Estelle Ellis Rubenstein papers

Estelle Ellis (1920-2012) a creative marketing pioneer, helped launched Seventeen along with Helen Valentine, as editor and Cipe Pineles, as art director. Ms. Ellis has advised numerous magazines, corporations, universities and other institutions on how to position themselves demographically and economically as well as reach their primary audiences. She has worked for Seventeen, Charm, House and Garden, and a number of other Condé Nast publications and with such companies as Kimberly Clark. The principal Estelle Ellis Collection (1944-1994) is at the Archives Center of the National Museum of American History.

-- Born in New York City, Estelle Ellis received her Bachelors degree in Political Science and Journalism from Hunter College in 1940. In 1944, she began her career as a Promotion Editor with Seventeen Magazine. Estelle Ellis was hired because she was a ‘young voice;’ in fact, at twenty-eight, she was the youngest person on the staff at the time. She and her co-workers, editor Helen Valentine and art director Cipe Pineles, formed a powerful troika. These three women grew very close and influenced each other’s lives and work. Estelle’s main responsibility at Seventeen was to research and understand the demographic of teenage females. She ‘beat her tambourine’ for the marketing of new products for this demographic, and a better understanding that would lead to providing a better magazine. During her time there, she came to understand that the product itself serves as the best promotion. This showed through in the magazine’s way of recognizing its young demographic as intelligent beings with their own wants and needs.

Estelle’s boisterous personality and her genuine passion for her work made it hard for people not to hear her. She had a knack for articulating this passion verbally, turning the heads of marketers, retailers, and manufacturers, eventually convincing them to begin catering to teenage women.

She is responsible for leading women’s magazines into a new territory and opening up new possibilities for these magazines. She did the same service for Charm magazine, which targeted working women.

After 13 years of working for Seventeen, Glamour, and Charm, Ellis broke away from the magazines and her troika with the intention of taking a break, hoping for intuition to lead her in the right direction in making a new career move. Three months later, she found herself taking clients and winning accounts for them, which blossomed into her own business: Business Images, Inc.

“Estelle Ellis considered herself a kind of missionary, convincing the nonbelievers that this new market existed and was sizable.” (Scotford) Seventeen’s commercial success was mostly due to Estelle Ellis’s trumpeting. From a woman’s standpoint, Estelle never felt oppressed by male co-workers during her career. At that point, she said, she and her female colleagues were just happy to have a job. -Hannah Barber, 6/28/17