folkU

Brief

Simon from Disruptable was asked to join the project as a founding partner and participate as the CEO and driving force of FOLKU S.A. de C.V. during its inception and first year of development.

• Build the concept of the brand in name and form
• Build the owned publishing channels (website and social media presences)
• Recruit and manage the internal team (creators, producers, and functional staff)
• Manage x2 studios (podcasting and video production)
• Design and manage the editorial strategy and publishing processes
• Manage the day to day activities for growing the business in three of the most prominent regions of Mexico (Mexico City, Jalisco, and Nuevo León)

Work Insight

Building a new media company and brand in today’s already overcrowded media space is an extremely difficult task, however with solid planning, a creative market strategy and a growth hacking mindset, it is more than feasible today.

For legal reasons we cannot publish the exact details of what we did with folkU, but we can provide insights of best practice and results from data in the public domain.

Brand Development

We followed contemporary brand development processes and principles, testing potential names and design concepts with sample groups of our predefined marketing personas, considering the desired competitive positioning and value proposition.

Once finalising the name and form, we repeated the process with numerous iterations of the website design and representation of the brand in social channels (channel branding, video supers etc.) considering a segmented approach to content distribution via dedicated channels to ensure the branded ecosystem could perform optimally.

Web Presences & Optimisation

In developing the website, we opted for a customised WordPress solution hosted with AWS, this provided us with optimal server performance whilst being able to easily customise the design, and optimise the website for search performance (speed optimisation and AMP configuration was simplified).

Out of the box, WordPress is pretty much all a media company needs, the technical support network is an invaluable asset, and once configured with workflow management, publishing can begin quite rapidly.

Content Creation

In following the lean startup principles, and with content as the focus of our value proposition, it was important create differing content types to varying degrees of production standards (based on theme and target audience), we would vary publishing times, and A/B test all elements of creative for organic and paid performance.

Content would also be our primary vehicle for brand awareness and development, therefore virality was always the golden egg we were searching for. Often our hypothesis for what would work and what wouldn’t was overturned.

You can view the x3 video libraries of the varying types of content on Facebook at:

• folkU Politik
• folkU Oficial
• folkU Anorak