WITH THIS RING Magazine ::: Interview with THE KNOT / BrideDecide.com's Kathleen Murray (Highlights)

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Wednesday, August 22, 2007
7:00 a.m. PST

Behind the Scenes ...
Highlights from an Interview with KATHLEEN MURRAY
Dep. Editor, The Knot; Man. Editor, BridesDecide.com

Editor Kathleen Murray's on "Fox & Friends" (YouTube)

I’ve always been struck by how on-the-ball The Knot co-founder and CEO David Liu is in terms of media strategy. BridesDecide.com is really different from anything your company has done up until now. What’s the logic behind it? Was there a story, or is it simply a matter of timeliness and wanting to get on the political bandwagon?

It’s really about the fact that this election, more so than any we’ve seen in years past, has become so critical. To everybody, in the whole country. So it’s such an important issue, and we really wanted to create a destination to motivate young women, because we do have the power that we have this amazing community of users and we just really wanted to draw on that. I mean, [between TheKnot.com, WeddingChannel.com, and TheNest.com, we have about 12 million to-be-weds and newlyweds, so we felt the responsibility to take this pool of voters and create a site where they could get information, and more so, chat with other like-minded women.

You know, a lot of our brides speak on political issues throughout our [message] boards, even our wedding planning boards. So we also wanted to create an area for them, where they could openly discuss politics without some naysayers saying “Get off this board, we don’t want to talk politics!” Which tends to happen if a political debate ensues on a thread about wedding cakes. So we have this separate site where they can talk to one another, and it’s been a great success. If you go on the boards, especially on TheKnot.com, there are countless posts everyday with up to thirty replies.

What’s most impressive to me is that even when there is someone with a very Democratic point of view and someone with a Republican point of view, it’s handled in a very civil manner. This is not a mudslinging forum; it’s really just talking about the issues, seeing what everyone else believes.

Can you give me an example of the type of topics that tend to come up, and I guess more importantly, what starts them? Are these women who are thinking aloud, are is there some inspiration for them to place a post?

[The editors] started the boards, so we put up the first post that says, “What issues are most important to you?” This was a few weeks ago, and from there it’s been completely self-contained, saying what’s on their mind, whether it’s “Did you hear what Obama said last night—what do you think?” or “Here are my thoughts” on gun control or the legalization of marijuana. It completely runs the gamut. And other things too: Minimum wage I’ve seen them talk about, and also there is definitely a lot about other posters, and I think about Hillary. Hillary tend to be a very hot-button issue, and whether or not they would vote for a woman, whether they’re only voting for her because she’s a woman. So it’s definitely a very interesting voting bloc—we call it the “Bridal Voting Bloc”—to have an eye on.

There’s no mention anywhere of the existence of BridesDecide.com on TheKnot.com or WeddingChannel.com. It just doesn’t look like you are marketing it. So what introduced BridesDecide.com to those first posters?

We are going to start marketing it more. We did a soft launch on it, so we’re getting out all the bugs and making sure everything is running, and then we have already designed internal banner ads that appear on all [The Knot, Inc.’s] sites that push to BridesDecide.com, and on TheKnot.com we’ve added this board to the pulldown list of all the boards.

Going back to the core properties—The Knot, WeddingChannel.com, and The Nest—there isn’t a whole lot in the magazines or on the sites to suggest politics. Generally weddings are not thought of as political. They’re romantic; you take all the divisive issues and throw them out the window for 24 hours, and everybody’s happy and smiling. Where did the idea come from to say, “We have this huge bridal property; we’re going to leverage that into politics”?

We felt that because we have this huge population of women predominantly—I believe our demographics, we’re about 97% women—and so yes, they’re brides. But they’re also at this period in their lives when they are thinking about the issues a bit more seriously.

You know, within the first three years of getting married, most newlyweds have a baby, so they have to think about their family. Because there are so many candidates out there, more so than ever before I think it’s really important for this segment of women to decide who is going to be best for their future and the future of their child. I mean, if we are electing this President in 2008, and that person will be in office until 2012, our users will definitely have children by then, and they’ll have their own family unit.

