marriage equality for herself and her partner.
The vast majority of our readers are mums or mums-to-be.
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Great to see the brand continue to grow and evolve – and also serve the ongoing needs of it’s very loyal and involved audience
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Richard, websites like this are about attracting a demographic so that ad inventory can be created and sold. The Dad’s are reading the news, business and sport (without wanting to stereotype) so Fairfax (in this case) already have their eyeballs. They want women in this demographic to spend more time online.
The content matter is simply a way to attract the demographic. It is just business and not a snub to males.
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