LADbible

LADbible
Type of business Private company
Type of site
 News and Entertainment
Available in English
Founded 3 April 2012 (2012-04-03)
Headquarters Manchester, UK
Owner The LADbible Group Ltd
Key people Alexander Solomou (co-founder and CEO)
Arian Kalantari (Director)
Employees 120 (January 2017)[1]
Website www.ladbible.com
Alexa rank Negative increase 13 in UK (January 2018)[2]
Advertising Native
Registration No
Current status Active

LADbible is a social media and entertainment company based in London and Manchester, United Kingdom. The firm describes itself as "redefining entertainment and news for a social generation" with a focus on viral content and social video to "provide news, entertainment and community to a global audience of young people".[3]

The LADbible was founded in 2012 by co-founders Alexander "Solly” Solomou and Arian Kalantari and focused on publishing easily shareable clips, pictures and stories.[4]

LADbible are best known for their viral video creation. In July 2017, LADbible were the most watched video creator across the globe with 2.8 billion video views according to Tubular Labs’ monthly rankings.[5] In 2018 LADbible won several Cannes Lions awards include the prestigious grand Prix prize for their Trash Isles campaign.[6]

History

Solomou developed the idea for a social media publishing business while at Leeds University, where he studied business management from 2009 to 2012.[7] Solomou founded The Lad Bible Limited on 3 April 2012[8] and developed the LADbible project before being joined by director Arian Kalantari later in 2012.[9]

LADbible's parent company changed its name from The Lad Bible Limited to The Global Social Media Group Limited on 18 November 2013. On 19 June 2014, the parent company changed its name to 65TWENTY LTD then to The Ladbible Group Limited on 16 November 2015.[10]

The LADbible project started in January 2012 when they published their first Facebook post which had over 75,000 interactions. Later in 2012, they launched a separate Facebook page specifically for their audience in Australia for more relevancy.[11] In 2014, LADbible's Facebook page had almost 2 million likes and was attracting over 5 million unique visitors every month.[12] By November 2015 this number had increased more than 400% to 10.6 million followers on Facebook.[9] This has continued to grow to more than 24.3 million followers in May 2017.[13]

Since it was founded, several offshoots of LADbible have been created by the company including the SPORTbible and Pretty52.[14]

In March 2017, the company re-branded, dropping "The" from the brand name and changing its logo.[15] Ben Walker, from design studio UFO who worked on the rebrand said; "The new logo uses bold, simple typography, while both of the words within the marque are set at the same height to give them equal prominence".[16] In an interview with Design Week, a company spokesman said; "It's about being an individual who thrives on humour, community – treating others right and being treated right by others."[16]

In July 2017 Tubular Lab's ranked LADbible at No. 3 globally in the Top Media & Entertainment Properties, behind only Walt Disney and BuzzFeed and ahead of Time Warner, Comcast and Axel Springer SE.[17][18]

In the same month Tubular Labs also rank LADbible as the No. 1 'Media & Entertainment Creator' in the world. [19]

Content and campaigns

LADbible publishes a diverse range of original and user generated content – spanning editorial, video, documentary and live. Since August 2014, LADbible have posted over 6,800 videos and generated in excess of 41.8 billion views on Facebook.[20]

In September 2016, LADbible launched a mental health campaign called "U OK M8?" to raise awareness of male mental health issues. A range of charities supported the campaign including the Campaign Against Living Miserably (CALM), the Movember Foundation, Samaritans and the Mental Health Foundation to "engage their huge youth audience and get men to open up to each other."[21] The campaign featured Olympic gymnast Louis Smith who talked about his own experiences of depression.[22]

Also in 2016, LADbible launched 'Climate Change', a campaign focused around the environment. The project was shortlisted in the AOP awards in 2017, for best use of social video.[23]

In May 2017, LADbible partnered with Kasabian and Sony Music to become the official streaming partner for the band's new single. Following the release of Kasabian's sixth studio album 'For Crying Out Loud', a groundbreaking real-time video for new single 'Are You Looking For Action?' was streamed via LADbible's and Kasabian's Facebook pages. Co-directed by Aitor Throup and Sing J Lee, this music video was the first of its kind: filmed live and shot in one continuous take.[24]

In the press

In February 2015, in an interview with BBC Radio 5 Live, LADbible's then marketing director says "A quarter of 'lads' reading the site are actually women," and that it "absolutely redefines what lads are".[25] This interview was featured in a BBC News article titled "How did The Lad Bible become so successful"[26] which looked at the reasons why LADbible had become so successful and appealed to such a large audience.

