LONDON — Liberty is embracing ink on paper, creating a biannual beauty newspaper called The Hall, with elements of an old-style print publication, including crosswords and horoscopes.
The super-sized newspaper also has interactive elements, such as QR codes, and will be supported by a social media campaign that’s meant to “ease the shopping experience, and link all our content streams together,” according to Madeleine Macey, Liberty‘s chief marketing officer.
She said Liberty has prioritized print because “our audience loves knowledge, they don’t like being ‘sold to.’ They want to know what we’ve discovered, they want to learn.”
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Macey added that the retailer has seen “excellent results in engagement and conversion” since it introduced The Book, Liberty’s collectable coffee table magazine.
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The Hall is available in the London store’s beauty hall, and will be mailed to 50,000 Liberty Loyalty customers twice a year. The content includes beauty news, trends and practical advice, as well as reviews and recommendations from experts.
The makeup artist Gucci Westman has guest-edited the inaugural issue, which includes features on the return of the lipstick; how to master the art of “bath-scaping.”
There are fragrance horoscopes written by the store’s in-house astrologer, Lady Liberty, while the QR codes allow customers to shop edits on Libertylondon.com.
Shannon Peter edited the publication alongside Sophie Beresiner, Liberty’s global head of content and editor in chief. Beresiner joined the company last summer and oversees creative production, editorial and social media teams and reports to Macey.
Beresiner said the newspaper is compiled “by industry-leading editors, and will always feature dynamic visuals, compulsive shopping edits, the best practical advice and visionary contributors, all wrapped up in the unique delivery.”
The past two years have been busy on the branding front for Liberty, which marked its 145-year anniversary in 2020. It has refurbished its Tudor Revival flagship near Regent Street, and rebranded and relaunched its e-commerce site.
As reported, the new, more streamlined logo was inspired by the Liberty sign that’s been swinging above the store’s Great Marlborough Street flower stall entrance since 1925.
Liberty worked with the design studio Pentagram on the rebranding. The firm redrew the Liberty logo using the sign’s original typeface, and designed it to be flexible, repeatable, layerable and bendable to cover packaging, campaigns and transform into its own repeat print.