How Deep Is Australia’s Digital Media Talent Pool?
A guest post from Nick Crocker.
Nick popped up on my radar just a year ago and since then he’s achieved an awful lot, particularly with the launch of the music aggregator We Are Hunted and Native Digital, neither of which existed when we met.
Nick, like many other entrepreneurs is deeply passionate about ideas. But as any successful entrepreneur knows, there are many obstacles in the way of taking a brilliant idea to execution. The toughest obstacle of all is raising capital.
Australia is a notoriously difficult market to raise capital for digital ventures. I know. Our business is one of a limited few who have successfully been through the process.
Nick’s post looks at who in Australia is pushing boundaries and innovating in the digital media space.
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Ask any serious investor and you’ll soon realise that the Australian investment culture is in need of a boost, particularly when it comes to digital.
The first step in any great enterprise is an idea. That idea becomes a business, and with the right product, investment and growth, it may well become successful.
But it all starts with ideas. And to understand why Australia’s investment culture is lacking, we first need to ask if there is enough Australian talent and innovation worthy of investment.
Because my particular area of interest is digital media, I’ve put the spotlight on Australia’s digital media innovators and asked: How Deep Is Australia’s Digital Media Talent Pool?
What follows is my subjective answer to this question, heavily influenced by the people and companies I’ve interacted with.
My hope is that in the comments, we can build a more complete picture of the digital media talent in Australia, so that everyone who reads this post comes away with a new person to meet, or great content to consume. If you fit somewhere in this post, leave a comment or email me – nicholascrocker at gmail dot com.
Australia’s Digital Media Talent Pool
At the top of the pile is Sound Alliance. Yes this is their blog. But they have size, scale, dollars and impact. Nine years old and counting, the business founded by Neil Ackland, Andre Lackmann and Libby Clark traverses advertising, sponsorship, ticket sales, merchandising, consulting, research, creative, content and web design services, events, music sales and memberships. It’s a true, diversified, digital media business.
No discussion of digital media in Australia could exclude Eric Beecher, Chairman of Crikey, Smart Company, Business Spectator and the Eureka Report. He has found a way to monetise content online where many others have failed. In the maelstrom of debate around paid news, Beecher has a model that works. Beecher sits outside the talent pool, identifying and investing in Australia’s next wave digital talent, but his model leads the way.
Barrie Barton at Right Angle Publishing has built a diversified business model with multiple offshoots. Their Rooftop Cinema in Melbourne is the physical embodiment of their capabilities, and they still publish by traditional means, but it’s their online communities – connected through The Thousands – that sets them apart digitally.
The Zavos brothers, Zac and Zolton, run Conversant Media, which produces the excellent trends and pop culture website Lost At E Minor, sports opinion site The Roar and music discovery site My Secret Playlist. They have an established presence as market leaders in quality content creation online.
The Cool Hunter, run by Bill Tikos, has an incredible following, particularly internationally. The business model centres on an image-driven site and weekly mailout, and has already begun extending itself into consulting and events.
Pedestrian.TV, founded by Chris Wirasinha and Oscar Martin, has found a groove in smart fashion, music and pop culture. They’re a diversified business too, offering a full-service production house and events.
Pages, founded by Marnie Neck, publish online magazines pages, Monkey Say and Groupie Magazine while also diversifying into events and custom publishing.
Matthew Levinson edits Cyclic Defrost, blogs at the micro-wonderful darlinghurstnights.com, and, among others, contributes to New Matilda, a powerful digital property in its own right.
Mark Pollard, who combines life in Adland and Dadland with Stealth Magazine and a great blog, has a long history of leveraging the value of content to build a community.
Tim Burrowes has created something that engages a particular audience very intensely with Mumbrella. It’s Gawker for Australian marketers.
The hyper-talented Mia Freedman is another great example of building a community around content online.
From there, you’ll find some amazing projects that are passion driven rather than commercially focussed. Vive Cool City started by Kirk Docker and Ryder Jack Susman is an on-line TV channel that streams 2-3min original episodes.
