IVENUS, the website for women developed by Smurfit Communications, is the latest dot.com casualty with the company now radically revising its strategy for the year-old £5 million (#6.35m) investment. "We are now adopting a brick and click strategy for the website," said Ms Norah Casey, chief executive of Smurfit Communications. "It's a survival strategy in what will be a lean year." Ms Casey views the new developments as being very much in line with the general downturn in the dot.com industry.
Under the new plan the company's women's magazine IT (Irish Tatler) and iVenus will share resources and there will be on-page and on-screen links between the website and the magazine.
"We will be developing a relationship between Irish Tatler and iVenus much like the one between The Irish Times and Ireland.com." However, the comparison doesn't really hold true, not least because the same editor will now preside over both the website and the print magazine. It's an unusual editorial approach because Web and print have such different requirements.
It would appear to be part of a cost-cutting strategy. Tellingly, perhaps, Ms Casey refers to the editorial role as "content management". IT's previous editor Ms Leanne de Cerbo is no longer with the company and the iVenus staff has been reduced from 24 to 13. Ms Casey says the staff cuts are the result of "natural wastage".
Mr Peter McKenna, the senior Smurfit executive who launched iVenus, left the company last month. Ms Vanessa Harriss, who previously worked solely on iVenus, will also now edit IT magazine.
Hopes were high for the iVenus website when it launched with a glitzy party last May. The company flew in supermodel Jodie Kidd to officially launch the site and the plan then was that it would be a pan-European site. An advertising campaign devised by McCann-Erickson supported its arrival.
Despite the wealth of content produced for the company's three titles, IT magazine, Women's Way and U, all content for iVenus was commissioned separately.
From August there will be "synergy" between the content of iVenus and IT, according to Ms Casey. From that time too, the magazine will be rebranded to Irish Tatler and the iVenus logo will be on the masthead.
Where synergy does not seem to be possible is in advertising. "We will now be concentrating on developing new sales strategies," says Ms Casey.
