Interview Summary and Project Proposal

For this assignment, I have decided to create a social media strategy for Gosha Rubchinskiy, a Russian streetwear brand. Gosha’s brand is currently being featured all over social media, but the brand itself does not have a steady social media presence. He has captured the attention of various celebrities, most recently, Best New Artist Grammy nominee Lil Uzi Vert, who mentioned Gosha’s collection in an interview on the E! News red carpet. Gosha’s clothes are inspired by the fall of the Iron Curtain, Russian street and youth culture, and his experiences. Pushing Russian iconography onto the world stage, Gosha has collaborated with multiple brands including Adidas, Fila, and Burberry.

I have noticed that Gosha Rubchinskiy currently doesn’t have a strong social media presence. They have an Instagram account, but there are only four posts in total. In an age where streetwear is thriving on runways and retail, I think that Gosha could use this to their advantage and benefit a lot from a stronger presence on social media platforms. I chose to work with this brand because I can start from scratch. There is so much potential to make Gosha one of the most popular streetwear brands on social media. I want to create an active platform for the brand.

As for the interview, I spoke with Emily Sundberg, the Instagram editor for The Cut, a satellite publication of New York Magazine for women's health, fashion, politics, and much more. She creates original content for posting and helps The Cut maintain an active social media presence. Here was a highlight from our conversation:

How did you decide to make social media a career?

I started doing a lot of film photography in high school which is how I fell in love with and really learned about photos as a medium. When my friends weren’t available to model for me, food was a reliable subject that people got excited about. When I got to college I was still shooting a lot of food for Instagram and life... my roommate at the time was a photo major and we both got equally excited about photographing food. Her boyfriend suggested I start a food Instagram (this was 2012) which seemed crazy to me because I didn’t understand the idea of a food only instagram. Crazy now, because there are thousands of them. So I got into it at a good time! And I started @sheloveseverything, and started meeting a ton of people in food and beverage, and eventually started making money from it.

From there I got an internship at Food Network in their social department and saw I could translate skills I developed independently to real work environments at big companies. From Food Network, I went to Yahoo for a year doing social media, production, writing, etc. but now the media landscape is so tied together — you need to know how to do it all. When I was looking for jobs senior year, a friend of mine who works at Instagram reached out to me and said Stella Bugbee, the president of The Cut, was looking for an Instagram editor. After going through the application and interview process I got it, and started a week after graduation!

Is there anything in particular that you’ve noticed about the evolution of social media? Like, how is it different from when you first started out?

I think the time people spend on it has GREATLY increased. I’ll speak on Instagram because that’s the product I use the most. When I started on Instagram I used it as a photo editing app! I think everyone did. I had photos of my drinking in high school because I thought it was for kids, not my parents and businesses! No people use Instagram for everything from dating, to finding jobs, to recipes... it's it’s own database for endless information. People become addicted to it, people build businesses on it, it’s a way to find and spread news. And it’s also amazing for creative people to express themselves in new ways... which was the original purpose of the app: photography.

What would you say is the hardest part of your job?

Giving a brand a personality is difficult because there are so many directions to take. Is it the EIC’s voice? My voice? Should it mirror our readers voices? This is something Stella, our president, Nora, our engagement editor, and I are constantly working on. Social media was originally for people to voice opinions, so constantly questioning “what does the Cut think? Where does the Cut stand? What does the Cut think is funny?” A personality per se. The other hard part is more obvious, and that’s finding time to be unplugged. It’s really, really hard for me to put my phone down and I don’t separate work from life too much. It stresses me out and makes me upset a lot but I’m working on better ways to make more time for myself in the real world.

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After talking with Emily about her experience as a social media professional, I was inspired to choose to create a strategy for Gosha Rubchinskiy. Emily started with photography and eventually made her way towards creating a wildly successful food Instagram with over 26,000 followers and kickstarting her career as an Instagram editor. The biggest reason why I chose to work with Gosha Rubchinskiy is because I would have a clean slate to create a successful social media strategy. Emily did the same kind of thing by creating her own brand personality and emulating that through her personal accounts as well as her professional ones.