#ElleTwitterTakeover boasts platform for events not just content, says editor-in-chief
Elle magazine’s editor-in-chief Justine Cullen, said that the title’s week-long partnership with Twitter offered new opportunities for the magazine to engage with audiences through events via the social media platform.
“The Elle audience, in particular, is really hungry for new things, so it was a way of keeping them interested and engaged. This was kind of a new way to partner with a platform we hadn’t really focused on before”, Cullen told Mumbrella.
“We used their functionalities like the polls and they are also beautifully set up for producing content. They had the blue room where you can go and easily create videos and audio content.”
“Every expert we had in over the course of the week were able to come into the blue room and be interviewed to create content both for Twitter and for our own website.”
Cullen said the week, which involved a series of diverse activations and events, including yoga classes, a musical performance with Sony and Montaigne, and a fashion industry panel, allowed for Elle to tap into events on a small scale.
“Everyone thinks of Elle as a fashion magazine but it’s a lot more than that and I kind of see it as the junction of fashion, pop culture and fitness. All of these are things a woman is interested in so we were able to tap into all of those things in that space,” she said.
Cullen said the activation had successes beyond engaging Twitter and Elle’s respective audiences, with team-building an important take away from the week.
“It was good for team-building, because I think a change of environment is fantastic and it is a beautiful space with fantastic view and lots of fun activities.
“Everyone was all hands on deck for every single event and the whole team was involved. That’s always great for a team to be working as a together outside of a normal project.”
As part of the activation, Elle pushed out daily polls to engage with Twitter audiences, which will feature in the November issue.
“That was a little bit of fun and a way to engage with the Twitter audience,” she said.
“It is an interesting snapshot of the audience but it wasn’t something we were taking incredibly seriously in terms of learnings for future content.”
While the activation was a success, Cullen admitted that there were challenges with learning to use the platform.
“For us, Twitter was never a platform that we had really focused on,” she said.
“It was challenging getting our heads around the platform itself and you know the best way to use it. Twitter were incredible forthcoming with helping us with that and working together and they were able to bring that strategy ‘know how’ and we were more about the content we could produce in that space.”
Cullen added that while Twitter hadn’t previously been used by the magazine, it was important to engage Elle’s readers through all social platforms.
“Audiences want to be engaged on every platform and I think we should be on every platform as long as it’s a very active expression of the brand.
“We need to do it in a way that’s true to our brand. So whether that is Twitter or a light event or a conversation with us on another platform, I think that’s all really important.”
What was this for and was it successful?
I don’t want to be negative but from the above it sounds like it was a “challenge” …but they had a “fantastic view” from the office and it was good for “team building”.
What do we learn about Twitter from that, or Elle for that matter.
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