Improve the best
Roland Wahrenberger sees a lot of potential in his role as Business Manager of Reader's Digest Switzerland.
Roland Wahrenberger sees great potential in his role as Business Manager of Reader's Digest Switzerland.The Swiss market is important for Reader's Digest. The Swiss offshoot of the international magazine has very good coverage and is still considered one of the biggest magazines in Switzerland. Best has an independent editorial team here. Some of the stories are taken from Germany. However, the topicality has to be covered in Switzerland. A third part comes from the international pool. The combined circulation of the French and German-language editions reaches 246,000 copies with 59,000,000 readers per month. "That gives us access to a very large number of households," says DM specialist Roland Wahrenberger. A large part of Reader's Digest's business is not generated by the magazine, but by other publishing products such as books, videos, audio books, CDs and DVDs. Wahrenberger is particularly looking forward to this diversity. "For me, it means a new dimension in direct marketing." In a perfection that he had never known before, although he claimed to be "one of the better DM specialists in the magazine sector".
The new Business Manager of Reader's Digest Switzerland has many years of experience in the publishing industry. Wahrenberger started out at the former Badener Tagblatt. As a career changer from the commercial sector, he "classically built up" marketing there 15 years ago, supported the advertising market, prepared media data and produced specialist studies.
After five years, the man from Aargau wanted to move to Zurich. At the Blick/SonntagsBlick publishing house, he took over responsibility for the so-called third bundles. These were countless editorial supplements, for example on Formula 1, where Wahrenberger acted as an interface between the editorial team, publishing house and advertising market.
The path then led to the weekly newspaper Sport at Jean Frey. "A difficult title," recalls Wahrenberger of this time around 1995. His task as project manager was to find new distribution channels. Among other things, he organized this with compulsory subscriptions for members of various sports associations and "learned a lot from this struggle over the years".
When he already suspected that the sport might be discontinued, he was offered the position of publishing director of the Swiss family by Tamedia. Although Wahrenberger was in the middle of his training as a publishing specialist at the time, he considered the opportunity of this job to be "unique" and accepted. A difficult time followed. The Swiss family was very poorly positioned at the time. Wahrenberger is all the more proud that he achieved a classic turnaround. Within five years, he was able to turn Schweizer Familie into the most profitable title in Tamedia's magazine portfolio today. Then came the structural change. The position of publishing director was abolished and Wahrenberger was subsequently made redundant.
Now he sees a new challenge at Das Beste. His tasks for the Swiss branch of Reader's Digest are "more varied than anything I've ever done before".
He is currently taking part in an international training program. In two weeks' time, he will be traveling to Portugal for a marketing meeting where the heads of several countries will meet. Before that, he spent a lot of time in Stuttgart. The German-language editions are organized centrally there. His boss in Stuttgart is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Swiss subsidiary. Wahrenberger therefore manages the operational business. Marketing is to be organized very independently in Zurich.
He sees a lot of potential in his new market. "I believe that the general public is not sufficiently aware of the high quality standard of our products." Wahrenberger himself is currently particularly taken with audiobooks on his many travels.
Series are another line. Three or four current bestsellers are condensed into one book and sold by subscription. But not in a club system. "Liberal offers are the basic principle of the company." Direct marketing can only work if customers are treated honestly.
Reader's Digest was founded in the USA in 1922 as a pocket-sized magazine that printed articles of lasting value from other international magazines in abridged form. Today, Reader's Digest is the most widely read magazine in the world. It is published with 48 issues in 19 languages and has a circulation of 23 million copies worldwide. In 2003, the company achieved a consolidated turnover of 2.47 billion dollars.
Roland Wahrenberger wants to make even better use of the cross-selling opportunities within the Reader's Digest readership.
Andreas Panzeri
The new Business Manager of Reader's Digest Switzerland has many years of experience in the publishing industry. Wahrenberger started out at the former Badener Tagblatt. As a career changer from the commercial sector, he "classically built up" marketing there 15 years ago, supported the advertising market, prepared media data and produced specialist studies.
After five years, the man from Aargau wanted to move to Zurich. At the Blick/SonntagsBlick publishing house, he took over responsibility for the so-called third bundles. These were countless editorial supplements, for example on Formula 1, where Wahrenberger acted as an interface between the editorial team, publishing house and advertising market.
The path then led to the weekly newspaper Sport at Jean Frey. "A difficult title," recalls Wahrenberger of this time around 1995. His task as project manager was to find new distribution channels. Among other things, he organized this with compulsory subscriptions for members of various sports associations and "learned a lot from this struggle over the years".
When he already suspected that the sport might be discontinued, he was offered the position of publishing director of the Swiss family by Tamedia. Although Wahrenberger was in the middle of his training as a publishing specialist at the time, he considered the opportunity of this job to be "unique" and accepted. A difficult time followed. The Swiss family was very poorly positioned at the time. Wahrenberger is all the more proud that he achieved a classic turnaround. Within five years, he was able to turn Schweizer Familie into the most profitable title in Tamedia's magazine portfolio today. Then came the structural change. The position of publishing director was abolished and Wahrenberger was subsequently made redundant.
Now he sees a new challenge at Das Beste. His tasks for the Swiss branch of Reader's Digest are "more varied than anything I've ever done before".
He is currently taking part in an international training program. In two weeks' time, he will be traveling to Portugal for a marketing meeting where the heads of several countries will meet. Before that, he spent a lot of time in Stuttgart. The German-language editions are organized centrally there. His boss in Stuttgart is also Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Swiss subsidiary. Wahrenberger therefore manages the operational business. Marketing is to be organized very independently in Zurich.
He sees a lot of potential in his new market. "I believe that the general public is not sufficiently aware of the high quality standard of our products." Wahrenberger himself is currently particularly taken with audiobooks on his many travels.
Series are another line. Three or four current bestsellers are condensed into one book and sold by subscription. But not in a club system. "Liberal offers are the basic principle of the company." Direct marketing can only work if customers are treated honestly.
Reader's Digest was founded in the USA in 1922 as a pocket-sized magazine that printed articles of lasting value from other international magazines in abridged form. Today, Reader's Digest is the most widely read magazine in the world. It is published with 48 issues in 19 languages and has a circulation of 23 million copies worldwide. In 2003, the company achieved a consolidated turnover of 2.47 billion dollars.
Roland Wahrenberger wants to make even better use of the cross-selling opportunities within the Reader's Digest readership.
Andreas Panzeri
