branded-content
(16)
The Guest List Is the Product
Two magazine editors noticed that culture was escaping the magazine. They built an agency around the part that still mattered: knowing exactly who belongs in the room.
The Company Selling Certainty in an Uncertain Media Business
For thirty years, Brandpoint has sold PR teams a rare commodity: a predictable path into the news. Now it is betting that the same publisher network can make brands legible to both people and machines.
Jones & Daughter Built a Small Company Around One Very Large Question
A mother, a daughter, and more than 1,000 pregnancy topics turned expertise into books, brand work, and a 704-page answer to the anxious question: what happens next?
ELA Advertising took Hollywood’s deadline into the boardroom
ELA built its agency around the speed of movie advertising. Its evolution into SmartMagic adds a bigger ambition: helping shape the product before selling the story.
Garage Team Mazda and the gap between knowing and caring
WPP built an agency around Mazda. Its most revealing assignment was learning how to turn a car’s engineering into something a driver could feel.
Stun Creative made the ad worth watching
A Los Angeles promotion shop learned to sell television, then burgers, then a bigger idea: put the people who make the story closer to the people who understand the audience.
Bubba’s LA knows how to move a pickle
A dancing pickle, a robot filming sneakers, and a cartoon with a devastating turn: inside the small motion studio that changes its methods to fit the story.
Ambient Digital Media made the movie after the movie
DVD menus, bonus features, and a television soundtrack rebuilt for iTunes: Ambient Digital Media worked where entertainment became a finished release. Its history shows how much production happens after the cameras stop.
VICE Bet $5.7 Billion on Owning Youth Culture. Bankruptcy Taught It to Rent.
The punk magazine that became a media empire lost the economics before it lost the audience. Its second act is smaller, stranger and surprisingly practical: finance the shows, license the brand and let partners carry the machinery.
theSkimm Built a 5 Million-Woman Habit. Then the Ad Market Sent a Wake-Up Call
Two former TV producers turned a $4,000 couch project into a daily ritual for millions. The clever part was never the email itself - it was owning a useful moment in the reader's day, then learning the hard way that habit and revenue are not the same thing.
The Bloomberg of Travel Was Built From a Startup's Ashes
Rafat Ali sold his first media company to The Guardian, then started over with a Nordic word for 'shift.' Skift now tells airlines, hotels, and tourism boards what's coming next - and charges them for the privilege.
Ink Found a Billion-Person Audience With Nothing to Scroll
For three decades, Ink has treated the passenger journey as a media channel - building the stories, screens and magazines that occupy the rare moments when travellers actually look up.
Hepmil Singapore
Hepmil is a Singapore-headquartered influencer, content and social media agency that grew out of the viral comedy platform SGAG. Through its Hepmil Creators' Network of 3,000-plus creators, it connects more than 450 brands with young audiences across six Southeast Asian markets, blending local humor, culturally-tuned content and social commerce. Founded in 2015 by Karl Mak and Adrian Ang, the group was acquired by Publicis Groupe in October 2025 to form the region's first end-to-end influencer solution.
Viddsee
Viddsee is a Singapore-based video entertainment company that curates, distributes and markets short-form premium content from Asia. Founded in 2013 by engineer-filmmakers Ho Jia Jian and Derek Tan, it began as a Facebook page sharing regional short films and grew into a multi-platform network reaching millions of monthly viewers. Beyond its consumer streaming platform, Viddsee runs Viddsee Studios, a branded-content production arm serving brands and government agencies, and Viddsee for Good, a social-impact storytelling initiative, plus the Viddsee Juree Awards that spotlight emerging Southeast Asian filmmakers.
Matador Network
Matador Network is a San Francisco-based travel media company founded in 2006 that publishes original stories, videos, and city guides for modern, adventure-minded travelers. Bootstrapped from an $11,000 start into one of the world's largest independent travel brands, its content reaches well over 100 million people a month across web and social. In 2023 it launched GuideGeek, a free OpenAI-powered travel assistant that answers questions inside Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook Messenger, and now licenses white-label versions of that AI to tourism boards and destination marketing organizations worldwide.
UPROXX
UPROXX is a Los Angeles-based digital media and entertainment company that grew from a music and pop-culture website into a connected-TV and social-video powerhouse reaching more than 160 million monthly viewers. Founded by Jarret Myer and Brian Brater, it owns brands including UPROXX, HipHopDX and Dime Magazine, produces original music and culture programming, runs a content studio for brand campaigns, and - after going independent again in 2024 alongside will.i.am and Rich Antoniello - sells media across YouTube and CTV while folding AI into how it makes and monetizes content.