As BD reported last week, Are Media has appointed Melissa Mason as editor (digital) of its heritage fashion brands, ELLE and marie claire.
With an extensive background in fashion, style and beauty, Mason has more than ten years print and digital experience.
Are Media announced it was relaunching ELLE.com.au as a purely digital play in November last year.
In the same month, Neilson's Digital Content Ratings (DCR) showed marieclaire.com.au was the number one fashion and beauty website in Australia, posting a record audience of 700,000 for the month.
BEAUTYDIRECTORY spoke with Mason about her new role, what she loves most about digital media and her agenda for the year ahead.
Congratulations on your new role as editor (digital) of ELLE and marie claire Australia! Can you tell us a bit about what the position will entail?
I’ll be heading up the content and brand strategy across ELLE.com.au and marieclaire.com.au.
What aspects are you most looking forward to?
Honestly just working on such trusted and long-standing fashion publications is a dream. I’m so excited to continue the fantastic work of my predecessors on both sites.
I also love the progressive social and political stances both brands take, they are the best of both worlds for me, as I love fashion and experimenting with style but I’m also passionate about bringing smart content to the smart women who read marieclaire.com.au and ELLE.com.au.
Can you tell us about your past media experience and what made you want to get into the industry?
I truly fell into the industry! I was interested in beauty and fashion during University and just started doing some work experience, which landed me an internship in the NW fashion cupboard. From there it was beauty editing and then a side-step into digital.
Most recently I was managing editor at Pedestrian.TV and content director at Broadsheet.
Best thing about working in digital media?
Oh wow, I think I was made for digital media to be honest. I love, love, LOVE how reactive you can be with digital. If something happens in the news cycle and you have an opinion on it, you can immediately write up a piece and send it live within hours. Similarly, you can tap into trends as they happen.
I also love the way you can see reader responses to pieces – nothing makes me happier than someone sliding into my Instagram DMs to let me know a story had a positive impact on them. You never got that kind of feedback with magazines, besides the occasional fan mail.
It’s such a fantastic way to gauge if you’re hitting all the right pulse points when it comes to what your readers want from your publication – and what they need.
What's first on your agenda in the new role?
The team and I are already working on some wonderful first person and opinion pieces that really articulate what our readership are thinking and feeling.
2021 is going to be an interesting year and I found in 2020, people just wanted to feel seen and read content that they identified with. So we’ll be working on that across the sites!
