SCALING UP BY SCALING DOWN AT CONDÉ NAST: It has been just over a year since Condé Nast merged its two food-centric titles Epicurious and Bon Appétit in what, at the time, appeared to be a cost-savings measure or a marketing strategy to sell advertising — or both.
But suggest those scenarios to publisher and chief revenue officer Pamela Drucker Mann, who oversees both properties, and you’ll get a little side-eye in response and a long explanation.
“Mash-up [merger] by nature isn’t necessarily the defining principle or defining strategy,” Drucker Mann said. “It’s about ultimately looking for what the marketplace is looking for…I wasn’t interested in just being a group publisher and running two brands. I was excited about doing something different and doing something new.”
From her corner office at Condé Nast’s headquarters at One World Trade Center, the publisher explained that the merger of the properties was part of the larger plan to form what the company calls “The Food Innovation Group” or ‘FIG.’
On its face, FIG is an amalgamation of Bon Appétit, Epicurious and The Shopper’s Network, comprised of more than 200 bloggers who produce exclusive content. It also includes a video and an-in house branded content studio dubbed “The Farm.”
Insiders pointed to FIG
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