Formerly Vegan Good Life Magazine and rebranded in 2021, Germany’s Antagonist magazine is a pure-play vegan media house, positioning itself as the “leading voice of a new ethical movement, in pursuit of #radicalkindness”. The founder states that the new platform is “hell-bent to change the outdated perception of veganism” and publishes aspirational content on all areas of vegan life.
Founder & Creative Director Eric Mirbach explains the mission of the new concept and tells us why every good story needs an antagonist.
What does Antagonist stand for?
Okay, so we think that “being good” has an image problem. A “me first” attitude and an air of ignorance is being culturally rewarded constantly. With Antagonist we want to turn that logic on its head and hijack this social undercurrent, luring people into making bad choices.
We all know that every good story needs an antagonist. To push things forward, to create tension. Antagonist is here to ask the uncomfortable questions and create space for much needed, candid dialogue, but with an inclusive approach, always. We merge aspiration and a sense of style and quality with a discerning mindset.
How do you distinguish yourself from other vegan publications?
To be honest, we don’t look at Antagonist as a publication, solely. We’re building a tech-driven, digital-first media house, with a channel-agnostic distribution set-up, best-in-class UX design and high-quality, well-researched and beautifully illustrated evergreen content.
We’ll have all the essentials of course! You’ll get your news, your fun social media banter, your recipes and recommendations. What makes us different, however, is our high standards when it comes to curating the content we feature.
After all, we have a legacy to live up to. Antagonist grows out of Vegan Good Life, easily the world’s most sophisticated print magazine on plant-based life & culture. Our background in print will live on in Antagonist and is going to be mirrored in our focus on quality journalism, strong opinion pieces, thoughtful essays, top-notch photography and outstanding illustration work.
Which target groups do you address?
Antagonist readers are 20 to 45 years old, about 85% of them identify as female. They are ethically motivated shoppers with high brand loyalty and are grateful for competent guidance. They are either vegan, vegetarian or a “flirt” (for us, that means everyone on their very personal journey towards a more ethical and kind life).
For everyone in that bracket who feels that, aesthetically and in terms of content quality, they didn’t find their medium yet — Antagonist is for you!
Why should companies advertise with you?
If the interconnected world created by the internet has taught us one lesson, it’s this: The consumer is the real decision-maker. On social media and the web in general, there are almost no communication barriers anymore, which means that power accrues almost completely to aggregators — with creators, enabled to connect with consumers, as secondary beneficiaries.
Antagonist is such an aggregator: digital at heart, pure-play vegan and with a discerning appetite for style and aspiration in ethical consumerism.
We gathered an international team of highly ambitious and mission-aligned creatives around us. We are venture-capital backed, meaning we’ll constantly invest into accelerating growth and lead acquisition. Additionally, our strong network of high-level influence opinion-leaders in the field allows us to tap into varied audiences across the ethical sphere.
We live in exciting times: this very moment, we see industries, cultures and daily life change at high speed. We’re sure that 2021 will start a decade of decisive transformation, the ultimate rally for ethical and sustainable decision making — and at a planetary scale!
If you want to talk to the opinion leaders spearheading that transformation, Antagonist is your “in”.
And if that’s not enough, we’ll bring vegan donuts to every meeting, just to be sure.
