What you need to know:

• The Brag founder Luke Girgis has just hit pay dirt, selling the business to ASX-listed music group Vinyl for $8m plus add-ons.
• After entering publishing from artist management, Girgis admits it took 18 months to work out what media agencies did. He still thinks many are missing youth market growth opportunities by taking easier options.
• “A big reason why we lose briefs sometimes is it just seems like too much effort – it's a lot easier to programmatically buy or pre-roll or something.”
• But those that do make the effort tend to stick around – and the smart operators recognise the pay off:  “I think we're 70 per cent repeat clients,” per Girgis. “We still have massive reach just with media-only deals but our real superpower is when it's all three – huge reach, when it involves talent and when it involves an event. No-one else in the country can do anything like that.”
• Now he’s bidding to take the model offshore with Vinyl.
• The question is whether working for somebody else will end better than his last employment gig. But stock options help – and Girgis is definitely willing.

Sweet music

An $8m deal announced in December and sealed last week with listed music group Vinyl will see The Brag take on a more ambitious expansion plan here and off-shore with its publishing business – it sells ads across a network of youth, music and culture sites but generates most of its impact combining ads with custom events and programs which put brands in front of sought after consumers. 

Vinyl, which has an online music store and operates platforms for artists and rights, acquired The Brag simultaneously with an $11m investment from billionaire WiseTech founder Richard White to fuel a bigger assault on the local market and offshore expansion.

Brag, which bills itself as “Australia’s largest youth publisher”, combines sites and titles like Rolling Stone, Variety, TheBrag.com, Tone Deaf and The Music Network with an events business bringing brands together with music and culture initiatives – it claims a monthly audience of circa 10m. Most of Brag’s $9m in revenues last year came from brands backing these custom programs although the firm also represents and sells audiences for HypeBeast, Billboard, The Hollywood Reporter, Music Feeds, ComingSoon, Rotten Tomatoes, Game Revolution and IndieWire.

Brief beef

“The average [publisher] industry win rate is maybe like 25 per cent responding to a [brand] brief. Our win rate when we are responding to a brief that requires talent, event and reach – we're close to 80 per cent,” Girgis told Mi3.

If true, it’s a surprising figure given Girgis admits cracking the media business “was a lot harder than I thought but I don’t fucking sleep until I figure things out”. 

One of his biggest surprises moving from the music industry to media then?   

“This is going to sound so silly to you but I didn't actually even know what a media agency was when I started,” he says. “I remember selling a lot of money with brands directly, both in the US and in Australia, with all the talent that I was managing. And I was doing really decent revenue brokering a lot of deals. So when I launched the media business, I was like, great, I'll just call all my contacts and start getting some revenue through, whatever."

But it didn't quite happen like that.

"I would I call of these marketing managers, they're like ‘oh no, you’re media, all that media budget goes through these media agencies’. I was like, what are you talking about? It honestly took me 18 months to figure out how the whole agency system works.”

Agencies crimp quality

That's faster than some trade journos. But his outsider assessment of the agency business is consistent with most – agencies are spread “way too thin and don’t make enough margin to be effective”, although there are some “really fucking good ones out there”.

Indeed, thinly-resourced agencies have created their own challenges for Girgis and The Brag team – brands and agency types talk relentlessly about winning over the younger set with authenticity, but that requires significantly more strategic effort and creative chops beyond placing an ad, often programmatically or in social platforms.

“A big reason why we lose briefs sometimes is it just seems like too much effort – it's a lot easier to programmatically buy or pre-roll or something,” says Girgis. “But I would say that is becoming less and less of a challenge – our repeat business is extremely high; I think we're 70 per cent repeat clients. It's really, really good and when brands work with us for the first time, they actually realise how much we do. There's very little approvals needed by them." 

Girgis thinks the smart operators recognise the pay-off. “We still have massive reach just with media-only deals but our real superpower is when it's all three – huge reach, when it involves talent and when it involves an event. No-one else in the country can do anything like that.”

Rolling Stone, Variety superchargers 

So what next for The Brag and Vinyl? Girgis says the efficiencies of using The Brag’s media titles to “supercharge” music sales on vinyl.com was obvious. Then a broader e-commerce play was in the blueprint.

Ultimately Vinyl and The Brag are hunting local and off-shore expansion. "The ambition of the shareholders, the board and CEO Josh …. is global,” says Girigs. “We don't want to be just a domestic company. So that is truly the exciting part of this. And that might not happen tomorrow, but hopefully it will happen the day after. We've got a big, ambitious vision for the company.”   

So how long does The Brag have masthead rights to Penske Media’s (PMC) Rolling Stone and Variety? “I don't know if I can disclose that. It's a long time. It's a very long time,” says the unusually fuzzy Girgis. 

Now and next

How important then is Rolling Stone and Variety to the global expansion plans of Vinyl and The Brag? “I’m trying to work out what I'm allowed to say here,” he muses. “What I will say is PMC, the owners of Variety and Rolling Stone, all these titles we work with, are really supportive of our global ambitions.”

Sounds like something is in the wind but how will a maverick like Girgis go inside a listed company with all its compliance, reporting and process – such expansion ambitions will clearly stretch beyond his two year contract tied into Vinyl’s deal and five million Vinyl options which vest in his second year. Will he stay?

“Beyond that, God willing, yeah. I would like to be if they'll have me. The last job I had I got fired. So we'll see what happens.”