Readers in focus: How the HAAS Media Group is shaping the transition to digital content.

Christian Kallenberg: Welcome to the Digital Publishing Deep Dive by sprylab technologies and We likeMags. My name is Christian Kallenberg and sitting opposite me again today is Benjamin Kolb, Managing Director of sprylab technologies. Hello Benni!

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Benjamin Kolb: Hello Christian!

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Christian Kallenberg: Benni, this time - after last time it was a bit theoretical with Professor Seeger - we have someone from the field with us, because today we have Mark Wittland, Publishing Director Private Customers and Paid Content at the HAAS media group.

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Benjamin Kolb: Yes, totally exciting and, above all, relatively unusual for us. Not remote at all, but all sitting at the table. I'm really looking forward to it.

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Christian Kallenberg: I'm looking forward to it too and that's why we're starting right now. Have fun. Hello Mark!

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Mark Wittland: Hello Christian, hello Benni.

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Christian Kallenberg: Mark, when I spoke to friends from the industry, they said: Mannheimer Morgen, they know it, but not everyone was familiar with the HAAS Mediengruppe, which is behind the Mannheimer Morgen. Would you like to tell us what the HAAS Mediengruppe actually does?

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Mark Wittland: Yes, the HAAS Media Group is a regional media group in Baden-Württemberg and Hesse. We have 5 daily newspaper titles in our portfolio. The Mannheimer Morgen is indeed the largest and best-known title. It is also our headquarters. We also have the Schwetzinger Zeitung, the Bergsträßer Anzeiger, the Fränkische Nachrichten and the Südhessen Morgen as daily newspaper titles in our portfolio. Very different titles with different circulation areas. So it's more urban Mannheim and then there's also a lot of rural areas with the respective strengths and challenges that you typically have there. And yes, there is also a portfolio of radio investments. We have other magazine products and a whole range of B2B services in the areas of marketing, agency and printing services.

Christian Kallenberg: You are Head of Publishing Private Customers and Paid Content for the entire Group. And the way you've just presented it, with the different regional focuses, I imagine that's a very, very broad task. Is that the case?

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Mark Wittland: That's right. That's right, we look after the title headquarters from Mannheim in the reader market area. In other words, sales and marketing is a focal point. Customer service and customer loyalty are important topics, and we have a benefits program/customer loyalty program that includes another 20,000 subscribers. This is a topic that is managed by our team. In addition, the whole area of digitalization of the subscription business is an absolute focus for us. We have also created new areas in the reader market for this purpose. Product management and web development are new teams that have now been added and will always be an integral part of the reader market, and the idea is that they will work very closely with sales marketing and other teams.

Christian Kallenberg: How did you approach this multitasking task?

Mark Wittland: It was an exciting task and an exciting move for me, firstly to be responsible for the traditional reader market and secondly to rebuild the digital sector. And as HAAS Mediengruppe - and this doesn't just apply to the reader market, but to the entire company - we set out two or three years ago to actively take on the challenges that exist in the industry, which are also quite serious, and to really turn the relatively classically positioned print-oriented media company into a company that is primarily based on digital business models.

Christian Kallenberg: How is your division organized in concrete terms?

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Mark Wittland: My division, we are just under 50 people in my division, that's four teams. The first is sales and marketing. In other words, the colleagues who take care of sales marketing and the entire subscription business for the print, e-paper and Digital Plus products. Then there is a team that takes care of all customer service / customer loyalty measures. This also includes our own customer service center, our own call center, which we have at the site. And then there are the digital areas. So it's product management, which basically covers all tasks relating to our digital portals and products, and web development, where we implement large parts of our technical development in-house.

Christian Kallenberg: And I assume, as you just mentioned, the challenges you face are similar to those that prevail in the industry as a whole. It's a bit complicated for regional publishers in print, isn't it?

Mark Wittland: It's complicated in print and it will probably continue to get more complicated. Of course, our challenges are similar to those of almost all players in the industry. We are confronted with extreme cost increases, energy costs, production costs, the whole issue of logistics is of course a huge topic. As print runs decrease, delivery is becoming more and more expensive. That's why our focus is on the digital subscription business.

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Christian Kallenberg: I'd be interested to know how you're going about it. But perhaps Benni has another specific question.

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Benjamin Kolb: Exactly, what does the solution to all these challenges actually look like? Particularly in one area of the private customer business, many publishers are finding it difficult to strengthen their subscription models in the advertising market. In other words, most of them are now actually moving towards subscriptions, which are perhaps divided into different groups. There are still the print subscribers that you have, which may be decreasing to some extent, but which you may also be able to convert. What is your strategy here?

