Poppy Reid’s podcast venture bulks up audience with brand switch
Poppy Reid’s new podcast network, Curious Media, launched this week with a big social media following that was inherited ready made from a brand with no content overlap.
Curious Media already boasts nearly 120,000 Instagram followers, thousands of likes on its seven visible posts, and a number of comments that appear bot-generated. The comments include platitudes like “always impressed by their unique approach” and “consistently amazing content from them”.
The page — with the handle curiousmediahq — also displays a post count of 163, despite only seven being visible – the first dating back to just February 24, 2025.
Despite this, the account has been active since October 2016, and has had one username change in that time, suggesting that the followers pre-date Curious Media’s launch.
Following inquries from Mumbrella, a spokesperson confirmed that Curious Media has inherited the social media accounts from The Nudge Group stablemate, “work-life” publication Balance The Grind.
Balance The Grind’s content appears to have little in common with Curious Media. Launch materials from Curious Media did not mention Balance The Grind.
Launched on Monday, Curious Media is a collaboration between Reid and investor Steve Grace, marking her first major move since The Brag Media was sold to Vinyl Group last year.
At The Brag Media, she played a “pivotal role” in shaping the youth publisher’s identity, overseeing its titles including Rolling Stone AU/NZ, Variety Australia, Tone Deaf, The Music Network, and The Brag.
Her new venture comes as her fellow The Brag Media co-founder, and her talent manager, Luke Girgis, is currently suing Vinyl Group, alleging he was unfairly terminated following the sale of the business.
Meanwhile, Grace is the founder and CEO of The Nudge Group, a company specialising in recruitment, capital raising, and owned media for start-ups and scale-ups. He runs Nudge Productions, which creates and manages podcasts, and he is also the co-founder of The Pillars, a “high-end” private members club in Sydney’s CBD.
Steve Grace and Poppy Reid
Described as helping you “live better”, Balance the Grind was founded by Hao Nguyen in 2016, and was acquired by Grace’s The Nudge Group in 2021. As part of the acquisition, Grace took on CEO and publisher duties of Balance The Grind, while he brought Nguyen into The Nudge Group as its head of content and producer of the ‘Give It A Nudge’ podcast.’
A newsletter email was sent to Balance The Grind’s subscribers earlier this week sharing that the publication was “partnering” with Curious Media but no other communications or disclosure of the “relaunch” was shared publicly.
Curious Media’s Threads page has a more realistic 650 followers, while its Facebook — which also previously belonged to Balance The Grind — has 662 likes.
A spokesperson for Curious Media told Mumbrella “media businesses rebrand and relaunch all the time” and said “Balance The Grind’s episodes will remain available online”.
The spokesperson also told Mumbrella that Curious Media has not begun selling ads or monetising its podcasts, suggesting it was therefore not misleading potential advertisers. Curious Media did not answer Mumbrella’s queries about the network’s business model and monetisation plans.
The spokeperson described Mumbrella’s queries as “conspiratorial”.
This isn’t the first time Reid has “taken over” an existing page with tens of thousands of followers.
In 2024, she posted a video to what was a loved, but dormant Australian music meme Instagram page, saying she’ll be “taking it over” after following it for “a really long time”.
In the video, she said she’s passionate about spotlighting Australian music, but she’s “not a meme girl” so will change its content.
It was met with a number of positive supportive comments, as well as some negative, including one that alleged: “[She] took over a meme page cause she couldn’t build her own following.”
The account has been active since January 2018. The username was changed when Reid took over — to itspoppyreid — and all former posts and memes were deleted, removing any signs of its previous life, barring Reid’s explainer video. The account has nearly 26,000 followers.
Reid’s former co-founder and partner, Girgis is also no stranger to the social media takeover strategy.
In September 2024, following his departure from The Brag Media, he launched a Substack called The Black Hoody, described as being a place “for creators, artists, and the professionals who work with them”.
The Black Hoody’s social media following across Instagram, Facebook, and X, was also inherited, this time from Pilerats, a music and lifestyle website.
Pilerats disclosed the changes to its more than 30,000 Instagram followers and 80,000 Facebook fans last year — those being the followers Girgis has since inherited.
“We are excited to announce that Pilerats, a name synonymous with cutting-edge music, culture, and creativity, is undergoing a change with our Facebook, Instagram and X accounts now being run by a music media legend under the title, The Black Hoody,” the business posted.
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You’re right—there isn’t inherently an issue with handing over social media accounts, provided there’s transparency. The real concerns, however, centre around authenticity and openness with the audience, particularly when there’s potential monetisation involved.
In this case, it’s pretty blatantly obvious that they’ve paid for fake likes, fake comments, and fake engagement, particularly noticeable on their blurred images. This isn’t genuine and certainly doesn’t reflect well on them. When they start attempting to book advertisers, it raises a critical question: what exactly are brands paying for? Essentially, it’s fake engagement, which undermines trust and the value advertisers expect.
Genuine engagement builds trust, fosters community, and ensures advertisers receive authentic and measurable returns on their investments. Artificially inflating metrics through bought interactions compromises the platform’s integrity and misleads potential advertisers.
Additionally, clarity is crucial when transitioning accounts. Communicating clearly about the handover or rebranding maintains trust and respects the audience who originally followed for specific content. Without transparency, followers might feel deceived, and advertisers risk investing in something lacking authentic audience interest.
While it’s true that followers can simply choose to unfollow if content changes, the core issue remains the lack of upfront disclosure followed by botted like (3,000+ per post) and botted comments from fake accounts.
Well done Mumbrella. I just think the industry will move closer to ultimate media transparency and accountability. The long game is about establishing audience listener and consumption habits, as opposed to having the appearance of popularity. Unless of course the plan is to find a cashed up buyer after a few years – then yes use these smoke and mirror tactics.
The misdirection worked last time, high chance it works again. Media not known for its due diligence.
Why does this matter? I am about to handover a couple of social media accounts I have used for a business to someone else who is starting a business. When they take over, they will announce who they are, and at that point, the audience chooses right? It’s just a simple unfollow if the user isn’t interested in the new content.
Interesting that they have brought in the “high profile talent” of Merrick Watts, Ben Lee and Ione Skye under the umbrella of their launch venture, who do undisputedly have high profiles, talent, and large social media presence of their own accord. Ergo, how could they not create a start up venture based off the talent they are backing rather than fostering a false narrative from the get go with bot engagement and bought followers? It all seems very fake and inauthentic for a media brand wanting to instill a sense of authenticity and trust in an already saturated market.
I understand how important genuine engagement is. So disingenuous bot comments are going to do much for the brand right? And advertisers are pretty smart about this by now (hopefully) or should be.. if there is no transparency, authenticity, or openness and all the comments are ‘paid for bots’ then it’s not going to bode well for monétisation. Surely they can do whatever they want to do, and until they are actually misleading advertisers, who cares? It’s only their long game at risk?