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1 Building A Video Empire April 15, 2015

Building a Video Empire

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Page 1: Building a Video Empire

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Building A Video Empire

April 15, 2015

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Building A Video Empire

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• We exist to inspire and empower the next generation of athletes

• Founded in 2005 as print publication

• Requested into 75% of nation’s high schools

• Largest teen readership in print with 5.4MM per issue

STACK Today

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• Largest sports performance media company with 15+MM UV/month

• Library of 8,000 original vids and 85MM+ views/month

• Advertising and Sponsorship deals with Gatorade, Nike, Under Armour, NFL, etc.

• Partnerships with Yahoo! Sports, Fox Sports and Relativity Media

STACK Today

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• Experienced the need for STACK as athletes at Mayfield High School

• Learned others had similar experience when meeting college teammates at CMU and Harvard

• STACK is the solution to athletes’ information problem

The Initial Idea

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• First major question: Where do we begin?

• Leverage University Resources– Professors

– Classes

– Advisors

– Classmates

• Leverage Student Status

• Read, Read, Read

Starting The Plan

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• Had classmates build us initial website

• Leveraged design and art majors for artwork

• Asked professors to be advisors

• Took relevant classes outside our majors

• Reached out to industry experts using student-status to open doors

Start Doing Something

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• Built business plan instead of taking internships

• Won multiple business plan competitions and $15,000 in prizes

• Declined job offers out of college

• Raised money via friends & family and credit card debt to soft-launch mag

• Built prototype of magazine repurposing website content

Keep Doing Something

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• Chose non-traditional route of controlled circ and free distribution direct to HS

• Ad supported model so more athletes could be reached

• Marketed magazine to 6,000 HS’s and signed up 3,000 in two weeks

• Sold ads to Nike, Reebok, Rawlings in first issue

Make Smart Business Decisions

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• Started producing original digital video content in 2007 with star athletes and trainers.

Master Digital Video

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Be The Expert

• By 2008 leading marketers like Gatorade and the National Guard were coming to STACK to help create custom video content

• STACK provided expertise in creating content for athletes and distribution to the brand’s target market

• Still actively creating custom content and recently did work with The Hobbit/Warner Bros.

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Scale Content Production

• Empowered subject matter experts to be regular contributors via tech tools

• Now have hundreds of contributors that scaled content production by 4x

• Content includes both article and video

• Key element in growth of audience as more content for more sports and interests

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Focus on SEO

• Started extensive SEO efforts in 2013 which have lead to 4x growth in organic search traffic in 15 months

• Content discovery is critical for success and search still a key driver of traffic for all publishers

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Be Mobile Friendly

• Mobile web browsing is out-growing desktop browsing and many sites now receive the majority of their traffic from mobile devices.

• STACK released a responsive design in late 2013 and our organic mobile traffic has grown 6x since.

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Know How To Market

• We began promoting our content via Outbrain, Taboola, etc. in 2013 and our traffic has boomed

• Social channels like Facebook and Twitter are also effective organic and paid marketing channels

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Video Is Critical To Success

• Video is at the core of all content opportunities & experiences

• “Writers” need to be directors and video producers to create multi-media packages

• Trending toward 100 million monthly vid impressions

• Partnerships with Yahoo! Sports, Fox Sports and Relativity Media

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Going Beyond Traditional Media

• Acquired franchisor of athlete-focused training centers in 2014

• Acquired mobile app developer of sports-fitness based apps

• Building new Direct-to-Consumer offerings to meet athlete needs

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Building A Video Empire

Chad ZimmermanSTACK

Co-Founder & President

[email protected]