Giallo Zafferano, the Mondadori Group’s online leader in the cookery segment – with over 6 million unique users every month (source: Audiweb View, Total Audience, January-May 2017), a fan base of more than 5.2 million users and an app that has recorded almost 7 million downloads – confirms its appeal on both newsstands, with an average annual circulation of 200,000 copies and social media.

These results are based on Italy’s leading cookery web site’s ability to engage its audience, in a continuous interconnection between the web, social networks and the printed magazine, as can be seen from the extraordinary participation in the making of the magazine edited by Laura Maragliano, who leaves the choice of the magazine’s cover to the brand’s audience.

This means that the readers are active protagonists in the creation of every issue. In fact, every month, Giallo Zafferano uses Facebook to propose two possible covers for the magazine and users are invited to express a preference using the standard Facebook tools “like” and “love”. In April, this initiative involved more than 1 million people, with and average of 5,000 votes for each issue. Among the most popular challenges was the May cover, “Four pasta dishes to prepare in a flash” against ”Six varieties of sandwich”, which was the victor in the meal par excellence in Italy, with 55% of the votes, out of a total of more than 12,000. The same making of mechanism was used to select the cover of the latest issue of Giallo Zafferano, dedicated to “8 spaghetti dishes for the Ferragosto national holiday”, chosen by 74% of the voters over the competing “Ferragosto picnic “.

But user engagement doesn’t stop at the choice of the cover. The magazine’s readers are also offered the opportunity to vote for their favourite recipe of the month published in the section entitled “A three-way challenge“, in which the three section chiefs of Giallo Zafferano battle it out on a common culinary theme. The July competition, which focused on pasta salads, also received over 1,000 votes and declared Aurora’s “Farfalle alla rucola” the winner. Readers and users also enthusiastically participate in the contest organised by Giallo Zafferano. For each challenge more than 100 recipes are sent in by users with the aim of winning the award for the best dish based on three ingredients proposed by the editorial team and published in the subsequent issue. The latest issue of Giallo Zafferano, on newsstands now, features the winning dish of the contest with August’s three ingredients: green olives, chicken and red onions.