Saturday, February 05, 2011

Hearst Corporation Buys 100 Magazines, Needs Innovative Digital Focus

I just read that Hearst Corporation, owner of The San Francisco Chronicle, purchased over 100 magazines, including 102 titles covering 15 countries.

Excellent. It's a good idea to own the high-end magazines as they draw top-dollar revenues from advertisers. But the problem is that ad revenues are falling.

A purchase as large as the near $700 million on made by Hearst Corporation must have an eye toward an all-digital future.

And please, not one only focused on the frigging iPad when there are 75 tablets out there.

The digital strategy must be multi-platform. Moreover, it must consider a planning scenario where print is out of the picture, and have a plan in place.

An all digital approach that has Hearst Corporation owning news websites, blogs, and forums that match the print-originated brands.

That is a future that brings revenues from different brands poised for a solid digital existence.

A good web example to follow is NFL.com, which is a giant collection of sites of each of the 32 teams of the NFL.

 Why not one portal for the websites of the magazine brands of Hearst Corporation, and that links back to the portal from each site?

Stay tuned.

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