The Brag Media has announced its acquisition of premium digital activations network Epic Digital and the promotion of chief revenue officer Joel King to chief operating officer.
King spoke to Mediaweek about the new role and his hopes to cement their growing events division, bring in new publishers – as part of the Epic Digital deal – and expand the sales team and staff.
King’s promotion to COO is effective immediately. He will work closely with CEO Luke Girgis to lead another year of triple-digit growth for the business that last year expanded into New Zealand and added new divisions in events, creative and talent management.
He said he was excited for the new role, which will see him responsible for all operations, including publishing and managing budget and profit and loss for the business.
His promotion also came as the company announced the acquisition of Epic Digital, a deal he said would offer their clients a more extensive and comprehensive reach.
Epic Digital has built an impressive network covering music, culture, and entertainment through The Brag Media, and popular gaming, anime and esports verticals via partnerships with Funimation, Enthusiast Gaming, Life Without Andy, Hypebeast and many more.
The addition of Epic Digital’s media partners joins Rolling Stone Australia, Variety, IndieWire, Billboard, thebrag.com, Tone Deaf, The Industry Observer, don’t bore us, and more.
After launching two years ago, Epic Digital has already activated campaigned for major brands, including Apple, PlayStation, Bandai, Hasbro, Stan, Sailor Jerry, Lion, EA and Binge.
King said: “Advertisers are utilising the audience where they can get it and being able to deal with a local business in Australia who was really focused on growth here is a benefit to them and it gives them better access to those youth audiences.”
The Brag Media also successfully relaunched Rolling Stone in Australia, online and print, in 2020.
The deal also brings the additions of Stacey Batchelor, Epic Digital’s founder and managing director, and Drew Worthington, operations manager, to the The Brag Media leadership team.
Batchelor steps into the newly created role of national sales director as Worthington moves across to The Brag Media as campaign manager.
“Stacey successfully brought a lot of new clients to the business. He will bring his expertise to that sales team, which will be a great support for our sales division.”
He also praised Drew, saying: “He’s great. He’s just going to support the campaign’s team. He’s great with clients; he’ll integrate into our current campaigns team.”
While many companies in the media industry suffered or faced uncertainty amid the pandemic, The Brag Media was successful and thrived. King said the company had a 300% revenue in 2021.
He explained that the company identified early in the pandemic that many of the global publishers in the Australian market had question marks over the sustainability of their business and keeping staff on board.
“We were very strong in that we’re going to keep going with our vision -we’re going to keep growing. BuzzFeed pulled out of the market. Vice pulled out of the market. Huffington Post pulled out of the market. It was already trending that way because there was oversaturation in the youth publishing market before 2020.
“From 2017 to 2020, there were many players in the market, so the pandemic just excelled that. It just created an opportunity for a local business based in Australia to fill out that void.
“We continued to see that for the past few years, a lot of global businesses we’re not focusing on Australia anymore. We saw the opportunity and were able to capitalise on it, so it’s been successful for us. I think it’s good for the local market and youth talent that we have a local Australian business that’s seen that kind of growth,” he added.
King added that The Brag Media has been aggressively securing and solidifying its place in the Australian youth publishing market since the pandemic.
Looking ahead, King hinted at another big global publisher set to launch into the market in the coming weeks – but kept mum on the details.
But he did note that The Brag Media is looking forward to the 2022 Rolling Stone Awards coming up again in March, as well as: “continued revenue growth, building out the team with new hires from across the board in all divisions.”
CEO Luke Girgis said King was instrumental in growing the commercial offering of The Brag Media and will now oversee the growing creative and campaigns teams too.
“Joel is a Bragger to his core. An exceptional results-focused operator makes this promotion a realisation of the inevitable. I can’t wait to work with Joel across every aspect of our business in his new role as COO. Joel’s ability to find clarity in complexity is second to none,” he added.
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Top image: Joel King, Luke Girgis and Stacey Batchelor