James Brown, pioneer of the Lads’ Mag concept as founder of Loaded, is an admirer of The LadBible and is excited by the wide range of content. He started his own male-skewed Sabotage Times site in 2009 and it now generates two million page views per month. The LadBible racks up nearly 800 million video views a month. It has opened a studio in its basement and will shortly embark on a new era of producing original video programmes. An early taste of this is a project The LadBible has been filming on the comeback of the boxer David Haye.
- “I wouldn’t fancy it myself, but that’s life,” a writer might sign off, or “I’m sure all this could have been avoided, to be honest.”
- LadBible Group won the ‘Best new product or publication launch’ category at The Drum Awards for Content 2021.
- Thanks to the website’s early content, the petri dish of rape culture received a massive antibiotic dose in 2012.
- The story was mentioned in The Sun and widely shared on Twitter.
The Lad Bible: How a media success story has harnessed social media to fill the void left by lads’ mags
His first venture was called Rate Our Student Life, which clocked up 10,000 likes on its Facebook page. Ostensibly a vehicle for students to like and share opinions about local businesses, it was in reality a vehicle for the kind of funny viral pictures and videos in which The Lad Bible now specialises. Solomou got the idea for a digital media business while still a business management student at Leeds University, where he studied from 2009 to 2013. It is thought he received a small start-up grant from the university. While Moore and the content team ActivTrades Overview are focused on meeting audience desires, Turner likes to talk up a sense of mission and social purpose. Mainly based in the smaller Spitalfields office, where an in-house agency creates native ad content, and favouring heels and designer dresses over the rest of the team’s jeans, T-shirts and trainers, Turner is not afraid to make bold claims.
Popular videos
Whereas a previous generation had the Lads’ Mags phenomenon of the 1990s, the young Millennials have The LadBible. It has more than 10.6 million followers on Facebook, more than double any newspaper brand. What’s more, it is only four years old and run by two 24-year-olds. In a converted warehouse in Manchester’s hip Northern Quarter, 50 young people are producing a media success story that has captured the attention of half of all British males aged 18 to 24. Bold stories and news about people and what connects them the world over. We bring you US news and entertainment by shining a light on people and their stories.
The campaign
Recently launched women’s site The Pool, co-founded by DJ and TV presenter Lauren Laverne and former magazine editor Sam Baker, is aiming for a smaller but tightly defined highbrow audience. Content is scraped and aggregated from anywhere – social media, Reddit, TV, radio, writers’ ideas – then written up with a consciously conversational tone. “I wouldn’t fancy it myself, but that’s life,” a writer might sign off, or “I’m sure all this could have been avoided, to be honest.” The platform’s Facebook reach – the number of feeds in which its content appears – is more than 400 million, the equivalent of a quarter of all the social network’s global users. The site is the 13th most visited in the UK, according to Alexa, and is the second most-visited British-owned site after the BBC.
TheLADbible’s relationship with commercial partners and its audience is to acknowledge that its readers loathe intrusive advertisements; the platform remains very ad-light – for instance, there are no programmatic ads in its app. The strategy for generating income rests on creating native content – particularly video in partnership with brands. Solomou played Rugby Union for Cheshire and has the slightly cauliflower ears to show for it. Turner, whose brief is partly to represent the company publicly so that he does not have to, How to buy enjin coin says he dislikes interviews.
The reception area of LadBible’s London office is decked out in black gloss and red neon and signed football memorabilia. Just out of sight from the parade of visiting gangsters, Love Islanders and media-trained footballers are ranks of bespectacled professionals deeply immersed in dashboards. Now a few years and award wins down the line, Peter Heneghan, head of communications at LadBible told The Drum, “as a brand we have been constantly evolving”. For the last few years it has operated under the mantra “With Social Power Comes Social Responsibility”. Readers have not simply cancelled their FHM subscription and headed to The LadBible.
Anything that doesn’t meet expectations is purged so it doesn’t kill the page’s algorithmic momentum. Some failures get a second life with a different post strategy, others are relegated to the tough lessons bin. Now, is swing trading safer than day trading is it less risky there’s a new campaign running on the site, called Free To Be. LadBible’s creative agency Joyride, working with Smirnoff, is exploring what it really means to be a lad, exploring different aspects of nightlife with an exclusive lens looking to highlight minority communities including LGBTQ+ and disabled people.
Leave a Response