Are Media’s new CEO Sally Eagle has outlined her plans to transform the publisher’s approach to reader acquisition, engagement and mitigating the threat of AI in an exclusive chat with B&T.
B&T spoke with Eagle and Jocelin Abbey, its GM of homes & lifestyle, ahead of the reveal of its new direct-to-consumer push debuting with a new membership offering for 90-year-old title The Australian Women’s Weekly.
The tier will give readers exclusive access to premium content, seasonal weekly recipe plans informed by more than 27,000 tried-and-tested recipes from The Weekly Test Kitchen, monthly digital masterclasses, exclusive dining events, digital magazine access, cookbook discounts and member offers.
“Over the last couple of years, we’ve been think more clearly about the audience. We know that our audience comes to us on trust. They’ve been coming to some of our brands for over 100 years. They’ve always relied on us and now we are strengthening the relationship with them,” Eagle said.
“This direct-to-audience play is a way for us to really inspire and build on that community to create incredible pathways where people can engage with The Australian Women’s Weekly brand, not just in print form, but across social, masterclass videos that we’re making exclusive for members, in-person events,” added Abbey. “We’re evolving to become multi-platform, multifunctional publishing business that sits across all those avenues.”
Much of the groundwork, Eagle said, had been laid by previous Are Media CEO Jane Huxley. She said Huxley had done a “wonderful job” building the business’ tech roadmap and reconfiguring its tech stack.
Challenges & Opportunities
It is no secret that Australian publishing businesses are facing a myriad of challenges.
Are Media is squaring off against new-ish competitors such as Mamamia and Broadsheet, while also battling with transforming itself from a legacy print publisher to something more rounded. And that’s before you even get started discussing the impacts of AI.
That said, growth for the sake of growth is not one of Eagle’s priorities for Are Media. In her mind, it doesn’t lead to valuable content for readers or return on investment for advertisers and partners—including SMEG, with which Are Media has recently inked a deep, long-term partnership.
The partnership will see SMEG’s products integrated throughout The Australian Women’s Weekly and used in its test kitchen.
“It was born from shared values around quality and the creative role that food plays,” said Abbey, “our studios service the entire business… so SMEG’s products are being used across the board in Are Media.”
“Obviously reach is really important and yes there’s a place for scale. There are a lot of media businesses in the Australian media landscape that do scale a lot better than Are Media,” said Eagle.
“We don’t have a reach problem. We can connect with many, many Australian women. But what we want to do is have a better connection and ensure we have a two-way conversation with them. We have a better first-party data opportunity to ensure the content we’re giving them is relevant. Yes, it’s a revenue stream… it’s just a different touch point in terms of how we’re talking to them and, from a business perspective, monetising our audiences. Reach is really important still. But for us, particularly so with the fragmented landscape, an engaged audience is our number one priority.”
This change in approach, what Eagle is calling a consumer growth framework, has launched with The Australian Women’s Weekly but there is more to come. Each brand will receive a bespoke offering, too, with Women’s Weekly serving as a template, rather than a cookie-cutter mould. Each masthead’s readers will want something slightly different, after all.
A desire to engage, rather than simply reach audiences, is also reflected in Are Media’s new talent acquisitions. A new line-up of food creators and experts have joined the title: MasterChef Australia alumni Laura Sharrad and Depinder Chhibber, alongside food creator and author Karima-Chloe Hazim. It has also strengthened its finance content offering with 9News Money editor Effie Zahos in charge.
A new brand campaign ‘With Australian Women, For Life’ is supporting everything and seeks to capture The Australian Women’s Weekly’s 93-year relationship with Australian women and its enduring role across their key life stages, with a focus on food, health, finance, travel and community.
AI & search degradation
However, what is clear is that there is one big, potentially existential challenge (and potentially some opportunities) facing all of Are Media’s titles: AI. Fortunately, Are Media’s rivals are also grappling with how to manage the technological change.
“Overseas and News [Corp] have done licensing deals with OpenAI. We are fortunate that lot of our content has not been digitised—it’s one of the benefits of having brands that are 100 years old. Now we can digitise it with AI, which we couldn’t do before because it was cost-prohibitive. It’s an opportunity for us… and one that we will leverage soon. All of this content that is not digitised will be included in a paid membership for The Australian Women’s Weekly,” said Eagle.
Eagle said that AI is having a “limited” impact on its page views, noticeably around its previously ever-reliable evergreen content, like ‘How To Fold A Bed Sheet’. As such, it’s having to pivot the way it produces and maintains content.
“That content surfaces in Chat[GPT] and we don’t get the click on the site. That’s annoying because they’re stealing our content but we’re creating a deeper and more direct relationship, so we don’t necessarily care what Google does,” said Eagle.
“Google, it depends on how they wake up that day as to how much traffic you get. We’re always looking at our data, traffic sources and we’ll continue to have to do that. But we’re having really strong success with brands, coming to us so we can write content on our platforms that gets their brands surfaced in ChatGPT.
“You cannot build a business and rely on Google. You just can’t and having a really strong consumer growth roadmap and framework, for us, is incredibly important. It will make sure our brands will continue to be relevant for many years to come and it means we can start to our own destiny, as opposed to being worried about sleeping with one eye open around what search is going to be for your site that week.
“Consumers continue to come to us because they trust us. Yes, they might go to Google to get the directions to the restaurant but they’re going to Gourmet Traveller to see which restaurant to go to because they don’t trust OpenAI.”
What’s next?
It’s clear from talking to Eagle that there’s still plenty on her mind about what the coming months and years will hold for Are Media—not least the fact that it is still up for sale.
Private equity firm Mercury Capital currently owns Are Media and commenced a sale process in July last year. Now, nearly a year on, Eagle said there was “really no update”.
“These things take time. We’ve seen it happen in the market with the QMS sale. We really want to make sure that we find the right buyer and the right long-term fit for our brands. So for us it’s business as usual,” she said.
While it might be business as usual, there’s no getting away from the fact that it is a challenging market for publishing businesses.
“It is challenging,” said Eagle. “The budget, interest rates, that proves it’s uncertain times for our clients. Where we have the best success and where we continue to perform is solving problems for them… It’s tough out there. Briefs are coming through the door. We’re building our relationships with agencies. We’re doing a good job there. We’re showing up more than we’ve show up before.
“But also, we want our media in Australia to be successful. I want everyone to be successful. I want Broadsheet to be successful. I want Mamamia to be successful. That means it’s a fruitful economy in Australia and that’s good for our audiences.”
But with a roadmap in place, and Eagle’s laser-focus on data to inform stories, engage audiences and provide return for clients, the 90-year-old Women’s Weekly might be set for the 21st century.
