MSN, BermanBraun, and Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. Partner to Launch New Online Lifestyle Experience

Site will launch in the first half of the new year with a focus on fashion, style, beauty, relationships, and home décor.

REDMOND, Wash., LOS ANGELES and NEW YORK - MSN, BermanBraun Interactive and Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. (HFM U.S.), publisher of ELLE, Woman’s Day and ELLE DECOR brands, have partnered to launch a new online lifestyle experience focused on style, beauty, relationships and home décor. The new site, which will launch in the first half of next year, will present a wide range of accessible content in an aspirational and innovative visual package. The design, programming and operations of the new digital brand will be spearheaded by BermanBraun and HFM U.S. MSN will lead the advertising sales efforts along with HFM U.S. on selected accounts.

BermanBraun and MSN, earlier this year, created and launched Wonderwall.com, which has become one of the top celebrity online news destinations reaching an average of 9.5 million unique users and 225 million page views a month in the U.S. since launch. Wonderwall.com has proved to be popular with advertisers and has achieved substantial success, compelling MSN and BermanBraun to extend their relationship and bring in HFM U.S., which has deep experience in establishing women’s brands on multiple platforms. The new lifestyle site, similar to Wonderwall.com, will be distributed through MSN and promoted on HFM U.S. Web sites and magazine properties. MSN will lead the advertising sales effort along with HFM U.S.

The lifestyle online category currently reaches an average of 100 million people every month, which is more than half of the online audience in the U.S. MSN Lifestyle is highly successful, averaging 7.3 million monthly unique users and 86 million monthly page views over the past 10 months. The new site will be designed to appeal to the highly valuable adult female audience, ages 25–49, building upon the existing MSN audience. This category of users is increasingly spending more time online and looking to the Internet for information on a range of topics. Adult females online are valuable to advertisers, as they tend to be affluent, educated and married with children, and drive many purchasing decisions for their families.

“Lifestyle is one of our top priorities because of its growing popularity and strong appeal to the adult female audience and advertisers that wish to reach them. We see a great opportunity to expand on our current lifestyle offering by delivering a new experience that is unique to the broader lifestyle category,” said Scott Moore, U.S. executive producer, MSN. “We’re excited to build on our proven model with BermanBraun, adding the category branding expertise and panache of HFM U.S. to deliver a compelling new lifestyle experience on MSN.”

“HFM U.S.’s vision is to build strong leading brands,” said Alain Lemarchand, president and CEO, Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. “We believe that the strengths within our relationship are complementary, and together we can create an online destination that will be a unique and compelling experience for women.”

“We are thrilled to be in business with a world-class partner such as Hachette,” said principals Gail Berman and Lloyd Braun. “We look forward to building on our relationship with MSN and creating an innovative and unique lifestyle experience.”

More Information

More details about the new online lifestyle experience are available on the MSN Blog at http://msnblog.msn.com.

About BermanBraun

BermanBraun is an independent media company whose three divisions - television, feature film and digital media - create and exploit entertainment content and advertising solutions throughout the world. The Santa Monica, Calif.-based company, founded by principals Gail Berman and Lloyd Braun in January 2007, has separate strategic global alliances with NBC and Microsoft to create and distribute creative content across all platforms.

In February 2009, BermanBraun launched WONDERWALL - the primary celebrity destination on the MSN Network. BermanBraun is presently producing two network series for the 2009/2010 television season, including MERCY on NBC and ACCIDENTALLY ON PURPOSE on CBS. BermanBraun is also producing the series IS SHE REALLY GOING OUT WITH HIM? for MTV.

About Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. (HFM U.S.) (www.hfmus.com)

Hachette Filipacchi Media U.S. (HFM U.S.) serves consumers’ passions and lifestyles through trusted, expert content that entertains and inspires on all media platforms. Illustrated with extraordinary images, these engaging editorial environments combine with highly-targeted demographics and scale to create rich opportunities for our advertisers. Our prestigious brands include: Fashion, Beauty and Design (ELLE, ELLE DECOR, and ELLEgirl); Women & Wellness (Woman’s Day, Woman’s Day Special Interest Publications); Automotive (Car and Driver and Road & Track as part of Jumpstart Automotive Group); Motorcycling (Cycle World) and Entertainment (Premiere). HFM U.S. is part of Lagardère’s (www.lagardere.com) media division Lagardère Active, a producer of special-interest content in more than 40 countries.

About MSN and Windows Live

Overall, MSN, Windows Live and Microsoft.com attract more than 600 million unique users worldwide per month. With localized versions available globally in 46 markets and 21 languages, MSN is a world leader in delivering Web services to consumers and online advertising opportunities to businesses worldwide.

About Microsoft

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

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