Buzzfeed in search for Australian sales director
Mumbrella today hosted a video hangout with the cult viral content website Buzzfeed’s vice president of international Scott Lamb and its Australian editor Simon Crerar.
In the interview, Crerar revealed that the US publisher was currently searching for an Australian sales director.
“We are looking to hire a sales guy and tech guys to help update the website while the US is asleep,” said Crerar, while discussing the broader editorial team.
“Right now we have an editorial team of three here and we will also be looking at having some people freelancing and having people (cover) New Zealand and other areas that are within our footprint.”
Crerar also spoke about the Australian operation’s recent experiment with native advertising ahead of today’s move to an Australian Buzzfeed website and confirmed that there would soon be an Australian presence working with brands on such campaigns.
“We ran a test in December,” said Crerar. “There is a great interest by brands in finding different ways of reaching their customers and at the moment the campaigns are being run out of New York but I think that is going to change pretty soon. ”
His colleague Scott Lamb, Buzzfeed Vice President of International dismissed concerns that the arrival of Buzzfeed, along with other overseas counterparts such as The Guardian and Mail Online would pose a threat to Australian media outlets.
Lamb argued that it was up to publishers not to be “lazy” and to look to find new business models.
“The internet is really big,” said Lamb. “There is a lot of room for a lot of players and I think in the Australian context, there are a lot of sites but there is no dominant site and a lot of the lazy sites are still thinking how they can adopt their brand and their form of news gathering to the web.”
The senior Buzzfeed executive said that there was a gap in the Australian marketing with the overseas websites were filling. “Because there is that space I think that’s why you’re seeing The Guardian, the Daily Online and the Huffington Post, who I’m sure is thinking about it as well,” he said.
Lamb also spoke about the importance of publishers understanding social media are a driver of online traffic in 2014.
“Right now someone in a basement somewhere is coming up with a social media network that none of us know anything about, but it five years is going to be this big thing,” said Lamb.
“The human aspect of wanting to share media as a form of social expression is not going to change and as long as we (as publishers) focus on that we are going to ok.”
The full interview between Scott Lamb, Simon Crerar and Mumbrella deputy editor Nic Christensen can be viewed in the player above.
Where do I go to watch/participate in the Hangout? Is the only way to take part by posting comments here?
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You can leave questions here or you can use the hashtag #buzzfeedhangout
does it concern you that buzzfeed’s traffic tends to come via a social giant like facebook, and when/if they change their algorithm it can have a huge impact on how often and who sees your content? #buzzfeedhangout
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What are the best ways for publishers and agencies to work with BuzzFeed in Aus in 2014?#buzzfeedhangout
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Would Buzzfeed ever do business with legacy media to connect with their larger audiences? License/provide some regular viral content?
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how hard was it to educate your advertisers and brand partners on the value of native advertising in the initial stages? and more importantly how did you retain editorial control and ensure the content didn’t step into the realm of advertorial? #buzzfeedhangout
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Here’s the top ten questions that marketers really want to ask Buzzfeed
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Are there any great Australian BuzzFeed stats that you can share? #BuzzFeedHangout
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I asked Buzzfeed this question and you won’t believe what they said!
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