From cause-based campaigns like ‘Trash Isles’ and ‘Uokm8?’ to LadBible’s latest mission to close the gap between porn and reality, marketing director Mike Walsh is helping the publisher turn audience conversation into cultural action. He tells Tim Healey why data, dialogue and daring to reinvent the medium keep LadBible ahead of the curve.
You’ve worked at Haymarket and Vice and have been marketing director at LadBible since 2024. Please walk us through your career.
My background isn’t classic marketing – I did a degree in drama and media. I failed at acting very quickly and then found work in commercial roles before moving towards marketing. In the media brand world, there aren’t generally enormous marketing functions in comparison to something like SMCG. You’re usually working very closely with editorial, creative and commercial teams. You’re kind of a connecting cog in lots of different departments.
Media businesses tend not to suffer quite so much from the ‘silo’ issues larger organizations face. The marketing function sits between teams and things happen by working alongside editorial and is central to the business, which I’ve always enjoyed. For example at LadBible, our platform is both our content and our brand.
The need to stay up-to-date has never been more acute: learning how to best communicate on new platforms and to different audiences. I’ve never worked in a medium that moves as quickly as social, being able to create and curate culturally relevant content that audiences except to see on our brands is a brilliant challenge daily.
I was listening to a podcast recently that summed up social media in 2026 by saying, in essence, “it’s definitely not what it was.” The illusion of it being a friendly place to make connections has faded, and it’s now a more brutal advertising platform. How is that shift in perception influencing how you think about communicating with people at LadBible?
We recently undertook a huge survey of Gen Z. The biggest shift in perceptions about social media is around social connections. When many of us found social media, you would have been sharing photos and messaging with friends. These interactions were built around your social network.
There has been a lot of stuff in the press in the last five years about how social media has become ‘more media, less social’. These channels have become more like a typical broadcast media platform, sending information to people.
The big caveat, of course, is that there’s a whole generation of people who, thanks to social media, have always had a comment section underneath the content, which is such a fascinating thing. For example, my children (aged 13 and 10) expect that if they consume something, they can engage, comment and interact with it.
We now talk about the algorithm generation. Social was originally built around what you liked, what you followed and what your friends and family followed – that information informed your content feed. But we’re in a phase right now where our content consumption is driven by our personal relationship with the algorithm rather than our relationships with people.
I don’t think this is ‘less friendly’ than previously but it can feel more focused on us as individuals. So in that sense I think social has changed but it’s also becoming increasingly effective as a recommendation engine. For us as content producers, we’re trying to create content for audiences. The art and science combination that LadBible is expert in is knowing how the algorithm is likely to deliver that content and what trends are most likely to connect with audiences in real time.
How would you explain LadBible to the uninitiated?
LadBible is one of the biggest social entertainment companies in the world. We talk about social entertainment because it’s a lot broader than just social publishing. We are on so many different platforms, producing different lengths, styles and formats of content reaching over 45 million people in the UK alone every month.
A lot of attention and effort goes into our original IP, hosted on LadBible Entertainment and Sportbible on YouTube. It is longer form and often based round celebrity A-listers – for example Brad Pitt will drop into do an interview (although I got more excited by Thomas Frank the ex-Brentford Manager). We also have LadBible Stories, which is much more serious, much more hard-hitting, longer form content. Highlights of this content will then be delivered across our Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Snapchat audiences.
Every day we publish somewhere in the region of 350 videos. For every second that readers spend digesting this interview, nearly 3,000 people are consuming our content.
Our own IP continues to expand with shows like Snack Wars and Agree to Disagree gaining millions of long-form views across multiple platforms, including our new FAST TV channel. The worlds of TV and social content are converging more and more. You have content creators and YouTubers who are TV celebrities and then you have the flip of it: film stars who are now making themselves more available on social, perhaps doing formats with partners like us, where they are talking directly, unscripted to their audiences.
So, I do think that that space of the broadcast, as we kind of traditionally describe it, is changing dramatically. I’m intrigued by trends around ‘micro dramas’ right now on TikTok for example – these 80-second episodic soap operas. Ultimately as marketers we are all reacting to audience behaviors. What we don’t want to see is any diminishing of quality. There will always be space for the high-end production series that people get so excited about. The role we want to play is to make sure that social entertainment is high quality, credible, and audiences keep coming back to it.
What’s coming up in 2026 for LadBible?
