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LADbible Group

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LADbible Group Limited, part of LBG Media plc,[2] is a British digital publisher. Its headquarters is in Manchester and it has offices in London, Dublin, Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland. Founded in 2012 by Alexander "Solly" Solomou and Arian Kalantari, LADbible Group produces digital content aimed at young adults,[3] claiming to reach two-thirds of 18–34-year-olds in the UK.[4]

LADbible Group Limited
Formerly
  • The Lad Bible Limited (2012–2013)
  • The Global Social Media Group Limited (2013–2014)
  • 65twenty Ltd (2014–2015)
  • The LADbible Group Limited (2015–2017)[1]
Company typeSubsidiary
Founded3 April 2012; 12 years ago (2012-04-03)
Headquarters
Manchester
,
England
Key people
  • Alexander Solomou (co-founder and CEO)
  • Arian Kalantari (COO)
OwnerLBG Media plc
Number of employees
450 (2021)
Websiteladbiblegroup.com

LADbible Group's media has five websites. Its brands include LADbible, UNILAD, GAMINGbible, SPORTbible, and Tyla,[5] among many others. They claim to generate at least 28 billion content views globally every year.[6] It has its own in-house creative team, Joyride, set up in 2016, who work with clients to help them reach LADbible Group's younger audience of 18–34 year-olds through creative campaigns.[5] In 2021, LADbible launched its own in-house production arm, LADstudios, which focuses on factual entertainment programming as well as documentary content.[7]

History

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Solomou developed the idea for a social media publishing business while at the University of Leeds, where he studied business management from 2009 to 2012.[8] The Lad Bible Limited was founded on 3 April 2012[9] and developed into the LADbible project when director Arian Kalantari joined.[10] LADbible Group's parent company was originally called The Lad Bible Limited, and changed its name 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 Ladbible Group Limited on 16 November 2015.[11]

The LADbible project started in January 2012 when the channel published their first Facebook post which achieved over 75,000 interactions. In 2014, LADbible's Facebook page had almost 2 million likes and was attracting over 5 million unique users every month.[12] By November 2015, this number had increased more than 400% to 10.6 million followers on Facebook.[10] This continued to grow to more than 24.3 million followers in May 2017. In 2016, LADbible Group, launched an in-house creative agency, Joyride, to offer advertising on their online platforms. In July 2017, Tubular Labs ranked LADbible as the No. 1 'Media & Entertainment Creator' in the world.[13] In the same month, LADbible also achieved No. 3 globally in the Top Media & Entertainment Properties, ahead of Time Warner, Comcast and Sony.[14][15]

In October 2018, LADbible Group took over social media rival UNILAD, making it the largest social video publisher ever.[16] In 2019, LADbible Group launched LADbible Australia, followed by SPORTbible Australia. In the same year, they launched LADbible Ireland, claiming to reach almost half of all Irish people each month, and opened an office in Dublin to better service that audience.[17] In May 2021, LADbible Group launched LADbible New Zealand.[18] In December 2021 the company completed a £360m float on the London Stock Exchange's AIM which raised £30m for the group and £81.1m for selling shareholders with the move.[19] In March 2023, LADbible Group completed the acquisition of the social media pages of Lessons Learned in Life (LLIL).[20] In November 2023, LADbible Group announced the launch of their sixth website UNILAD Tech. [21]

Content and campaigns

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LADbible Group publishes original and acquired content,[22][23] including editorial, video, and documentary material, some of which is broadcast live. 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.

