Nine unites verticals under 9Honey network umbrella as Helen McCabe seeks better TV and digital integration
Nine has brought together a number of its verticals under the umbrella brand of 9Honey to launch Nine’s women’s network in Helen McCabe’s first big move since being appointed head of lifestyle in July.
9Honey originally launched in April 2015 as a fashion pillar for what was then known as Ninemsn, with the fashion and beauty website rebranding as 9Style while the 9Honey brand will become the overarching umbrella brand.
The launch is the first major step by Nine head of lifestyle Helen McCabe and is part of her ambition to better integrate Nine’s digital and television businesses.
this sounds more like like a very confused, ill-formed thought bubble than a clear, compelling digital strategy. The only concrete change in all of this is to pull all of the lifestyle sites/brands into a lifestyle portal under the name 9honey (and what a terrible name that is). the rest of the story is Helen making apologies for what nine’s digital lifestyle offering is not and some vague and not particularly exciting ideas for where she wants to take it. Lifestyle is such a crowded category and no-one is making a particularly good fist of it especially in terms of commercialisation. There’s a reason everyone else is aggregating anything and everything considered “lifestyle” together — it’s because on their own, they’re all too niche (aka small) to drive meaningful audience and $$. Yet pulled together, these lifestyle “portals” become little more than generic, content blackmange