Q&A with Zolton Zavos (Conversant Media: Lost At E Minor.com, The Roar.com.au)

Q. Diving right in, you’re an Aussie, right? What brought you to NYC?
I am an Aussie. From sunny Sydney, in fact - land of the endless barbecue, wicked amber fluid, and some very fine beaches. I came to New York in August 2006 to run Riot, an Australian pop culture magazine I co-founded. I decided to put it all together from New York, what I perceived at the time to be the cultural hotspot of the world. And I wasn’t disappointed when I arrived…

Q. Judging from the photo, you left sunny Sydney a while back. Anyway, it seems you have your hands in a number of pots. Can you give us a little run-down, Zolton?
My Sydney-based brother Zac and I set up an online publishing company, Conversant Media, in May last year and we now publish two websites — Lost At E Minor, a pop culture publication that unearths and promotes new talent in music, art, fashion, film, amongst other creative pursuits; and The Roar, an Australian-based sports opinion website that meshes articles written by our sports fanatic readers with those by professional sports writers. We have a saying in Australia (perhaps it’s universal?), that when it comes to sports, everyone is an armchair expert. This is what The Roar is all about: giving those armchair experts a voice. In addition to this, I do digital consulting and freelance copywriting.

Q. Is this media business as usual or are you doing something different we should know about?
Conversant Media is headed up by two people located in cities about as geographically apart as you can imagine. So it’s a media business as usual, but with a twist!

Q. What do you tell folks at a party when they ask “What do you do?”
That’s always a good question to ask me. Depending on what time of day (or night) it is, the answer could be online publisher or self-employed typist.

Q. Apple or PC? Is that a redundant question?
It is redundant. I made the leap to the Apple side about eighteen months back and haven’t looked back. Not even to see if the specter of Michael Dell is chasing me.

Q. You’ve worked wonders with WordPress on Lost At E Minor and Roar. Tell us more.
I use WordPress for all of my websites and recommend it — where appropriate — to anyone I consult for. We’ve utilized a number of the plug-ins that WordPress packs, which have added some more spice to the websites. Before we cut Lost At E Minor across to its new look design recently, we had it all fully integrated into WordPress. Once that was done, the rest was easy. Well, easy enough!

Q. You enjoy taking in culture. Why is culture important?
It’s the glue of life. It allows a sense of escapism that is invigorating. I guess everyone’s definition of culture is different, but to me it’s that noisy soundtrack to my workday. Or the wonderful visual clutter that fills my head, and then exits again gracefully when its time is done.

Q. Do culture and technology work against each other?
Not at all. In fact, technology is enabling more forms of cultural expression and for that cultural expression to reach the eyes and ears of more people around the world. Lost At E Minor — a 21st century communication platform very much rooted in new technology — is all about promoting culture.

Q. You’re having some success with user-generated content on The Roar, your sports opinion site. What are the key insights there?
We’ve been pleasantly surprised with how many of our readers want to actively engage with our writers and with other readers. There are clearly a lot of aspiring or frustrated writers out there. So we’re happy to provide them with a platform and an audience through which they can get their thoughts across. The user-generated content we run on The Roar seems particularly real and heartfelt: unpolished, but expressed with great passion.

Q. Pretend you’re an indie brand pushing a new product line with $50k to spend on marketing in ‘08. How would you spend it?
I’m a strong believer in clever viral campaigns for emerging brands. The ease with which the success, or otherwise, of online marketing can be measured through data collection has contributed to what I see as a state of creative inertia amongst many brands. For an indie brand trying to cut through the noise, I’d be looking more to create a noise all of its own. So if I had $50,000 to play with, I would conduct an online treasure hunt, where clues are buried amongst the content of a network of affiliate sites; stage an orchestrated product scramble in Union Square (that’ll get the YouTube kids chattering); and create an anti-ad to run on the cover of an indie magazine …

Q. I like that, Zolton… let’s have a chat about this soon over b’fast. OK, what else do you have in the cooker?
I’m incubating (in the nicest possible way) a new music-based email newsletter, and have a new site in the works, which I’m keeping under wraps for now.

Q. You’re a busy man. How do you keep it real?
I’m lucky to have a beautiful fiancee who keeps me just as busy around our apartment as I am online. Well, nearly anyway.

Q. Good on ya! I always perform and feel better when there’s love in the house. Anyway, final Q: how has the web changed the way your generation relates to brands?
My generation is more brand aware and, I think, more brand excited, than past generations. The skepticism surrounding the most pervasive brands and their intentions, is still there. But its increasingly tempered with an understanding that great brands, by and large, deliver great products. Look at Apple and Adidas. Declaring your allegiance to particular brands is not so much a sign of means anymore, but rather of social orientation. It’s stating what sort of person are you — cool? studious? athletic? — and it’s reflected in the phone you carry, the shoes you wear. Brands are back. And the web, which is de-sensitizing people to an overload of messaging, is largely responsible for it.

Q. Interesting POV, ZZ. One more. Key lessons learned from your work experience to date.
Long hours brings more long hours. The cycle is relentless. But I couldn’t function without it.

Thanks for sharing, Zolton. We’re going to keep a beady eye on your projects…

Photo credit: photo: Alison Whittington