Edwina McCann has spent decades building glossy authority the old-fashioned way.
So there’s something faintly delicious about the fact that when Glamour Australia arrived this week, it didn’t bother with a print debut, a launch party, or even a website. It just… went live on TikTok.
“If you want to launch a modern media brand, I believe this is the way to do it, especially given the demographics, audience, and customer base,” McCann, who oversees Vogue Australia and has been steering Glamour Australia’s local launch, told Mediaweek.
“This is where they are, engaging on those platforms, and we need to meet them where they are with content that’s both appropriate and engaging on those platforms.”
It’s a deliberate bet on trust over reach. “Given Glamour’s global beauty authority, there’s a real need for trusted brands and trusted content on platforms like TikTok and Instagram in particular,” she said.
“In a world of influencers and the influence of influencers being so strong, you need brands who are discerning, who abide by media laws in our country, and who can be trusted as a source.”
Edwina McCann
Lessons from Vogue
McCann isn’t launching this blind. Glamour Australia’s social-first playbook borrows directly from Vogue Australia’s own pivot.
“We learnt through Vogue with Forces of Fashion how to create really engaging content that worked seamlessly for our sponsors,” she said.
“We believe that our client base and our agencies are mature enough and sophisticated enough to work with us in this way without necessarily needing all those traditional measurements.”
That meant ripping up the KPI sheet.
“We changed many of our KPIs from pure traffic to video views, which gave the team, especially the younger members, the opportunity to really change how they pitched and to start thinking about storytelling from a video-first perspective, with text as an afterthought.”
Redefining the space
For McCann, the appeal isn’t just editorial – it’s existential for how media brands hire and think.
“It’s exciting because we’ve got the opportunity to redefine this space and the value of that reach and engagement on those platforms,” she said.
“It’s also great from a hiring perspective because, from the outset, you’re looking for very different sorts of creators, journalists, and producers.”
Clients want more video… and Myer’s buying in
The commercial logic tracks too.
“From a commercial standpoint, we’re increasingly getting video-first briefs from clients,” McCann said.
“You need a team who are fully skilled and capable of responding to those briefs with great ideation and, you know, affordable yet high-quality production they can deliver to clients.”
That commercial confidence has already landed a marquee partner: Myer has signed on as Glamour Australia’s exclusive, multi-year beauty launch partner. But McCann is quick to shut down any read that this is a youth play. “If you look specifically at the Myer partnership we’ve got, we are not going after a youth market, at the expense of the 30-somethings,” she said.
“I’m in my 50s, and I’m hopeless at make-up. I get my kids to do my make-up. They’re so much better at it because they’ve grown up on YouTube, right? So we’re not saying this information isn’t interesting or useful to older women as well.”
The pitch to advertisers, she said, is precision without the usual social media chaos.
“It can be very scatterbrained still on social. We all know that, but with our network and our targeting, and the data that we have, we can guarantee a delivery,” McCann said.
“So relatively speaking, you’re getting no wastage. You’re getting guaranteed delivery to the audience. And I think that is a new way for marketers to think about it.”
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The launch, the licence, the new editor
Glamour Australia is being published under licence from Condé Nast by News Corp Australia, which has held Condé Nast titles locally for close to two decades and now runs the brand alongside Vogue Australia, Vogue Living and GQ Australia. YouTube, a dedicated Australian website and newsletters are slated to follow later this year.
Fronting it all is newly appointed editor Remy Rippon, who joins from her role as senior beauty and health editor at Vogue Australia, with more than a decade of experience across beauty, fashion and lifestyle media, including a stint at Net-a-Porter in London.
The debut campaign – created with News Corp Australia’s in-house agency Roller – is already live and has been rolled out across social, out-of-home, digital and owned channels under the line “Your favourite follow follows @glamour.au,” built around a cast of talent dubbed the “Guests of Glamour.”
Remy Rippon
“We’ve worked away and worked very, very closely with Condé on this launch. And we’ve learnt things from them, particularly about their relationship with Meta,” McCann said.
It’s a launch strategy with no safety net of a print run to fall back on – just an algorithm, a beauty editor with a decade of receipts, and a director who’s betting the whole thing plays out exactly the way it did for Vogue.
If it works, Glamour Australia won’t just have arrived. It’ll have arrived without ever printing a single page.