Lucky is a brand synonymous with personal style – identifying what makes you unique and exploring that self expression through fashion, accessories and beauty. Luckymag.com is my go-to for inspiration and what to buy now with content that is not only informative but entertaining and simply fun. I chatted with Elana Fishman, Senior Digital Editor of Luckymag.com, a truly creative and thoughtful mastermind of content, about working with a brand that has such a strong signature and the stories and pitches she loves to hear about.
Name: Elana Fishman
Media outlet: Luckymag.com
Title: Senior Digital Editor
Twitter/Instagram: @elanafishman
I’m Lucky‘s Senior Digital Editor, which is a part-editing, part-writing job. In addition to editing most of Lucky’s day-to-day web content and making sure that our stories reflect our voice and point of view, I also work on my own larger-scale features and the occasional news post as well. I also attend events and previews—though it can be hard to swing midday jaunts out of the office!
The atmosphere at Lucky is unlike that of any place I’ve ever worked before—everyone is truly so friendly and fascinating to talk to. That “you can sit with us” attitude, as we all like to call it, makes me look forward to coming to the office every day! And the Lucky digital team is just fantastic. I’ve been here for two and a half years now—I was originally brought on by the wonderful Lauren Sherman, who I met when I was writing for Fashionista.com as a freelancer a few years ago, when she joined the Lucky team as Executive Digital Editor. I was pretty devastated when she left at the end of 2012, but we somehow managed to get the absolute best person ever, Verena von Pfetten, to replace her. A lot of my job involves discussing our daily, weekly and monthly content plans with Verena, and we just see completely eye to eye on so many things.
It’s been amazing to watch our team grow—we’ve literally doubled our staff since I joined.
That’s a tough one. I’m a huge pop culture junkie, and have done features on Breaking Bad, The OC and even Uptown Girls (don’t laugh—that movie’s the best) that had a strong style angle. For April Fools’ Day this year, I wrote that The Hills was confirmed to become a Broadway musical, and so many people totally bought it—that was fun to do. And for Valentine’s Day a few months ago, I thought it’d be silly to have Lucky staffers’ significant others pick out their date-night outfits—and show them side-by-side with ones the editors themselves had chosen. The results were shocking—it seems that Lucky couples are just crazy in sync with each other!
I really enjoy doing long-form interviews with women whose style I admire. Taylor Swift and Gwyneth Paltrow are both at the tip-top of my wish list—someday, it’ll happen! And this isn’t quite as fashion-focused, I’d really love to enlist Skrillex to teach me how to make dubstep music. A lot of people don’t know this about me, but I love EDM (although rave culture terrifies me). I’d love to learn how to drop the bass from the master himself.
Via email, or over drinks or dinner (more on that later). I’m not a phone person in general—except in a social media and texting context!
A week, usually—but often even less. Some of my features go from an idea to being live on the site in a single workday, and the same goes for the rest of the Lucky web team!
Any time. Email’s a 24/7 game!
Certainly ones that are in line with what Luckymag.com generally covers. It’s always pretty obvious to me when the person pitching is actually familiar with our site—and when they’ve never looked at it once. I’ll also mention that I live for a good pun, and throwing some clever wordplay into the mix will always, always catch my attention.
Worst? Misspelling my name—I know it’s easy to do, but still—or including the wrong publication name in the body of the email. Beginner’s mistakes. I also can’t stand when PR people I’ve never actually met before (even via email) address me as “love,” “hun” or—and I swear I’ve gotten this several times before—”E.” It’s great that you feel comfortable chatting with me and all, but maybe use my full first name if you’ve never met me before, you know? Finally, general “What are you working on?” emails are pretty purposeless in my opinion.
Every day, Luckymag.com posts 15-20 stories—so suffice it to say that if you send me something really great, chances are we’ll be able to include it somehow!
In terms of best practices, inviting an editor to sit down for drinks or dinner and chat while off the clock really sets a PR person apart. You can certainly discuss work, but actually getting to know someone is the best way to figure out how you two can collaborate in the future—and you might wind up making a new friend, too!
Photo credit: Ashley Jahncke
