Maxim took a different tact for its first site redesign in five years, aiming for the look of a video site or game, and not simply a Web magazine. Chief revenue officer Ben Madden, vice president of business development and general manager of digital Dave Roberson, and senior VP for digital Jay Woodruff spoke with paidContent about the site’s new look.
Madden:
It was a challenging third quarter, but we’ve seen strong returns in the fourth quarter driven by large integrated programs led by digital — Jeep Maximum Warriors and Nissan Game Unleashed. The momentum is continuing into the first quarter of 2011 tied to integrated programs across all platforms.
Roberson:
In doing the redesign, we looked to sites that our audience tended to go to, sites that were more video- and game-oriented. Obviously, we’re still proud of our connection to the print version, and we do promote it on the site. And we made sure that we took a lot of direction from the print editorial team in terms of color palette and fonts, for the sake of consistency. But in terms of the presentation, a magazine should look like a magazine, and a Web site should look like a Web site. That’s the same view we took for the mobile and tablet apps, as well.
“Men are dumb.”