Original content

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LADbible Group has their own in-house production studios called LADstudios where they produce original content, including original show formats including "Minutes With" and celebrity content, with A-list stars such as Will Smith and Tom Holland, like entertainment productions "Snack Wars",[24] as well as "Shocking Answers". They have also recently began making content for partners, including the UNHEARD six-part documentary series for Amazon Prime Video which focuses on critical issues of racial discrimination in Australia, including Indigenous deaths in custody, the targeting of Indigenous youth, attacks towards Asians during the COVID-19 pandemic, Islamophobia, the vilification of the African community and the treatment of asylum seekers and refugees.[25]

European Union membership referendum

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In the run-up to the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum, LADbible launched an awareness campaign to encourage their youth audience to exercise their vote. The publisher spent three months producing stories and short explainers on the vote, which linked directly to the government's register-to-vote page. The 45,000 clicks attracted by the campaign accounted for 20% of all traffic to their sites during this period.[26]

Mental health

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LADbible first launched their mental health campaign in 2016 with the dedicated UOKM8? website hub. Supported by charities including CALM, the campaign included a video series called 'Everyday Heroes' that featured a number of high-profile men, including Olympian Louis Smith, and addressed their struggles with anxiety and depression.[27] UOKM8? was recognised by the industry by winning awards including: Drum DADI, Masters of Marketing, Lovies and Webby.[28] The campaign as a whole reached in excess of 36 million and received over 4.8 million video views. UOKM8? was relaunched in 2018 with a shifted focus towards helping others suffering with mental health problems.

In 2020, LADbible Group relaunched UOKM8? across its five major brands, LADbible, UNILAD, GAMINGbible, SPORTbible, and Tyla during the UK's third lockdown as the company recognised readers were "suffering" under continued restrictive measures and in particular after the government's reversal of relaxation of rules for the Christmas period.[29]

Plastic pollution

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LADbible's biggest awareness campaign to date, "Trash Isles", was designed to highlight the global problem of plastic pollution in oceans. Featuring high-profile climate activists including Sir David Attenborough, Dame Judi Dench and Al Gore, the publisher approached the United Nations to declare an accumulation of plastic in the Pacific Ocean, as an official country, encouraging people to sign up to be a citizen.[30] Trash Isles was identified by The Drum as one of the most awarded media campaigns of 2018,[31] picking up accolades across the industry, including eight Cannes Lions awards, including two Grand Prix.

Blood donation restrictions

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UNILAD launched "Blood Without Bias" in November 2019 to campaign for a fairer blood donation system, and raise awareness of the fact that gay and bisexual men are still prohibited from donating blood by UK law unless they are willing to abstain from sex for three months. The campaign included the launch of the world's first blood bank for gay and bisexual men called "The Illegal Blood Bank", where qualified medical professionals were on hand to assess donors, based on their broader sexual behaviour, and test the blood, to underline how much blood was potentially going to waste due to the law.[32] UNILAD also shared content across its channels and started a petition on Change.org to demand that risk be assessed based on individual sexual behaviour, not sexual orientation alone.[33]

The campaign has nearly 1 million video views worldwide, achieved 10.8 million impressions online and in June 2021, the NHS revised its guidelines, opening blood donation up to anyone who has had the same sexual partner for three months or more.[33] The campaign also won three awards at Cannes Lions 2021.

Awards

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In November 2015, LADbible featured in the 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, Solomou, won the Young Digital Entrepreneur of The Year award.[34] In June 2018, LADbible's 'Trash Isles' campaign won eight Cannes Lions Awards at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity.[35] The campaign won two Grand Prix awards as well as a further two Gold, one Silver and three Bronze.[36]

