Ian is the founder and CEO of Vuulr, the industry leading online content rights marketplace. Prior to Vuulr, Ian founded Vocanic in 2005 and led the business to become the largest, regional, full service social media marketing firm in Asia with offices in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore and Jakarta. In 2013 Ian successfully sold a majority holding in Vocanic to WPP, today Vocanic is part of the GroupM network.
When online licensing marketplace Vuulr expanded its international reach early last year, the young company anticipated a gradual rollout. Launched in Asia in 2019, the platform went global in Janu…
Digital marketplace Vuulr is shaking up the traditional way of deal-making when it comes to film and TV series licensing.
That represents 110,000 hours of ready to buy, ready to air programming. We do the heavy lifting when it comes to uploading and organising the material. We upload and prepare very large catalogues quickly. And once uploaded we take responsibility, using our own budget, to do the digital marketing to get it in front of buyers globally. That means you don’t need to have to be digital marketing specialists because we do it for you.
As a digital platform for licensing and acquisition, we represent a new way. This was the first year of a new way of doing business, so at that point you would really only expect to see early adopters. What actually happened was faster growth. Not only in the metrics but also in [interest] from the bigger and more established players. [We saw] growth in numbers and growth in credibility. Our strategy was to be global from day one. With India next door, we have been able to build a substantial library of Hindi and Telugu-language titles… finding content in one part of the world and finding demand for it in another.