Enjoy vibrant private office suites and thriving coworking space with great value monthly memberships. It performed well in terms of revenue and profit, but reputedly couldn’t sustain itself – emphasising the difference between the two brands, since LADbible has grown and enjoyed a meteoric rise to global success over the same time period. Spurred exness broker reviews by its success and the interactions from all over the world, he launched a new Facebook page, specifically for Australian users, later in the year, making it more relevant to his target audience. 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.
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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 recent survey of 4,000 young people conduced by Lad Bible, 68% agree that a ‘lad’ is a good example of an individual standing up for his mates, and also for the things that matter in life. A ‘lad’ respects the ones around him and tries to be a good person all round. He or she is seen as a connected individual, knowing what’s cool but also what’s relevant in the news.
Their content covers entertainment and celebrity interviews, as well as news and current affairs. They also run campaigns on subjects intended to interest a young market, such as mental health, the environment and political matters. Founded in 2012, LADbible is a social media and entertainment social publisher based in London and Manchester, United Kingdom. The website is co-founded by Alexander “Solly” Solomou and Arian Kalantari and focused on publishing easily shareable clips, pictures, and stories.
Two years later, in 2014, LADbible’s Facebook page had attracted almost two million likes and had more than five million unique visitors each month. Towards the end of 2015, the number of followers on Facebook had grown to 10.6 million – an increase of more than 400%. Putting it simply, LADbible is a mix of videos and photos, some of them posted by users, the remainder gathered from all over the internet.
- “I wasn’t allowed in the office, but they made me write really long articles that weren’t read or published,” he says.
- Laura Bates, founder of the Everyday Sexism project, has blamed the site for encouraging young men to sexually pursue “unwilling women”.
- “John Quinlan was saying that the administrators were corrupt and he was trying to get everyone to share this email he’d written on LinkedIn,” says Sara.
- Back in June of 2018, few people had any idea of Unilad’s looming catastrophe.
British actor Judi Dench also became its queen and helped encourage members of the public to sign up for citizenship as the group tried to get the United Nations to identify the Plastic Isle as a state. The drive was developed with help from the Plastic Oceans Foundation who said it served as a “powerful tool for awareness”. The publisher emphasises, however, that it has no plans to lessen investment in Facebook, where its audience is also expanding. “We’ve already built up such big followings there that when the monetisation does get turned on, we’re already in a great position to start making money,” she says. “With Facebook we have a strict schedule in terms of monetising and traffic. We have bigger teams on Facebook just because of the structure there and we know we can make money from that,” says Tyrrell.
Clare McCann wants to give her son Atreyu the ‘opportunity to live again’
Beating the likes of Daily Mail, Barcroft Media, Channel 4 and Jungle Creations, LADbible Group’s flagship brand LADbible also took to top spot in the UK. LADbible publishes an original and acquired content, 34 including editorial, video, and documentary material, some of which is broadcast live. Since its launch in 2012, LADbible have posted over 6,800 videos, which have been attracted over 41.8 billion views on Facebook.17 Their content covers entertainment and celebrity interviews, as well as news and current affairs. With the biggest youth audience in the UK and unparalleled influence on social media, LadBible took the bold decision to make the brand an instigator of social change, digital innovator and the voice of a social generation. Content and campaigns LADbible is also a socially aware brand, publishing a wide range of original and user-generated content including editorial, documentary, video and live content. The site has published more than 6,800 videos, generating more than 41 billion views on Facebook since August 2014.
The website has more than 10.6 million followers on Facebook, more than double any newspaper brand
With this data, LadBible built some editorial and marketing cornerstones. Mental health was the audience’s biggest concern, followed by the environment, and politics. Over the last year, LadBible has been picking up awards left, right and centre for its social good pursuits, in particular, by creating a dialogue around mental health in young men and raising awareness of ocean plastic pollution. This is part of its mission to build a ‘Positively Social’ platform that can harness an audience to effect change. For many publishers however, including Ladbible, Tiktok is a key way to reach coveted younger audiences.
50,000 survey entrants shared their experiences on the LadBible website, allowing the brand to get into the its audience’s minds in a huge way. This was achieved by creating pop culture moments, innovation in original content and driving social change through authentic content. At the back end of 2016, the brand drew its first line in the sand in this space with the ‘U OK M8’ campaign, looking to tackle the issue that suicide is the single biggest killer of British men under the age of 45. It worked with men’s mental health charity Calm which brought to the table research claiming that 41% of the men who contemplated what is mirror trading ending their lives – never actually spoke to anyone about it.
