“That Kim Kardashian can ‘break the internet’ with a print magazine cover (as opposed to, say, an Instagram) is perhaps the biggest coup of all,” wrote Time. According to one outrageous – and false – theory, Kanye paid us to push Taylor Swift out of the news cycle.įrom there, the conversation moved on to more weighty matters, such as the future of print in the face of the digital revolution. It caught people off-balance, made them look twice and led many to speculate that either she was paid or we were paid. Those new to Paper were beguiled, wondering what the queen of reality TV, gossip talkshows and social media was doing on the cover of a publication they had never heard of. Those familiar with Paper as an indie magazine were shocked by the choice of this mainstream star. The numbers were staggering: on 13 November, one day after the full story appeared, our traffic measured nearly 1% of the entire web browsing activity in the US.Īppearing on the cover of a small-circulation magazine proved to be a brave and brilliant move for Kardashian. Everyone in the office spent the night glued to real-time analytics, watching the traffic on the site skyrocket. ![]() The inside photos – including the full nude – were released the following night at 8.30pm. Within a couple of hours, he had been retweeted about 70,000 times. The response was immediate and overwhelming, reaching a fever pitch when Kanye tweeted “the butt cover” with the hashtag “#ALLDAY”. So, we switched gears – we released the covers first. Somewhere along the chain, from the printer to the truckers to the distributors, we were afraid someone would leak the photos the next thing you know, they would have been on TMZ and we would have lost our own story. But seeing the photos made us change our game plan. The plan was to publish online in conjunction with the magazine’s appearance on newsstands. With the arrival of the internet, we’ve had a harder time being heard above the noise.Īnd so, a cover with Kardashian, already one of the world’s most famous women, was meant as the first salvo of an assault on the world wide web. Paper has been spotting new talent in fashion, entertainment and the arts for decades. But this alone would not have been enough.īehind the scenes, we were mobilising the troops, adding servers to handle the anticipated online surge and lining our ducks in a row for the social media campaign. Jean-Paul Goude, a pop culture legend in his own right, with work in the Louvre and several iconic images under his belt, was able to make you stare at one of the world’s most photographed women as if for the first time. W did a major shoot Vogue ran exclusive photos of Kim and Kanye’s wedding British GQ ran them bare-assed on their cover – none went viral like this. ![]() Many magazines have shot Kardashian over the years. ![]() Thanks to the creative team, led by Drew Elliott and Mickey Boardman, Kardashian and Goude came on board, game to take on the hyperbolic mandate “#BreakTheInternet”. We began with the idea of creating a conceptual art project for our art issue. It’s more art than science, and there is no recipe. The thing about popular culture – or “virality” – is that it cannot be fully predicted or manufactured. But did we expect it to go global, to become a major story for two weeks running? Or for it to lead a Saturday Night Live segment and become an ongoing discussion on late-night talkshows? Or that, taking up our challenge to #BreakTheInternet, versions of Kim’s behind would turn up on a piñata, a Thanksgiving turkey or Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi’s Christmas card? Never.
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