The Lagardère Active group recently launched a Spanish-language version of its French website Doctissimo.
The doctissimo.fr website covers topics on women and for women. It also offers health and wellness articles based on scientific research, as well as a members forum.
The launch of the Spanish site "was inspired by the success of Doctissimo.fr in France," said Basile du Plessis, head of Doctissimo.es. "We are not repeating things we’ve already done— we simply wanted to export this success to other countries."
The new Spanish website offers various editorial sections, including health, pregnancy, beauty, sexuality and medications. It also features advice from experts on health, encyclopedias, and other topics of interest.
In addition, Doctissimo´s new Spanish site features two blogs on babies and health.
Du Plessis says the site hopes to attract traffic not only from Spain, but also from Latin America. "Initial figures make us very confident about this projection," he said.
Lagardère Group’s digital bet in Latin America includes Spanish language sites Elle.es, CarandDriver.es and Fotograma.es (in addition to newly-added Doctissimo.es).
Valerie Blondeau, Director of Media Relations for Lagardère, tells Portada: "Our Spanish-language sites are very popular in Latin America, so we started to target our Latin American audience through advertising agency Fox Networks, who represents and handles our online sales in the continent."
For the time being, the group does not plan to continue expanding its digital products in Spanish. "This is our first experience and our goal is to prove our credibility in this market," explains du Plessis.
As for print media, Lagardère has 7 magazine publications. "We’ve been developing our presence in the region since our launch of Elle Brazil in 1988, followed by the launch of other Elle titles in Argentina and Mexico in 1994," said Blondeau.
In Mexico, Lagardère publishes Elle and Quo (the latter in partnership with Grupo Editorial). The magazines have a monthly circulation of 33,000 and 87,000, respectively. It also licenses the publication of Psychologies,to Editorial Premiere.
In Argentina, where the group licenses Elle and Deco to the Clarín Group, Elle has a monthly circulation of 36,000.
In Brazil, It licenses Elle to the Editora Abril Group, and Car and Driver is licensed to Editora Escala. Elle has a monthly circulation of 72,000, while monthly circulation for Car and Driver is approximately 35,000.
"Latin America is a very important region for us and we want to continue developing our brands there," added Blondeau.
