LONG ISLAND, NY — They may not have dreamed it when they first formed a school magazine to cover a Glasgow suburb in the 1980s. But now The Drum‘s founders Gordon Young and Nick Creed are riding the wave of running one of the marketing industry’s most influential trade publications.
After leaving school, the pair formed an early print trade publishing company focused on sectors from architecture to law. But it was when they began focusing on the media sector itself that The Drum was born – first formed as ScotMedia and later broadened outward.
Now The Drum is best known as the news and analysis website serving marketing professionals in the UK and, increasingly, around the world. And founder and editor Young is fired up about global expansion and helping marketers realize their ability to change the world.
“On November 10, we set out to prove that marketing really can change the world by challenging our industry to make a difference over the course of a single day,” he tells Beet.TV. “This event is called Do-It Day.
“We have brands on board – Airbnb, Coca-Cola, to name but two – who have agreed to a challenge. We’ve brought on board ad agencies and creative companies to help, and resources companies to do something that day. We have 17 organizations.
“We’ll have access to the big signs in Times Square, Piccadilly in London, a TV company in Scotland, planting a forest in England – 20,000 trees over 10 acres.”
Do-It Day isn’t just a well-meaning initiative to help marketers bring about change. It’s also a self-branding exercise for The Drum itself. “Marketing can change the world” is the publication’s new strapline, and Young wants the eat up an ever larger piece of that world.
“We want to establish ourselves as the first global marketing platform,” he tells Beet.TV. “We don’t want to be geographically focused – we just want to cover interesting stuff, no matter where that happens.
“Our head office is in Scotland, our biggest office is in London, we have a small base in New York, our senior editor based in Portland and we’ve just launched in Asia. Next year, The Drum magazine will go global – one printed magazine that will cover all our main markets.”
From humble beginnings, the drumbeat is getting louder.
Beet.TV recorded this video at an executive offsite meeting in Long Island, New York.
