How Custom Boxes Help Popular Media Site ‘Her Campus’ Engage with Clients and Community
We have the pleasure of developing custom packaging for all types of clients. We ship them off to you, with a hope they will be a part of your brand’s story. And it’s those stories that are our favorite. We love to see what you’re doing with custom packaging and what it’s doing for your business.
One of those businesses is Her Campus, a lifestyle brand and media site dedicated to providing aspiring female journalists and marketers with the skills and experience they need to launch their careers after graduation. Their sister company, InfluenceHer Collective is a tight-knit community of influencers and brands that send out custom “survival kits” to members. But here’s the best part; Both businesses are run 100% by women and the 12,000+ contributors are entirely made up of college journalists spread out across 11 countries.
The founders, Stephanie Kaplan Lewis, Annie Wang and Windsor Hanger Western met while working on a lifestyle print magazine. At the time, they were focusing specifically on Harvard college women.
“We decided to bring the publication online to modernize it and allow us to reach a broader audience.” says Wang. “We realized there was this need in the media industry for lifestyle content by college women for college women. After experiencing success with publication, we wanted to do something bigger that was not just a publication at Harvard, but a platform that would allow anyone to create a similar magazine on their campus.”
Their venture has led them to be named as the Number One Media Site for College Women by Forbes, Top Small Business of the Year by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce, and Entrepreneur Magazine’s list of The Best Entrepreneurial Companies in America
We recently caught up with Annie Wang, Co-founder and Creative Director of Her Campus, to talk more about her business, finding inspiration, and how she uses a custom designed (and downright awesome) subscription box to engage with their clients and community of women.
Tell us more about your subscription box.
Our InfluenceHer Collective survival kits are an extension of our Campus Survival Kits. Both kits are a fun way that we engage both our clients and our community of college women. We work with clients to send product to our community, and they in turn create content surrounding the kits. It allows our clients to reach a niche and new audience, test new products and promote their brand while allowing our influencer community to be on the cutting edge of new trends and brands while building their content portfolios.
Why did you decide to use custom packaging? How does it add to your business?
Custom packaging takes our products to a completely new level. We have a genius and award-winning design team that I lead, and they are integral to every campaign we launch. We believe in storytelling through graphic design, and custom packaging is another way to expand on our brand’s standard of excellence that our members and clients expect.
How do you promote Her Campus?
The success of Her Campus can be largely attributed to our chapters. We have over 380 chapters around the world producing original editorial content on HerCampus.com. The hands-on experience our students gain working on their chapter teams leads them to land their dream jobs and important connections. We also have multiple events a year — from our tentpole Her Conferences in New York and Los Angeles, to College Fashion Week in Boston and New York, to our B2B College Marketing Summits.
We have immersed ourselves directly in the college market, engaging with students on social media, and have truly embodied the approach of 360 marketing that spans digital, influencer, on-campus, experiential and insights.
Where do you find inspiration?
As someone in a creative field, it’s incredibly important to constantly seek inspiration and intentionally make it a part of your day. Inspiration for me comes in many forms, from scrolling through my Instagram feed, to reading Architectural Digest (I like getting inspired from “unrelated” art disciplines), to consuming a large diet of articles on leadership, productivity, and best practices related to my responsibilities. I moved from Boston to Miami a year and a half ago and this was the best thing I could have done for myself in terms of gaining inspiration, thanks to the totally new culture, weather, green spaces, and creative energy of this city.
What is one piece of advice you like to give young women?
Be outgoing and be confident in who you are and your ideas. Network, network, network. We like to describe our team as overachieving, entrepreneurial, action-oriented, innovative, collaborative and passionate, because we feel that these are the qualities of successful women, and I would encourage those looking to break into their dream field or find their dream career to embody those traits as well!
One of my favorite quotes is: “Entrepreneurship is not a sprint, it’s a marathon,” and that’s so true. Sometimes winning just means getting through another day and moving forward. Starting your own business can be daunting at times; focusing on what you can do each day to move the needle, and trusting the team you have built, will lead you to success.
Would you share one of your secrets to success?
We at CompanyBox know that daunting feeling. We have felt it ourselves and we see it with many of the companies we work with. That’s why we love telling your story. Because, if Annie, Stephanie and Windsor can take an idea and turn it into a successful media site for college women with national content, countless campus chapters, bloggers, events, conferences, apparel and even a book, then you can do something great with your idea too.
Interested in creating custom packaging for your story and business? We want to be a part of that marathon with you. Visit us at CompanyBox.
How can we help?
We’re all ears. Drop us a line and we’ll get in touch!
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