James Perry leaves Evolve Media to launch pop culture site Fandom in Australia
James Perry has left Evolve Media after seven years to launch entertainment and pop culture fan site Fandom into the Australian market.
Perry: new MD for Fandom Australia and NZ
The former managing director at Evolve Media and current chairman of the Audited Media Association of Australia, left the media company just before Christmas.
Perry stepped into the newly created MD role at Fandom Australia and New Zealand in the last few days. The site is owned by Wikia, the company whose software powers open source sites including Wikipedia.
The vice president of sales for Fandom Asia Pacific, Eric Welles, said “we’ve taken the next steps in the evolution of a mainstream media company, we’re hiring tremendous talent across the globe”.
When asked about his decision to leave Evolve, Perry told Mumbrella: “If you think about the way the traditional market place is moving, this for me was an opportunity within Australia and New Zealand, to be part of a 21st century brand that’s doing what will set sight for the future. You’ve got big data, strong content, strong audience and really good natural traffic.
“You haven’t got the issues when you are working with third parties, everything we do we can control, and it means we can then do a better job for advertisers and we can do a better job for users”.
The vast array of data and content appealed to Perry, he told Mumbrella he didn’t take the job for the sake of doing something different, somewhere else.
“What I’m here to do is to work with Welles in making Wikia the strongest property in this market. It’s about making sure Fandom is built out in a way that works for the Australian market and not just from a sales point of view but from a content point of view.”
Fandom.com.au should launch by March next year and is currently in discussion with Netflix, Universal Pictures, Warner Brothers, X-Box and EA.
The vacant Evolve Media MD role is yet to be filled.
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This seems like a really good hire for Fandom. James is widely regarded as a very accomplished digital executive.
However, it is surprising that Fandom would hire such a hot senior talent given they just recently did a large layoff in the USA and closed their Japanese market, firing all staff. There are also growing rumors among US bankers that their funding round feel out and that the company is not on sound financial footing and may be making some sizable shifts to the business model.
On the other hand, it is presumably a strong property and James should make a big difference to their trajectory in AU. Will be interesting to see how this plays out.
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James is a gun – good hire.
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