Mark Wittland: We essentially have two main areas that we are looking at. One is how we manage to take our existing subscribers, i.e. long-standing subscribers, with us into the digital world and the second point is, of course, how we address new customers, new target groups with new products. Perhaps I'll start with the first point. With our existing subscribers, we took the step a year and a half ago of saying that there would no longer be a pure print subscription, but that all print subscribers would receive the complete product portfolio in one package. In other words, a complete subscription that includes the e-paper, Digital Plus, news apps and other products. And here, of course, it's very much about getting these subscribers more involved in digital use. In other words, we are taking a very close look at how we can get them to register for the digital products as a first step and then get them to use them more and more. This is a long-term, very long-term task.

Benjamin Kolb: Where are you now, if you go from 0 to 100%, where are you after a year and a half?

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Mark Wittland: After a year and a half, around 40% of our subscribers, our print subscribers, have now registered for the digital product and are using it. It's about various aspects. One is, of course, usability. There are special challenges for this target group in particular. How do I get them well into the processes? The e-paper plays a very important role for us. In principle, transferring the print layout to digital is of course a first step. Other topics, such as the read-aloud function and good guidance through the processes, play an important role for the customer.

Benjamin Kolb: What is your target? So now you're at 40%. I don't think you believe you can digitize 100%. How much are you transcribing? 

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Mark Wittland: I can't really say how much we are writing off. I think it's realistic that we can get two thirds of the customers we have now into good digital use. For example, added value that you don't have in print also plays an important role. Last year, we introduced a digital Sunday newspaper, i.e. a real seventh edition in the e-paper that is no longer printed. And of course I can always draw attention to this and it's added value for which customers who are socialized in print then register in the e-paper and then use it.

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Benjamin Kolb: Do you have any other added value that we have in mind? Something like engagement with your products that goes beyond just reading articles?

Mark Wittland: Yes, absolutely! The whole topic of interactive puzzles and games plays an important role. These are also added values for which the more classically oriented customers register and then start using. Topics such as podcasts also play a role. These are also things that our print readers don't typically come into direct contact with. And then integrating these products well into this e-paper app so that I can start them directly from the app, from the e-paper app, that really helps a lot when it comes to activating customers and then keeping them in the product permanently.

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Benjamin Kolb: That's an investment in the future and you said it would bring a lot. Now the interesting question is, how much does it bring? So, how is the conversion to such enhanced features that such a product brings?

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Mark Wittland: This is also an issue that we have to look at in the long term. The first step is really to see if we have good usage of this premium product, the digital products, and then we see that many people actually switch to the e-paper in the second step and then become digital-only subscribers, so to speak. And we are already seeing a steady conversion. At the moment, 15% of total subscribers have become digital-only subscribers.

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Benjamin Kolb: Now we've talked a lot about the print and e-paper subscribers and perhaps expanding the product. What about the other side of your subscribers? I'm sure you also have a Plus model on your websites. What is your strategy there? And is there also a strategy to somehow marry the whole topic? Because I don't think you can plan as a publisher for the next 100 years with two different target groups in terms of readers, can you?

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Mark Wittland: We actually believe that we are planning with two different product lines and target groups in the longer term. We really see this as two different approaches. On the one hand, we say that we have readers socialized to print and, on the other hand, we have new target groups, younger target groups that haven't really grown up with print on an everyday basis, so to speak. And that's why we see two very, very different approaches. One is the curated, self-contained product and the other is Newsstream Digital Plus, where we try very hard to appeal to new target groups. And when it comes to Paid Content Digital Plus, we are of the opinion that we can no longer go and offer a one-size-fits-all product for them, but have to go very, very much into personalization, both in terms of editorial content and in terms of the sales approach. And we've been doing this for two years now. After the relaunch, we also introduced paid content. This is a major focus for us in terms of further developing the business model and we are taking a very close look at which users we have on the sites and how we can address them accordingly. The whole issue of loyalty plays a major role here. In other words, how often do users come to the site, how do they use the products? The second is the whole topic of content. In other words, what topics are they interested in? The third aspect that plays a major role for us is, let's say, the subscription status. So which products do they already have, for example. Do they already have a customer relationship via the free newsletter or something similar? Based on these three components, we play very individualized content on our pages.

Christian Kallenberg: Can you tell us where you stand in terms of subscriber numbers?

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Mark Wittland: We now have almost 4,000 Digital Plus subscribers at Mannheimer Morgen. We would have liked to be even faster. But this has now accelerated significantly over the course of this year. We are therefore quite satisfied with the figures and still have ambitious goals for the next few years.

