Emap's women's titles will collaborate on single portal

by Andrew McCormick, Media Week 11-Sep-07

LONDON - Emap has started work on an ambitious digital project that will see its women's titles brought together in a single portal.

Content from titles Grazia, Heat, Closer and First will be aggregated to produce what is intended to be the consumer division's flagship website.

The project is the second major digital publication that Emap's consumer division is working on, after details of a separate fashion project came to light in July (Media Week, 17 July, page 5).

Andrew Robb, who last month joined Emap Consumer Media as lifestyle digital director, will head the project.

Plans are at an early stage - top digital executives at the firm met last week to discuss what shape the collaboration should take.

The initiative has been inspired by the success of Conde Nast Interactive's Stylefinder website, although a source close to the project said that the portal would not necessarily be a direct competitor to Stylefinder.

Emap is also keen to add to its stable of digital properties, having taken some major blows to its consumer titles in the latest audited circulation figures.

Executives at Emap think highly of WGSN, the business-to-business website that provides online research, trends and analysis to the fashion industry, and are keen to replicate this success in the consumer arena. Emap forked out £140m in October 2005 for WGSN, but is hiring staff to work on in-house start-ups.

Emap Consumer Media has only this year launched a website for its popular celebrity weekly, Heat. The appointment of Robb is intended to speed up the delivery of online projects and put the digital consumer project at the centre of the firm's online plans.

Emap is keeping busy on digital projects as investors circle over the company, seeking to pick off the separate divisions.

The consumer initiative comes in addition to a fashion project headed by Geoff Campbell, the former executive publishing director of Emap Australia's men's division, who came to the UK in July to head the new venture.