Media agency experience helped keep Pedestrian alive say founders
Pedestrian’s founders have credited their years at media agencies as helping to keep the pop culture site alive and helping it evolve as the publisher looks set to launch its next segment Pedestrian Help.
Last night Pedestrian was named as Media Brand of the Year at the Mumbrella Awards.
Co-founders Oscar Martin and Chris Wirasinha started their careers in media agencies, with Martin working as a media assistant at UM.
Speaking to marketing students at GroupM’s MGrad stream of Mumbrella360, Martin said the business was born in spare rooms at their parents houses: “Our mums and dads let us take over a section of the house and we literally started doing all-nighters.
“We believed in our idea. The reason why we feel we managed to keep the product alive and to evolve is through what we learnt at a media agency in our humble beginnings.
“Talking to advertisers in a way that media agencies are used to is the very reason we could go in and try and win a brief or get some money from an agency, it was absolutely fundamental in our journey.”
Chris Wirasinha on connecting brands with culture, editorial integrity and employing full time staff.
The team are set to expand upon its Jobs and Coach sections with Pedestrian Help which aims to create change in society.
“We’ve got an idea to launch a new section called Pedestrian Help and it is actually saving the world,” Martin said.
“That’s really exciting. Finally we can use all the readers to actually do a good thing, make change, raise awareness of causes in need.”
Pedestrian Help is set to launch with coverage of a mental health issue.
In March, Nine Entertainment Co acquired a stake in Pedestrian.TV .
On the relationship with Nine, Wirasinha told the students: “Quite a momentous occasion to happen to us was the biggest media company in Australia, Nine Entertainment took an investment in Pedestrian.TV; it was a partial investment.
“It was pretty cool, these are the types of companies we look to. We were getting approached by a lot of businesses in the market and we were looking at ways to take on some bigger challenges for the business and really grow it in the next ten years.”
Miranda Ward
Miranda Ward worked for Mumbrella from 2013 to 2017, eventually becoming deputy editor. Miranda joined Mumbrella in September 2013 from Sky News.
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