Case Study: Hearst Magazines delivers clickable, data-driven content and boosts traffic with Slack

How Slack helps Hearst deliver clickable content in the digital age

Hearst Magazines, publisher of brands like Harper’s Bazaar and Esquire, faced the challenge of competing in a fast-paced digital landscape while producing thousands of pieces of content across some 25 titles. Editors needed timely, actionable data but analytics were scattered and slow to retrieve—individuals could spend up to 30 minutes tracking down reports—while teams often worked in silos, slowing editorial decision-making and cross-brand collaboration.

Hearst solved this by embedding Slack and a custom bot called HANS into daily workflows: HANS pulls and merges data from multiple sources, answers natural-language queries, and delivers 40 customizable reports directly in Slack channels. The tool is used by thousands, saves about an hour per employee per day, handles thousands of weekly queries, and helped drive measurable gains—record traffic (361 million unique visitors), nearly tripled e-commerce revenue from cloned articles, and large increases in video views and cross-brand collaboration.

Hearst Magazines

Zack Packer

Product Director