Active Interest Media Announces Major Cross-Platform Relaunch of the Yoga Journal Brand

BOULDER, Colo., Sept. 9, 2014 /PRNewswire/ — Active Interest Media (AIM; aimmedia.com) today announced a cross-platform relaunch of Yoga Journal, the world’s leading yoga media brand (yogajournal.com). Beginning with the October issue (on sale September 16th), the magazine and website debut a cleaner, more modern design, new departments, engaging graphics, and easy-to-navigate content, all geared toward serving the needs and aspirations of today’s smart, sophisticated, and ever-more-diverse yoga practitioners.

Under the direction of Editor in Chief Carin Gorrell, Yoga Journal’s cover-to-cover redesign now includes more-accessible yoga instruction as well as more yoga lifestyle content, including articles on clean eating, conscious living, ethical style, and natural beauty and health. Five new front-of-book departments cover the yoga world in all its depth and breadth, from news and trends (What’s the Buzz); to wisdom and physical wellness (Be Well); to clean-eating news, tips, and recipes (Eat Well); to yoga sequences and pose how-to (Practice Well); to the yoga lifestyle (Live Well) including retreat reviews, natural beauty, and eco-friendly yoga style. The magazine will also address some of the more controversial topics trending in the yoga community in its trademark balanced, deeply reported features. Its yoga content will target the intermediate practitioner—the largest group of practitioners in the United States, according to the company’s Yoga in America Study—while also continuing to offer inspiring and useful information for beginner as well as advanced practitioners.

“The yoga community is growing and becoming more diverse daily, and with that growth, their needs and desires are evolving,” says Gorrell. “We want to better reflect and serve that community by delivering on their call for a more welcoming, inclusive voice, more-accessible instruction that meets them wherever they are on the mat, and more timely news and trends. This also means being a part of the more difficult conversations that are happening within our community, such as addressing body-image issues and related concerns like eating disorders, as we do in the October issue. That said, we continue to remain dedicated to honoring the traditions of yoga and maintaining the authority and authenticity of our almost 40-year-old brand.”

Meanwhile, Yoga Journal’s first mobile-optimized site will feature new architecture, and will be fully integrated across all platforms, including print, social media, mobile, tablet, newsletters, and instructional videos. Just a few examples: the magazine’s October cover model, internationally known yoga teacher and social-media luminary Kathryn Budig now pens a weekly online column, Find Your Inspiration, and the October issue’s “Yogapedia Poses of the Month” will be demonstrated step-by-step in an accompanying instructional video.

The yogajournal.com redesign is optimized to leverage the digital needs of the emerging global yoga audience. New channels, including poses, meditation, philosophy, and videos, were re-architected to target the 20-million-strong American yoga market’s needs. The site will also offer custom templates, including listicles and slideshows, and debuts the new “Yogapedia”—a multimedia asset featuring more than 100 yoga poses for practicing, teaching, and sequencing. Emphasis on content marketing will change the industry options for endemic advertisers who want to reach a wide audience of both serious and casual practitioners.

“Yoga Journal’s digital mission is to make a difference in someone’s life—in seconds! We will make Yoga Journal available anytime, anywhere. From the gym to the ashram, via tablet or phone, from Instagram to Facebook, yogajournal.com will continue to offer the smartest, most relevant information on yoga today,” says Kristen Dollard, Yoga Journal’s Brand Director, who spearheaded the redesign.

Yoga Journal has consistently shown strong growth across all platforms. In the past three years, the magazine has seen a 19 percent growth in readership, a 50 percent increase in web-ad revenue, and, since November 2013, a 320 percent increase in Facebook likes, to 1.2 million.

“The Yoga Journal brand is known worldwide as one of the most trusted sources of information for all things yoga,” says Kim Paulsen, general manager of AIM’s Healthy Living Group. “With this cross-platform redesign, Yoga Journal’s goal will be to connect with the vast number of readers, users, and advertisers more quickly, easily, and with a deeper level of engagement.”