Since its inception in 2004, Time Inc.'s All You magazine has been distributed at Wal-Mart stores and via subscription, offering consumers money-saving tips. This week, the magazine is relaunching its site to better serve its audience during a recession. Consumers visiting the site will get exclusive coupon offers, a Web video series and "Style for Less" tips. With more Americans moving to budget-friendly shopping, this was the right time for a relaunch, said All You associate publisher Suzanne Quint. Brands such as Carvel Ice Cream, Arm & Hammer and Snapple have signed on as sponsors, offering the exclusive coupons on the site. Heinz’s Smart Ones is the site’s launch sponsor. Quint chatted with Brandweek about All You's new site and how it hopes to reach women—the magazine's target—online. Excerpts from that conversation are below.
Brandweek: You’re re-launching AllYou.com as a value destination on Monday. But the magazine is already geared towards value-oriented readers. How is this different?
Suzanne Quint: Our strategy is to be the go-to site for value-driven consumers online. The essence of what we’re doing is consistent: Women are looking for great value and that’s been our focus since we launched All You magazine five years ago. But this gives us an opportunity to bring it to her in a different way and to activate a lot of the money saving messages we have online. Women use the online site differently than they use the magazine.
BW: How so?
SQ: People go online for information and solutions to help make their lives easier and in our case, to help them save money. For example, if you want to make something for dinner tonight that doesn’t break the bank, you can go to the new AllYou.com web site. All of our recipes are budget friendly. The vast majority of them are under $3 a serving. You can search our recipes and know you are going to get something affordable for dinner that night.
Online will reach people beyond what we reach in the magazine and offer us the opportunity to provide them with content and tips and coupons on a daily basis.
BW: What’s new or different about the site? How’s it different from the other value-oriented consumer titles out there?
SQ: What makes the site unique is it’s going to marry the trusted, money-saving content with exclusive, high value coupons on products that women actually use in their daily lives. There are a lot of coupons and deal sites online. In fact, for the month of May, it was the fastest growing category of sites online, according to comScore. However, there is no place online that marries cost cutting, shopping smart and money saving tips with actual online coupons. At least, not all together. And I would argue that there is no major web site that focuses on money saving tips and marries the trusted [editorial] content with daily deals and coupons. That’s the essence of [the site relaunch]. It’s something that hasn’t been done before. It’s something we know the consumer is very interested in using as a mom.
We’re also very excited about the recipes that are featured on our site. Every recipe on this site has a cost-per-serving [feature] on it. That is unique because women can feel confident that when they check out at the register in the supermarket, if they’re using our recipes, their bill isn’t going to be a big, unwelcome surprise.
BW: Tell us about this web video series, “Supermarket Smarts,” that you’re launching (12 videos altogether, with future episodes).
SQ: It’s called “Supermarket Smarts.” It does talk about cooking with inexpensive [ingredients], but it’s more than that. It talks about how to store things for value, how to save them, how to use them in different ways. For example, we know that eggs are a low-cost food, but did you know you can freeze eggs? If you are like me and when ordering through FreshDirect you hit 11 instead of one, what are you going to do with 11, instead of one dozen eggs? One of our “Supermarket Smarts” tips of the week will show you how you can actually freeze eggs.
BW: Wait, so you can really freeze an egg?
SQ: [Laughs.] You scramble them!
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