Last month the Podium Lecture Theatre at London College of Communication hosted a talk on the digitalisation of media and how fashion magazines build interest through social media.
Joanna Montgomery, head of digital at Bauer Media, responsible for the publishing of products such as GRAZIA, Mojo, Kerrang, Q, most recently The Brief and many more, was one of two guest speakers.
The creative director of emerging fashion app ASAP54, Deborah Joseph, joined the talk to share her experience as a fashion journalist and also entrepreneur.
BA (Hons) Journalism student Desislava Todorova reports on the event.
Joanna Montgomery began by telling us about her experience in the industry. As a head of digital in Europe’s largest privately owned publishing group since 2012, she takes care of digital marketing, audience and content strategy, product management, media analytics and a bit of technology.
According to Joanna, social media has become an important element of the marketing strategy and people are becoming more aware of that. Accurately building up an audience on all social media channels could be crucial for the success of a campaign, for instance.
Another topic touched on was the digital content of magazines and how, as she mentions, “three years ago” websites were regarded as pure marketing tools, while now they are separate editorial products in their own right. As a result, the best content is being selected and later included in the print version.
To the question of whether or not digital is killing print media, she referred to the mobile versions of Bauer’s products. In this way, people are not focusing on the magazine as an object but more on its content. So her answer was “yes and no” because in the end, apps, websites and mobile versions are simply different mediums for information and digitalism has provided us with more options without necessarily excluding their print versions.
This is when Deborah Joseph stepped into the talk. She is the creative director of mobile app ASAP54. Her career more recently involved being an editor-in-chief of Condé Nast’s publication Easy Living magazine.
Her vision of the fashion world has changed through the years, as well as her perception of publications. She recalled saying years ago during an interview that she couldn’t imagine reading a book (as an example of print publication) without physically feeling it as part of the experience.
Today, she carries her Kindle and explains how fascinated she is with this swift pace of change due to digitalisation. Her most recent project, ASAP54, is a combination of trend research, fashion styling and cool-hunting which completely changes the shopping experience.
Therefore, this product is an example of the reshaping power of digital media and how this has changed our everyday perspective.
The talk was attended by students from various courses and concluded with a Q&A session which proved very useful for students aiming at fashion and digital journalism.
Words and image by BA (Hons) Journalism student Desislava Todorova.