Later in the same year, a news story on The Independent looked deeper into how LADbible had "harnessed social media" to fill the gap in the market left by the closure of the once popular Lads' Mag titles. It revealed that where a traditional newsroom is arranged into desks dedicated to specific interests like health, education or business, staff at LADbible's office specialise in different social media platforms; Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and YouTube.[9]

On 19 April 2017 LADbible featured in Marketing Land as they generated 3.2 billion views[27] to became March's most popular video creator in the world.[28]

Awards

In November 2015, LADbible featured in Manchester Evening News for winning two awards at the Digital Entrepreneur Awards ceremony. LADbible won the Social Media Campaign of the Year (medium/large) and founder, Alexander Solomou, won the Young Digital Entrepreneur of The Year award.[29]

At the Prolific North Awards 2016, LADbible won Video of the Year with their video produced in collaboration with Bearded Fellows for "The Ladbible app Launch" campaign.[30]

At the 2017 Brand Film Festival awards, LADbible gained double recognition for their work with the RNLI, including Best of The Best, for the Respect The Water campaign.[31]

In June 2018, LADbible's "Trash Isles" campaign won eight Cannes Lions Awards at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.[32] The campaign won two Grand Prix awards as well as a further two Gold, one Silver and three Bronze.[6][33]

References

  1. ↑ "The Lad Bible seeks 40 more UK staff in recruitment drive ahead of 'global expansion'". PressGazette. 31 January 2017. Retrieved 26 May 2017.
  2. ↑ "LADbible.com Site Info". Alexa Internet. Retrieved 16 October 2017.
  3. ↑ "About Us & Our Brands – LADbible Group". LADbible Group. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  4. ↑ "Meet the woman overseeing the LAD Bible phenomenon". Telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  5. ↑ "LADbible outperforms UNILAD as most watched video creator with 2.8B video views". Marketing Land. 2017-08-02. Retrieved 2017-08-24.
  6. 1 2 "Cannes Lions of the Day: Trash Isles wins Design Grand Prix, plus more Grand Prix winners". The Drum. Retrieved 2018-06-21.
  7. ↑ "Inside The Lad Bible's Viral Web Empire". BuzzFeed. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  8. ↑ "Certificate of Incorporation of a Private Limited Company". Companies House. 4 April 2012. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  9. 1 2 3 "How the Lad Bible has filled the void left by lads' mags". The Independent. 20 November 2015. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  10. ↑ "THE LADBIBLE GROUP LIMITED – Overview (free company information from Companies House)". beta.companieshouse.gov.uk. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  11. ↑ "How The Lad Bible Became Facebook Famous | Search Control". 1 January 2017. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  12. ↑ "The big business of bro media – Digiday". Digiday. 2 January 2014. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  13. ↑ "LADbible". www.facebook.com. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  14. ↑ Cumming, Ed (12 December 2015). "'A lad is someone who has manners, who can be a hero': meet the man behind the Lad Bible". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  15. ↑ "LadBible rebrands to become more 'aspirational'". Prolific North. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  16. 1 2 "LadBible rebrands to leave behind "negative associations" with lad culture – Design Week". Design Week. 21 April 2017. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  17. ↑ "Tubular". Tubular Labs. Retrieved 2017-08-17.
  18. ↑ "Lad Bible ranks as Europe's 'most watched' for video content – Press Gazette". www.pressgazette.co.uk. Retrieved 2017-08-17.
  19. ↑ "Tubular". Tubular Labs. Retrieved 2017-08-17.
  20. ↑ "Tubular". Tubular Labs. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  21. ↑ "TheLADbible launches mental health campaign "U OK M8?"". Mynewsdesk. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  22. ↑ "Watch: Olympic gymnast Louis Smith spearheads TheLADbible's mental health campaign U OK M8?". Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  23. ↑ "AOP Digital Publishing Awards Shortlist 2017". AOP. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  24. ↑ "Kasabian to livestream 'Are You Looking For Action?' video in one take". Sony Music UK. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  25. ↑ "LAD Bible exec: 'Quarter of "lads" are actually women', In Short – BBC Radio 5 live". BBC. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  26. ↑ Webber, Esther (5 February 2015). "How did The Lad Bible become so successful?". BBC News. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  27. ↑ "The LAD Bible takes No. 1 spot from UNILAD as March's most popular video creator". Marketing Land. 19 April 2017. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  28. ↑ "Tubular". Tubular Labs. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  29. ↑ Roue, Lucy (12 November 2015). "TheLADBible is big winner at digital awards". men. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  30. ↑ "Prolific North Awards 2016: The Winners". Prolific North. Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  31. ↑ "Brand Film Festival London 2017: the winners' showcase". Retrieved 2017-05-26.
  32. ↑ "LADBible was once the poster child for Facebook video — now it's expanding its distribution to Instagram and Snapchat and ditching its bro-ey tone for social good content". Business Insider. Retrieved 2018-07-09.
  33. ↑ "LADbible Cannes Lions Award Wins - LADbible Group". LADbible Group. Retrieved 2018-07-04.
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