Pod Insights a16z Podcast Digital Branding: Lessons from Vogue, Monetizing Social, Creator Tips | Field Notes with Connie Chan About this episode This is Field Notes, a video podcast series by a16z that explores the business models and behaviors that are changing consumer technology.
In this episode, host Connie Chan talks to Susan Plagemann, the president of WME Fashion and a veteran of the fashion and publishing industries—previously, she helped build brands including Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, and Vogue. They discuss how tech has transformed the media industry, how to turn editorial vision into influence, and how creators and companies can build standout digital brands.
0:00 Intro
1:26 Influence of fashion mags in '90s/'00s
3:27 Turning Cosmo into a "mega-brand"
4:35 The first-ever video podcast
8:02 The origin of Vogue.com
10:00 Vogue visits Silicon Valley
13:36 Vogue's pioneering social presence
15:51 Why social platforms should compensate publishers
19:08 Tips for creators
21:19 Digital branding advice
23:05 Fashion's influence on sports/entertainment/music
Transcript 0:00 Speaker 0 The real success and the genesis, I think, of really great digital reporting and coverage comes by your team's ability to respond to what's happening in the culture in the news on a daily basis. And that's what Vogue, I think, was genius at
0:24 Speaker 1 hi, and welcome to Feel Notes. I'm Connie Chan, and this is a new video podcast series from Andreas and Horowitz, where we study how business models and behavior are changing in consumer technology. Today my guest is Susan Plageman. Susan is a veteran of the fashion and publishing space. Cosmo, Maria Claire, Vogue. Susan's an expert in art and beauty and fashion. We're going to be talking about how tech has changed the media landscape. And as president of WME Fashion, Susan will also share tips on how creators and companies can build standout digital brands. Welcome to the show, Susan. Thank you. Thank you, Connie. It's great to be here. Fashion to me, I feel like looks night and day different, even in terms of like where we're getting our influence, where we're hearing about what's hot, what's stylish compared to 20 years ago, it feels like a world of difference.
1:19 Speaker 1 And in 1998, when you were at Hearst, you were the second ever female publisher of Cosmo, and you were the youngest publisher of Cosmo at that time. Tell us about what a huge role magazines and Cosmo played in fashion and media back then.
1:34 Speaker 0 When I look back at it, um, the one thing that I can share with you and everybody viewing is when I was given that job, I was terrified. And I remember talking to my husband saying, like, I'm never going to be able to do it. It's too big a job. Like, will I be able to be successful? Um I was really young. And I just thought, oh my gosh, can I actually do this? And what was so interesting at that time was there were two brands, Cosmo and Glamour that were really big leaders in terms of the women's arena. And when I say the women's arena, I mean reaching women 18 to 34. What everyone has to remember is that at that time there the internet wasn't there.
2:24 Speaker 0 Like we weren't didn't have websites. So it was literally just paper and circulation. And
2:32 Speaker 1 it had huge influence at the time. I mean, this is how every person figured out what was trending, what was in style, which celebrity was worth following. That was all that was all dictated by these magazines. Yeah,
2:46 Speaker 0 it definitely.
3:15 Speaker 0 So as people would age out, they were constantly bringing in new people.
3:19 Speaker 1 And how did the business lines change? I mean, back then the main revenue driver was print ads, full page ads or what have you.
3:26 Speaker 0 So it was interesting. While I was there, one of the things that um our company was leading was how to make Cosmo into a mega brand. How are we going to propel this brand into like a mega brand? How are we going to make it like Coca-Cola or how are we going to make it as big as McDonald's or what have you? And so there were definitely four way forays into new spaces. Um, one was they looked at doing a Cosmo cruise, another was that they looked at doing Cos Cosmo Espanyol, and then the other was Cosmo Girl. And of the three, the one that really took off and did well was Cosmo Girl. And that was really reaching the next generation of Cosmo consumers.
4:16 Speaker 1 And and what are some other business lines outside of Cosmo Girl that you then saw, you know, over oversaw the launch of? And then how do you also respond to the internet or the email starting to be a more popular communication channel for normal normal everyday readers?
4:34 Speaker 0 Yeah. So after Cosmo, I then um I went to Mary Claire. We launched ever um the first ever video podcast series. And the fact that I'm calling it a video podcast series just again shows you like it, it's just
4:49 Speaker 1 no video podcasts are bad.
4:52 Speaker 0 Well, but what we did, the content of the video series was literally every month we would take the issue, we would look at it, and then we would pick 10 to 12 stories from the issue, and we would produce a video story based on that editorial content. So not vice versa, right? So it's not like we weren't creating video first. We were creating print first, and print was leading what we were doing.
5:25 Speaker 1 So you would have to go back and almost like re-report the topic, go re-interview the person or go back to the scene of the event or recreate it.
