Pedestrian TV is expanding into Perth and Adelaide as it cements plans to increase its national footprint following its success in the youth demographic in other markets.
The move follows Pedestrian's launch of five new verticals this year, including luxury, money, food, gaming and pets. The first being Pedestrian Luxe which is currently live on the website, with the others to launch throughout the year.
Speaking with AdNews, Pedestrian co-founder Chris Wirasinha says: “Over the last year we've grown from 35 to 50 people, which has been a natural growth of the business as well as a response to the demand from advertisers.”
Of those 15 new positions, hires were made across all departments including boosting national markets across the eastern seaboard, with Pedestrian's readership continuing to grow.
It now has more than 300,000 Facebook fans – which contributes approximately 55% of its total traffic across the site.
This year Wirasinha plans to bring on an extra 20 people to grow the youth-focused media company's national footprint. It is on the hunt for sales staff to increase its 'partnerships' offering in Perth and Adelaide, as well as its current offices.
With its Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane offices now established, Wirasinha is putting sales executives on the ground in Perth and Adelaide to gauge the size of the opportunity in this market.
The Pedestrian TV team
“What we've typically done in the past is have a sales representative test out the opportunity and then introduce editorial resources to support that,” he says.
“We've always found that when we go into a new market there has been a lot of engagement from local commercial partners for Pedestrian, which builds off the back of our national readership.”
Like most media companies, Pedestrian is concentrating on its video offering for clients, looking to hire around three staff in this area. It has already worked with blue-chip brands like Holden, Telstra, Microsoft and CommBank on native video content, and is plotting more.
Pedestrian uses an “editorship” model which sees one person within the company lead the content for a brand partner in an “always-on” capacity.
Telstra is one of the brands utilising the “editorship” model on Pedestrian to produce native content as part of its campaign to reposition from a telco to a tech company.
Another brand that has utilised this partnership model is Smirnoff. Over the last nine months, Pedestrian has delivered more than 150 pieces of content for Smirnoff, focusing on its global brand direction of focusing on openness and inclusivity.
It's seen the publisher extensively cover topics of gender equality, LGBTQI issues, ageism and race and hit more than 10 million campaign impressions.
This news piece on the Australia Day lamb ad brought to life the Smirnoff positioning of inclusivity
Wirasinha aims to roll out this concept for all the verticals introduced last year.
“Brands these days have invested so much through social channels and everyone’s talking about content marketing, but when they do it themselves they don’t quite reach the same level as a publisher can deliver,” he says.
“The editorship model works closely with brands that are looking to speak to a millennial audience around the passion points that are relevant.”
While there are a lot of competitors in the youth space, from BuzzFeed to Vice, Wiransiha says Luxe is not targeted at the same audiences of these publishers, rather the ailing premium magazine brands and their underperforming digital assets.
The luxury vertical provides a snapshot of what's to come when the pets, gaming and money verticals launch later this year, explains Wirasinha.
An example of Luxe content - this article delivered 20,000 views
“No one was really doing anything in the luxury space that was tapping into the 25-35 age group. They've got reasonable income and they are looking to make purchases for the next stage of their lives, but they also want to be communicated with in the right, light-hearted tone,” he says.
“We don't feel like anyone is doing a good job digitally, which has allowed us to tap into the premium space editorially and commercially.”
Advertisers such as Virgin Australia, Set for Life, Mazda and John Frida have got on board with the new luxury vertical, led by Natalie Dean-Weymark who joined from The Collective earlier this year.
Also launching this year is Pedestrian Bites, a foodie site, which will compete with the likes of BuzzFeed Tasty.
“Culinary discovery is a crowded market. The way we are differentiating Bites is through a large focus on cooking at home. No one is speaking to people cooking in sharehouses our goal with Bites is to help establish the culinary skills of young Australians," Wirasinha says.
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