"I Don't Want To Say We Were Masquerading As A Publisher": Inside Josh Simons' Brag Challenge

Capping off an eventful few months for Vinyl Group, CEO Josh Simons today announced the acquisition of Funkified, an events and brand activations business which has worked for many years with the company’s media arm The Brag Media, publisher of Rolling Stone Australia, Variety Australia, Tone Deaf and The Music Network.

On announcing the acquisition, Simons said “The acquisition of Funkified completes our acquisition strategy aimed at fully realising the opportunities identified in The Brag Media business, while improving group company margins, revenue and driving growth.”

The move gives the group cost savings as well as additional capacity across their mastheads and is the final piece in a complicated and perhaps unexpected puzzle Simons set himself with The Brag acquisition earlier this year.

Simons sat down with Unmade’s Tim Burrows for a candid interview about the last six months of changes. Labeled as the “accidental publisher” after purchasing the business from Sam Benjamin and CEO Luke Girgis, the expectation was that Simons would be hands-off, allowing The Brag to operate as it had been with its existing team, however the aftermath instead led to the exiting of Girgis in June followed by founding staff member Poppy Reid last week.

Addressing the departure of Girgis, Simons declined to discuss individuals in detail, but acknowledged that the split was not amicable.

“The company did a review process and it wasn’t too long after that the company parted ways with [Luke]. We wish him nothing but luck in whatever he’s doing next, but the business wasn’t firing on all cylinders and in order to hit the goals that we needed to hit, that our shareholders expected us to hit, there needed to be changes.”

“Plan A was certainly to be a happy family, but like you say, with any merger or acquisition, things do change. That’s life.”

Girgis has landed on his feet, recently appointed CEO of another Sam Benjamin-owned company, food delivery service Providoor. He has also kept a hand in music, starting a controversial personal industry blog called The Black Hoodie and purchasing the social media assets of now defunct blog Pilerats to rebrand and promote the new venture.

On his exit, Girgis reflected on his leadership, stating that “The Brag has a legacy of high-quality events, content and growth. Publishing brands like Rolling Stone and Variety is a huge privilege and responsibility. It's our culture that got us this far, so never forget that without Braggers and the culture that binds us, there's no Brag. Thank you, Braggers; I’m so proud of what we built together.”

Simons claims that the biggest issues he faced after the acquisition of The Brag were editorial and cultural as they headed into the company review.

“What was The Brag? What had we purchased? Where were opportunities? Where was there potential?” he said to Burrows of the business review. “There were two big areas that we saw with room to improve and unlock efficiencies. One of them is trade. We had these great trade assets [Music Network and Variety] and they weren’t really doing a lot. And the other area was publishing. We were…. I don’t want to say, masquerading as a publisher, but we weren’t doing a lot of editorial, so we needed to fix those things and that required investing in different parts of the business than what had perhaps been invested in, certainly in recent years.”

One of Simons’ first acts was to bring in a new Head of Content, ex-Billboard writer, Brisbane-based Lars Brandle, announced at the same time as Girgis’ departure and the promotion of Jessica Hunter to General Manager. Vinyl Group also recently acquired trade title Media Week which it has brought into the fold, but will, according to Simons, be keeping its individual editorial control so as not to be seen as “a mouthpiece for Vinyl Group”. On Unmade, Burrows asked Simons about his approach to public interest journalism and how he viewed journalistic responsibility.

“As soon as you asked the question, authenticity came to mind and that’s why I hired Lars within a few months of coming into The Brag world because I just think he’s one of the best music journalists and had enough experience at Billboard and other publications in his very long career that I thought he would be able to run that head of content function across all of our mastheads and publications.”

In a nod towards the need for editorial substance and cultural reform in the media, Simons admitted:

“It’s a pretty small market and everyone knows everyone. If you weren’t going about it in an authentic way you’d be found out sooner or later. Maybe you’d coast for a couple of years or so, but then… I think there’s enough media publications commenting on the media that you’d be found out as a few people have been in the last few months.”

Simons also revealed that the cultural change across the Vinyl Group includes his leadership style.

“I don’t personally need to be in the spotlight. Sometimes I am, sometimes I’m not but I don’t actually give a crap, so that’s probably to the company’s benefit because I’m a big believer that values flow from the top and if I’m not walking into the office every day going ‘What are we going to do to promote Josh Simons, then hopefully the staff underneath me aren’t going ‘What am I going to do to promote [General Manager] Jess Hunter’ or ‘What am I going to do to promote [COO] Joel King’ and they won’t because they see a man who’s come in that just wants to do what’s in the best interests of the company and it’s shareholders. They’ve seen me roll up my sleeves, they’ve seen me do a masterclass in media and that’s the example I’m trying to set for the rest of the business.”