Hearst

Hearst was our very first client. In fact, the magazine’s publisher had been a client even before we started Made by Many. In a way, it encouraged us to set up shop in the first place.

Back in 2005 a number of us were engaged by leading women's web-only destination Handbag.com, then part of the Telegraph Media Group and reaching 20m women each month. Handbag was a dot com success story and we were asked to help the management team optimise user experience and engagement, and develop some rich Web 2.0 style community features.

Our approach

Handbag already had a very active message-board community and was a fantastic product to be asked to 'socialise'. We redesigned the site and editorial process, trained the site's editors to blog and developed a social commerce proposition long before the term 'social media' was coined.

A few months later, Handbag was acquired by The National Magazine Company for £22m. The company created a standalone digital unit called Hearst Digital, and Made by Many were retained to help the rest of the portfolio - including Cosmopolitan, Harper’s Bazaar, Good Housekeeping and Country Living - with strategy, social media, design and technology consulting.

Women totally rule the social web, and Hearst’s websites reach one third of the women online in the UK

Hearst’s websites reach one third (around 4 million) of the women online in the UK. Women totally rule the social web, spending more time and money online than men. They also use the web quite differently - for getting advice, to support each other and keep in touch (as well as shopping). This offers a magazine publisher like Hearst some really interesting ways to leverage its expert content and involve ‘the people formerly known as the audience’ in more engaged, active and participatory relationships.

How it all went

As a result of working with so many publishers and media owners, including Hearst, we have a good understanding of the challenges facing a magazine publisher in the digital age. The opportunities are certainly extremely exciting but this is because the internet continues to be extremely disruptive. We helped Hearst think differently about its brands and audiences - for example, by helping the business to rationalise its portfolio online. We helped Hearst to merge Good Housekeeping, Country Living, House Beautiful and Coast magazines, into a single (and more social site) at Allaboutyou.com.