Christian Kallenberg: When you say it has accelerated significantly this year. Was there any specific trigger or is it just a coincidence or simply the result of your excellent work?

Mark Wittland: Well, there is no single trigger. From my point of view, there is a whole range of issues that have to come together somewhere. From my point of view, there are really a lot of small pieces in the collaboration between sales, product and editorial that have to develop and that these things then come together. And I believe that this target group-specific approach and really developing the users plays a very important role. So, we look very closely at which users are flybys, for example, who only come to the site very rarely, how do we get them to use the site more intensively so that they come to the site almost every day and that we then make them the right offer. And on the other hand, where do we have subscribers, for example, who have a relatively low level of usage, i.e. who are not very loyal. These are of course customer groups where we have a risk. How can we specifically address them with content offers and then also keep them as subscribers in the long term? So, this whole issue of durability and retention of subscribers is almost the biggest challenge for us at the moment, rather than getting people to initially subscribe.

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Benjamin Kolb: What do you do with people who are subscribers and who, in your view, use your products far too little?

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Mark Wittland: We are also trying very hard to automate this, so that there are corresponding newsletters or similar offers where we communicate the added value and actively address people, i.e. the push function. If usage is not what you would normally expect from a subscriber, we try to actively draw people's attention to exciting new topics, including content that could potentially interest them, in order to keep them active and keep them using it.

Benjamin Kolb: Do you have an offer for print readers who you have taken with you into the digital world, but who might also be interested in premium content or your online articles? So is there a kind of mixed subscription or do they generally have access to it?

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Mark Wittland: You generally have access to it. In other words, the Premium subscription really does include all digital added value.

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Benjamin Kolb: Have you ever measured how big this intersection is?

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Mark Wittland: At the moment, around 40% of our complete subscribers also use the digital products.

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Christian Kallenberg: You have another advantage that other publishers don't necessarily have. I'm thinking of your Mannheimer Morgen advantage program, where people are already used to paying money for digital content. That would probably also be an idea to incorporate that, wouldn't it?

Mark Wittland: Yes, absolutely! The benefits program, it has to be said, has been around for a relatively long time and used to be very print-oriented, so it traditionally worked via an insert in the daily newspaper and we have now taken many steps to make it more attractive for digital subscribers and to link these things more closely. For example, you used to have a physical card, but now the whole thing is also available in the app, so that I can basically open the card directly from my news app and then show it to a partner or similar, for example, and get the corresponding benefits. There are also other purely digital benefits that can be used with the card and we are trying to link these worlds ever more closely.

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Christian Kallenberg: And what did you say, how many are there in the benefits program?

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Mark Wittland: At the moment there are 20,000 subscribers in the advantage program, who get it in addition to their normal subscription, which is about 25% of our total subscribers.

Christian Kallenberg: That's a great basis to draw from. What would interest me about the age structure of the readers, where it is not possible to digitize them, do you have any insights where you say: "Ok, at that age, it's actually hopeless, it's not worth making new offers, because experience has shown that they don't keep up anyway?

Mark Wittland: In our opinion and experience, it's not really an issue that can only be broken down by age. We believe that there are people in every age group who are interested in digital products and then use them. The e-paper on the tablet in particular offers me usability that is almost better than that of the daily newspaper in many places, and I think it's really about the introduction that you have to do with the subscriber. This can also be done through training, of course it can also be done in sales by bundling subscriptions with hardware and there are a whole range of measures that we are looking at. So we're not saying that it's primarily just to do with age.

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Christian Kallenberg: You said earlier: target of two thirds. The elephant in the room is this other third. So is it worth it or is there somehow - you don't have to answer this either - but is there a plan for when a demolition edge will come at some point?

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Mark Wittland: Yes, we are looking at this very closely. That's also a big issue in the industry at the moment. For example, in which delivery areas can I still cover my costs? You have to say that overall we are still doing quite well with our delivery areas in the southwest. But of course we are still looking at where people are switching to e-paper, for example

Benjamin Kolb: And do you think there's a demolition edge at all or do you think print will outlast us in some form?

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Mark Wittland: Well, we believe that print will continue to exist in some form for a very, very long time. But that will change a lot.

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Benjamin Kolb: If print is only there for a third, is e-paper with a print layout somehow a product goal that you have to have? Because you end up imitating something that is actually somehow cooler on paper than on a tablet. Because the tablet isn't as big as the paper. Shouldn't it be the other way around? So, shouldn't you make the thing for digital and then there's just a print version of it that looks a bit different from today's newspaper?