5:34 Speaker 0 I mean, honestly, Connie, it's it's it I don't even, I wish I knew where they were, but it's it's kind of miraculous what we did. Oh, it was the first, but it was the first of its kind. No one else, no one else was doing. It was the first of its kind.
5:48 Speaker 1 And and where were people watching the videos? Where
5:51 Speaker 0 were they watching their video? I mean, uh they watched it on the website, which I think probably had 15 people, but like all 50. I mean, I don't know. I'm sure it was, I'm sure it was more than that, but it's not, I was not, we were not dealing with a website, like it wasn't like an Instagram feed, like I had a Vogue of like 20 million, 30 million, 40 million people. It was very specific. It was, I'll say it was very targeted.
6:19 Speaker 1 And if you if you remember back to the 2000s, how do you feel like media publications responded to the internet? Were they largely just taking the same idea, putting it online? And who was innovating?
6:33 Speaker 0 I think in the beginning, a hundred percent. I mean, I think it was we were all um, I think we all had our eyes wide open. And I think whether people want to acknowledge it or not, I think all the newness was exhilarating but also terrifying. But you need to anticipate consumers' behavior, and you need to get there before they're there. And then when you're there, you need to guide them and teach them how to consume your content in a new way. And that was that was probably the hardest thing. I mean, one of our like one of our first memories. Um, I just remember like talking to web editors and like, okay, how are we putting the content up there? And I just remember in early days, everyone was really mesmerized.
7:22 Speaker 0 Okay, great. The content can go up and down, or it can go left to right, not knowing that actually like we we actually wanted to move in one direction, which is now the scroll, right? But like it took a really long time for people to figure that out.
7:39 Speaker 1 Like when media was adapting, so one, it's format, it's the length, right? But it's also like the amount of content you now have to produce with the internet. You can't just stick with the same number of articles and expect it to be sufficient. How did how did these kind of outlets and publications respond to this new demand where you you need new stuff at least on a daily basis?
8:02 Speaker 0 One of the things that was really like the highlight of my career was obviously going to Vogue in 2010. And one of the biggest learnings we had there. When I arrived, I was tasked to build a website because the company was had change strategy and they were now doing individual websites for all the brands. And I remember thinking, like, okay, build a website. Like I'm like, okay, it's not like I've got to like go sew a ham and a dress. I've got to go build a website. And so, you know, we were very well resourced and we were very well supported.
8:41 Speaker 1 Wait, so so Vogue didn't have a website at that time.
8:44 Speaker 0 Not when I arrived. It did it had a website that it shared with another brand, but it was not a free, it was there was no Vogue.com. We built it. Wow. Yeah, we built wow. I mean, it wasn't just me, obviously, it was a team of like a there was an army of people involved in it. Um, but we built it and then we monetized it. And one of the best things I think that ever happened in my life was just the freedom to go and explore and create and try things and just how hungry our partners in the market were to see what we were doing because we were the market leader, right?
9:30 Speaker 0 We were the global leader.
9:32 Speaker 1 And and it's fascinating because yes, you you are the global leader. And back, you know, in those years, especially the the pretty much um you you could king make any designer. You could king make any brand, any beauty brand, any fashion brand. And so I think all eyes were on what what you were building.
9:54 Speaker 0 Yeah, I mean, one of the I mean, which is apropos how you and I came to meet, but. One of the best things again about that entire experience was I had a conversation with my boss, and I said, you know, look, I want to do this learning trip. And I was like, well, um, this learning expedition, we're going to take some of the editors, and we're taking some of the business execs, and we're literally going to go to Silicone Valley and meet with companies that are going to help us solve for these three things on the business side and these three things on the editorial side. But it's the first time edit and the business side had gone together on basically a strategy tip trip together.
10:42 Speaker 0 And yeah, I was super grateful because my business partner on the editorial side was super supportive. And the people that we took, we had three days of just meeting companies, and you remember that because Andreason was one of the first places we went, and we just got to listen and learn. And those trips are what really they were really, really critical foundations to how we led and created and built our digital strategy.
11:13 Speaker 1 That's fantastic to hear. I I have a question, you know, on Vogue, because you have to still operate and maintain this pristine, beautiful magazine that's still hugely influential, but you also need to have this thriving uh thriving online platform destination. If you think back, was it the same kind of editorial person running both? The ads, like are these really treated almost as two businesses, or how do you intertwine them?
11:43 Speaker 0 So listen, the success of Vogue is because it's in my humble opinion is because it's always had really strong, clear editorial vision. And at the end of the day, in the beginning of the day, brands are only as good as the clarity, I think, in which they move and could articulate why they matter and why they matter in someone's life. And so Vogue was run both editori both on the print side and digit by the same person by our editor in chief. But the real success and the genesis, I think, of really great digital reporting and coverage comes by your team's ability to respond to what's happening in the culture in the news on a daily basis.
