How Vice Media went from start-up to US$5.7 billion global behemoth – it’s not all been smooth sailing
Hong Kong-born Tom Punch, the company’s chief creative officer, ponders how Vice can remain a ‘challenger brand’ having gone from a staff of 80 when he joined in 2012 to 3,000 globally now, as it looks to expand its Asia presence
The company that redefined current affairs for the millennial generation, Vice Media, is one of the most successful – and controversial – media brands to emerge in the past 25 years.
Founded in Montreal, Canada, in 1994, and known for producing youth-oriented content with a provocative edge, Vice has grown from local counterculture magazine to US$5.7 billion multi-platform global media enterprise in less time than much of its current audience have been alive.
Based in New York – in the hipster stronghold of Williamsburg in Brooklyn – since 2001, Vice’s growth over the past six years has been nothing short of stratospheric, a rise that has coincided with the tenure of Hong Kong-born Tom Punch, the company’s chief commercial and creative officer who is responsible for “bridging the worlds of content and commerce and revenue”.
In Hong Kong for the recent Great Festival of Innovation at the Asia Society, the affable Punch says Vice had a team of about 80 people when he joined in 2012. Now, the company has about 3,000 staff globally, including 1,500 in New York alone.
“It’s been a pretty dramatic shift,” he says.
