‘We are not going to sell out’: Are Media heads stress importance of quality journalism
Trusted content brands matter now more than ever, and while Are Media plans to expand its content commerce business, the publisher’s chief executive officer, Jane Huxley, and director of sales, Andrew Cook, have stressed the importance of also maintaining quality journalism.
At its annual Ignite event last week, Are Media – which publishes leading titles including The Australian Women’s Weekly, ELLE, marie claire, and Gourmet Traveller, among others – unveiled a suite of new initiatives to expand on its content commerce offering.
Driven by the audience’s trust in Are Media’s brands, and the connections they have built over the years, the publisher will launch promo codes ahead of the Black Friday/Cyber Monday and Christmas shopping periods, and plans to add live and dynamic pricing on products mentioned in editorial. It will also launch social shopping executions for shopping events, and will expand email marketing during peak sale events.
“Our brands are more valuable than they ever were, so what content commerce allows us to do is diversify our revenue by playing the same role that we’ve always played, but doing it in a new and relevant way to what people are looking at today,” Huxley told Mumbrella.
Huxley and Cook
Aiming to “reduce friction in the experience”, Are Media will allow the audience to purchase recommended products directly from within the environment.
But, what Huxley also acknowledged, is the importance of not overdoing it or selling out.
“Content commerce is critical because it contextualises the role we’ve always played,” she continued. “It helps to diversify our revenue, which funds our journalism… Otherwise, what we’re going to be doing is just responding to whoever has got the deepest pockets.”
She said publishers around the world are becoming more vocal about this and the need to fund journalism, but there are always hesitations. The way Are Media’s titles execute the fine balance between editorial and commercial content is so important, especially if it wants to keep the trust it has built with Australian women.
“This is something we think about a lot, so our approach is with two editorial teams – we have a team that writes for our consumers and our brands, and that’s a different implied contract with our readers,” Huxley told Mumbrella. “It’s real journalism that’s based on intuition, thought, research, or knowledge.
“And then we also have commercial teams that write in the tone and under the same mastheads, but we are very careful about that. As I said, the most valuable asset that we have in the company are those brands, and we are not going to sell them out because we intend to be here in another hundred years.”
Cook described the content commerce expansion as the one of the last “missing elements” in closing the loop: “We’re getting real interest because we have that full funnel connection now that we can talk to clients about.
“Getting to the end of the funnel is really important now for marketers, and we have that as an opportunity particularly behind the brands that we have and how we know how to connect with the Australian women,” he told Mumbrella.
“So from a marketing point of view, it’s really added additional weight to our discussions in market, because we can go full circle,” he added.
He said Are Media is simply leaning into its position as a leader in influencing its audience, with its new research, conducted in partnership with Pollinate, demonstrating just how powerful it really is.
“We’re talking about clout, curation, and confidence – and it’s lived out in that discussion, which makes it ring so true,” he concluded.
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Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the agency beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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Sorry, there’s very little real journalism in Are Media’s digital space. It’s all talk and no substance.
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