The Brand: Travel + Leisure
The Brief: After working her way up the masthead at Travel + Leisure in roles including associate editor, senior editor, and style director, Laura was promoted to deputy editor of Travel + Leisure, where she led a team, oversaw the brand’s coverage of worldwide travel destinations across platforms and helped steer the creative direction. While Laura was the deputy editor of Travel + Leisure, this legacy print magazine was experiencing a seismic shift in the media landscape and starting to realize that a traditional approach to print and online media was not enough to take the brand into the future. In an effort to reinvent itself as more than just a magazine, Travel + Leisure tapped into Laura’s expertise in brand building to broaden its scope and create new, revenue-producing ideas. Laura launched a multi-platform content division that — in collaboration with the marketing and sales teams — drove innovation and revenue.
The Results (Brand Strategy): Working with the marketing and advertising teams, Laura developed smart new initiatives, innovative brand extensions, and strategic partnerships. First up was a new multi-platform content division that Laura created in collaboration with the marketing and sales teams, driving over $5 million in revenue by working on content-marketing programs with BMW, Luxottica, and more. Laura oversaw the magazine’s partnership with Hudson News to create branded airport stores. She also spearheaded a revenue-generating platform with the outfitter Cox & Kings, in which she curated branded T+L Trips aligned with stories in the magazine. Travel + Leisure shared a portion of the profits from this unique partnership. She launched Travel + Romance, a co-branded magazine on honeymoons and destination weddings, done in partnership with The Knot. And she oversaw the magazine’s profitable book series, which reinvented Travel + Leisure in fresh new ways.
The Results (Editorial): At Travel + Leisure, Laura directed the coverage of the magazine’s most important topics, including lifestyle, hotels, and trends. An adept line editor with finely tuned visual packaging skills, Laura hired freelance writers and collaborated with the magazine’s art/photo teams to produce top-notch articles for the magazine. An expert on style, fashion, and beauty, Laura also oversaw Travel + Leisure’s style department and all related coverage. Another accomplishment: Every year, Laura oversaw two of Travel + Leisure’s most important single-topic issues: Hotels and Style & Culture, directing all content. Here’s a look at the 2013 Style & Culture issue, which won a Folio Eddie Award for Best Full Issue (Consumer) and showcased the myriad ways that Laura combined editorial, digital, and other platforms.
• For the issue’s signature package, “Shop Like a Local,” Laura and her team tapped into a global network of well-connected insiders — as well as T+L’s social media followers — to create a guide to the world’s style capitals. To coincide with the feature, the team crafted a Shop Like a Local Twitter chat that involved nearly 100 participants (designers; bloggers; fashion and style experts), generating 17 million digital impressions.
• The Radar section, which Laura oversaw with a small team of editors, was T+L’s indispensable guide to the globe, marrying news, discoveries, and service journalism with sharp writing, eye-catching images, and witty infographics. The Packing Doctor column was a concept that Laura helped develop, in which the magazine’s style director solved packing dilemmas sourced through T+L’s social media channels; the team also produced an accompanying packing video. The interactive last page profiled a neighborhood through crowd-sourced tips.
• The rest of the issue featured a smart and seductive mix of stories, celebrating modern style and culture around the globe, including fashion writer Lynn Yaeger on the emerging fashion scene in Scotland, the enduring allure of a countercultural Big Sur retreat by award-winning novelist Dani Shapiro, and New York Times writer Guy Trebay’s take on global street style.
