Lagardère : Presenting the news

Home page news develops a marketing dimension.

The Site

Lagardère, a France-based media and publishing group, has a radically different approach to the inclusion of news headlines on its home page.

Lagardère’s home page is built around a full-width display panel that contains an image overlaid with a headline, summary paragraph and En savoir plus (Learn more) link. These are geared to an event or development (for example, latest results, an Olympics media rights deal, a new mobile phone application). The content changes in a set sequence that follows the order of five tabs below the panel that correspond with the group’s operating divisions: Groupe Lagardère, Publishing, Active, Services and Sport. Each is populated with two or three items, with the current selection indicated by highlighting in the tab bar and a number counter in bottom right of the panel itself.

The sequence can be overridden by clicking to jump to either a fresh tab or a new number. Rolling over a tab reveals a further choice: Actualités/Présentation (News/Presentation). The first relates to the standard (default) display; the second triggers a separate roll call of products/brands. A more conventional headline ticker is provided under an En bref (‘News’) rubric at the top of a featured content panel beneath the main display.

The Takeaway

Not for Lagardère the small side panel or date-determined set of three or four headlines favoured for news coverage by most corporate home pages. Instead, it has exploited the web to create a visually bold animated feature that presents the group through not just its core activities but also the latest developments and events around them. The result is a dynamic magnification of the ‘marketing through news’ objective of a press release. It is also an interesting attempt to use the home page to convey the diversity of the group, though the alternative Présentation sequence is a limp affair that waters down rather than enhances the impact.

There are enough other signposts on the page to address the needs of information seekers. A bigger danger, such is its distinctness, is that the people most likely to be attracted to the feature – browsers – may not immediately grasp its scope or topicality. A prompt to ‘explore what’s happening around Lagardère’, or something similar, could provide the cheese to draw them on.

First published on 30 July, 2009