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BREAKING NEWS & VIEWS
MSLO's Smoothies for iPad: Own the Category, Not Just the BrandTuesday, June 14, 2011 There have been some curious new apps popping up on the iPad in recent months sporting the MSLO moniker. It all started over the holiday season .PNG) with Martha Stewart Cookies, a colorful and beautifully designed series of recipes and kitchen hints and tools aimed at the cookie baker. Just a few weeks ago we happened upon a similarly designed specialty app Martha Stewart Cocktails. And this week the MSLO brand Whole Living offers a Smoothies app for the tablet platform. Magazines have been coming at the app models from multiple directions. The first wave of branded media apps often re-purposed print into digital magazine apps. Then we had such publishers as Rodale extract popular franchises (Eat This, Not That) into apps that delivered highly focused content but within a higher profile brand package. While MSLO maintains its branded magazine apps, the company is focusing specialty apps on a strategy of owning specific categories of tasks, often timed well to the season. In addition to the cookie app appearing around the holiday, the very colorful Easter egg dying app for iPhone and iPod Touch appeared in late winter. The Smoothies app is made by Callaway Digital, makers of the cookie app, and it brings to the app a bit of whimsy and very pronounced visual stylings that are all Martha. The glasses of smoothies literally float across the three sections of the app: Essentials, Meal-in-a-Glass and Allergen-Free. As we have said before of MSLO apps, this publisher understands the fundamental visual and tactile allure of the platform. The images are large, simple, detailed, and luscious. The navigation is kept very simple, and clearly labeled with thumbnails describing every tap. A drop-down ribbon menu gives the user immediate lateral access to the how-to-videos, food glossary and tips that support the recipe collection. The extremely cool and fun Search function calls up a rotating wheel that lets the user find the right drink by dialing in drink type and main ingredient. It is a little more fun than functional, in that there really aren't enough different drink combinations in the catalog to support the elaborate interface, but it keeps the user tapping and engaged. Unlike too many magazine apps we have been seeing lately, the Whole Living Smoothies app is not afraid to share. Via email and Facebook, any recipe can be sent to oneself or a friend, including full prep instructions and an attractive image of the blend that communicates tho Martha design brand values to anyone who gets the message. You can also add notes to any of your recipes and of course create a list of favorites. The Smoothies app is working on a different business model from the original Cookies app. The low $1.99 price gets the user into the app and its elegant simplicity. Then the app uses in-app purchase to upsell new modules. For 99 cents, the user can buy one of two new sets of content for weight loss and detox. MSLO clearly is onto a winning formula with these niche-focused utility apps. The Whole Living Smoothies title is at the top of the paid app list in the iPad Lifestyle section of the Apple App Store (as of 6/13), Martha Stewart Cocktails is #11 and Martha Stewart Makes Cookies is still at #26 after all of these months. One might quibble that the Smoothies app could use more content for the $1.99 base fee, and surely there are other similarly priced and free apps with more raw content tonnage than this. Compared with some of the competition, the MSLO apps can be stingy with video as well. But in some sense, the user is paying also for the level of professional polish, style and editorial curation in such an app. Less is more in Martha-world, and so it is on this app.  If you have breaking news to share please contact Steve Smith at ssmith@accessintel.com
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