Elle hires AOL managing editor for new digital role

Popular fashion magazine and website Elle has hired AOL’s Managing Editor, Phebe Hunnicutt, to fill a newly created digital role.

Hunnicutt will join the team in March this year as Digital Director, having been at AOL since 2008 where she began her career as Style Editor for StyleList.com.

Hunnicutt will be responsible for managing Elle’s website, where she will help to develop and manage the editorial and commercial digital strategy across the brand.

The latest ABC Consumer results show that digital editions of print brands are up by a huge 329%, demonstrating a changing strategy for the industry.

Scott Braniff, Investment Director of Havas Media said: “Looking at Hearst as a whole, they are down -11% across their print editions but they are delivering strong digital numbers across their headline brands such as Cosmopolitan and Elle.”

Zoe Bale, Head of Press for Carat UK notes how over the next year some magazines will abandon print completely and become available as a digital format only.

“Readers are becoming ‘smart aggregators’ and choose what content they want to read and what format they want to read it on. Consumers are filtering content to become their own editors. Over the next year we will see more closures in the print market and a trend of magazines becoming available only in the digital format.”