New Zealand’s number one female lifestyle website, nzgirl.co.nz, today announced plans to establish itself as an independent publisher in 2010 and appoint Tee Twyford as General Manager/Editor.

Following on from the announcement that parent company Flossie Media Group is set to move head office to Sydney, Australia; CEO, Jenene Freer, today made the following announcement regarding nzgirl.co.nz;

“Flossie Media Group is the current owner of nzgirl.co.nz (and nzgirl Ltd); from the 1st of January nzgirl will operate under a new company structure. FMG is an aggregating business while nzgirl is a publishing businesss and we felt that due to the vast dynamic differences in operations that nzgirl needed to establish itself separately as an independent publisher to enable it to thrive and grow.

December 11th marks the 10 year anniversary of nzgirl.co.nz and over this time it has consistently grown and provided a solid financial return. This past year alone nzgirl produced a 60% EBIT. We believe under its new operational structure and management it will produce even better results for the shareholders.

In addition we have appointed wunderkind editor-in-chief from Flossie Media Group, Tee Twyford, as General Manager/Editor of nzgirl. She will be charged with executing a major overhaul of the site and meeting pretty substantial growth targets. Her impressive track record over the last 18 months at Flossie has given us the confidence that Tee will deliver exceptional results for both shareholders and advertisers.

The nzgirl office will continue to be based in Auckland. For all advertising and editorial enquiries please contact;

Tee Twyford
General Manager/Editor
nzgirl.co.nz
tee.twyford@nzgirl.co.nz
+64 21 469 447

“Over the past 18 months we have successfully created a brand in New Zealand and Australia that connects women with content and women with advertisers on a mass scale.

Since embarking on this journey in July 2008 we have seen the advertising market undertake enormous changes. This has inspired us to review our entire portfolio of products and the way we operate in the New Zealand & Australian market.

We found demand remains in direct response and the most popular measurement currency continues to be CTR. With this in mind we have taken the approach of ‘delivering to the demand’. From January 2010 we will no longer be offering display advertising as part of our service and will be morphing our business to focus purely on one-to-one communication with our core product being focused on an automated and aggregated email service. This will include solus emails and newsletters – plus content syndication and integration into social media.

We recognize the challenge for networks such as ours to sustain revenue from display advertising. Without owning our ‘eyeballs’, it is difficult to negotiate the large scale deals that the portals are able to offer. However, without publishers, we cannot offer the reach agencies demand.

We know we can deliver engaging one-on-one communication within the niche communities of our publishers. As a great example of how effective this communication channel can be, $1000 spent on display would drive on average 100 clicks, whereas the equivalent spent on a newsletter would drive 600.

Undeniably, the Australian market, still represents the best opportunity for scale and therefore alongside our change in focus, Flossie Media Group will be changing location with our head office moving to Sydney. All campaign management and product development will be run from Australia and New Zealand will operate a satellite sales team only. This change will take effect from January 2010.

Our publishers currently within the network are hugely supportive of our strategic change and we are working with them to make recommendations on the appropriate network partners to take on their display advertising ongoing. It is imperative for us that the sales pipeline is managed well so that all clients are satisfied that we are able to honour forward bookings and proposals.

Over the next few weeks we will be meeting with key agencies to showcase the new newsletter and content network.

For further information, please contact Jenene Freer, CEO, Flossie Media Group:

 jenene.freer@flossiemediagroup.com