Docker’s now turned up on The Denton-backed Hungry Beast which also features Dan Ilic whose viral talents are displayed on the Where The Hell Are You Spoof.
For viral talent you can’t go past The Handsomity Institute whose Trent From Punchy and Beached Whale videos have almost than 10M views between them. And of course, Natalie Tran, Australia’s favourite Vlogger whose Community Channel on YouTube has 21.5M views to date.
While writing this, I discovered Kluster which exists in the stylistic realms of Frankie and Monster Children, themselves physical publications with followings that would justify vital digital properties. Stab is another great example that fits here.
Ned Dwyer runs ElectroRash, Dave Ruby Howe runs Mass Hyperbole; Who The Hell and Jonny runs Polaroids of Androids. There’s an entire community of music bloggers creating something worthwhile, particularly the video recordings at Shoot The Player.
I imagine this is replicated across fashion and politics too.
I can’t help but mention the indescribable Mark Catanzariti. Watch these, if you’re not familiar.
The digital media talent pool is slightly obfuscated by the fact so much of it is being co-opted by day-jobs. Arturo at Modular, Andy Miller and the Gutter Club crew, Jess at Something Changed, Seb Chan at the Powerhouse Museum, Mark Bulgin and the team at MySpace and Ben Shepherd at Maxus.
And finally, the Creative Catalysts list covers a lot of people who would plug in to or around a number of the initiatives listed above.
In short, the digital talent pool is more than deep enough.
There’s multiple examples of interesting, valuable media ideas, content and creators in Australia. There’s a lot of inter-connection and crossover between the main players, and a lot of mutual support. Admittedly, there’s a lack of mainstream media coverage and influence, but there are true audiences.
I’d argue that there’s suppressed value in the audiences and an overflow of under-commercialised talent. And that makes Australian digital media an interesting playground for the right investor.
Nick Crocker is MD of Native Digital and co-founder of We Are Hunted.
11 Responses to “How Deep Is Australia’s Digital Media Talent Pool?”
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The Sound Alliance, Suite 5, 113 Reservoir Street, Surry Hills NSW, 2010
Telephone: +61 2 9282 4000
www.thesoundalliance.net
Photograph by Calum Paton
great read.
thanks Nick!
I co-run http://www.albumoftheweek.com.au and am frequently visiting most of the digital media you mention. Its great to see not only the content being frst class but a lot of the Australian online design is my favourite going around.
cheers
If we’re talking Digital Media MVP’s – Dave Ruby Howe aka Mr. Mass Hyperbole, ITM News, Cool Hunter Music and former Pedestrian temp has to be up there. I also recall Dave gracing Gutter Club a few times – so big ups Dave your productivity is hurting my mind grapes.
Also well worth a mention in the Pop Culture realm of digital media is the relatively new UHH and The Blackmail.
http://uhh.com.au/
http://www.theblackmail.com.au/
I also think non traditional media outlets such as Ksubi and Kirin’s “Big In Japan” blog and Modular Ideas and V Energy Drink’s “V Raw” page are good examples of creativity in the digital space. They’ve both engaged their existing communities with great branded content.
Nice work on the list Nick!
Ash
What about thevine.com.au ?
Its rated as Australia’s number 1 youth portal in Nielsen Netratings
Awesome list Nick!
I think that you could add the guys at Allure Media to this list, they own the Australian rights to 4 of the top 10 Australian blogs (Defamer, Kotaku, Lifehacker and Gizmodo) and have localised the content with Australian editors!
You don’t seem to have answered your question – “to understand why Australia’s investment culture is lacking”, you list a bunch of people involved in digital media in Australia (a small specific culture of people you have interacted with) but then what? Why is there not enough investment or is there? If not, the ideas must not be good enough or not the right planning to get a business idea to grow?
There’s a lot of other innovate companies in Australia in digital media like Campaign Monitor and Envato who have been able to grow and sustain a good business model.
