Reader's Digest Association Announces New Appointments for Lora Gier, Renee Jordan and Amber Dunn in the Newly Formed U.S. Affinities
New Affinity Will Accelerate Growth and Efficiency Across Advertising Sales and Digital Development Areas
NEW YORK, Sept. 17 /PRNewswire/ -- The Reader's Digest Association, Inc. today announced expanded roles for Lora Gier, Renee Jordan and Amber Dunn in the newly formed U.S. Affinities under the leadership of Suzanne Grimes, President.
In her new position as Vice President/Publisher of the Taste of Home and Home & Garden Media Group, Lora Gier will now oversee the Home & Garden Media Group in addition to Taste of Home. In the digital space, Renee Jordan, general manager of tasteofhome.com, will also be charged with building and growing The Family Handyman and home sites as General Manager of the Taste of Home and Home & Garden Digital Group. Meanwhile, Amber Dunn, Vice President of Sales for Digital Feast @RDA, will assume digital advertising sales and operations responsibility for all digital assets in the U.S. including readersdigest.com and familyhandyman.com as well as allrecipes.com, tasteofhome.com and rachaelraymag.com in her new role as ad sales and operations and account management for U.S. Affinities.
"We have put together a great team of individuals to accelerate growth and efficiency and enhance collaboration, effectiveness, and best practices across all of these U.S. based businesses," said Grimes. "Lora Gier, Renee Jordan and Amber Dunn have been highly successful within the Food & Entertaining division, and we can leverage their talent and experience to drive continued profitable growth across the U.S. Affinities."
Since Grimes joined RDA in April 2007, the Food & Entertaining affinity has seen a 73 percent growth among Every Day with Rachael Ray, Taste of Home and Allrecipes.com brands in the print, digital and experiential program. This increase is due, in part, to the launch of Digital FEAST, a centralized digital advertising sales team for the Food & Entertaining Affinity. This group leverages multiple titles to best meet advertisers' needs through innovative, multi-platform campaigns.
At the same time, digital development has soared, with allrecipes.com achieving the #1 market position as the largest food website in the U.S., while aggressively expanding globally with site launches in 10 countries. Taste of Home realized a 61 percent growth for its Web site in the first quarter of 2009 compared to an average growth rate for magazine Web sites of 7.2 percent for the same time period according to Nielsen.
Gier brings more than 20 years of experience to her position and led a team in creating customized marketing programs. She joined Taste of Home in June 2007 from Conde Nast Publications (CNP) where she spent ten years as Corporate Sales Director, responsible for the corporate sales and marketing programs of all CNP print and digital properties. Prior to this, Lora managed the Midwest sales office of Vogue. She also held key sales management positions at Globe Media, Esquire, Outside, Spectrum Television and IT Subscription Television.
Jordan has served as General Manager for Tasteofhome.com since June 2007. She led the planning and execution of the site's re-launch in December 2007, which has delivered a 160 percent annual growth in monthly unique visitors (Comscore: December 2008 - 1.9 million unique visitors). Prior to this role, Jordan served as Vice President, Consumer Marketing for Taste of Home and the company's 12 other Milwaukee-based magazines in the food and home/garden affinities. She joined Reader's Digest in 2001 as Vice President, Circulation Operations. Prior to joining Reader's Digest, Renee held consumer marketing and circulation leadership roles at Primedia, Cowles Business Media, and Fairchild Publications.
Dunn is Vice President of Digital FEAST @RDA, the centralized digital ad sales team created in February 2009 for the Food & Entertaining Affinity, and has more than a dozen years of experience in the Internet arena. Prior to joining Allrecipes, Amber was Senior Director of Marketing with Kinetix Living, an early-stage Internet startup, and WildTangent Inc., a casual, online games company, managing consumer marketing programs. Her earlier positions include serving as Senior Director of Product Management at Classmates Online, and Senior Product Manager at Reunion.com.
About the Reader's Digest Association, Inc.
RDA is a global multi-brand media and marketing company that educates, entertains and connects audiences around the world. The company builds multi-platform communities based on branded content. With offices in 44 countries, it markets books, magazines, and music, video and educational products reaching a customer base of 130 million in 78 countries. It publishes 94 magazines, including 50 editions of Reader's Digest, the world's largest-circulation magazine, operates 65 branded websites generating 22 million unique visitors per month, and sells approximately 40 million books, music and video products across the world each year. Its global headquarters are in Pleasantville, N.Y.
