Last July, Leigh Campbell shocked the beauty industry by announcing she was leaving the magazine world to head up lifestyle at HuffPost Australia. At monthly glossy magazine Cosmopolitan for the eight years prior, Campbell’s new role brought with it a different change of pace. But a pace the journalist has embraced whole-heartedly.
Here, Campbell gives BEAUTYDIRECTORY an update on all things HuffPost, the digital world, and getting reimmersed in the beauty scene.
It's been exactly six months since we heard you were leaving the magazine world for The Huffington Post. Has it been everything you expected?
Without meaning to sound cheesy, it really has and more. I was so happy and comfortable at Cosmopolitan, so making the decision to leave wasn't easy. Though if I was going to take the leap into digital, the most popular news, lifestyle and entertainment website in the world with a Pulitzer under its belt and Arianna Huffington at the helm was a leap worth taking. Of course, like every woman I know, I had read Thrive and beyond implementing its learnings into my life, I was keen to work for the woman who wrote it. I knew that Lisa Wilkinson was coming on board as editor-at-large and I had heard great things about Tory Maguire, our editor-in-chief. Six months on and we’re growing at an excitingly rapid rate and the team I work with are some of the best journalists in the country.
How does working in lifestyle at The Huffington Post differ from writing content for Cosmopolitan?
It’s wildly different. For one, working in print meant I had a certain amount of pages to fill each issue, and that was that. Tory said to me very early on: “The internet is infinite. It doesn't stop. So, you need to learn to stop,” and that was sage advice. My lifestyle team (of which there are currently four full-time and a few part-timers) work hard at producing over 50 stories a week, but we don't kill ourselves doing it.
Secondly, at Cosmo I wrote on beauty for the most part. Now I head up all of lifestyle which emcomapses fashion, beauty, home, travel, food, wellness, fitness, tech and entertainment. Tory’s background is news and politics and so she lets me run the lifestyle department how I see fit, which gives me and my team the freedom to be reactive, efficient and on the pulse.
Lastly, it’s fun (and never boring) to write to such a wide audience. Having ‘a reader’ in mind is fairly old-school in thinking and is more appropriate when trying to target a consumer who might purchase your print product. With digital, your audience is so varied depending on the topic - some come to our site for the political coverage, while a completely different type of person enjoys the travel section. Because the content is free and accessible to anyone with an internet connection, we can reach so many people. For the most part, HuffPost Australia’s audience is intelligent, affluent, no-fuss and open-minded.
Are you still heavily involved in the beauty industry?
For sure. As I mentioned, my team produces over 50 stories a week, of which a number are beauty. Within HuffPost Australia beauty stories, you’ll find a mix of how-to advice, back to basic informative articles, educational pieces when the topic lends itself to a scientific approach, and of course the best new products to market.
My team has more than doubled since launching (which was five months ago) and we're continuing to grow. With more hands on deck, I’m able to get back out in the beauty and lifestyle industry, attending launches but also meeting with PRs and publicists about how we can work together (though the world of digital is fast and time away from the desk needs to be justified). For us, launches need to to be informative and efficient.
Do you miss working at magazines?
Of course. I spent 12 years at Bauer Media and have so many incredible memories from my time there and have made genuine friends for life. Working under Bronwyn McCahon for eight years, without a doubt, set me up for the new challenges I am facing and I’m so grateful to have learnt so much from her.
Though times are changing. Media, just like any industry, is at the mercy of technology. We recently saw the closure of CLEO which is just so sad, but I don't think many people were surprised. In the not too distant future, print titles will be like vinyl - coveted by a few fanatics and relevant to a few indie mastheads. But the mass? Digital. Obviously. And within digital, it’s video next, then VR, then who knows. Media will evolve with technology. It has to.
The Huffington Post is a truly global network and we are a very tight knit family. I speak daily with my colleagues on all 15 editions, though work most closely with the US, UK and Canadian lifestyle teams. They love HuffPost Australia’s lifestyle content and regularly share in their channels. That network boasts hundreds of millions of unique visitors each month. We’re part-owned by Fairfax and for that reason our stories also run on The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
Digital makes a brand instantly global and immediately reactive in a way that print can’t. I do miss the glossy pages though.
