Next-Generation Media brands: Growing recurring revenues from content and community

How Next-Generation Media brands (NGMs) are diversifying beyond traditional revenues with ‘Direct to Community’ products and services.

To launch the Vida Media podcast in February 2020 we spoke to three inspirational founders of startup media businesses who have turned a personal passion into a successful, growing business.

- Danielle Welton from Casquette, a brand that exists to promote, support and connect the growing audience of women cyclists, largely ignored by the male-dominated mainstream cycling media.

- Hero Brown from Muddy Stilettos, a multichannel lifestyle platform for the growing band of people moving out of the major cities to the county, but who are not yet ready to don ‘tweed knickers’.

- And Liv Little of gal-dem, the media brand for women and non-binary people of colour.

These three businesses are very different but they share the key characteristics of next generation media brands.

We covered a lot of ground in a short space of time in the podcast  - Growing a brand, audience development, raising investment - and you can hear it in full here.

But two of the most interesting insights came when the conversation turned to building recurring revenues.

It’s a truism that you can’t build a sustainable business on ad revenues alone, so although the three founders all started here, each has diversified. For instance Muddy Stilletos through its annual small business awards, and gal-dem and Casquette via events and experiential. Casquette is the official women’s cycling partner at the London Bike Show for the second year running in March 2020 and gal-dem caused queues around the block for their sold-out V&A Lates event. This year these two NGMs are diversifying further by developing Direct to Community revenues, in different ways.

For Casquette, this means building on the success of their DTC product test last year where they sold out a run of branded caps (Casquette is the name of the iconic cycling cap). Danielle puts the sales down to a combination of serendipity, and a deep, innate understanding of what your audience wants, perhaps because as a founder of a passion project you are of that audience. As such, branded products and brand extensions are not so much Direct to Consumer, but Direct to Community. 

DTC brands are, by default, close to their customer, which makes every transaction a potential learning opportunity. This closeness enables the founders to evolve products and their overall offering to better suit the customers quickly, and with authenticity. Next generation media brands selling direct to the community they originally came from - and remain part of - enjoy this same advantage, and more.

For gal-dem, inspired by the success of their guest edited edition of Guardian weekend which sold out, and informed by formal market research amongst their audience, this month will see the launch of their membership programme, a tiered offering with paying members accessing a range of added-value benefits. By combining the deep, instinctive and authentic understanding of their community with the technical, strategic and operation expertise of a specialist membership platform like SteadyHQ, gal-dem has found its own authentic way to sell direct to community.Developing direct to community revenues is just one of the benefits that VIDA offers to founders and investors in next generation media brands.

If you’d like to hear more, get in touch here or follow VIDA for future podcasts focused on this space. Look out for our Next Gen Media 20 list next month, a list of the best NGMs in the UK right now, and the ones to watch.