Dion,
Interesting to see you are still making that false claim publicly. I’ll repeat what I said in my blog post about The Vine:
I challenge The Vine to tell the market how they substantiate their Number one youth audience claims.
http://blog.thesoundalliance.net/2009/08/19/%E2%80%9Cwe%E2%80%99re-number-1-cause-we-said-so%E2%80%9D/
Looking forward to a response, finally.
Neil
Hi Guest,
“Why is there not enough investment or is there?”
I guess I wanted to see if there was enough digital media talent to justify investment.
The next question is – if the talent is there, why isn’t there more being generated from it?
I don’t know the answer, but I’m fascinated by the question.
I love Campaign Monitor – it’s amazing, we use it for all our ventures. As for Envato, today’s the first time I’ve seen it and it looks really impressive.
Campaign Monitor didn’t make the list because I didn’t seem them as a media company. If I was going to talk about talented startups, the list would have been thousands of words longer. Atlassian, Wotnews, Adioso, Stateless Systems – Silicon Beach people – there are lots of examples.
Dion – Claims of Vine supremacy aside, Lifelounge should have made the original list. It’s a media/content focussed business with a diversified business model.
http://www.uhh.com.au/ – Just found it… Very cool.
Great post Nick.
I agree with Neil that you have achieved a huge amount with We Are Hunted and Native. Great to read your thoughts on this.
In terms of the question posed, there’s not much investment right now because it’s hard to get a return when the business model for publishers is advertising focused.
Australia’s a pretty tough place to be a small online publisher right now.
The portals command so much of the media spend, and many media planners have a myopic focus on unique visitors over site engagement and audience fit (even when a campaign will typically reach only a tiny fraction of these numbers).
This needs to change in order for smaller sites to reach the scale they do in the US.
It’s a good list you provide. I’d add Riley Batchelor with the stuff he’s doing with http://www.2influencemedia.com and also Dan Walsh at http://www.kwoff.com.au
Thanks for the note Zac. You comment about the media agents is very true, and I am sure you will agree its our’s and everyone else on this list’s job to continue to change that view by educating the media agents on the greater value of running with small-mid level publishers and their loyal communities.
As well as 2influence media we have some other ventures that I will take the opportunity to blatantly plug:
http://www.2threads.com
http://www.thiswayin.com.au
http://www.estile.com
http://www.2threadslive.com
I would also note hobogestapo.com for the list, along with Nathan Ruff from Urban Geek and Nick Holmes A Court from Buzz numbers and Shifted Pixels.
Great post Nick. Your analysis is very interesting. I certainly agree that the first step in any great enterprise is an idea. But perhaps just idea’s and great content while extremely important are not enough alone. A business model and a firm plan for sustained revenue generation is key.
I spent 6 months in the US last year and the main difference between here and there, and perhaps a reason why there is more investment there (along with the obvious population and ad revenue differences) is a more developed business community around digital media. A community that has a greater focus on revenue generation through diversified revenue streams. Achieved by a mixture of creative ideas people for the content, digital marketing experts for traffic generation and experienced sales gurus to commercialize every last visit and impression.
In my experience investors, and in particular VC firms, invest in companies that have business models that tick a number of boxes- A good idea, eyeballs, revenue (current and projected), profit and perhaps most importantly management teams and their ability to generate a return on their investment by effectively running a good business model.
There is no doubt that the low-mid level sector of Australian digital media industry has the ideas and the quality content. With a greater continued focus on strong diversified business models to maximize revenue (instead of a pure content and eyeballs focus while waiting for google’s M&A department to call your mobile) this sector can begin to build up revenue and profits (which in my view are enough to allow small-mid players to grow and scale without investment) and finally pose a real threat to breaking the dominance of the top 5 cartel. If this is achieved, then the large investment $$ will follow into this end of town further paving the way for the end of the cartels dominance.
The “mutual support” you also mention Nick is very true. Putting immediate competitiveness aside and collaborating for the longer term greater good will go along way to achieving the end goal of attracting investment and greater shares of the ever growing digital revenue pies.
Thanks for the post Nick.
A new Melbourne focused lifestyle site has just had a soft launch this week.
http://www.broadsheet.com.au
Lots of great content to come.