Balance sheet attacks competition

Business press With its new publication format, Bilanz aims to regain momentum and make life difficult for the competition.

Business press Bilanz wants to regain momentum with its new publication frequency and make life difficult for the competition From January, the two glossy business magazines Bilanz (Jean Frey) and Bilan (Edipresse) want to double their publication frequency and launch fortnightly. "We will split the previous journalistic menu into two courses," says Bilanz editor-in-chief René Lüchinger. Accordingly, the issues will be somewhat thinner and shrink from the current 120 to an average of 90 editorial pages. According to Lüchinger, the aim is not to "cram in reading material", but to maintain the existing journalistic quality and depth and to deliver the monthly magazine for the top elite of the business world every two weeks, so to speak. One insider believes that the business media must be in a very bad way for such a step to be necessary. In fact, the makers of Bilanz have calculated the scenario between four and five times in the last twelve years and found the risks to be too great each time. After Bilanz was also unable to break the continuing negative trend in the business press with a relaunch at the beginning of 2003, the time has obviously come. Advertising campaigns with short cycles are the economic driving force behind the move. For example, if Swisscom wanted to advertise six times within two months, then it went into the weekly press.
The new balance sheet will undoubtedly intensify competition. Andy Lehmann, Managing Director of Aegis Media Group Switzerland, says: "The extent to which the higher publication frequency will also cause shifts in the reading market remains to be seen. It is possible that a future subscriber will save on a weekly magazine." For Cosima Giannachi, Managing Director at Mindshare, there is no doubt that the new balance sheet will siphon off advertising revenue from financial titles such as Cash and Finanz und Wirtschaft. "They will lose one to two placements per advertising campaign," she estimates.
Dietmar Bemberg, Managing Partner of Optimedia and BG Media, sees the move by the two titles as courageous in the current economic climate, especially as solvent clients such as the major banks have not yet increased their advertising budgets again. "But you shouldn't expect euphoria," he says.
Christof Kaufmann, CEO of the media agency OMD Schweiz AG, is skeptical. "I assume that Jean Frey has done the math and that the additional income from advertisements is higher than the additional costs of the new publication rhythm," he says. However, the advertising market in the two segments whose readership the
balance sheet, is highly competitive.
According to Kaufmann, in the financial services segment the paper competes with Cash, NZZ,
Finanz und Wirtschaft and HandelsZeitung. In the luxury goods segment such as watches, perfumes, fashion and cars, which is aimed at private individuals, Weltwoche, Sonntagspresse and Facts, for example, are active. Kaufmann assumes that all titles will lose ground, including Sonntagspresse. Kaufmann believes Facts is particularly at risk. "Based on the number of advertisements, I can't imagine that Facts is currently in the black," he says. Something also needs to happen with Cash, which is at an angle in terms of format.
The editor-in-chief of Cash, Dirk Schütz, was also "somewhat surprised" by the move by Bilanz, whose carpeting he knows from the inside as a former deputy editor-in-chief. He considers the bi-weekly rhythm to be "unnatural" and emphasizes that the changeover of the German business magazine Capital, the former Bilanz role model, is considered a bad decision in the industry. Schütz will now be supported by Bruno Affentranger, a former member of the Bilanz editorial team who is now moving to Cash as deputy editor-in-chief.
For Affentranger, the rhythm of publication, which is ultimately decided at the newsstand, is not the main factor. If additional revenue and additional costs turn out to be a zero-sum game, then the project will have failed. Unlike most of his colleagues, however, he does not fear that the business press will continue to consolidate, as the papers are all still present on the market: "The question is whether you can compensate for the economic fluctuations with lower revenues by reducing costs".
"But you shouldn't expect euphoria. "Dietmar Bemberg,
Optimedia
"I assume that they have done the math."
Christof Kaufmann, CEO OMD Switzerland
"It's possible that a subscriber will save on a weekly magazine."
Andy Lehmann, Aegis Media Group
"We will split the previous menu into two courses."
René Lüchinger, Editor-in-Chief Bilanz
Considers the two-week rhythm "unnatural". Dirk Schütz,
Editor-in-Chief Cash
"Financial stocks will lose one to two shifts."
Cosima Giannachi, Mindshare
René Worni

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