OK! Magazine has partnered with UK-based mobile media company Jeanie Media to create the OK! Celebspotter app for the iPhone. According to Jeanie Media, the app offers users the chance to visit the UK’s favourite celebrity haunts, live the lifestyle of their favourite celebrities and gain access to a wealth of listings, reviews and recommendations from those who know how to help them make the most of their social lives.
Through 20 individual content partnerships with major content owners, such as FENS Celebrity Bulletin, the Press Association (PA), Squaremeal.co.uk and VisitBritain, Jeanie Media has created what it says is the world’s largest aggregated private listings database; giving OK! Magazine unrivalled access to quality, co-branded content for its users.
The app uses Google Maps to link content to location. Users have the option to ‘Search by Celeb’ and, by tracking and adding recent celebrity sightings, they can home-in on the hotspots where their idols have been regularly sighted.
“Making the move into mobile has been a high priority for us for a while, but we needed to make sure we got it right,” says Farzad Jamal, group internet controller at Express Newspapers & OK! Magazine. “Many brands make the mistake of using a ‘quick and dirty’ approach to development that can’t provide the quality of content to excite and maintain the interest of their users. Jeanie Media has the best content partnerships we’ve come across, and a mobile framework that allows the app to become an extension of our existing brand, adapted to the medium for which it is intended.”
Jeanie’s 20 content partnerships cover 600 categories and 2m records. Visit Britain, the UK’s national tourism database, for example, has 120,000 records; the Press Association has 800,000 live events listings from one central agency; Skiddle.com, has 120,000 club, dance, theatre and comedy records; and the Good Pub Guide offers 3,500 UK pub reviews.
Jeanie Media is also working with VisitBritain to provide a mobile counterpart to the National Tourism Open Platform (‘NTOP’) database – the central pool for all local accommodation, attractions and events listings aggregated from 86 counties across the UK – so that its highly location-centric information can be provided by third-party brands to their own audiences.
More broadly, Jeanie Media says its mobile format technology can be easily recalibrated to meet the needs of individual brands of all shapes and sizes and in any sector, from lifestyle to retail, TV formats and property. Customised formats can be created in around four weeks, and are designed to reflect existing brand and product guidelines and identities. Jeanie Media’s app formats are typically made available on a fixed set-up and monthly licence fee basis.
“There are no short-cuts when developing a mobile product with relevance and longevity,” says Jeanie Media managing director, Alexander Fairfax. “Our apps are designed to imbue a brand’s prior equity and, crucially, interpret that in a way that is mobile-centric. Our formats are designed with the mobile user in mind, and always aim to go the extra mile so far as content and deliverables are concerned. Through our formats, brands can finally exploit the mobile opportunity with a product that won’t fall short of customer expectation.”