• by Steve Smith , Staff Writer @popeyesm, June 8, 2011

Demand Media continues its ongoing project to create more traditional media destinations and brands, often linked to high profile celebrities. This week, on-screen and print darling Rachael Ray lends her name, face, if not her video presence, to a new eHow Food section. Titled "Rachael Ray and Her buddies" the series of recipes and video walkthroughs are hosted by Ray's "friends" who do most of the video heavy lifting. Ray lends her name to a blog and gives the cast of buddies her highly effective imprimatur of personable, accessible style.

The idea is to confer onto the eHow regulars some of Ray's famous personality. The premise is that cuisine is intimidating and hosts like Ray open it up to a larger audience. The partnership plays into Demand Media's own evolving brand, moving from its reputation as a "content farm" to a more pointedly democratic "person-to-person" content provider. The fact is that users themselves voted for Demand Media and eHow's good-enough approach to content with their repeated clicks. Much to the chagrin of traditional media, the company demonstrated that credible content and good-enough solutions to immediate questions often were just fine with many users. Rather than run entirely from that legacy, Demand Media appears to be morphing it into something like a "people's content" image. In the canned quote attributed to Ray for this launch, for instance, she says, "I've been watching all the ways people are engaging with online and traditional media, as a direct result of this I have partnered with Demand Media to create the new eHow Food experience. Whether being a waitress, a manager of a gourmet market, or signing books and reading viewer emails, I've spent my career listening to people and giving them what they want; eHow does the same thing in the digital universe." And so the aim of eHow Food is to give people advice "that feels like it's coming from their best friend - who just so happens to be a trained chef or self-taught expert." the company touts. 

Yeah, well, maybe. Ray's rating success suggests that what the people really want are celebrities that feel like a best friend. Whether Ray's Buddies ware good stand-ins remains to be seen. Of course it is not as if the Buddies were just plucked out of Demand Media's infamous pool of underpaid freelancers. Most of them, like established Latin food author Daisy Martinez and "man-food" specialist Josh Ozersky, have a built-in audience and polished on-screen presence.

For the long term, the eHow, Ray partnership is designed to cultivate talent for the food content category and some additional exposure for Ray and her line of goods. The site links to her online store.