With today's Derby City Bride announcement, in partnership with social network software start-up Springpad, Gannett is gunning for what I'll call tweens 2: female consumers between Metromix readers, perhaps 24 and under, and the over-30 crowd at Moms Like Me. The Louisville online wedding planner works like other social networks: lots of photo galleries and user-generated content. (The Olsen Twins owned the first tweens market when I wrote about that business.)
Gannett and year-old Springpad are promoting Derby City today, but it actually launched April 2, says Anonymous@8:54 p.m. The timing looks smart: The much-anticipated Kentucky Derby will bring zillions of hits to The Courier-Journal's site on May 2 -- a week from Saturday. Assuming Gannett's Ripple6 consumer tracking software is woven into this and other bridal sites, GCI can hand Kay Jewelers and other advertisers lots of data to sell against.Weddings are crazy expensive. When I wrote about the rise of wedding photojournalism, a typical wedding cost about $19,000 -- and that was in 2001.
From today's press release: Spring Partners today announced a springpad for publishers co-branding program that gives publishers a new communications channel to attract and engage readers with the springpad personal organizer. Co-branded springpads make publisher and advertiser content and offers portable and useful, extending the publishers' brand into their readers' daily activity, event and project planning.
Gannett’s first co-branded springpad, the Derby City Bride Wedding Planner, is a free online notebook to help Louisville brides plan and manage their entire wedding experience.So, that's what it's About!
Here's the latest version: Gannett Co. Inc. is an international news and information company operating on multiple platforms including the Internet, mobile, newspapers, magazines and TV stations. Gannett is an Internet leader with hundreds of newspaper and TV Web sites; CareerBuilder, the nation's top employment site; USAToday.com; and more than 80 local MomsLikeMe.com sites.
Gannett publishes 85 daily U.S. newspapers, including USA Today, the nation's largest-selling daily newspaper, and more than 850 magazines and other non-dailies including USA Weekend. Gannett also operates 23 television stations in 19 U.S. markets. Gannett subsidiary Newsquest is the United Kingdom's second largest regional newspaper company with 17 daily paid-for titles, more than 200 weekly newspapers, magazines and trade publications, and a network of Website.Please post your replies in the comments section, below. To e-mail confidentially, write gannettblog[at]gmail[dot-com]; see Tipsters Anonymous Policy in the green rail, upper right.
[Cover: This week's USA Weekend features the Make A Difference Day Awards franchise]
C'mon Jim, you're a better journalist than that.
ReplyDeleteThe site didn't launch today - go give a quick read on the springpad blog.
April 2.
Sheesh.
D'oh!
ReplyDeleteGannett. Still playing catchup I see.
ReplyDeleteDon't just take my word for it: http://springpartners.com/2009/04/springpad-launches-a-wedding-planner-with-derbycitybridecom
ReplyDeletePretty low-key launch, if it takes that long to get out a press release.
This is big,even though no one realizes it. It is the first step in many more to come in the future.
ReplyDeleteIt is perfectly normal to launch a site and announce it two weeks later. You don't want to launch and announce at the same time. That's just asking for any launch problems to be amplified by the increased traffic.
ReplyDeleteSpringpad is a new tool to Derbycitybride.com, from what I'm told. The site itself has been live and active since 2nd quarter 2008.
ReplyDelete