LadBible has a positive reputation for leading cause-based marketing campaigns. We had ‘Trash Isles’, an award-winning campaign that highlighted climate change when LadBible spotlighted a pile of trash in the Pacific Ocean so large that it was registered as a country and declared at the UN.
We followed that up a year later with a campaign called ‘Uokm8?’, which raised the issue of men’s mental health back at a time when that wasn’t being talked about as much as it is now. There have been multiple important issues raised since, and this year we are now launching our biggest campaign to date. We are tackling the impact of porn on young people.
The campaign is called ‘For F**k’s Sake’. We talked to over 5,000 young people aged between 18-29. 77% of Gen Z said that they are watching porn. Almost half of the young men we spoke to said that ‘porn was their main source of sex education.’ It’s the primary way they are introduced to and learning about sex.
There are a lot of people who will be able to make that distinction between entertainment and reality. But there are also people, particularly a younger age, who might not be quite as clear on that. 52% of women felt that porn was reinforcing male dominance in sex, with over 35% saying they had experienced strangulation in sex.
The issue for us isn’t whether porn is a good or bad thing; it’s not our aim to decide for our audience. The issue is that we’re not having a conversation about the fact that porn is so prevalent and accessible, and at times, extreme in our society. The LadBible campaign really is about starting that conversation and providing expert information for young people to ask questions they can’t find answers to elsewhere. Porn is a subject that while everywhere in some ways, is generally shut down quickly when you try to discuss it seriously.
We are also addressing the government. From age 16 onwards you’re legally allowed to have sex and yet there’s no form of sex education, whether that be a digital resource, or part of formal education. 77% of our audience surveyed wanted to see better resources made available to help them navigate porn and sexual relationships. Working with charity partners Fumble, Movember and Pivotal, we are looking to improve the offering at a national level as currently the only reference point in the void appears to be porn.
We really wanted to try and tackle what is a complex, nuanced subject in a way that was accessible to young audiences and at the same time add an element of entertainment to it to make sure that we can engage people. Because again, it was very clear from our research that people don’t want to hear from their parents or their teachers!
To support our campaign, we had musician and actor Jordan Stephens launch it for us. He sat down with a group of young people to hear their views on the subject and produce a call to action launch film for us. We also have a documentary on LadBible Stories with Josh Pieters, the YouTube documentary creator, and it includes a trip to Amsterdam to the world’s biggest porn expo to get a real understanding of all sides of this story.
Our ambition is to start conversations. We have the platform to do that, and the comment section is where those conversations will begin. It’s something we talk to our partners about a lot: culture starts in the comments. Then our mission for the campaign is to take those conversations into a real-world setting, including parliament.
How’s your marketing team structured?
Small and agile is the reality of my team – as is the case with most media businesses. We have design, comms, B2B and B2C marketing. Obviously, a lot of our revenue is driven by our client partners, so the B2B side of marketing is an important part for us, bringing that LadBible brand story to life for our partners.
Beyond the core team, we have the ability to tap into our channel teams – like the YouTube Originals team or short-form social video studios. Working across the wider business is so important as we avoid teams being siloed and we can lean on the expertise that is all around us. Each platform has its own behaviors and our teams that work on them daily truly understand that. So we collaborate with them on various marketing campaigns and on a consistent basis in terms of supporting the audience growth across the business.
How do you manage to surf the tidal wave of marketing technology?
We try to stay focused on what it is that we need. I start with what needs fixing or enhancing. Of course new technology can be really exciting. With AI we are working hard to understand what the audience does and doesn’t want to see AI used for.
We’ve seen some really encouraging results – using A/B testing on social media around content that might traditionally have been stock imagery or video – that using AI video and using AI imagery can enhance the background of human-led stories. We’re seeing genuine engagement increases across most metrics. Sometimes AI can be the story, but we are seeing the most audience benefit when we are elevating human-led stories with AI rather than creating something purely with AI video. I think most marketers are currently trying to find that value exchange between faster and cheaper, but also ensuring it’s actually a better end result for audiences.
I think that example reflects how we approach the general influx of technology into marketing: always try to remember your audience and clearly identify the problem that you are trying to solve. Don’t get too distracted by the bright, shiny new thing.
What myth about marketing would you most like to bust?
