Welcome to Future Talks by RTF, where groundbreaking ideas and visionary leaders converge. In our upcoming conversation, we have the pleasure of engaging with a trailblazer in the realm of lifestyle, travel, and digital media: Mia Cowling.
Mia is more than the Founder and Editor-in-Chief of eat.live.escape; she’s the architect behind a vibrant digital lifestyle hub and a collection of print magazines that delve into the very essence of travel, food, beauty, home, fashion, and lifestyle. Her brainchild, eat.live.escape, isn’t just a platform—it’s a cultural rendezvous, a narrative of contemporary living woven through captivating content.
At the helm of MJC Digital, Mia spearheads a media and information publishing powerhouse. With a global resonance, this company knits together diverse audiences, bridging traditional print media with cutting-edge digital landscapes. Mia’s commitment to innovation, her love for exploration, and her fervor for the digital age shine through in every facet of her work.
Beyond titles and accolades, Mia is a passionate leader fostering an ecosystem where creativity flourishes. She champions a workplace ethos that’s not just about productivity but about fostering a culture of support, kindness, and flexibility. Her dedication to nurturing talent and empowering content creators lies at the heart of eat.live.escape’s soulful narrative.
Join us for a conversation that promises to uncover the secrets behind Mia Cowling’s visionary approach—a journey that transcends boundaries, embracing the spirit of the modern age while shaping the future of lifestyle and media.
RTF: What was your vision behind coming up with eat.live.escape? What inspired you?
Mia: My career background is in the corporate world, however I have always had a strong passion for travel, food, lifestyle and writing. I made a decision to bring these worlds together to found our media company MJC Digital, which is the umbrella company for the eat.live.escape label. eat.live.escape is a place to share the best of food, travel, fashion, home, interiors, beauty and wellness – all of the ingredients for a beautiful life! In addition to ele, MJC Digital now produces a dedicated home and interiors magazine, ele HOME, and have two new projects in the works – a tech focused publication and a 24/7 digital news site.
RTF: How do you look at the future of print media given the emergence of other media forms?
Mia: Interestingly, while we have a digital first strategy for eat.live.escape, our print media continues to thrive. There is a huge reader base that loves the tactile nature of print and the ability to hold and feel the product. It is a moment for people to slow down and reconnect with a media format that isn’t distracting. Print is a profitable part of our business and we do not see we will move away from it anytime soon. That being said, digital is also crucially important, including the digital edition of our print magazines as it allows us to reach global audiences across the world that we wouldn’t be able to connect with if we were a print-only publication.
RTF: What are some challenges that the interviews and general exchanges with designers, creatives and entrepreneurs present?
Mia: The sheer volume of requests we get from PR and companies to review products, destinations and interview creatives and entrepreneurs can be overwhelming, we want to do every exchange justice so it can be difficult to prioritise them all. There are so many incredible stories to be told, finding a way to fit everything in to the publishing schedule is our biggest challenge.
RTF: Ele Magazine has a great growth trajectory. How did you scale it to heights in a short span of time?
Mia: It has been all organic growth and to date we have done very minimal advertising. Social media has been crucial but not the typical social media channels you might expect. While Instagram, Facebook and TikTok are great avenues for traffic, Pinterest is the true king of directing traffic, we have very few followers on Pinterest but we have some pins that have generated millions of hits of traffic and created virality. My top tip to any business that has a very visual appeal – you should be putting most of your social media effort in Pinterest, purely because it acts like google for images and the virality you can achieve far outweighs all other platforms. In addition to social media, working with photographers and writers across the globe has been invaluable and of course investing in a strong SEO strategy is crucial.
RTF: What is the process of selecting content to work with like, with a plethora of content coming your way? How important is a media kit?
Mia: A Media Kit is important but it doesn’t tell the full story, we love to hear the story behind the brands and individuals and understand more about the business origins and how they came to be. The real human stories are what makes a story compelling. Plus we love hearing form anyone doing new and exciting things!
RTF: What is your idea of a ‘good pitch’? What are the tips to make it more comprehensive?
Mia: We receive over 100 pitches a day (on a slow day!), the key to a good pitch is concise information, great imagery, inclusion of all relevant links – basically anything that makes it easy for a publication like ours to pick up the story and run with it without having to spend too much time going back and forth. Good quality, high resolution images are critical for a visual online medium and aligning pitches to relevant content vertical so we know which Editor to direct the pitch to.
RTF: What would you suggest the aspiring designers and creatives who wish to get their feature published in the top publications?
Mia: Be creative with your pitch, include beautiful imagery, have a compelling story to tell and offer some level of exclusivity through an image or content, and always tailor your pitch to the publication – receiving a pitch that you can tell is a blanket pitch out to multiple publications is much more likely to be overlooked than a pitch that is directed to the specific Editor or publication. We love to hear from new and emerging brands so my other advice would be don’t be afraid to get in touch, Editors are always looking for new brands and creatives to showcase.
RTF: How do you look at the interests of advertisers in publishing? What is the ‘acceptable’ amount of influence that you let in?
Mia: We are very cautious of the influence of our advertisers, we only accept advertisers with similar values and aesthetics of our magazines and digital site, we have to believe in the product and we really like to ensure that advertisements are interesting and valuable to our readers, that being said we find that working with advertisers we can usually come up with a great advert that works for both the advertiser and our readers.
RTF: What fuels you creatively? How does your professional life impact your off-the-table life?
Mia: I am lucky to live in a very beautiful part of Australia with a lot of nature around me, but also close enough to the cosmopolitan city of Melbourne. My creativity is fuelled by this unique mix of urban and natural features and the people I meet every day in my line of work. I try to avoid seeking inspiration online or in social media as I find it can stifle creativity and prevent you from finding a unique point of view. I love visiting new cities and places, art galleries and sitting in cafes soaking in the atmosphere. A lot of what we do at ele is food and travel focused so any chance I get to immerse myself in a foodie setting in invaluable! For our ele HOME magazine, connecting with interesting architects, exploring buildings old and new and seeing what is new in the world of interiors and design fuels creativity.
RTF: What do you think about the media landscape today, and what is the route for magazines and publications going to look like in the times to come?
Mia: There is an insatiable thirst for communication, information and content and as it is delivered to us directly to our phones it means that we have access to information from across the globe. I think media companies need to strike the balance between producing quick, engaging content and more long form work that is thoroughly researched where quality time has been committed to bringing it to life. And of course, AI is dominating media and content at the moment which only makes the human focused stories and experiences so much more compelling. I think there will be two lanes of content going forward – ‘slow’ news and the fast, AI generated pieces that attract clicks and create virality. Visual and video is also crucially important and in-tech experiences that allow readers to be part of the story and connect with it menaingfully will start to dominate. The global pressure of the last few years will likely continue for the short to medium term but I then see a move to a more balanced, joyful human experience – after all history repeats itself and human nature seems to go trough cycles of experience, the one difference with this cycle is the emergence of artificial intelligence and our ability to control and co-exist with it.
RTF: How would you advise aspiring magazine editors who are eager to break into the field of content and advance their careers?
Mia: I would suggest getting as much experience as possible in a variety news and media outlets and create connections through LinkedIn and other professional platforms, we have made some of our best connections through social media and employed writers bases on their portfolios. I would also suggest not being afraid to reach out to Editors or others in your preferred field and ask for mentorship or guidance, most people are more than willing to assist and provide connections and introductions. There is also a real opportunity for young editors to be fully across future trends, AI and emerging social tools to set themselves apart.
