Demand Media Inks Deal with Tyra Banks for Fashion Site
Tuesday, June 29th, 2010
Demand’s deal with Tyra, and what it says about creating profitable content: you need hub sites.
Demand Media has entered into a partnership with Tyra Banks to create a new digital brand for the beauty and fashion industry.
I expect this to be similar to the company’s deal with Lance Armstrong for LiveStrong.com. Basically, the company created a new branded web site with star power, plugged it into Demand’s content pipeline and social media machine, and started printing money.
Indeed, the press release about the announcement reads:
Demand Media will work with Banks to create a new digital brand that will be inherently social, highly interactive and grounded in delivering content and experiences that respond to real consumer demand. Demand Media will leverage its leading content creation platform, social media tools and application development expertise to aggressively build a unique online destination that will launch later this year. Banks will work exclusively with Demand Media to build and promote her online presence on the new property with entertaining features, educational videos, inspiring stories and helpful applications.
Demand Media has no doubt figured out the content game, and I think it’s necessary to build these centralized, branded web site hubs in order to drive the necessary search and repeat traffic to make it profitable. In other words, taking Demand’s content and putting it on any old domain won’t work, because it won’t get the SEO traffic and repeat visitors. This could be a challenge for people looking to build out large portfolios of domain names.
Further Reading:
- In Demand (Part 2): How the Domain Business Can Benefit from Demand Media
- Demand Media Renews Ad Deal With Google
- Demand Media Rebrands with New Web Site and Logo
Tags: Demand Media, tyra banks
If you are saying MFA sites are dead, then you are correct.
It is about having a big effort put behind the idea/website. So having the social medium, combined with advertising and HEAVY star power = website success.
It takes a lot of money, and it started from their domain data. It showed them what industries needed help with, and it is paving the way for them in the future. Demand media will be a big player in the media field if this site is as successful as livestrong.