Conde Nast International aims to fulfil need gap for B2B digital publication with Vogue Business

The media landscape is constantly evolving as majority of publication businesses look for consolidation. In such an environment, having a distinctive business model is of prime importance. In this evolving publication industry, Conde Nast International has seen a need gap for B2B digital publication that follows trends and movements in the market and can provide insight for fashion professionals on a global scale.

The Vogue and GQ publisher Condé Nast International has now launched a new London-based B2B title Vogue Business for the fashion, beauty and luxury industries. Vogue Business aims to fill a critical gap in the information landscape, helping audiences really understand the new forces shaping the industry’s future.

Some key areas of focus include consumer and cultural trends, technology, globalisation, climate change and emerging markets. The online publication will examine fashion trends and the fashion industry within a wider context of global and cultural trends. The Vogue Business offering includes a twice-weekly newsletter, website and presence on social platforms such as Instagram and LinkedIn. The content will be shared and adapted for all of these platforms.

Wolfgang Blau, President of Condé Nast International, said Vogue Business has been developed with a highly distinctive voice and tone of its own, reflecting the new audience it’s talking to.

Speaking about the strategy and research employed by the publication while launching Vogue Business, Blau said, “We have been interviewing executives in fashion companies about their various business needs and, of course, have our own network of 23 different country editions of Vogue globally with their vast networks of contacts in the fashion and luxury industry. From these networks and our research, we saw there was a need for a new type of industry publication. It was only through the process of running this idea through our incubation framework (a specific process that we use inside Conde Nast International) that we realised how big the potential for Vogue Business is. We can harness the unparalleled network of fashion, luxury, design and technology experts that we have with our journalists, analysts, sales experts and other specialists at Vogue, GQ, Wired and Architectural Digest around the world who are all embedded within their own country.”

Blau said the incubation phase has allowed them to spend six months doing nothing but testing the content treatments and topics and, the journalism’s visual presentation, while staying in a close dialogue with many of their current 7.500 beta subscribers in 29 countries to optimise the product together with them.

Vogue Business is employing a transparent and agnostic approach to publishing and operates as a separate entity with an independent editorial team from Vogue and other Conde Nast titles, including GQ. The dedicated editorial team for Vogue Business is based at the Condé Nast International headquarters in London. The team consists of 21 members, including editors, designers, UX researchers and audience growth. The Vogue Business team will work with the publisher’s 29 editorial teams around the world to develop an editorial schedule and will also draw on insights from 29 markets, including Conde Nast US, and tap into Conde Nast's International's unrivalled global network.

Vogue Business is targeting C-suite executives and key decision-makers who can view the entire industry globally. On the target audience, Blau said, “At the highest level, Vogue Business is a wide-angle lens through which C-suite executives and key decision-makers can view the entire industry globally. But it’s also a powerful microscope for examining industry trends in forensic detail — not only design trends, but also the deeper economic and cultural patterns and their driving forces. Vogue Business helps fashion industry leaders to make decisions that will protect and grow their businesses — quickly, intelligently and with the most up-to-date information at hand, whether they are operating in Seoul, Shanghai, Moscow or San Francisco.”

For the first year, Vogue Business will be available for free to its subscribers, as they aim to initiate a subscription model by the end of 2019. “The focus of the team is to establish what Vogue Business is — a measured, intelligent and insightful perspective on the fashion industry, to grow the brand and establish a loyal readership,” Blau said.

In order to gain readership on the website, Vogue Business developed a visual approach for a visual industry. Vogue Business will start as a newsletter, rather than a website, aiming for a niche audience over having broad reach. Vogue Business is said to be designed for maximum accessibility and impact, delivering a visual language and style designed to convey information, making it easy to understand key ideas and trends at a glance.

“We take a highly visual and data-driven approach to journalism, telling powerful stories in innovative, design-driven ways. We’ve designed Vogue Business to help audiences derive instant insight and take decisive action without having to digest thousands of words of text; instead, we focus strongly on concise visual components and clear, incisive textual analysis,” Blau said.

Apart from Vogue Business, Condé Nast International is strengthening its offering with the launch of Vogue in Hong Kong and Greece in March, followed by Wired in the Middle East in Spring.

Blau stated, “Across Europe, there is still a culture of reading print magazines with those brands that have a clear brand identity and mandate. These are the titles that resonate best with consumer across all platforms, both print and digital and also social. At CNI, we continue to play to our strengths with our leading titles while also innovating with the launch of Vogue Business. At CNI, we’re always extremely excited by the possibilities of launching titles globally and beyond what people may perceive as the traditional Condé Nast home territories.”

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