LVMH launches luxury online magazine “Nowness”

As The Guardian reported late February, French firm LVMH's online magazine promises to blur the lines between
editorial and promotional content some more but in a "beautiful" way!

In a move likely to provoke more debate on church/state separation in
the publishing world, Louis Vuitton Moet Hennessy (LVMH) enlisted
digital commerce company CreateThe Group to create and
position Nowness as an "information reference" – a place for
users to experience "moments of inspiration" and "experience
the luxury lifestyle online."

Until now, the printed
Acne magazine, from the epnymous Swedish clothing label, was the only prominent example of a distinguished yet
high-end fashion magazine produced by a brand/advertiser. Nowness will hope to be seen as its online
equivalent. The digital magazine Nowness had been in teaser mode since LVMH shut down its
online store, eLuxury.com, and switched the site to the new name and
editorial concept.

Nowness.com, currently only available in English, boasts a simple, minimalist design
and features mostly a daily multimedia story. So far, as on many luxury sites, the interactivity is not a
free-for-all, but relatively controlled. Visitors can’t leave comments,
but they can vote “like” or “don’t like” on each presentation, and the
site will direct a visitor to similar or different content from the
archive. A navigator called the “Explorer” groups random titles from the
archive by color and size to graphically represent their popularity.

The content
ranges from art, fashion and photography to architecture to design, and
will be created and curated by an international team of contributors and
editors. LVMH said: "Nowness is a brand of the luxury group LVMH, but
the content is editorially independent."

The site has been getting about 10 000 visitors a month (according to WWD), although the company expects more after the full launch. The site has
several thousand fans on Twitter and Facebook already, and a database of 300 000
members who have registered on the site. Eventually, Nowness
will think about revenue and advertising, as well as content
partnerships with brands, “as soon as traffic is high enough to be
interesting to potential partners,” as Kamel Ouadi, Digital EVP for Nowness explained to WWD in a recent interview. According to him, the site wants to work
with luxury brands outside the LVMH family.  I can't imagine competitve brands rushing to advertise on the site personally, but that's just me.

Lagardère Active launches 25th edition of ELLE DECORATION in Indonesia

Lagardère Active recently announced the signature of a license agreement with PT Trinaya Tirta for the launch of ELLE DECORATION in Indonesia, whose first issue came out on February 22nd. PT Trinaya has already been publishing ELLE successfully under license for now 2 years in Indonesia and Adeline Juni Mewengkang, already editor-in-chief of ELLE, has also been appointed editorial director for ELLE DECORATION. The title will have a print run of 50 000 copies and will sell for 48800 RP (about €3,80).

The ELLE DECORATION brand has developed through a wide range of activities and is now a platform-agnostic global media brand catering to avid decor enthusiasts everywhere.  Content is available on websites, brand extensions such as magazine spin-offs, TV programs, several local events and the ELLE DECORATION INTERNATIONAL DESIGN AWARDS, which are now considered the worldwide annual rendez-vous for world-class designers and manufacturers.

The ELLE DECORATION network, the world’s number one style magazine for the home, now boasts:

* more than 8,5 million readers worldwide
* a yearly circulation of more than 20 million copies
* more than 10 000 advertising pages in 2009
* 34 000 editorial pages in 2009