Mamamia moves, Outloud changes & what I'm wearing this week
Mailbag time!
This week, I asked on my Insta stories if you had any questions - here are a few - feel free to leave more in the comments.
Q: “Why the office move for Mamamia?”
A: ICYMI, we recently moved our Sydney office to a bigger space - about twice the size. Couple of reasons for this.
Firstly, we simply needed more space. Since we moved into our previous office about five years ago, we’ve grown pretty significantly. About 150 people work at Mamamia, most of them in Sydney where our content team is based along with sales, operations and our leadership team. We also have an office in Melbourne - which also moved recently to a bigger co-working space - that’s mostly sales. And we have a sales team in Brisbane as well.
But Sydney is MM HQ and the other reason we had to move is because we needed more studios. With podcasts now all being filmed and the fact we make something like 50 hours of podcasts per week, we needed purpose-built recording studios.
At our old office we had one small studio and one video studio which we converted badly into a pod studio. Neither were fit for this new world order.
So we built three custom studios in the new office and we’re really enjoying the change of scene. There’s a huge cafe area and lots of meeting rooms which we really needed because like most offices, we are open-plan. I have my own little office which I love.
Here’s a bit of a tour:
Q: “Are you still planning to live in Copenhagen at some stage this year?!”
A: Yes! I’m seriously toying with the idea of taking a sabbatical later this year. I haven’t done this ever in my career and certainly not since starting Mamamia 18 years ago. I’m heading to Italy for a wedding in Spring so I might extend and spend some time in Copenhagen. My obsession with Copenhagen fashion continues.
Q: “Has Outloud had a bit of a re-brand lately?”
A: I guess we have? The move to vodcast has impacted everyone in the podcast space, hugely. I don’t know any podcasters who are thrilled about this.
Those of us who have been podcasing a long time - Mamamia Outloud is 11 years old - were drawn to the intimacy of podcasting partly because it wasn’t video. I had no desire to be ‘on TV’ and I’ve never pursued a career in front of the camera.
As a creator, I consider myself a writer first and foremost and now a podcaster. When many publishers ‘pivoted to video’ at the urging of Facebook around 2014, we chose ti pivot to podcasts instead and that was an excellent business decision for us, it transformed Mamamia which is now known as much - if not more - for our podcasts as our written content.
But the economics of podcasts are driven by the tech platforms which means that to be sustainable, you need to grow your audience and the only way to do that is to make social content which is now exclusively short-form video thanks to the way TIKTOK has changed everything. Ugh. The cost of it, the time it takes, the way it can change the fundamentals of what you’re doing…..we try exceptionally hard not to let it impact the essence of the show but I’d be lying if I tried to say the landscape hasn’t changed and we want to always be ahead of those changes.
A strong brand will always evolve and iterate when things are going well - Outloud has never had a bigger audience, we are the #4 podcast in Australia and the #1 women’s podcast. So we have been embracing the opportunity to make some tweaks and keep it fresh.
We’re also on Youtube now…….
Q: Will there be a third season of Strife?
A: We don’t know yet. This season was really successful for our Australian streaming partner, Binge but we’re waiting to hear whether we’re renewed for season 3. We hope so! We have lots more stories we want to tell about Evelyn and Eve Life……
Q: Why was ‘bra wearing or not’ discussed on MM? What traction or click-bait was achieved by this?
A: I’m not sure if you’re referring to something we spoke about on Outloud or an article on mamamia.com.au but either way, it would have been discussed because women buy bras, wear bras and sometimes talk about bras.
Funnily enough, I was just in a meeting this morning where the women were talking about bras and I learned that someone had paid $125 for their E-cup sports bra.
The thing about women is that we are people and therefore interested in lots of different things. Talking about bras doesn’t make you stupid and talking about politics doesn’t make you intelligent. It’s just information. And every woman I know is agnostic about the things she’s interested in.
I’m not sure what you mean by the term ‘click-bait’ but I think you’re using it to suggest it’s somehow superficial or manipulative to talk about bras? Obviously, we cover a huge spectrum of topics on our podcasts and website and socials. We publish hundreds of pieces of content every week and we’re always trying to make content that women are interested in.
Not every one of them will be of interest to every person. I’ve noticed a definitely increase in the way some people are indignant about content that doesn’t speak to them personally. Angry even. It’s like there’s an expectation that if you don’t like something, it shouldn’t exist. Which is pretty whack.
Q: “What is your favourite season weather wise and then fashion wise?”
A: Definitely not winter. I find the extremes of seasons - high summer and high winter - very boring from a fashion POV because what you wear is so dictated by the temperature rather than how you feel. Less opportunity to be creative.
I also run hot these days and my rosacea hates central heating of any kind so I struggle with the constant switch between freezing outside and toasty inside.
As you can see below, I haven’t quite hit my groove yet this winter. Tracksuit pants, polo tops and camo are all featuring but I threw a lace dress in there too.
Q: “Will Outloud ever be hosted by acclaimed academics to expand Australian audiences.”
A: No. Jessie has a degree. I think we’re good.
What I’ve been wearing this week….
