Door opener or gravedigger?
Tamedia Publishing is streamlining its magazine business to boost profits and is focusing the affected publishing houses on synergies. This is a process that Ringier and Jean Frey have already gone through.
Publishers Tamedia is trimming its magazine business for profit and the publishers concerned for synergies. A process that Ringier and Jean Frey have already undergone: vendor's tray salespeople first of all advertise their most attractive products - especially if they receive a share of the sales via a bonus system. In media companies with centralized advertising acquisition and sales representatives with various products in their portfolio, this understandable sales reflex regularly causes resentment, bad blood and, in the case of titles with little sex appeal, occasionally even existential fears.Roland Wahrenberger, publishing director of Schweizer Familie (SF), which is unglamorous compared to Annabelle and Facts, is unfamiliar with such feelings. This could soon change in view of the imminent restructuring of Tamedia's magazine division (see interview). Wahrenberger admits that three separate publishing organizations are quite a luxury today, and at the same time is optimistic about the "door-opening effects of the joint presence with major customers". Nevertheless, skepticism and uncertainty about the planned concentration of sales forces cannot be ignored.
For Duke Seidmann, the fact that the big titles - not in terms of image and not in terms of numbers - are ahead of the smaller ones in the advertising sun is also one of the cherished myths of the publishing business. His experience as advertising market manager at Ringier, where he implemented the decentralization designed by the then magazine boss Beat Lauber from 1997 to 2002, has even convinced him of the opposite. "Despite occasional frictional heat with constant staffing levels, we were able to practically double sales within five years with our hybrid solution of professional central sales and title-specific support from brand managers." Seidmann answers the question of whether all four titles benefited equally from this in the affirmative, but adds that market success depends just as much on editorial work as it does on sales work. "It's the product that makes the numbers; numbers never made a product" - a publishing principle that Tamedia is currently feeling the effects of at Facts (see guest commentary).
Income statement still missing
Seidmann's advantage was that Schweizer Illustrierte, Tele, Glückspost and Gesundheit Sprechstunde are all located in the conservative-extrovert southwest of the psychographic media radar. For the partial commercial merger of Weltwoche (north-east) and Bilanz (north-west), on the other hand, the key argument was not homogeneity but the complementarity of readership and advertising customers. "Our flagships complement each other more than they compete," says dual publishing director Uli Rubner. The Jean Frey model has yet to prove its success: But this much confidence should make Wahrenberger, whose SF - unlike Facts and Annabelle - is based in the staid southwest, even more hopeful about the future.
Could convince major customers together: the publishers of Facts, Schweizer Familie and Annabelle.
Oliver Classen
For Duke Seidmann, the fact that the big titles - not in terms of image and not in terms of numbers - are ahead of the smaller ones in the advertising sun is also one of the cherished myths of the publishing business. His experience as advertising market manager at Ringier, where he implemented the decentralization designed by the then magazine boss Beat Lauber from 1997 to 2002, has even convinced him of the opposite. "Despite occasional frictional heat with constant staffing levels, we were able to practically double sales within five years with our hybrid solution of professional central sales and title-specific support from brand managers." Seidmann answers the question of whether all four titles benefited equally from this in the affirmative, but adds that market success depends just as much on editorial work as it does on sales work. "It's the product that makes the numbers; numbers never made a product" - a publishing principle that Tamedia is currently feeling the effects of at Facts (see guest commentary).
Income statement still missing
Seidmann's advantage was that Schweizer Illustrierte, Tele, Glückspost and Gesundheit Sprechstunde are all located in the conservative-extrovert southwest of the psychographic media radar. For the partial commercial merger of Weltwoche (north-east) and Bilanz (north-west), on the other hand, the key argument was not homogeneity but the complementarity of readership and advertising customers. "Our flagships complement each other more than they compete," says dual publishing director Uli Rubner. The Jean Frey model has yet to prove its success: But this much confidence should make Wahrenberger, whose SF - unlike Facts and Annabelle - is based in the staid southwest, even more hopeful about the future.
Could convince major customers together: the publishers of Facts, Schweizer Familie and Annabelle.
Oliver Classen
