Since rolling out its content creation studio, Guardian Labs, in the Australian market earlier this year, the publisher is at capacity when it comes to creating bespoke content for brands, says managing director of The Guardian Australia Ian McClelland.
McClelland said that in comparison to other markets, brands in Australia are not only interested in The Guardian’s scale to distribute content, but also in using the content the publisher creates for their own media platforms.
“Brands are coming to us because they’re interested in our reach and curious Australians are a great audience, but they’re [also] interested in us to create content for their own media channels,” McClelland said.
“We’re producing an interactive series [for GE] but they spent a lot of time and effort building up their social channels and platforms, and it’s important that they can reuse that content on their own platforms.”
The Guardian currently has 70 staff in Australia, with 65% of staff working in editorial and the remainder as commercial and operation staff – which includes the native team.
The original Guardian Lab, which started in London, currently has 120 staff and McClelland explained that the Australian operation is able to tap into that resource. He said, however, that he still can’t hire staff quickly enough because the Australian arm of the native business has more briefs than it can handle.
“We’ve got, pretty much, more briefs than we can respond to at the moment. In terms of native, we can’t hire people quick enough,” he said.
The Guardian is one of the fastest- growing publishers in Australia. It recently knocked Fairfax publication The Age from 6th position in the Nielsen Online News Rankings, with the online news site receiving a unique audience of 2.08 million in October.
It hasn’t yet done any of its own marketing in Australia yet, instead investing in its editorial and its platform.
The Guardian Australia last week rolled out its new cross-platform web offering, which did away with the site’s traditional columnised site and flipped it to a horizontal container- based site. McClelland said he believes this new offering will help the site’s growth, however he said he wouldn’t rule out a brand campaign in this market down the line.
“We’ve made the decision to keep on investing in journalism … This site, by its very nature, encourages people to share more and to use it on more than one device.
“I think we can rely on that to a certain extent, for the foreseeable future, but at some point we may do a brand campaign,” he said.
This story originally appeared in the 28 November issue of AdNews. Subscribe here in print or much faster on your iPad here.
For more news see below:
The Guardian shakes up web layout, revamps ad offering
Guardian chief blasts Aussie dinosaurs
Big ad: Guardian launches new app
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