Not sure if it’s a myth, maybe an approach I’d like to change. I’m a huge advocate of content-led campaigns, building your brand world and having stories you can tell within it. Too often, I feel like content is used as an afterthought behind a traditional ‘ad spot’. I would suggest the opposite approach is much more effective. Create something of value for your audience. Tell that story with as much depth as possible and allow your audience to discover it in different ways. You can build more direct call to action adverts into that but give your brand a chance to add something to your audience’s lives, whether it’s directly related to your product or something that you have been able to build into your brand world.
Could you describe a moment when your instincts and the data pointed in different directions? And what was your takeaway from the experience?
We do our best to combine art and science. The art being our creative layer that sits on top of understanding what our audience wants to see. Our reach and internal cross-platform data tools give us a unique advantage in that sense.
We’re already building up to the World Cup on Sportbible and lately we’ve been creating content that taps into nostalgia for younger audiences. It’s not immediately obvious that 16–24-year-olds would be interested in players and moments from before they were born, so instinctively we might have steered away from certain talent and format. However, on this occasion, finding the right data took us in the right direction, as through games like EA FC and the Legend profiles, the vast majority of that audience are absolutely tapped into different eras of the game, and it allows us to expand stories out across different elements of the platform portfolio for maximum impact.
Could you tell me about a significant activity you’ve deliberately stopped? Then, what capacity did it release, and what did the results teach you?
We have recent example of this: we get invited to film the red carpets when celebrities arrive for new film premieres. They can be fantastic and we do some great content from them, but due to logistics and capacity these shoots had become the responsibility of the marketing team.
Much as it was lovely to turn up to a red-carpet occasion and you might see some celebrities, it wasn’t really fulfilling our marketing ambition to reach new audiences and elevate the LadBible group brands; it was something that sat more naturally in our editorial team.
I think a good marketing team is naturally inquisitive and wants to be helpful to as many parts of a business it can. It’s also why as an industry I think people can struggle with managing workload and one of the great things about coming in somewhere new is being able to ask why things are done a certain way and reset. Protecting and focusing your team’s time is a key element of the role for any leader.
If you had one piece of advice for mid-weight marketers looking to become marketing leaders, what might that be?
The sooner you can decide what you enjoy and what it is you love doing the better it will be for your career. I didn’t decide early. I spent 10 years going around in relative circles before I really understood that I love content marketing and I love working with youth-orientated brands.
Understand what it is that you want to do. That may be working for a certain company (and I would always be an advocate of the company rather than the role). If you get into a business that you care about, that you believe in, that you enjoy being part of and the culture is right for you, then you can work your way to the role that you love.
Equally, coming at it from the other direction, you might find a role you love. You might really find that you particularly love a specific area of marketing. The sooner you’re able to identify what that is, the sooner you will get there. So as a mid-weight marketeer to take that step up, I think a lot of it is being quite single-minded in what you want, whether that’s role or business, until you can hopefully find both combined.
What question would you like me to ask the next senior marketer when I interview them?
Tell us about a campaign route you turned down because they felt it was too risky and do you have any regrets? Is there a moment in your career where you had an idea on the table that, for whatever reason, your own choice, maybe legal, you backed away from? And does it still play on your mind?
Your question from the last senior-level marketer that I interviewed: how do you ensure that your marketing team are staying culturally relevant in an ever-changing market?
We’re quite fortunate. It’s an oxymoron to be an expert all-rounder. Instead, one needs to be ‘a round leader’ by leaning into different experts and I think we have so many of those in our business.
To stay culturally relevant in our business, I would suggest our team spend time with the team who run, for example, our TikTok feed or our web editorial content. They’ll be very different. There’ll be a trend on one platform that doesn’t exist on the other, and then it’ll get used as a cultural reference. Everything moves incredibly quickly so keeping abreast can be challenging.
We create a Christmas card for our clients that illustrates social-driven cultural moments of the year. There are so many, you have to work hard to remember them! This year, I’d definitely be looking out for the Ibiza Final Boss and the Coldplay concert moments!
If there’s one thing you know about marketing, it is…?
You are very rarely going to have two days that are the same. Marketing is such a multi-faceted, multi-disciplined function that encapsulates so many different things and that’s what keeps it interesting.
You might die tomorrow so make it worth your while. Worth Your While is an independent creative agency helping brands do spectacular stuff people like to talk about. wyw.agency.
This interview has already appeared in The Drum. Discover the best campaigns, industry insights and interviews from world-leading marketers, creatives and more.
