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Hearst Magazines, a renowned U.S.-based publisher of such well-known titles as Esquire, Popular Mechanics and O, The Oprah Magazine, has selected WoodWing’s Enterprise system as their new multi-channel publishing platform in the U.S., replacing another solution.
Hearst is a legendary name in the world of publishing and will celebrate its 125th anniversary this year. Today, Hearst Magazines, a unit of Hearst Corporation, is one of the world’s largest publishers of monthly magazines, with 20 U.S. titles and more than 300 international editions. The Company also publishes 19 magazines in the United Kingdom through its wholly owned subsidiary, Hearst Magazines UK.
Migrating to a multi-channel publishing solution allows Hearst’s publications to enjoy a streamlined production workflow, especially when it comes to creating multiple brands of editions that range from daily to weekly to monthly. Having the ability to manage a variety of media-rich content ensures the production schedule runs in a timely manner. It also significantly streamlines the editorial review and quality assurance process that is essential to each publication’s daily workflow.
“Building a streamlined and cost-effective approach for collecting, storing, creating, publishing, distributing and archiving our vast array of content are our biggest challenges as we turn more of our brands into multi-channel publications that include print tablets, mobile and social media,” said Sean Keefe, director of publishing technology at Hearst Magazines. “Hearst’s reason for selecting the WoodWing Enterprise system is a strategic move to align each of our brands for the emerging mobile markets while still supporting our print editions. Because of the size of the implementation, involving over 800 seats, we’ve also looked closely to the total cost of ownership for our new solution.”
The process began when Aysling Digital Media Solutions began a pilot project in May 2011 to showcase the capabilities of the WoodWing Enterprise system for multi-channel publishing, including the creation of custom HTML5 widgets for Food Network Magazine’s popular apps. The pilot was a success, so Hearst tapped Aysling to implement the WoodWing system.
“We have an extensive amount of experience moving publishers from legacy systems. This is a core function within our organization,” said Patrick Becker, president of Aysling Digital Media Solutions. “Aysling was selected by Hearst Magazines given our approach, knowledge base and history of delivering exceptional multi-channel solutions for the publishing industry.”
“We are seeing a significant shift by publishers to adopt WoodWing’s publishing solutions in an effort to retain and capture subscribers for both the print market as well as the fast-emerging tablet and mobile markets and to efficiently manage all of these cross-media channels,” said Shawn Duffy, managing director at WoodWing USA. “We are pleased to have Hearst Magazines join the WoodWing family.”
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