Advice from Vice: six lessons from a publishing outsider

As the publisher secures another $500m investment, its rise from Montreal magazine to powerful brand has lessons for all

Shane Smith, co-founder, Vice Media — Vice co-founder Shane Smith has spoken about the importance of knowing your audience. Photograph: Tim Knox

When Vice Media disclosed that it had secured a further $500m (£309m) in financing last week, its valuation immediately rose to over $2.5bn (£1.6bn). The sum may sound absurd – perhaps it is absurd – but it’s just the latest example of how this 20-year-old gonzo publisher divides opinion.

To its detractors, what Vice does is “more Jackass than journalism” (US News & World Report); “the intersection of shallow and gullible, where they meet, high-five and compare tattoos” (New York Times TV critic Mike Hale); the equivalent of “putting on a safari hat and looking at some poop” (David Carr, the same paper’s media columnist).

On the other hand, Vice Media has a large and loyal audience. The company claims 150 million users globally every month, even if indicative numbers from ComScore suggest fewer. Either way, the audience it attracts – 18- to 34-year-old males – is coveted. “They are a very powerful brand, and it cannot be underestimated their ability to reach a very hard-to-reach audience,” said Nancy Dubuc, chief executive of A&E Networks, one of the recent investors.

So what is Vice doing right and what can others learn from its success?

1. Be platform-agnostic
Famously, Vice began as a Montreal-based magazine and, like many others, it ventured online in the mid-to-late 1990s. Yet this is more than a simple print-to-digital transition tale. Vice puts out records, publishes books, makes TV programmes and produces films. In other words, it goes where its audience goes.

2. Know your audience
Subject. Platform. Treatment. That’s the recipe. It’s not enough to know what your audience likes; you have to know how they like it. Or in co-founder Shane Smith’s words: “Young people have been marketed to since they were babies, they develop this incredibly sophisticated bullshit detector, and the only way to circumvent the bullshit detector is to not bullshit.”

3. Know your own voice
Any decent publication, website or programme will cultivate a tone of voice. But where others might opt for something collegiate and inclusive – collaborative, accessible and straightforward – the voice of Vice reflects the scurrilous and rabble-rousing nature of its editorial mission. It is exclusive rather than inclusive (you’re either in the club or you’re not), it’s caustic and it’s provocative. Contributors and audience revel in it. “We want you to love us or hate us,” Smith told the New Yorker last year. “We just don’t want you to be indifferent.”

4. Tell compelling stories
“Meet the girl who’s crowdsourcing her abortion”; “I got cocaine blown up my ass so you don’t have to”; “This guy spent twenty years searching for a dwarf James Bond”. This random sample of Vice headlines from recent days nods to sensation over substance. Yet Vice doesn’t lack support for its journalism among the more serious parts of the press. “Vice goes places other news organizations don’t and tell stories others won’t,” wrote Politico’s Dylan Byers while the New Yorker’s Lizzie Widdicombe insisted that compared with the cable news broadcasters and their “blow-dried personalities rehashing wire reports … it’s hard not to be impressed by Vice’s vitality and by some of the topics that it covers firsthand”.

Time’s Fareed Zakaria, who has a consultant credit on one of the outlet’s documentary series, claims that Vice is simply following the editorial principles laid down by Geoffrey Crowther, former editor of The Economist: namely, simplify, then exaggerate. To its admirers, like Zakaria, Vice tells compelling stories with passion.

5. Create some noise
This may mean social media engagement but it needn’t. Vice’s Twitter and Facebook shares are healthy but not spectacular. But creating some noise means two other things, at least. First, it means getting readers and viewers to talk to each other about you face-to-face. Second, it means getting the rest of the media to talk about you (think Dennis Rodman in North Korea or the extraordinary Islamic State film).

6. Make money (without losing audience credibility)
This is a tricky thing to pull off. Vice generates significant revenue through sponsored content. Clients, past and present, include Intel, North Face, Dell, Nike and Red Bull. So far its audience is onside. Perhaps this is down to the skill of its film-makers, a rigid divide between (editorial) church and (advertising) state, or an uncanny knack to pick brand partners that perfectly reflect the demographic.

In the long-term, a roster of corporate clients like that might prove a turn-off and fatally damage the outsider brand Vice has long nurtured. It’s something that Vice, and those which wish to ape its success, must manage with care.

Jon Bernstein is an independent digital media consultant and writer, formerly deputy editor then digital director of New Statesman and multimedia editor at Channel 4 News. He tweets @jon_bernstein