It has also made the bold claim to reach half of UK millennials. While Ladbible’s content naturally appeals to Tiktok’s Gen Z audience, there are some key things that Tyrrell says have helped the publisher find success on the platform. “As the platforms continue to make more money obviously it means we can bring in more talent to work on those platforms. But we’ve got so many people who are experts on all of them already that we’re in quite a good position.” Walker managed to claw back about £5,500 of what he was owed by Unilad, after taking a hard drive containing client material hostage, but he’s still owed around £3,500 in unpaid invoices. Headspace offers flexible workspaces for the creative, media and technology sectors, taking care of the hassle of running an office so that clients can concentrate on what matters most – running their business.
The campaigns
“You can read the funniest gag or GIF in the world and it has just come from an individual,” he said. Loaded was unfairly characterised as sexist, he said, when – unlike Zoo – it never relied on pictures of undressed women. Brown’s final cover depicted a then unknown Harry Hill, sitting on a badger. “Lots of stuff that goes viral on social is a cross between home movie-based TV show You’ve Been Framed and what we were doing on Loaded,” he said. The most recent men’s magazine launch was Coach, a free title offering advice on healthy lifestyles. Ian Westwood, group MD of publishers Dennis, said that the Lads’ Mags had tried to offer a mix of “funny, sexy, useful” content.
The huge commercial appeal of the brand has seen LadBible working with an ever-growing number of brand partners. LadBible is increasingly seen as the go-to brand for youth having been invited to present at 10 Downing Street, Mindshare Huddle, Facebook Developers, Advertising Week Europe, Festival of Marketing, and beyond. We have also been identified by Vice as being a catalyst for driving a new generation of “woke” lads. Lad Bible has helped change a narrative around what it means to be a ‘lad’. Knowing ME, Knowing EU, a campaign around the EU Referendum showcased the LadBible audience was politically engaged and demonstrated influence in this space.
Relatable to everyone, offering a bit of a break from the rest of the world. Celebrating the everyday with a British tone of voice and a global outlook. LADbible reportedly offered to buy part of UniLAD’s £10 million debt.
We reach over half of all adults and nearly two thirds of year olds in the UK alone, with more Gen Z watching our content than our main competitors. The publisher, says Tyrrell, also rarely posts the same video across different platforms, making sure that clips are customised to what works best on each platform. Text, for example, is one thing that works well on Tiktok in her view.
- The Drum’s deputy editor Cameron Clarke paneled an Advertising Week Europe session on social good campaigns where LadBible delved into a deeper discussion around their role developing meaningful campaigns.
- Since launching on Tiktok in 2019, Ladbible Group has grown to become the biggest news publisher on the platform, with almost 46 million followers across the group’s accounts.
- A video Unilad uploaded of a man playing Pie Face with his son had 183 million views (four years on, it’s up to 205 million views).
- Although Tiktok is one of the world’s fastest-growing social networks, Facebook remains a huge priority for Ladbible Group and is still the biggest audience driver for its brands.
The publisher has recently delved into topics including the cost of living crisis and university tuition fees. These days, the website itself looks much the same as it ever did, with Unilad pumping out viral news and videos. In a 2019 report in The Drum, LADbible cofounder and COO Arian Kalantari is quoted as saying the two companies have joined together “incredibly well”. But according to a former Unilad employee, there’s still some lingering animosity between staff, with each side of the lad army “working separately on different floors”. Since Unilad shuttered, Bentley, Harrington and Quinlan have maintained a low profile.
How Ladbible grew to become the biggest news publisher on Tiktok
The group’s biggest Tiktok accounts, its eponymous Ladbible page and its sports-focused channel Sportbible (4.8 million followers), are the only two accounts that are each run by a dedicated Tiktok specialist. Understanding how to package its news content for Tiktok is key, says Tyrrell. By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy & to receive electronic communications from VICE Media Group, which may include marketing promotions, advertisements and sponsored content. To make matter worse, because salaries at Unilad zulutrade forex broker review were low it was easy for LADbible to poach staff – but woe betide anyone looking to make the jump to their competitor. “It was like the Montagues and Capulets – that level of hatred,” says Harry.
Popular recent content ranges from the revelation that “A quarter of all British men feel they have a ‘man period’”, to “This lad created the perfect underground man cave”. Radhika Sanghani, of the Telegraph’s Women pages, has said they “encourage male users to rate women and make misogynistic comments”. The LAD Bible is a mixture of video and photos, some of it posted by users, the rest harvested from the four corners of the internet. They are hosted on a website called the Lad Bible and are being shared in their thousands by its 17 million followers, across Facebook, Twitter and Reddit.