League Championship side Aston Villa is "looking to up its content game and take advantage of the commercial opportunities of establishing itself as a publisher in its own right," according to Jennifer Faull of THE DRUM. To "lead the charge," the club hired former Discovery and BBC producer Will Radford in April '16 as head of media and content. Prior to joining, Radford spent "nearly a decade at Red Bull Media House during its meteoric rise from drinks maker to a media powerhouse." His plans for Aston Villa’s output are "just as ambitious." He said, "It's about trying to upgrade everything. Villa had become very stale and old school in its approach of just looking after owned channels and not talking to new audiences, where people were having conversations about football." Aston Villa’s path to becoming a respected publisher is following "much the same route as clubs that have gone before it." Though it runs news, features and short videos on its website, it has been "flexing its content-creating abilities" on social media, aiming for an output that Radford said will "expand reach to go viral more often," especially around key moments in the sporting calendar like transfer deadlines but "more frequently on wider issues in the news cycle." Radford: "We've tried to pick up more of what's going on in culture and media to become more of an entertainment brand rather than just a sports brand." Facebook, where 2.5 million fans follow Aston Villa, has been "at the heart of this strategy." But Radford explains that in the last six months, that has "tailed off as a direct result of the platform's algorithm changes." Instagram is where the club is "seeing the most substantial growth and is also proving to be the most effective" (THE DRUM, 10/11).
