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New Zealand Media and Entertainment (NZME) is a leading media business in New Zealand, with a portfolio of more than 50 brands across print, online, and radio.

NZME identified an opportunity to create a new subscription vertical - VIVA -for an existing client base. This was aligned to the subscription strategy to develop a portfolio of complementary offerings to increase both acquisition and retention. This new subscription is now available for purchase through all NZ Herald digital channels.

To ensure a quality and differentiated experience, the UX team followed a human-centred design approach and regularly tested this with user groups during design and build. The team then overlaid the commercial elements to create a high value advertising proposition. Ensuring this worked across desktop, mobile web and app was important, along with how it would fully integrate with the parent brand, NZ Herald.

VIVA had previously existed without a paywall and therefore limited monetisation opportunities. The whole solution was rebuilt, with content migrated from a legacy content management system to improve efficiencies and moving all components onto the core NZ Herald platform. The VIVA Editorial team now work alongside the core newsroom teams to maximise overall business outcomes.

This was a key step in NZME’s subscription growth plan, delivering the first additional vertical offering into the market.

This enabled NZME to bundle subscriptions across their digital products, increasing Average Revenue Per User, a long range value metric. During a period of news fatigue across the industry, a lifestyle-focused offering has cut through and provided increased value. Herald Premium subscribers bundled their subscription to include VIVA. Over 25% of subscriptions are bundled subscriptions helping to increase the Average Revenue Per User.

During the early stage of the design phase, there were multiple rapid iterations to align on the core look and feel. The human-centred approach also generated a reusable design framework. As NZME develops additional vertical offerings, key learnings are being applied to ensure a clear hierarchy of user needs are solutioned for.

Whilst the content offering was unique, this project developed a blueprint for all core business elements: product, development, quality engineering, data and ad tech that will increase efficiency for future similar projects.