John Reynolds
TECHNOLOGY
NEW AGE
MEDIA
With new methods of engagement and a wider reach, many traditional quarters are seeing a new online presence
OUTSPOKEN MPS SUCH AS DOMINIC GRIEVE OF THE TORIES, THE SNP’S IAN BLACKFORD, AND CHANGEUK’S ANNA SOUBRY HAVE GIVEN INTERVIEWS FOR THE DIGITAL PUBLISHER.
JOE.CO.UK’S viral satirical videos - some of them set to catchy songs we’re all familiar with - lampooning Nigel Farage, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Jeremy Corbyn, Theresa May and Dominic Raab, have effectively become today’s equivalent of 80s satirical puppet TV series Spitting Image. And the founder of the company behind them is Mayo man Niall McGarry. With offices in Dublin and London, his fast-growing digital media firm Maximum Media and its various brands employ 175 people and reaches about 16 million people in these islands. He describes Joe.ie as a teenager and Joe.co.uk [which also has spin-off brands PoliticsJoe, RugbyJoe and FootballJoe] as a precocious five year-old. Europe and perhaps Australia may also hold opportunities for the business, with RugbyJoe in particular showing potential for increasing its overseas audience. “We produce original content and set our own agenda, rather than following and reproducing the same news stories that many other media organisations are,” married father of one McGarry says, as we 22
NETWORKS
chat in the North London office where his business is about to take more space. Her.ie meanwhile, is described as “a smart, current and edgy digital destination for Irish women”, with more than 2.3 million users of its app and website every month, each of which it describes as “a close friend, and an audience that is loyal and vocal.” Over the past several years, Joe.co.uk has become a media outlet that British MPs are increasingly turning to in order to reach new audiences, that have perhaps previously been underserved when it comes to political coverage. In 2016, demonstrating the organisation’s ability to reflect and follow political trends, a video that it made with Jeremy Corbyn was found by news analysis firm Newswhip to have been the most influential political one on Facebook that year. Health and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd broadcast a video of herself reading out shockingly offensive tweets that she received, while one Tory leader hopeful approached McGarry’s team about
breaking the news of his ambition to the Joe.co.uk audience first. Currently living in Galway - from where he makes a weekly commute to London - he grew up in Castlebar in the neighbouring county, and was interested in business and entrepreneurship from an early age. “If I wasn’t running this business, I might’ve got into retail. I would’ve admired the success of Dunnes Stores in Ireland, the family business founded by the Dunnes. At a young age, I organised a school disco and made a bit of money from it. I ran a small landscape gardening business, with a couple of people working with me doing the physical stuff. I remember one time we were struggling to get paid by a customer, and they ended up paying us with a number of surfboards that we had to then sell,” he recalls with a laugh. At a time when some older and more established media organisations are still struggling to make their digital operations work effectively and achieve a profit, don’t be surprised if one of them tries to snap up McGarry and his talented and growing team.
