Ten questions for Elle Australia's Justine Cullen Editor-in-chief of Elle Australia, Justine Cullen. Picture: Foxtel Source: Foxtel THE editor-in-chief of Bauer Media's Elle Australia, Justine Cullen, has been juggling a newborn baby with another baby - the biggest magazine launch in Australia for years. Cullen reveals how she's been coping with the two-pronged challenge. You've recently had a baby. How are you managing the looking after a new family member and the biggest mag launch in Australia for years? Like most working mothers, I have a lot of help, mostly in the form of my own mother. Of course it's a juggle - I tend to race home in time for dinner and bedtime and then get back on to my laptop and work into the early hours. But while the timing wasn't ideal, the opportunity to launch a magazine like Elle is once in a lifetime - I would have moved mountains to make it work. The women's category is a crowded marketplace. What will Elle offers Australian women that they're not getting from its competitors? Elle taps into a part of the market that really isn't being catered to right now - we're unofficially calling it "younger luxury." There are existing luxury titles in the market, but none that approach the category in the modern, relevant and accessible way that Elle does - nor with the complete package of luxury, shopping, beauty, features, lifestyle and pop culture written about in a friendly, irreverent way. It's a very contemporary approach. In the digital age where magazines live on multiple platforms, does the front cover still retain its impact and power? Your cover is still a window into who you are and what you stand for. I think there's less interest in paper tricks and stunts, like foils, because of the increasing importance of digital, but it's the cover that gets instagrammed and tweeted, and it's the cover that sells that particular issue, so it will always be the most important decision you make each month. You're promising 300 page-plus magazines. How is this sustainable in such a turbulent media sector? Everyone involved in Elle from a management perspective has felt very strongly that this is an opportunity to bring it back to the product. We have a lot of faith in this masthead. So from an investment point of view, we'd all rather see our own dollars put into book sizes and content than constant tip ons and other stunts that result in short term wins. The reaction to our first and second issues has been incredibly strong in terms of ad revenue, and I think it shows that if you can excite the market, the money is there. My job is to just continue doing that past the launch period into issues three, four and five and on. There have been some well chronicled cuts at Bauer, particularly on the advertising side. Do you see yourself as a growing part of the business? Even in tough times you have to keep growing and evolving, and launching new things is a vital part of that. Bauer has been able to look at the company and make decisions from a purely economic standpoint. I can't comment on the cuts, but from where I sit there's definitely investment and excitement around creating something new and fresh. You have three joint venture owners (Bauer, Hearst and Lagardere). Does this make the decision-making process challenging and are JVs the way of the future given tough times in the mag sector? It's definitely an advantage in these times to be an international title with all the support of an international network behind you, not to mention the recognition and clear positioning it brings. I think it would be tough launching today without that. I was very wary of the three-way JV to start with, as you can imagine. Editing by committee rarely works and I wasn't sure how much involvement each stakeholder would expect and if their end-goals were the same. But I've been so pleasantly surprised. They each play very different roles - LA are obviously the brand protectors and are mostly concerned with content. HMI are more involved with the business side of things and management, staffing etc. My day to day contacts on both sides - particularly Valeria Bessolo Llopiz at Lagardere and Kim St. Clair Bodden at Hearst - have an amazing amount of editorial understanding, wisdom and experience behind them, which I really appreciate having come from a title that didn't have that. Lagardere's policy is that while the values of Elle need to stay the same, the market and audience will always be different, so they allow a lot of creativity, which is an editor's dream. Luckily, the Germans, French and New Yorkers all seem to really love the magazine we've made and outside of being there for support and guidance when needed, have very much left it up to us. I went through a fairly rigorous process to get this role and throughout made it very clear what sort of magazine I wanted to make, which everyone involved believed in. So I think that's helped to make sure we're all on the same page from the start and made my UN of approvals a lot smoother. What's the difference between style and fashion, and how will Elle Australia represent this in the magazine? Fashion is what's on the runway. Style is how you put it together. Elle has always been more about personal style than the other fashion titles - it's less dictatorial, more relevant to real life. I also think that there's more to style than being a clothes horse with nothing to say, and Elle addresses this in its features well (by giving our readers interesting things to think and talk about) and in its lifestyle section (by inspiring them to live their most stylish lives both home and away). You're an Instagram and Twitter user. Is it critical for magazine editors to have a big social media presence? It's definitely, absolutely critical for magazines to have a good presence. Any brand these days needs to create an emotional connection and play a role in the everyday lives of any potential customers, and social media is an instant, easy, cost-effective way to do that. The difference with a magazine is that it also works as a taster of your voice, and of the actual product that at some point you want to ask them to pay money for. So you need to get it right. I came from a title where I had quite an intimate relationship with my readers and that worked for me. I don't think it's necessarily critical for all editors because if it's not something that comes organically to how you like to communicate, it will come across as inauthentic and contrived, which in my mind is social media death. As the former ed of Shop Til You Drop, what do you make of recent changes at the magazine? I'm really interested to see it. It's a whole new staff and format so it doesn't feel like the same magazine I worked on - I'm just going to be interested to see it as a reader. I love that they're trying something completely new and a bit brave - it's so easy to be stagnant in this business but we need to evolve and move. Who has been your favourite interview subject in your career so far, and who's top of the wanted list? I don't get particularly excited by interviews. The part of this industry that gets me going is the creative side - looking at new ways of doing things, fresh ideas, out with the old and in with the new. I'm really hoping that with Elle we've made something entertaining and a bit progressive and right for this place in time - that was he end goal every person on staff shared. Although, I would love to interview Jane Pratt, who has done just that twice. That's an interview I'd get excited about.