Shane Smith of Vice to talk about secrets of success at Toronto conference

Smith

 Marketing magazine is featuring Shane Smith, the co-founder of Vice magazine and Vice Media as the keynote speaker in its Young Influencers conference, Thursday, Feb 23 8 a.m. to 4 p.m.at the Bram and Bluma Appel Salon at the Toronto Reference Library. Not coincident with his appearance is a feature by Marketing's editor Tom Gierasimczuk  in this week's issue relating how the hipster bible, launched only a decade ago in Montreal, is showing the way for media by essentially leaving behind its "magazine" beginnings in order to pursue the creation of content across platforms and verticals and grow into a company valued at $1 billion today.

“The magazine is less than 5% of our total revenue,” growls Smith, bleary eyed from the previous day’s flight from Los Angeles where he and creative director Eddy Moretti shopped their new independent film and photo project. The plan is for it to live as an online branded content community, joining an expansive network that Vice already curates and sells to complementary brands....

Smith is fond of saying that he handed the magazine over to the interns years ago. It’s a typically effective anecdote to demonstrate that these days, he and Toronto-raised Alvi and Moretti, are busy following the money to where brands are spending it on Vice’s verticals and platforms. Last month’s billion-dollar valuation by Forbes magazine had to do with the verified statement by Smith that “if we don’t answer our phones in 2012, we’ll double—likely triple—in size.”

[Update: All free tickets have been claimed.] Tickets for the conference are $425 each and we have five of them to give away, courtesy of Marketing. The first five readers to send their coordinates (name, e-mail) to canadianmags[at]gmail[dot] com will get them.

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