Launching new brands

One of the big challenges of sustainable media businesses is making efficient use of the infrastructure required to run them. By infrastructure, I don’t mean tech platforms, but the people and functions needed to underpin the core value proposition of media: making content.

Operating even a small media brand can be daunting. An ad model requires not just expensive sales people but also client service. Marketing and audience development are required. Tech obviously. Finance. Audience development. Design. Content studio. Multimedia. Pretty soon, an efficient content business is very inefficient.

The answer out of this situation is often new brands. At Digiday, I was reticent to expand into new brands. One reason was practical: Getting people to give a shit about one brand is a Herculean challenge; why do it all over again? The other was discomfort about going into new areas outside of my own core expertise. But the advantages of new brands were too many. Here are the core considerations for launching a new brand.