When Lily Barclay joined Good Food Magazine, in the UK, as a digital assistant, print dominated the title’s output. Now, she’s content director for Immediate Media’s Food Group (part of Hubert Burda) and print is just one part of her multi-platform, multi-brand portfolio.
Barclay’s career at Immediate began almost 20 years ago when she joined the then BBC Good Food as a digital assistant. She sees her current role as a symptom of the multi-platform evolution that Immediate’s food titles have undergone over the last few years.
“I started out as a digital assistant on Good Food when I was 23 or 24 and it’s a very different beast [now]. It was very much print dominant when I joined the business; print is still a really important part of our portfolio, but we are planning in a much more multi-platform way.”
At the centre of the group’s content planning is an audience-first strategy that is intimately tied to multi-platform distribution.
“When you’re creating content that is audience-first, you know that it can work on multiple platforms,” Barclay explained. “You might have one point of conception… but then we edit it in various different ways to make it relevant for the platforms that we’re using.”
Multi-brand, multi-platform
There are three brands in Immediate’s Food Group: the 30-year old Good Food; Olive, launched in 2003; and Good Health by Good Food, a new social-first sub-brand built specifically to counter the growing volume of health and nutrition disinformation online.
Good Food is all about utility, helping people solve everyday problems. “We really believe that Good Food is for everyone, no matter their time restrictions, their budget, or their dietary requirements. We work very hard to have content that appeals to a really broad section of society,” said Barclay.
Olive is more aspirational, celebrating food culture and encouraging people to slow down and enjoy food. “It’s restaurants, it’s travel, it’s cocktails and drinks. It’s about entertaining,” said Barclay. The audience there is much more likely to want to spend time creating something special, looking for a lifestyle rather than everyday recipes.
Where Good Food and olive are long-established newsstand magazine brands, Good Health by Good Food launched at the end of 2025 to counter the growing volume of health and nutrition disinformation online. Targeted at a Gen Z audience, it posts health videos five or six times a week on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube.
Across the three brands, Barclay’s team concentrates on content that is going to add value to each specific audience. She explained: “If it’s Good Food, we need to think what is the problem that our audience have and how do we make that better for them. What is the solution that we can offer that is genuinely helpful and accessible to our audience? Then we’ll start thinking about what platform that [should] be distributed on.”
Barclay highlighted the expert content commissioned for Good Health by Good Food to illustrate how one piece of content can be repurposed in multiple places.
“We will invest in long-form health content that has been written by doctors or nutritionists,” she explained. “That piece of content could start out as an Apple News article, but then will be reused in print – we have a Good Health by Good Food miniature magazine that’s in Good Food every month.”
She said that same article could also be used as the inspiration for a video script for TikTok or Instagram videos. “Because we really do invest in content that we know is good quality and factually correct, it can have many different lives in many different places.”
Meeting audience needs
Turning back to the audience-first aspect of content planning, Barclay explained that the investment in Good Health from Good Food was made to meet a clearly identified audience need. “Health was always one of our strongest pillars at Good Food,” she said. “We were getting about 10 million page views per month going to health; that was a combination of healthy recipes as well as long form articles and video content.”
The popularity of Good Food’s health content ran parallel to a growing trend for younger audiences to look to social media for health advice. “There were some stats in that space that said only 2% of health advice on TikTok is actually correct,” Barclay explained. “We wanted to be able to provide credible, fun, and interesting health information to a younger audience on the platforms that they were using.”
The investment has paid off, with Good Health by Good Food racking up 27 million views since launch with over 26,000 followers across social media. “We see really significant engagement on those posts. People are saving and sharing and they’re coming back to that content. The month on month stats are really encouraging. I think it is a really good example of there being a clear audience need, and following that with strong and credible information.”
Premium print pays off
Meeting audience needs isn’t just about new digital initiatives. Last year, olive magazine underwent a major print refresh, going from 13 times a year to eight, but with the increasingly familiar ‘premium print’ makeover. The magazine’s cover price jumped to £8.99, but higher page counts, quality paper stock and high-spec photography have resulted in a 40% increase in newsstand sales and a 400% increase in subscription acquisitions, bringing a 39% increase in subscription revenues.
The newly luxe feel of olive is playing well to an audience that cares less about finding the best lasagne to feed their family and more about elevating their everyday life. “We can see it really resonated with our audience,” Barclay said. “£8.99 is a higher price point, but you’re getting a much richer, thicker publication… it offers people an enriching experience. It’s a really beautiful read.”
Whether it’s providing expert-led podcasts, recipe videos, social-first myth-busting content or premium print, Barclay said her role has evolved in ways she would never have been able to predict 18 years ago as editorial assistant.
“But I feel really lucky to have been a part of that journey,” she said. “They’re all things that are really editorially rich. They’re all about storytelling. They’re all about reaching the audience on new and exciting platforms. It’s been an amazing time to have a career in editorial.”
Listen to the whole episode above, or search ‘The Publisher Podcast’ from MediaVoices on your podcast app of choice. MediaVoices is part of Flashes & Flames Media Ltd.
