"We have to report on really good advertising"
At the first event in the «Marketing Talks» series, Blick Editor-in-Chief Andreas Dietrich and Nicolas Hostettler, Strategy Director at Sir Mary, discussed the interplay between marketing and media. If you couldn’t make it, don’t worry—we took notes.
MK: Dear Andreas, dear Nico, we are very happy that you are sitting on our stage at "Kosmos" tonight. I would like to start with a question for Nico: International campaigns that have been successful in recent years have often been characterized by particular courage. How brave, then, are Swiss advertisers?
Nicolas Hostettler: I am not particularly fond of the term courage - at least as it is often defined in Switzerland. For clients here, courage often means being somehow "different" from the competition. But standing out from the competition should not be understood as courageous; it should be the apriori basis of every advertising measure. Otherwise you don't even need to start.
MK: That means: There is right and wrong courage, so to speak?
Hostettler: In any case, it is not effective to say: I want to do something new, to take a risk, but at the same time this new thing is supposed to have worked three times before in other campaigns.
Then you could argue that you showed real courage after founding SiR MaRY. You sprayed a claim for the alliance on your wall and streamed it live into the pitch session.
Hostettler: (laughs): Yes, that's right, with graffiti paint. And if it had gone wrong, we would have left it standing anyway. As a memorial, so to speak.
MK: Andreas, with you as ViewWith the new editor-in-chief, we have an expert on the "economy of attention" with us. Advertisers want to understand: What do people bite on, what do you attract them with? Do you have to shock them - or is less more?
Dietrich: Here I would like to differentiate between the various formats in which the View appears. Online, we want and need to be fast, loud, sometimes scandalizing, and exclusive whenever possible. And we can do that. Otherwise we get lost in the flood of information on the Internet. In the print edition for which I'm responsible, we focus less than before on "sex and crime," because you can get that everywhere nowadays and it's repulsive in overdose. The newspaper concentrates on the brand essence: "Blick is in" - meaningful, entertaining, close to everyday life and readers. Paper enables strong staging and forces limitation and condensation, which is not the dumbest remedy against information overload. Boulevard makes the complicated understandable, that is our claim on all channels.
In cultivating your own brand, you also manage to do this with unusual, often political actions. Can you give us an example?
Dietrich: I have particularly fond memories of the Blick issue that refugees did at the height of the refugee crisis. Everyone else was talking about these people, with us they were able to express themselves. That was enlightening, a statement, and provided material for further discussion.
And then, in 2017, there was gun support from a notorious politician....
Dietrich: (laughs) Right. When Turkish President Erdogan sent his people to Switzerland to campaign for his all-powerful constitution, we thought: If he interferes with us politically, then we'll interfere with him. And without further ado, we made a front page in Turkish. With the appeal to the Turks in Switzerland: "Vote no to Erdogan's dictatorship! Mr. Erdogan was not very happy about this, and in the evening he showed on Turkish television the View-front page. We were relevant, showed attitude, became an event ourselves - the best that modern tabloids can offer.
Let's stay with attention - but let's switch to social media. There, Nico, attention is often measured by whether a campaign or a story is shared virally. If clients want something like that, what do you advise them to do?
Hostettler: First, we put their expectations into perspective. It's often pure wishful thinking: I spend less on my campaign and achieve much more - because it then runs beautifully by itself on the web. But virality is not a strategy, it's a result. And sure, you can work towards that. But that has nothing to do with "cheap" per se. Ultimately, it's about strong stories. Stories that go straight to the heart today and still occupy the mind tomorrow. Viral stories can be dissected. They fulfill most of the news factors - surprise, proximity, prominence, valence, identification, etc. But thinking them backwards - from the result to the trigger - this "reverse engineering" is something only professionals understand.
In addition to social media campaigns, the placement of native advertising within an editorial environment is very popular right now. What's the reason for that, Nico?
Hostettler: We are all in an attention crisis. The amount of information and entertainment on offer has exploded. And a wide variety of parties are vying for the same amount of attention in this intensified market environment. As we look for new ways to stand out, we annoy people more and more, and as a result, they consistently tune us out. That's why the desire for editorial coverage is increasing - that's where we don't interfere and where we can still be in the public eye. Only this can't be planned, which is why native ads are becoming the salutary alternative.
Andreas, your parent company Ringier has found a way to earn money with the wishes of its clients. Your Brand Studio produces the content for native advertising itself. From your perspective as editor-in-chief of BLICK, do you sometimes find it annoying that the native content resembles your reporting? Or do you, as a Ringier employee, say: We can do this better than most agencies, so we should do it too?
Dietrich: We all know how the print industry is doing. That's why I have nothing at all against publishers opening up new sources of revenue. But two things have to be rock solid: The content is clearly labeled if someone has paid for it. And they don't come from our salaried editors. We like to work closely with our Brand Studio because they are professionals. Both sides know what they are doing and that they each have a different job. Journalism is not advertising, and mixing the two is harmful for everyone.
For advertisers, too?
Dietrich: In the medium and long term, definitely. If we mix editorial content and advertorials, we lose our credibility. And a medium that is not believed no longer offers an attractive advertising environment. Maybe the advertiser has a brief success, usually it's an embarrassing one. And it does him no good if he loses an important platform as a result.
What should you do if you want to be placed editorially in a way that is profitable for media makers and advertisers?
Dietrich: Having ideas, showing courage. For example, if an agency has the Matterhorn painted orange because the mountain and the color suit the client - then we and everyone else have to report on it. We are aware that a brand message is involved, but a good story is a good story, and we are always happy to tell it. That would also be my wish, as a journalist and as a consumer, to agencies and clients: Tell more good stories! I'm amazed every day at how boring and bad most advertising is.
Nico, what would you say?
Hostettler: I agree. If you manage to tell a story in a way that doesn't disturb but excites, you've done it. But that happens so rarely that you try to crowbar it. Actually, it's about courage again. Originality requires a willingness to take risks. Do I dare to think big, even so big that I might lose my job? Or do I remain conservative and afraid of attracting attention?
Andreas Dietrich is Vieweditor-in-chief. At a young age, he began his career as a local journalist at the Confederation in Bern, was co-founder of a press office, later, among other things, reporter and text chief at Facts (†), editor at The magazine and NZZ Folio, member of the editorial boards of Weltwoche and Tages-Anzeiger as well as a collaborator in a failed magazine start-up in Berlin. He was honored for his work with a Swiss journalism award and nominated for the Henri Nannen Award in Germany. He has also co-written scripts for documentaries and other books.
Nicolas Hostettler is Strategy Director of the Sir Mary agency. After studying journalism at the University of Zurich, he rose as a social media manager to become Samsung's top like-getter (and won the company 200,000 fans in Switzerland). This was followed by a steep career to Strategy Director, where he worked for brands such as Heineken, UBS, Campari, and Zalando. However, he has been doing real pioneering work for Sir Mary since 2016 - as the first employee and partner, he was responsible with the founders for building up the agency and winning important accounts from Allianz, Switzerland Tourism, Coop or Samsung.
