Head of the week: "I am anything but a pure marketing person"
Gérard Geiger, soon to be the highest-ranking Romand at Ringier Romandie
Gérard Geiger, soon to be the highest-ranking Romand at Ringier RomandieHead of the week: "I'm anything but a pure marketing man"
When the Edipresse Group is looking for executives in French-speaking Switzerland, it usually goes on a recruitment drive to Ringier Romandie - this time it's the other way round. The new head of Ringier Romandie is Gérard Geiger, who is currently still head of magazines at Edipresse. Now that a whole series of Edipresse managers are former Ringier Romandie boys, an Edipresse man will be looking after Ringier Romandie as the successor to Gilles Marchand, who has been appointed head of French-speaking television. As a result, media managers in French-speaking Switzerland will soon be competing almost without exception with the publications they previously nurtured. If only that goes well...
Many Swiss journalists see Geiger as a pure marketing man. However, when asked whether he recognizes himself in this image, Geiger answers WerbeWoche with an unequivocal: "Pas du tout du tout du tout." If the Ringier Group was looking for a pure marketing man, it was mistaken. He had always been interested in "les chiffres et les lettres": the commercial and the journalistic.
The 40-year-old from the Valais canton capital of Sion has an illustrious name: The footballer Alain Geiger is his cousin, the glacier pilot Hermann Geiger was a brother of his father, who incidentally had 18 siblings (his mother only had 16). Like his uncle and cousin, G.G. was not lacking in energy: as a teenager, the Jesuit student went on an exchange to the USA. He then studied Lettres (phil. I) in Geneva. Because he needed money, he started working. Sometimes he had to walk dogs, sometimes stall during experiments, sometimes write articles for the Journal de Genève.
And that's how he got into the media. And because he liked it so much in the industry, he stuck with it. He worked his way up at Editions de la Tour in Lausanne, was in charge of the publication SQP (Swiss Quality Products), did public relations work for the Geneva Salon du livre et de la presse and managed the magazine Optima, where he also became familiar with German-speaking Switzerland. This is how he ended up at Edipresse.
The call from Ringier came as quite a surprise. "Of course I hesitated," says Geiger, "because I liked it at Edipresse." Ultimately, however, the desire to broaden my professional horizons once again prevailed. It is clear that there is not much time left for his family - a Geneva-based wife and two boys aged 9 and 13 - or for his hobbies (tennis, pre-Columbian art and jogging with his Dalmatian). But Geiger consoles himself: "Quality comes before quantity." May he be right.
Christophe Büchi
When the Edipresse Group is looking for executives in French-speaking Switzerland, it usually goes on a recruitment drive to Ringier Romandie - this time it's the other way round. The new head of Ringier Romandie is Gérard Geiger, who is currently still head of magazines at Edipresse. Now that a whole series of Edipresse managers are former Ringier Romandie boys, an Edipresse man will be looking after Ringier Romandie as the successor to Gilles Marchand, who has been appointed head of French-speaking television. As a result, media managers in French-speaking Switzerland will soon be competing almost without exception with the publications they previously nurtured. If only that goes well...
Many Swiss journalists see Geiger as a pure marketing man. However, when asked whether he recognizes himself in this image, Geiger answers WerbeWoche with an unequivocal: "Pas du tout du tout du tout." If the Ringier Group was looking for a pure marketing man, it was mistaken. He had always been interested in "les chiffres et les lettres": the commercial and the journalistic.
The 40-year-old from the Valais canton capital of Sion has an illustrious name: The footballer Alain Geiger is his cousin, the glacier pilot Hermann Geiger was a brother of his father, who incidentally had 18 siblings (his mother only had 16). Like his uncle and cousin, G.G. was not lacking in energy: as a teenager, the Jesuit student went on an exchange to the USA. He then studied Lettres (phil. I) in Geneva. Because he needed money, he started working. Sometimes he had to walk dogs, sometimes stall during experiments, sometimes write articles for the Journal de Genève.
And that's how he got into the media. And because he liked it so much in the industry, he stuck with it. He worked his way up at Editions de la Tour in Lausanne, was in charge of the publication SQP (Swiss Quality Products), did public relations work for the Geneva Salon du livre et de la presse and managed the magazine Optima, where he also became familiar with German-speaking Switzerland. This is how he ended up at Edipresse.
The call from Ringier came as quite a surprise. "Of course I hesitated," says Geiger, "because I liked it at Edipresse." Ultimately, however, the desire to broaden my professional horizons once again prevailed. It is clear that there is not much time left for his family - a Geneva-based wife and two boys aged 9 and 13 - or for his hobbies (tennis, pre-Columbian art and jogging with his Dalmatian). But Geiger consoles himself: "Quality comes before quantity." May he be right.
Christophe Büchi