See also

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References

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  1. ^ "LADBIBLE GROUP LIMITED overview - Find and update company information - GOV.UK". Companies House. 4 April 2012. Retrieved 19 January 2024.
  2. ^ "LBG HOLDCO LIMITED persons with significant control - Find and update company information - GOV.UK". Companies House. 11 November 2021. Retrieved 19 January 2024.
  3. ^ Kleinman, Mark (1 December 2021). "Youth publisher LadBible targets £360m valuation in London flotation". Sky News. Retrieved 1 December 2021.
  4. ^ "LadBible's two founders, 30, withdraw £53million from IPO". uktimenews.com. Retrieved 15 December 2021.
  5. ^ a b Woods, Ben (12 December 2021). "LadBible aims to beat BuzzFeed in viral media battle". telegraph.co.uk. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
  6. ^ Kleinman, Mark (1 December 2021). "Youth publisher LadBible targets £360m valuation in London flotation". Sky News. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
  7. ^ Lawes, Ruth (21 October 2021). "Barcroft alum Alex Morris resurfaces as head of LADbible's new studio". c21media.net. Retrieved 19 July 2023.
  8. ^ "Inside The Lad Bible's Viral Web Empire". BuzzFeed. Retrieved 26 May 2017.
  9. ^ "Certificate of Incorporation of a Private Limited Company". Companies House. 4 April 2012. Retrieved 26 May 2017.
  10. ^ a b "How the Lad Bible has filled the void left by lads' mags". The Independent. 20 November 2015. Retrieved 26 May 2017.
  11. ^ "The LADbible Group Limited – Overview (free company information from Companies House)". beta.companieshouse.gov.uk. Retrieved 26 May 2017.
  12. ^ "The big business of bro media – Digiday". Digiday. 2 January 2014. Retrieved 26 May 2017.
  13. ^ "Tubular". Tubular Labs. Retrieved 17 August 2017.
  14. ^ "Tubular". Tubular Labs. Retrieved 17 August 2017.
  15. ^ "Lad Bible ranks as Europe's 'most watched' for video content – Press Gazette". www.pressgazette.co.uk. 17 August 2016. Retrieved 17 August 2017.
  16. ^ Waterson, Jim (16 October 2018). "LadBible takes over social media rival UniLad". The Guardian.
  17. ^ "The group behind entertainment site LADBible is opening an Irish hub". thejournal.ie. 3 June 2019.
  18. ^ Cheik-Hussein, Mariam (5 May 2021). "LADbible launches in New Zealand". adnews.com.
  19. ^ Robinson, Jon (15 December 2021). "LadBible group completes £360m float as selling shareholders get £81m pay day". Business Live. Retrieved 11 November 2024.
  20. ^ "Annual Report and Accounts 2022" (PDF). LBG Media Plc. 11 April 2023.
  21. ^ "Annual Report and Accounts 2022". LBG Media Plc. 16 November 2023.
  22. ^ "The LAD Bible withdraws legal action against blogger who accused them of stealing content". International Business Times UK. 16 October 2015. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
  23. ^ Abbruzzese, Jason (8 July 2015). "Facebook has a massive video theft problem". Mashable. Retrieved 1 July 2020.
  24. ^ "Will Smith & Guy Ritchie | "I don't like that at all!" | Snack Wars". 17 May 2019 – via YouTube.
  25. ^ "Amazon Prime Video, Ladbible Australia team on investigative docuseries "Unheard"". realscreen.com. Retrieved 20 September 2021.
  26. ^ "How tech companies are trying to get youngsters to vote". 8 June 2016.
  27. ^ "LadBible: Destigmatising mental health through their powerful content campaign". The Drum.
  28. ^ "LadBible Group, 360i Europe and Flow Creative win big at the 2017 Dadi Awards". The Drum.
  29. ^ "How LADbible uses its 'mate in the WhatsApp group' status to tackle mental health". marketingweek.com. 9 March 2021. Retrieved 9 March 2021.
  30. ^ "Dame Judi Dench And Chris Hemsworth Unite Against Plastic Pollution By Becoming Citizens of The Trash Isles - LADbible".
  31. ^ "The Big Won: these 20 ads won the most creative awards in 2018". The Drum.
  32. ^ "Unilad launches 'illegal blood bank' for gay and bisexual donors". campaignlive.co.uk. Retrieved 14 November 2019.
  33. ^ a b "Inclusivity for Impact". contagious.com. Retrieved 13 September 2021.
  34. ^ Roue, Lucy (12 November 2015). "TheLADBible is big winner at digital awards". Manchester Evening News. Retrieved 26 May 2017.
  35. ^ "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 9 July 2018.
  36. ^ "LADbible Cannes Lions Award Wins - LADbible Group". LADbible Group. Retrieved 4 July 2018.
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