Walls Fall Down at Thrillist

Thrillist, a New York-based startup that is growing fast, is forming the Thrillist Media Group, which will combine its content and commerce divisions.

Image: Portfolio.com File Photo/J.D. Harrison

Thrillist, a website for young city-dwelling men that raised eyebrows among media observers when it first added a separately operated e-commerce division and daily deal site, is now pulling down the walls between all its operations.

The company, which operates content site Thrillist.com, local deal site Thrillist Rewards, and e-commerce site JackThreads, will unite all three under the Thrillist Media Group umbrella.

“We’re now looking at the three brands as one collective audience of men (with north of 4 million subscriptions) and creating deeply integrated, cross-platform campaigns that let brands access this in really meaningful ways,” co-founder Ben Lerer announced in a press statement.

The reason? It’s been successful in “unique cross-brand campaigns,” and plans to continue such initiatives. For example, when McDonald's was looking to promote the relaunch of the McRib, Thrillist offered the fast-food giant the chance to work with JackThreads’ in-house designer to create a custom, limited-edition McRib T-shirt. The site sold 500 T-shirts within 24 hours and donated all of the proceeds to the Ronald McDonald House Charities. The company also ran a “tweetstakes” on content site Thrillist, where hundreds of followers tweeted for the chance to win one of the shirts.

The consolidation of the three divisions will not result in layoffs. On the contrary, the startup, which currently employs 160, is adding three new staffers every week, the company says.

A combined media and e-commerce business model is unorthodox for some and confusing to others, although a growing number of news sites have added their own versions of daily deals. As Beta Beat pointed out in recent coverage of a talk that Lerer gave at the Paley Center for Media, he made no apologies.

“So you’re a media company that stocks goods? Is that the new definition of a media company?” the moderator asked.

“I think it should be,” the young Mr. Lerer answered.

In its newly united format, the New York-based startup has hired two new sales honchos: Adam Chandler, a former Yahoo executive and chief revenue officer of Martini Media, will head up the Thrillist Media Group sales team as the company’s new president of sales and CRO; and Shane Rahmani, former senior director of strategy and operations at MTV Networks Digital Media Group, will be Thrillist’s new vice president of business development and strategy.