Comment: General store (2)
René Worni on Swiss Post's cleverly timed media products.
We have already reported it once: Swiss Post, the general store, is also becoming a publisher and wants to publish newspapers and magazines itself. The people in charge of the Swiss Post subsidiary DMC waved it off. So far, it has only been about a kind of mini-newspaper "in-", which is distributed twice a week but will soon have a circulation of one million copies in households. The potential is enormous.
Together with the Publishers' Association, Swiss Post publishes the 16-page congress newspaper for the annual Publishers' Congress, with practical value in the form of a foldable congress guide enclosed. The newspaper not only highlights the congress agenda, but also provides congruent content: An interview with the LeTemps publishing director on the free press in French-speaking Switzerland, a front-page report on the changing everyday working life of foreign correspondents, expert opinions on the debate about the challenges facing journalism and even clever self-promotion about the advantages of early delivery or about a distribution portal on the Internet. The magazine has been produced in a serious manner, with experienced journalists and photographers at work, and it is clear that Swiss Post has what it takes to be a publisher. It will not hesitate if it is forced to tap into new sources of revenue as a result of the ongoing liberalization of the postal market.
Together with the Publishers' Association, Swiss Post publishes the 16-page congress newspaper for the annual Publishers' Congress, with practical value in the form of a foldable congress guide enclosed. The newspaper not only highlights the congress agenda, but also provides congruent content: An interview with the LeTemps publishing director on the free press in French-speaking Switzerland, a front-page report on the changing everyday working life of foreign correspondents, expert opinions on the debate about the challenges facing journalism and even clever self-promotion about the advantages of early delivery or about a distribution portal on the Internet. The magazine has been produced in a serious manner, with experienced journalists and photographers at work, and it is clear that Swiss Post has what it takes to be a publisher. It will not hesitate if it is forced to tap into new sources of revenue as a result of the ongoing liberalization of the postal market.