So they’ll need to make decision, and will need to choose a candidate, that is going to be best for their family—whether it’s about health care, which is the #1 issue all our users say is most important to them. Or if it’s about taxes: to-be-weds have to definitely think about tax breaks and combining incomes and about how that’s going to affect them as a family.

More than ever, these issues are important to our users. And as The Knot works with The Nest, we have a forum for our to-be-weds; and as they become newlyweds and of course during the engagement process as well they are starting to think about these big issues. Merging money, buying a house—a lot of things that maybe were not as prevalent in their lives when they were much younger, before they were even contemplating getting married.

Did you do a poll, or is this simply a matter of “knowing your audience”? Did you get letters from people asking for this forum, or a matter of knowing who your readers are, know that they are talking about these issues?

It was just about knowing about our audience. Obviously being aware to what’s going on in the world, and seeing how the election is such an important issue; and that by starting so early in the process we want to be a site where our users can go to find the latest news and just cater it more toward them and what they’re looking for. Of course, you could go to CNN and find out about the issues, but we really chose the issues that we felt, via a poll, were most important to our users. That’s why there’s not every single issue on the planet covered [on BridesDecide.com], but it’s the ones that they expressed specific interest in.

From a branding perspective, do you think there’s any risk that someone will see or infer or assume a perspective that may turn them off? Because it’s no longer just about finding resources for a wedding, but they may now agree or disagree with perspectives that could put their engagement with The Knot, Inc.’s, various brands at risk.

I don’t think so, because that’s part of the reason why we decided to do this as a separate site rather than just a part of TheNest.com or TheKnot.com or any other site. It’s an extension of our brands…Of course, [BridesDecide.com] is integrated with our brands, because it is an extension of us and our community—which really is the heart and soul behind our brand. I don’t think we will be alienating users because they can decide whether or not they want to participate in the forum. That’s why we created a separate forum, because wanted to eliminate that [risk.]

Of course people are going to disagree with one another: if you are familiar with our boards at all, our users fight all the time about wedding-related issues…so if there is any controversy, I have to say that on the site I’ve been very impressed that they have been pretty civil about the issues and are really just enjoying talking to one another about them. So I don’t think it’s going to alienate at all. I think they’re going to make the decision if they want to be a part of this discussion—and if they don’t, then they don’t have to go to the site.

Shifting to the issue of coverage: By definition, wedding magazines tend to skew conservative. But the Knot has always been good, at least to some degree, about integrating resources for same-sex weddings, for example, and other non-traditional weddings. When it comes to engaging the political issues, how are you going to—if you are going to—engage same-sex weddings? Gay marriage is a huge issue, and there’s a vast difference among age groups.

We’re not putting our own political beliefs on the site. We’re basically just reporting the issues, and same-sex weddings is in there, and you can compare to see all the candidates’ positions on it and what they plan to do. But we’re not saying whether or not we agree with a candidate; we’re really just putting the information out there for our community to then take from it what they want. Links to news about both parties—we’re really not going to editorialize about what we think about the issues. This is really just a vehicle for our brides to get engaged in the election, to be educated on it, and just discuss among themselves.

The site has been launched very early in the process—there’s basically a year and a quarter until the election. Will coverage of political subjects bleed into the magazines themselves over the next year or so?

We haven’t firmly decided what is going to come of [BridesDecide.com]. As the election gets closers, there’s definitely more possibility to do more features.

In which case, what would be the editorial voice of The Knot on a political issue?

To be honest, that’s why we’re still exploring it, because we do have such a large brand that we want to be completely in unison about what the tone, the voice should be. But for now the plan is to inform and stay up-to-date and let our users know when people drop out of the election, something big is said by somebody, links to other people’s coverage of the debates, to really just be a resources for them to view all election news in confidence…

This is a great vehicle for our users to be educated on the issues and to learn more about them, and we are hoping that the candidates will provide us even more information about how they feel on the issues, so it’s not just our little news blurbs. We would love for them to supply us with more comment so our users can know exactly how we feel, to give us more insight into who these candidates are and what they plan to do.

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