Demand Launches 'Grow, Cook, Eat' Series

Demand Media’s service-oriented portal eHow.com on Thursday (Aug. 5) launched Grow, Cook, Eat, a new organic cooking-themed series that will be the first of several planned brand-friendly original series.Grow, Cook, Eat is hosted by current eHow.com contributor Willi Galloway, who encourages readers to grow their own fruits and vegetables for meals in her blog DigginFood.The new series is part of a planned redesign of eHow, which will soon organize its content into six user-and-advertiser-friendly channels: eHow Family, eHow Food, eHow Health, eHow Home, eHow Money and eHow Style.“This is a step in the reinvention, or evolution of our brand,” said eHow.com gm Gregory Boudewijn.The plan is to launch multiple original series in each channel using contributors who have previously established a voice on eHow, and ideally an existing following, according to Steven Kydd, evp of Demand Media Studios.“What we’ve seen over the past four years [since Demand purchased eHow.com] is that we’ve really raised the bar of quality and have broadened our appeal,” he said. “We started with really task oriented content, and now we want to start to tell some stories.”Indeed, a big drive behind the redesign and the slew of new video series is to help attract more regular users, not just those searching for a particular topic. Plus, shows like Grow, Cook, Eat should assuage the concerns of brands which think of companies like Demand as content factories designed to pump out cheap, search-oriented articles. The company has yet to show the new series to advertisers, but will start this week.For eHow’s upcoming series slate, Kydd said he expects to draw talent ranging from relatively unknown niche bloggers to ex-professionals from the traditional media space. In fact, he sees eHow’s large audience (internal numbers put the site at a massive 69 million unique users) as competitive to the TV world. “We see our talent emerging in the same way that the Food Network built its superstars,” he said.Take a look at an episode here.

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Demand Launches 'Grow, Cook, Eat' Series

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