inside people magazine's snapchat war room - bloomberg ...3/5/2016 inside people...

3/5/2016 Inside People Magazine's Snapchat War Room - Bloomberg Business

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Inside People Magazine's Snapchat WarRoomFor People magazine, Snapchat is an important medium and revenue source.

It’s just past 9 p.m. on Sunday night, and seven pop culture savants are crammed in a windowlessconference room in New York's financial district, staring at a collection of screens. They’re togglingbetween Twitter, Slack, Giphy, Instagram, Google Docs, and a halfdozen entertainment and culturewebsites, while emailing with a team of reporters. They’re typing furiously, cropping images, editingvideos, testing out oneliners on one another. Beyond their laptops and desktops are two giant TVs tuned tothe Academy Awards.

This is the indefatigable Snapchat team at People, Time Inc.’s mostwidely circulated magazine. They havebeen assigned to manage the magazine’s most important social channel. Unlike People's approach to the restof the social media universe—accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and others—the Peopleeditors treat Snapchat as a sort of younger, quirkier version of the magazine itself, giving the Snapchatoperation its own dedicated staff and a slightly goofier voice. People’s Snapchat editions appear eachmorning on Snapchat Discover, a section of the app carved out for a lucky few news organizations. TheSnapchat editions on Discover disappear after 24 hours.

ReprintsMarch 3, 2016 — 12:47 PM PST

Max Chafkin Sarah Friersarahfrier



“Did you see this GIF?” asks Alison Schwartz, senior features editor, calling the room’s attention to an

animated image from the Oscars telecast of someone in a bear suit clapping, followed by a shot of Leonardo

DiCaprio looking on. GIFs—for those under 35—are animated images and are one of the key elements of

any good Discover “snap”—the term of art for a piece of Snapchat content. In this case the bear GIF is a

joking reference to the animal that mauls DiCaprio’s character in The Revenant. Schwartz proposes pairingit with a caption suggesting that users send it to their friends. “Maybe it’s, ‘Seeking someone who looks at

me the way Leo looks at the bear,’” she says.

The headline will later be simplified. “Share with your biggest fan,” it offers when People’s Snapchatedition debuts at 6 a.m. the following morning. Shareable content is the other key to any good snap. It's a

hit: People’s Oscar’s edition will coincide with the magazine’s bestever day on Snapchat, according to a

1

Source: People



magazine spokesperson. That means the most daily unique views, though People declines to specify howmany that is.

“We wouldn’t want to be putting our eggs into a basketthat wasn't giving us a return on investment.''

At the beginning of last year, People didn’t have a Snapchat channel. But when it was offered a spot onDiscover, which currently has just 20 media brands, the decision to bet heavily on the platform was a nobrainer, says Joe LaFalce, who serves as executive director of business development for People and its sistermagazine Entertainment Weekly. "Any sort of legacy media brand is really trying to understand how tospeak to new audiences,'' he says. Snapchat's young, largely female demographic "is the perfect example ofa new audience that we really want to get the brand in front of."



Snapchat also represents a revenue source for People and the other Discover partners. The 10second adsthat run between snaps command higher rates than are generally offered on Facebook and Instagram,

revenue that People splits with Snapchat. LaFalce won’t comment on the financial performance of People’sSnapchat channel but says, “We wouldn’t want to be putting our eggs into a basket that wasn't giving us a

return on investment.” The plan is to add three people to the Snapchat team in the coming months. “It's a

really important platform to us,” says Zoe Ruderman, a features director. “We really think of it as creating a

mini magazine or a mini TV show every day.”

On Oscar night, the content is mostly silly, but it’s all business in the magazine’s Snapchat war room. A

white board in the back corner proposes a tentative 15snap lineup, and the room is filled with printouts of

past Snapchat editions to remind editors of examples of content that has performed well. A snap on

Source: People



1.1 Leo and the Bear. This is a shareable "card," which is a standalone image or animated GIF that publishers put on Snapchat in hopes users willsend it to their friends. Because Snapchat is pretty much walledoff from the rest of the Internet, these shareable cards are one of the only waysbrands can get more followers.

“moments we can’t stop talking about” was a huge hit for People’s Grammy coverage; it serves as atemplate for the first snap of the Oscar edition.

Posts are workshopped, written, edited, and then uploaded directly into the content management system thatSnapchat provides its Discover partners. Mostly separate from what goes on People's website, it may featurecelebrities that are more appealing to younger readers. (Kylie Jenner and Selena Gomez over JenniferAniston.) Unlike other social media channels, the Snapchat team is not trying to drive traffic back toPeople.com. The dedicated team structure is reminiscent of how media organizations treated the Web in itsearly days.

Ruderman says she bases Snapchat news judgement on what a 16yearold girl would care about. Her teamtries to make the content funny and interactive—and sometimes ridiculous. For instance, on Oscar night,Schwartz picks up on a meme comparing Alicia Vikander to Belle from Beauty and the Beast. She suggestsblowing it out into a multipart snap titled, “7 Celebs who were Literally [Princesses]” – using the emoji fora princess. “It has become a moment,” she says, approvingly.

The same could be said for Snapchat itself.

Before it's here, it's on the Bloomberg Terminal.

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