March
21
Wonderwall: BermanBraun's New Model Celeb Site
The offices at Revolution Studios on L.A.'s Olympic Boulevard are humming. Television/film mogul Gail Berman (who left Paramount's presidency in 2007) is in her element, running in and out of cast auditions for TV pilots: a total of four are in the works. Her partner, Lloyd Braun, sits in his office staring into a giant flat screen monitor tracking the day's breaking stories on the team's newest venture: Wonderwall. "It's alluring," he says, "and addictive."
A year-and-a-half after launching BermanBraun, the popcorn celebrity portal is the first-born child of BermanBraun Interactive, in partnership with MSN. Having started Yahoo OMG and recognizing the success of AOL's TMZ, Braun saw that MSN wasn't aggregating celebrity content. So BermanBraun and their internet division chief Geraldine Martin-Coppola (plucked from Braun's old Yahoo team) persuaded MSN to back a slick, visual, horizontal, content-driven celebrity site designed to hold eyeballs for more than two seconds--and lure premium advertisers.
Berman/Braun launched Wonderwall on February 5, just ahead of the Oscars. "We're fixing things as we roll out content," says Braun, who enjoys using some of his hard-won knowledge from his stint at Yahoo Media Group, where he wasn't able to achieve much of what he had wanted to do.
While celeb content is king on the web, BermanBraun's main push for Wonderwall--a name Berman insisted on using because "it's the point of the whole thing," she says--was to draw people in with eye candy and attitude, and then keep them interested.
"Wonderwall is not like TV, a destination medium," Braun says. "Engagement is terrible on websites. The web portals didn't have a deep well of experience in programmed content. They're closely focused on technology or search algorithms. On the converse side, traditional media companies are only now beginning to understand digital. Now we have the rare opportunity of understanding both."
Wonderwall provides "something MSN hasn't been able to do," says Braun. "Through the technology behind the site, we're taking information and presenting it to the consumer, with a POV and spin. It's a content management system with a horizontal presentation, an experiment with engagement."
The partnership with MSN was key. "It allowed us to build this in a way that we would never have been able to on our own," says Berman. "It's important as the site grows to make its point-of-view clear for people. It's fun, not just photos, but design and voice."
Part of the fun, beyond writing clever celebrity photo captions, is to respond swiftly to the day's breaking news. Like improvisational comedy, "We're doing this in real time," says Braun.
When Mickey Rourke's dog died, for example, Wonderwall's five editors (four in L.A., one in NYC, who starts the day early) compiled Famous Celeb Pets. Traffic skyrocketed. On St. Patrick's Day they mounted Favorite Irish Celebrities. Led by managing editor Alex Blagg, the edit team boast experience at Radar, People, Us Weekly, People, Best Week Ever, The New York Post, and Alloy.
For now, they're using feeds from The Onion and A.P. and relying on MSN for top editing. But as Wonderwall's team beefs up their photo galleries and dips their toes in red carpet coverage, exclusive celeb interviews and video offerings such as In 60 Seconds--short videos with quick Jib-Jab style narration--the site offers up stories on Celebritweets, Wonderwall on Twilight, Celebrity Lookalikes and The Latest On Natasha Richardson. On Fridays, the site mounts The Week in Photos to sustain viewer interest over the weekend.
"We're looking for other video content partners with smart takes on celebrity news," says Blagg, "more ways to do things on a regular basis. Celebrity interviews don't have to feel dirty. We want you to make you laugh, wink and smile, to elevate the discourse slightly. There's so much we want to do."
For one thing, Berman and Braun want the site to have a strong voice. "There's no reason to be too mean, we can be smart," says Berman, who admits she had some catching up to do on the interactive side. After investigating web series, she decided that they offered no business model. "The object was to build a business."
Cracks Braun, "I went through Yahoo boot camp. Gail knows how to design product to please the consumer."
While BermanBraun is already busting out of Revolution's fancy office space, the execs kept Wonderwall's overhead low. Within two weeks of its launch, Wonderwall had reached 152 million page views and 7.4 million unique visitors who were spending 4.6 minutes per visit. "Traffic is growing by leaps and bounds, outstripping our planned benchmarks," says Braun.
Wonderwall may be sticky.
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