12:36 Speaker 0 And that's what Vogue, I think, was genius at, really. I think they were genius at. They really we we created like the first dancing video. We created like the first video where you saw a musician like Deb Heinz dancing. I mean, we created the first video where we had people running down Park Avenue and ball gone gowns getting excited for the Met.
13:05 Speaker 1 And they embraced the video format. They they took something that wasn't possible in print and said, How how much more can we make if we're now on the internet using audio or video?
13:16 Speaker 0 Yeah, I mean, listen, the economics always come into play. I mean, that was my responsibility. It's like, okay, now how do we monetize this? And I think we did a really good job at that, and we had so much fun doing that, and we had really, really great things to sell and to market. We really did.
13:36 Speaker 1 And how did the Vogue respond to the proliferation of social media? I mean, during that time, there was the app store, there was Facebook, there was Instagram, there was Snapchat. What what was the response to social media?
13:49 Speaker 0 Um, they embraced it, they embraced it big time, and I think people were just hungry for the like we really took advantage of the visuals that you could play. We really took advantage of the play on words. I mean, the wordsmithing with the hashtags, I think was just like some of the most genius ever. And um, then videos and gifs and like everything that you could imagine was just like we would go there.
14:20 Speaker 1 And how much did kind of the the content that was created on Instagram influence the editorial on print and vice versa? Um thing that I think about a lot is that companies that have both a website and a mobile app sometimes feel the need to fully replicate feature functionality or content. Do you think it's possible to almost have a different set of content or a different set of features?
14:49 Speaker 0 I don't know if it was so so much different as it was a place to further explore the content that was being created. So I don't think it was if, for instance, I'll just stay on the theme of the Met, the May issue used was traditionally always the Met issue. So what we were doing online in all of the digital formats wasn't it wasn't that we wouldn't cover non-Met things, we would, but we we definitely used it as a place to I think further explore and speak to our readers in deeper or quicker or in other ways that we couldn't necessarily do just in print, and vice versa, and and definitely vice versa.
15:42 Speaker 1 And how did um I mean social media or just the changing business models influence your thinking of new business lines or or new revenue streams for the company?
15:52 Speaker 0 The biggest thing that I always wanted to do was to charge consumers to follow us on social. And everyone's like I've been told no for I don't know, as long as we've had social out there. And so now, as you've seen in recent weeks, now that the platforms are now being asked to actually compensate the publishers for the content. It's like I'm like, Hallelujah! Like, of course you should be, because like I would argue that brands like Vogue and other brand, like really, really great brands actually helped make Instagram as cool and as great as it is. And the same thing with TikTok. I mean, these are highways where people can go and put their content up, but the value of that content, not all content is created equal, and some of that content I think has greater value than others and should be recognized.
16:52 Speaker 1 Okay, we're gonna fast forward to your current role as president of WME Fashion. Tell me a little bit more about that role. What are all the different things that you oversee?
17:01 Speaker 0 Essentially, what I've been charged to do is um we have four really great incredible companies here, and they are Art and Commerce, which really is the premier leadership um representation company in terms of photography, um, hair and makeup and stylists. Um, we then have the wall group, which is similar. Um, it's a representation business in hair, makeup, and stylists, and both have an incredible roster of artists. And then the next company is IMG models, which is the global premier modeling agency. And the last company is IMG Fashion and Events, which is charged with uh how do we create buzz and provocation, if you will, around New York Fashion Week, Australian Fashion Week, and any other fashion week that we may decide to dip our toe into.
17:58 Speaker 0 Um so it's those four companies, and um, so there's three goals in taking over them. One is to really highlight to our talent, our artist, they're our biggest priority because without them we don't survive to really be able to articulate to them what's our meaningful differentiation, what do we offer them? Uh, not just in terms of you know, jobs, but in terms of strategy, in terms of creativity, in terms of support. Um, the second piece is really how do we get much further upstream with brands? Uh, which is really my probably my biggest strength just through my relationships and having done it for so long, and um how do we sit across from these leading global fashion brands and beauty brands and luxury brands and help anticipate what they need and come to them with solutions, um, even solutions before they may know that they even need them.
19:03 Speaker 1 And Susan, I'm sure you've negotiated so many deals with brands in your career. What would your advice be to either the people that you represent um in your role as president or even just creators today? I mean, you talk about hairstylists, um, makeup artists. There are so many Instagram, TikTok, YouTube creators that fall into that bucket of expertise. How would you counsel them on how they can work with brands? Or or other kinds of revenue streams in general?
