The Mamamia Women’s Network (MWN) eyes off podcasts, data and brand consultancy as the publisher unveils its 2016 plans.
The female-focused publisher revealed its plans for the coming year at its NewFronts in Sydney this morning (Tuesday), with the business explaining it's unifying its content under its master brand Mamamia, it's growing its podcast business by 220% and also launching its own branding consultancy named Broad Media.
Newly minted managing director of MWN, Kylie Rogers, said 2015 has been a great year for the MWN, with the business achieving everything it set out to do.
“Today we have an ecosystem of influence spanning four content brands, five podcast brands, two event brands, over two million followers across our social media channels and an influence network of over 200 women,” Rogers said.
The MWN is made up of brands, including Mamamia, The Glow, Debrief Daily and The Motherish, and it was announced this morning that while editors will continue to produce content for each of those sites, they will also now feed their content directly into the “mothership” Mamamia.
The business, which as Rogers mentioned has five podcast brands to date, is going to up that to 16 next year with the launch of new shows as it looks to diversify how it tells stories.
Mia Freedman co-founder of MWN said that from a content point of view the business is focusing more on humour, and positivity rather than negativity.
“We’ve phased out clickbait and ended outrage in 2015,” she said. “Both on our websites and on social media channels. That leads to more thoughtful opinion and a positive optimistic filter on all our content.
"Mamamia is firmly positioning itself as a high quality brand safe environment for women and advertisers.”
All the moves the publisher is making are off the back of research it conducted using a sample of 5000 of its readers, in order to understand the way women consume content and interact with brands.
Unsurprisingly women consume content in a mobile first way and they are happy to interact with content whether it's adversing or not, they just want it to be engaging.
The business also formally revealed its agency play with the publisher unveiling Broad Media, with Rogers previously telling AdNews it’s been operating a fully-fledged creative shop for brands and providing what she called “transmedia story-telling”, which merges real life experiences with online platforms.
Broad Media will be able to create content and strategy, provide research and 360 channel planning, with national sales director, Danika Johnston, explaining that: “Broad Media will be a unique media consultancy working with clients, agencies and marketers.”
Johnston also noted that the publisher's content strategy moving forward centres around “see it, click it, buy it,” and also on video, with it also rolling out an app where users can create video that can be uploaded in order to communicate with others who also use the sites. Johnston also flagged that a deal had been inked with a DMP in order better utilise publishers data.
The publisher also announced its official launch of its New York website called Flo & Frank as well as hinting at an offering in Ho Chi Minh City.
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