Mumbai: Condé Nast today unveiled its new global content strategy, leadership teams and structure. The company will transform its creative operations to better serve audiences and advertising partners by appointing global leadership teams to its storied brands. This new strategic approach to content creation brings an emphasized focus, across the company’s worldwide portfolio of brands, on quality and reach. The complete redesign and investment in editorial operations will transform how the creative teams create, share, translate, adapt and distribute content across platforms and formats. By strengthening each brand’s ability to bring talent and the very best in journalism and storytelling together across a global media infrastructure, the company will more effectively meet advertisers and audiences where they are now and where they will be in the future.
Leading the transformation is Anna Wintour, who has been named chief content officer for the company, worldwide. Wintour will also now serve as global editorial director of Vogue while continuing her oversight of Vogue U.S. Christiane Mack, chief content operations officer, who has largely been responsible for the unification of the creative teams across video, digital and print, will continue in her role, reporting to Wintour and Condé Nast Entertainment president Agnes Chu, to continue implementing the rollout of the global operating model.
Condé Nast has also appointed global editorial directors of AD, Condé Nast Traveler and GQ, with the remaining global brands to follow in early 2021. The global unification of the brand editorial teams will enable the brands to create the best version of each global story or piece of content and distribute it in customized ways for each local edition. The global editorial directors will continue to oversee the edition of their title in their home market in addition to their new global brand responsibilities.
Amy Astley will be the global editorial director of AD, Divia Thani will be the global editorial director of Condé Nast Traveler and Will Welch will be the global editorial director of GQ. For Vogue, Edward Enninful will be European editorial director for the markets owned and operated by Condé Nast, which include the UK, France, Italy, Germany and Spain. Similarly, Simone Marchetti has been promoted to European editorial director of Vanity Fair, inclusive of the editions published in France, Italy and Spain. Vanity Fair U.S. and UK editions will continue to be overseen by editor-in-chief Radhika Jones.
The deputy editorial directors for AD, Condé Nast Traveler and GQ will be Oliver Jahn, Jesse Ashlock and Adam Baidawi, respectively.
“Anna’s appointment represents a pivotal moment for Condé Nast as her ability to stay ahead in connecting with new audiences, while cultivating and mentoring some of today’s brightest talent in the industry, has made her one of media’s most distinguished executives,” said Roger Lynch, CEO of Condé Nast, to whom Wintour will continue to report. “Edward, Simone, and our new global editorial directors, Amy, Divia and Will, have proven throughout their tenures at the company that they are our best storytellers, capturing the cultural zeitgeist and growing their audiences on all platforms. In their success they have helped shape the world’s most influential brands and reimagined them for our new media ecosystem, and I’m thrilled to see their talents helping to lead our next chapter.”
The global editorial directors will set the overall content strategy, vision and tone across their title’s markets and platforms, including video in partnership with the Condé Nast Entertainment team. They will ensure global consistency of the brands while reinforcing one of the company’s greatest strengths — local storytelling and reporting. In addition to their global roles, they will also continue to oversee the local editions of their titles in their markets.
“The relationships we have with our audiences today are ongoing exchanges of ideas and opinions, and Edward, Amy, Divia, Will and Simone are masterful in their approaches to creating content that inspires, challenges and delights,” said Wintour. “As we look to the future of Condé Nast, we will use the unmatched combination of our global reach and local knowledge and identity of our titles to tell the most important, inclusive and inspiring stories of our time.
