Glamour Spain at 15: celebration with eyes firmly fixed on the future
Glamour Spain was launched in 2002 by Condé Nast Spain “to fill a void in the market of fashion publishing”. Targeting women aged between 20 and 40 years, the magazine’s fresh approach to lifestyle and beauty ensured that it became a bestseller from its launch edition. Fifteen years later it’s maintained this position.
Editor in chief Alicia Parro says the reason Glamour Spain continues to be the best selling magazine on newsstands and became a benchmark player across all its digital platforms is because her team has remained focussed on three key elements: creativity, quality and humour.
“From the very beginning, the attitude at Glamour was to represent millennials, allowing us to have a fresh personality. These millennials have captured the attention of society with their concerns and claims and are the target audience of many major fashion brands. They love reading printed magazines because they need something physical with culture and sophistication, but by the same token they engage with our digital content because they were born in the digital era.”
The print readership of Glamour Spain stood at 380,000 at the start of 2017, circulation at 112,173 average copies sold each month, monthly unique website users at 2.125 million as of May this year with more than 18 million page views. In line with the trend being experienced in the rest of the world, content consumption via mobile is increasing with more frequent mobile visits via social media. In May, more than 6 million readers connected with the brand’s Facebook page every month and 10 million people viewed content on the video platform ‘Glamour in Motion’ between January and May this year.
Premier (print) editions
To celebrate the first 15 years, Parro sees several opportunities, including digital and social media drives, a re-design of glamour.es, many events and a unique opportunity to also reinvigorate the role of print as part of the multi-platform experience.
“Our focus remains quality. The message I have conveyed to my staff is to work on each issue as if it was a premier edition. I believe that (print) magazines have a future as long as we produce them in an artisan way. Needless to say, we rely on top-notch contributors.”
But print in modern publishing remains part of the overall mix. “I recall vividly the launch of Glamour. Once we had the premier issue well planned, our main concern was the need to get the attention of our target audience. We wanted to make a lot of noise, and got it with a notorious television commercial and an outdoor campaign. It was a huge success, although if we were to do it all over again, we would have to do it differently – with plenty (more) digital work.
“Today, besides reading magazines, our readers are using digital multimedia, talking to each other, buying fashion and beauty online, following our Facebook live events and searching trends on glamour.es. So all of our anniversary ideas are driven digitally. We expect an important response from readers, given that our audience is very active on social media.”
Party = events
Besides monthly celebratory content themes – like exploring the link between sport and health, or beauty under the sun – events will be an important part of the celebrations. “It’s a way to connect with our audience and clients in real life. We will take the opportunity to go a step further, developing some multiplatform projects that combine parties, print features, social media, and website activities. This year we set in motion Glamour&Rock nights, which are mini concerts branded by clients. In September, the second edition of Glamour Sport Summit, a big sport and health event will take place.”
The headline celebration will happen in the last week of October when the November Glamour main birthday edition hits newsstands. “The goal is not only to have the best Glamour party, but also to enhance the trust clients grant us to organise events incorporating some of the largest brand names.” She adds that this will be an important event because the aim is to use it as a benchmark for coming years as they foresee similar events to be part of larger business opportunities in the future.
The social key
In every celebratory project the role of social media is increasing daily, says Parro. “Social media is one of the means that allows us to develop a stronger relationship with our audience… It also contributes to brand awareness and to reach new audiences. An example would be live coverage of a fashion week, a royal wedding or a red carpet event.
“A unique content approach guarantees the access to wider audiences so the content becomes a marketing campaign by itself. It is very important to understand the nature of each social platform in order to deliver the right content and messages.
“You know that you are on the right path when observing interaction rates; when people like and share your posts and content organically. That’s the key to social media success.
“On the other hand, and from a journalistic perspective, social platforms such as Instagram or Twitter are also a valuable source for news and content creation. We identify incipient worldwide trends and react fast. In addition, we are also able to bring together large audiences around a cause or action of our brand with the result of national trending topics like #GlamourStreetFashionShow or #GlamourSportSummit.”
She says social media also contributes to the bottom line. In fact, “the reach of our content has multiplied thanks to social media so it has had a positive impact in monetisation as it is one of the main traffic sources”.
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A glamorous future
Where does Parro see Glamour in another 15 years? “It’s one the strongest female brands worldwide. It’s a multimedia brand with the ability to engage with women sharing a positive attitude to life. Although the global trend for (print) magazines shows a decline in sales, the future audience will be more sophisticated and demanding.
“These features will make them very unique to advertisers. I see Glamour in print as an ongoing model to deliver insight to our audience.
“For the latest news and trends, glamour.es and social media will lead the conversation. And when the driverless car becomes popular or robots perform our duties, I see readers taking the extra time to enjoy magazines in any shape or platform. Meanwhile, we are working hard on the distribution channels (newsstands, subscriptions, digital and social channels) for new ideas and new partners so that readers have the magazine wherever and whenever they want in the fastest possible way. As a brand that connects and engages with sophisticated and smart women, we must be ready to embrace any medium (channel, platform, technology or format) that allows us to develop a strong relationship with our audiences. It may include virtual reality, artificial reality, the internet of things, wearables, cars…”
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