Yahoo7 unveils entertainment and lifestyle offering, Be
Yahoo7 has unveiled its new lifestyle and entertainment offering, Be, three months after Pacific Magazines brought its digital assets back in-house.
Launched today ahead of an official launch in July, Be is the result of Yahoo7 partnering with Australian personalities to create and publish video and socially-driven content designed to attract audiences to the website from its branded social channels.
Speaking with Mumbrella, Ed Harrison, CEO of Yahoo7, said what’s “unique” about Be is that it was “born out of the insight that personality-led content does trump general lifestyle-entertainment content”.
“Strong personalities with strong media followings can be incredibly valuable and that’s our starting point for all of this. It’s recognising the power of social media for content distribution,” he said.
Launch personalities include:
- Maz Compton, radio personality: entertainment
- Ash Pollard, ex-My Kitchen Rules contestant and television personality: food
- Scott Gooding, ex-My Kitchen Rules contestant and fitness and health expert: health & fitness
A fourth personality who will lead the fashion vertical will be revealed at the Be launch event on July 14.
Harrison said: “The point of picking these celebrities – what we’re trying to get from that, is something really authentic, very accessible and also really credible. They bring large followings with them in the process, and that’s the areas that they cover. They’ll be creating content in all of those areas.
Compton will drive content across the Be entertainment vertical
“It’s really multi-layered in terms of our approach to editorial. They’re the backbone if you like, the first layer of content and a lot of what they do will be video-led.
“Then we have our own Yahoo editorial staff who’ll be looking to amplify this content and create digital content that complements what they’re doing. Then we have the final layer which is utilising the Yahoo global contributor network which is many different sources that we’re able to access that play into the themes that our personalities are tackling and writing about.”
Harrison: Be is something that’s been in play for a long time
Harrison declined to reveal how big the Yahoo7 editorial team is, saying only that it is “substantial”.
“It’s the group of people who were previously working across the traditional verticals and were working on the individual mastheads for Pacific Magazines. It’s a sizeable group of people who’ll be contributing to this,” he said.
Harrison said the plan is to generate around 150 pieces of content per week including both video and written content.
“When you get that sort of scale you can provide content daily, which is really important because it is about creating Be as a daily habit,” he said.
In terms of how much of that content will be produced by the personalities heading up the verticals, Harrison admitted it was on the smaller side, describing it as “a handful”.
“They would be the key, marquee piece – relatively small in number, but we anticipate large in terms of engagement. Those are the big bits we’ll be pushing hard across the social media channels,” he explained.
The editorial team then draws on the Yahoo global contributor team, which includes paid and unpaid blogger contributors.
On the commercial front, Harrison said Be is supported with a combination of sponsorship, native advertising and video.
“In amongst all of that there will be lots of opportunities for advertisers to get involved, from basic forms of advertising to quite integrated. We can cover that whole spectrum,” he said.
Be will also use Yahoo’s e-commerce platform Polyvore, which Yahoo acquired in 2015. Polyvore offers Be a combination of “content and utility”.
Polyvore will allow the Be audience to explore “sets” of fashion based on outfits worn by celebrities at events which can be explored and then bought by users.
The launch of Yahoo7’s Be comes three months after Seven West Media took the digital assets for its Pacific Magazines properties back from Yahoo7.
Yahoo7 now creates native advertising for the Pacific Magazines brands but other aspects of the business, like e-commerce, are controlled in-house.
Commenting on the relationship of the launch of Be to the change in the Pacific Magazines-Yahoo7 relationship, Harrison said:”This is something that’s been in play for a very long time and it’s acknowledgement that we can each play to our own strengths.
“Pac Mags using the individual masthead brands as the lead allows us to re-think the way we manage lifestyle-entertainment content. It’s very complementary and that’s why we’ve been able to come to the agreement we have with Pac Mags.”
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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