How Ladbible built a media empire on creativity
Ladbible Group’s ECD LA Ronayne discusses how it’s helping everyone from banks to government bodies reach a youth audience and the brand’s broader mission to become a global entertainment company
Ladbible’s stratospheric growth has become the stuff of social media lore over the last decade. Set up by Alexander ‘Solly’ Solomou and Arian Kalantari (who left the business last year) in 2012 while they were still students, the friends started out posting funny videos to a few thousand followers on Facebook. Since then, Ladbible Group has evolved into the world’s largest social publisher, with an eclectic mix of brands spanning everything from gaming to sport, and a global audience that’s rapidly approaching one billion.
While the business initially drew criticism for its connotations with the more problematic elements of lad culture (Everyday Sexism’s Laura Bates described sites like Ladbible and Unilad as “misogyny sickeningly disguised as banter” during its early days), the team behind it – headed up by Solomou as CEO – have gradually shifted perceptions of the word ‘lad’ to reflect contemporary culture, as well as putting social issues such as climate change and mental health as high on the agenda as humour.
Fast-forward to today, and Ladbible Group’s stats speak for themselves: its brands reach nearly two-thirds of 18 to 34-year-olds in the UK and its audience is a neat 50/50 split between men and women. “We’re still the biggest youth publisher in the entire world and I think that’s our secret sauce for how we work with clients and brand partners … as well as going deep into Gen Z culture and now really flexing our Gen Alpha skills,” says LA Ronayne, who joined as executive creative director in 2023.
Ronayne, who previously worked in agencies including Anomaly and Stink Studios, heads up a 50-strong department spanning a conceptual creative team, a creative production team and an in-house production team. Since joining, the ECD has been building out those three core functions based on the existing experience of colleagues who have been with the business for a long time and fresh talent that instinctively understands Ladbible’s audience.
“When I came in, I didn’t suddenly want to be like, we’re changing everything that we’re doing,” she explains. “We really took our time as we’ve grown over the past year to upskill some of the brilliant people that we’ve got here, hiring different skillsets that are complementary as well.”
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For Ronayne, the biggest joy of the role is being able to fulfil her dream of treating a creative department like a newsroom, as well as the scale and reach of the work they get to create on a daily basis. “The volume of work is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced. Essentially at any given time, we’ve got 150 pieces of work at various different stages coming through the gates,” she says.
Equally as exciting for her is the fact that this work is coming from such a broad mix of clients. Historically, these have ranged from big brands like adidas and Nandos that are already embedded in youth culture through to the Cabinet Office, who turned to them for help illustrating how misinformation spreads in the wake of major stories like the pandemic and the war in Ukraine.
One of the biggest partnerships Ronayne’s been involved with since joining is with Lloyd’s, off the back of its recent rebrand by Wolff Olins and accompanying campaign by adam&eveDDB. “Banks in general probably haven’t spoken to this generation in that way and through these types of channels probably ever. They just can’t reach them on TV, they don’t watch it,” she says. “We’re taking a brand product story and then we’re turning it into content that’s actually entertaining.”
As legacy brands increasingly wake up to the reality that they need to find new ways to engage with youth audiences and take social media more seriously, Ronayne points out that nailing the right tone is vital. “You can’t just come to Ladbible Group and put advertising on our channels, because it won’t work. The second we put something out, we know if it’s going to fly. You get real time responses, so there’s no hiding. But especially with Gen Z, they don’t mind as long as it’s entertaining or useful. There was a job for the AA where MC Grindah did a piece about MOTs that was really funny but really useful, and it was the most saved thing we’ve ever done TikTok.”
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Social good has long been an important pillar of Ladbible’s work, as seen with its phenomenally successful Trash Isles campaign in 2017, which won eight Cannes Lions awards. More recently, the group’s marketing communications team have re-launched its UOKM8 campaign for Mental Health Awareness Week, partnered with the Mayor of London on anti-sexual harassment campaign Maaate, and launched End Spiking, Now to raise awareness of the UK’s chronic drink spiking problem.
Ronayne’s team will often look at ways that they can lean into purpose-driven projects like these in their own work, and sometimes there’s a overlap moment when they get to help bring a campaign to life as well, such as with its recent short film for charity Women’s Aid. Produced by Sharon Horgan’s Merman with a script by Bad Sisters writer Ailbhe Keogan, Van Wife follows a young couple on a campervan adventure and reveals how coercive behaviours can escalate into abuse.
Much of the work done by Ronayne’s team is also underpinned by LadNation, the publisher’s 55,000-strong consumer youth panel that would be the envy of most market research companies. “In ad agency world everything can take a really long time with focus groups and a little bit of second guessing,” she says. “We can get live insights at any given time and that’s all coming from a youth-based focus, which is worth its weight in gold.”
While it’s been a challenging few years for many media brands and ad agencies, Ladbible has been a rare good news story, with the business recently reporting a 35% year-on-year increase in commercial growth. Similarly for Ronayne, she says it’s been “one of the best years of my career”. Bolstered by its ongoing growth and recent acquisitions such as female-founded digital media company Betches, the team behind the publisher also has big ambitions for a US expansion and reaching £200 million in annual revenue.
“We’re getting really strategic in our partnerships as well, doing what we’re doing and keep doing that really well, but having bigger, longer-term partnerships where we give brands access to things like LadNation,” Ronayne adds. “The change since its inception and how we’ve grown as a group is really to bring it into being a global entertainment business, rather than just being a social publisher or a creative agency. That’s our overall mission and we’re well on the way there with it.”
