Light spent nine years at Vice before the poster child of new model digital publishing canned its Australian operation as the pandemic took hold, following several challenged years globally.

“Ultimately Vice had done a very good job of diversifying revenues, which today is critical for media businesses,” said Light. “But it was still very exposed when Covid hit.”

Vice returned locally a year later via a deal with Nine-owned Pedestrian. Light pointed to Vice’s “experiments into commerce” via affiliate models with Rec Room and Refinery29 as a sign of where publishing is heading.

Thirsty work

Light put a chunk of his redundancy package into launching Bowlo Beer last year with former colleague Matty Graham. The two had worked at Vice with the likes of CUB – Light also set up Vice’s in-house Virtue agency – making test brands for the now Asahi-owned beverage giant, as well as Hoegaarden and Stellar Artois in Apac markets while under AB InBev ownership.

“With all that experience, we thought we’d have a crack ourselves,” said Light. “We toyed with different ideas but decided on Bowlo because we’d built points of differentiation into the model: a customisable brand – taps and packaging can be personalised to each bowlo, which means it feels like their own brand – and a give-back component. We gave back some money to support clubs in need,” said Light.

From early days of “driving around with kegs in the boot”, the start-up now has distribution in around 100 bowling clubs across New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, though with hundreds of independent breweries fighting for share against the Lion-CUB duopoly, the yards are hard.

“It’s a tough game, margins are tight,” said Light, who is now pulling back from the beer business with Graham taking charge. “But I learned a lot about building and running a business from scratch.”

Converting intent

Light was still consulting to pay the bills, and crossed paths with Concrete Playground founder Rich Fogarty, who was plotting the next phase of growth after weathering the Covid downturn.

Light will spearhead Concrete Playground Trips while taking the managing director role across the broader business in a bid for scale. He thinks harnessing intent to purchases and mapping across to adjacent categories will drive the next leg of growth.

“Concrete Playground is very good at inspiration at the top of the funnel. But we’re exploring how to bridge that with intent and action,” said Light.

The plan is use both affiliate models – handing off to partners and taking a cut – but also “bringing some of that in house, so people complete the purchase on the platform.”

That brings purchase data into the fold, and Light thinks the Trips business will seed adjacent opportunities by understanding “overlapping intent” across other Concrete Playground verticals – food, drink, arts, events and style.

“There’s a lot of recent activity around intent driven publishing businesses around the world. The Infatuation, a US dining and restaurants platform was acquired by JP Morgan Chase last year to drive a dining audience into an acquisition funnel for financial services products,” said Light. “Hubspot similarly acquired [business and tech publisher] The Hustle as it sees the value of driving actions from intent,” he added.

“I’m not saying that is our goal, but certainly there are lot of interesting things happening that inform what we do next – and Trips is the first phase.”

Launched last month, Concrete Playground Trips has begun building out business with ANZ tourism bodies. Tourism Tasmania will form the first case study, with the firm publishing a food-focused branded content programme last week, alongside a “carefully crafted culinary journey around the state as a value-add to give them a taste of what we can do,” said Light.

“So we are now working with clients across the full funnel – not just brand teams but trade teams … watching the data and figuring out how to make that business work … and that’s a great learning experience for everyone in the business.”

Growth mode

Fogarty will now work with Light on a phased handover as he focuses squarely on growth after shoring-up the business through Covid and its aftermath.

“Trips will make a great case study for how we can drive commercial transactions, we want to do that well and that is not a short-term focus. But there is more that we can do within commerce – affiliate marketing is an obvious next step, and how we might staff that with a focus on travel,” said Fogarty.

“Much of the last couple of years I’ve been operationally focused. Alex coming in means he can handle that side and I can focus on audience growth, revenue growth and how we can do that better.”