19:33 Speaker 0 Well, I think asking questions and then actually listening is something that everybody benefits. I think everybody can get re schooled in that. Everybody.
19:44 Speaker 1 Well, what are the questions? What are the questions that these creators should be asking?
19:48 Speaker 0 The first one I would ask would be in your role, um, how do you define success? Because that very quickly will tell you. That person you're sitting across from, it will very quickly tell you like what's their priority. And when you know someone's priority, then you can start to solve for it.
20:11 Speaker 1 Right. Because it could be viewership or fame, or it could be money oriented, very different solutions potentially.
20:18 Speaker 0 Totally. So I think that's a really important question. Um, the other question that I think is really important to ask is um what are the three most important things that you have to do this year for your company? And that too will give you very quickly where their focus is.
20:41 Speaker 1 Interesting. So your approach is more figure out what is the problem that brand is trying to solve and then create your solution around that. Yeah. Versus just saying, hey, I'm a creator. This is the type of content I create. This is my audience, this is my viewership. This is the kind of engagement I get on every video. Do you want to work with me for the for X, Y, and Z dollars?
21:05 Speaker 0 Yeah, see, I recommend asking the questions first because I think it will further inform how you answer and present yourself in the right way to the audience.
21:19 Speaker 1 What are your best tips for creators today as they're thinking about how to adapt to this evolving world of tech?
21:27 Speaker 0 Well, as I said, like I think, you know, asking questions and listening. Um I think not to be not to be um afraid to disrupt yourself. Um, I think that's a big big thing. Um, I think the other thing is to really lean into the strength of your brand and what you stand for and really make sure that you know, ask yourself is everything I'm doing feeding this strength, right? Is it am I really really focused on keeping all of this, all this benefit
22:05 Speaker 1 um
22:06 Speaker 0 in this lane? And then I also think another big thing is like making sure you're really clear on what that lane is.
22:14 Speaker 1 Vogue was very clear in that having their voice or having their purpose.
22:19 Speaker 0 Yeah, yeah, most definitely. Most definitely. And um, but I think for any brand, whether it's a software company, um, you know, that provides utility in a space, I think it's really understanding like what do you what do you stand for? And how do you make sure that you continue to be best in class for that benefit that you're giving the consumer?
22:45 Speaker 1 Yeah, I agree. I think a lot of our founders, when they're thinking about their startups, they they know branding is important, but a lot of them don't know how to how to go about thinking about it. But a lot of it is coming back to that vision statement. What is your right to exist? How are you impacting the lives of your customers?
23:03 Speaker 0 Yeah, absolutely, a hundred percent.
23:05 Speaker 1 Because you sit at the intersection of so many interesting things. What are different opportunities for say fashion, sports, and entertainment to collaborate or collide with going forward?
23:17 Speaker 0 Because it seems like, you know, even
23:18 Speaker 1 the sports influencer has influence in fashion too, or has influence and entertainment. It just seems like influencers can cover so many different vectors now.
23:28 Speaker 0 Uh well, they can. They can and they do. And that's where, you know, it's interesting. When I arrived here, everybody said, okay, great, now we have fashion. And one of the things that I'm doing now currently is getting deeper on what that means. So when somebody says, Well, I love fashion, okay, great. What part of fashion do you love? Do you like the storytelling? Do you like the clothing? Do you want to do it in like, do you want to do a collaboration? Do you just want to be at a show? Like, what part of fashion do you want to be a part of? And I've said it a lot. We have a ton of people in this company that intersect with fashion, right? They work with different fashion companies, et cetera.
24:17 Speaker 0 And I think what's exciting about our division, what we're bringing is actually a deeper understanding of how fashion companies actually work and run and using that expertise to actually inform people in sports in music.
24:32 Speaker 1 What you're saying, Susan, is that basically every kind of content creator or company really could figure out a fashion strategy. Even if they are software enterprise, maybe there's a way that fashion can work with them somehow.
24:49 Speaker 0 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, absolutely. I always say, um, I always say, you know, people have to get dressed in the morning. And people get dressed in the morning in a myriad of ways. Um, but fashion makes you feel good.
25:04 Speaker 1 I also remember you sharing that fashion is about a feeling that it gives you.
25:08 Speaker 0 Yeah.
25:09 Speaker 1 Uh you you meant,
25:10 Speaker 0 you know, we all have enough clothes in our closet
25:12 Speaker 1 as is, but it's around being able to put together a feeling so you can tell your your story in the way that you want to tell it.
25:20 Speaker 0 Absolutely.
25:21 Speaker 1 Awesome. I can't wait to help our companies think through their fashion strategies.
25:25 Speaker 0 I know, me too. Me too. Thank you so much, Connie.
25:29 Speaker 1 Thank you, Susan. It's been great.
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