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Mark Wittland: Yes, I believe that the trend will be to have very different products that appeal to increasingly specific target groups. I do believe that the classic print layout as we know it will continue to play a role in the e-paper for a long time to come. This will certainly also involve us automating such layouts and the development of such layouts even more in the future and working in a more resource-efficient way. But I do believe that this product will also be relevant in the longer term. There's also the topic of Digital Plus, where we really do have a different usability, different target groups and there will certainly be other digital products in the future. So, of course, these are also topics that we are now thinking about, for example, how we can make the current Digital Plus product, which is basically a product. How can we manage to create various other offers with different price points that can also appeal to other target groups?

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Christian Kallenberg: We're a podcast here and I've seen that you have lots and lots of podcasts. Is that perhaps also an approach for podcasts to try to monetize on their own?

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Mark Wittland: We will also be looking at this in the future. At the moment, we are still more involved in building up our reach and experimenting. It's all about branding and customer loyalty at the moment. But this will certainly become an issue in the future: what role can these podcasts play in the paid content product and what content is freely available and what is then also included as part of a subscription?

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Christian Kallenberg: Benni, perhaps you can say something about the future of print? After all, one of your customers is the Hamburger Morgenpost, which has just announced that it will now become a weekly newspaper, at least in print. What does that look like? Can you reveal what the workflows are like there in terms of digital first and print second or fourth, fifth?

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Benjamin Kolb: I think I can answer that in general terms. Almost all of our customers are currently looking at how they can achieve a digital-first workflow. It's not easy, but there are already corresponding solutions in the product area that use artificial intelligence and analyze many decades of printed newspapers to offer a solution for how to transfer articles that were previously written in print to a newspaper layout. And that is very exciting, very exciting for me personally, because it is an exciting technical challenge, but it is of course an exciting editorial challenge, because the print product naturally has a lot to do with prioritizing articles, with finding topics, with focal points that you set and that you also have to set editorially in advance, because you can't measure and change them afterwards. Instead, it's printed and that's a completely different approach, which of course also has very high journalistic standards and which you don't want to give up just like that.

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Christian Kallenberg: Okay, but before we talk about the future collaboration between the editorial team and the publisher, let's perhaps stay with the technology for a moment. Mark, you've just mentioned that you're also involved in a process. I'm thinking again of the benefits programme from the printed newspaper, with a print supplement, largely already digitized. But I can imagine that there are systems that have been used in the past, used very successfully, that can no longer do what they should do. Where do you stand and what is your goal?

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Mark Wittland: Yes, that is also an ongoing process, the modernization of our systems. In traditional publishing, we used to map a lot of things via SAP, which is no longer being developed further and where we are of course looking very closely and working a lot on how we can map the new technical developments or our new processes well in the IT landscape. And this is actually also a focus of our work. On the one hand, it's about creating the entire funnel management, the technology behind the websites, behind the paid content product, CRM is a big issue. And then also significantly more flexible options when it comes to mapping subscriptions, so that we can simply make flexible offers, offer modern pricing and all these issues. And this is an ongoing process where we have not yet reached our goal, but where we are working very hard on these topics.

Christian Kallenberg: What about the editorial system? There's old and a bit newer. Where would you say you stand?

Mark Wittland: At the moment, we are also involved in the larger relaunch and reorganization project of our editorial system. At the moment, we are also creating the basis for working digital first or channel-neutral and also creating the basis for implementing new processes in the editorial department. You just mentioned that the print product no longer determines the working methods and rhythm in the editorial department, but that we are focusing on the online product, on the digital topics here and then the print product is created from these digital processes at a certain point in the day.

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Christian Kallenberg: You spoke earlier about what it looks like for others. Is this a general path that everyone is now taking or are there still customers who say: "No, we would like to keep two separate systems for whatever reason?

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Benjamin Kolb: I can explain a bit about our product strategy for our publishing solutions. That's what we believe in. We are not a print system. We connect print systems, which is why there is still a system that is dedicated to creating print products. But our strategy is that we have our editorial solution as a digital-first solution, so to speak, where other channels and not just print, but also social media, web and app, of course, but also newsletters and so on are simply connected. In other words, we have a classic multichannel publishing system. What we firmly believe in, which is why we have cut it a little differently, is that there must also be platforms in the future that provide end-user solutions. Just like what happened in e-paper years ago, where you basically have an out-of-the-box solution that you can configure well, that makes brands look more individual, but that you don't have to rebuild every time just because you're launching a new brand. Instead, we incorporate a lot of knowledge from many customers, the features can be incorporated and we then expand this to include the entire digital part, so to speak. So the news websites and so on will also be launched on one platform. Because, and I think this is the reason for our strategy, it's simply because we see that the cost pressure is simply far too great, especially for regional newspapers that now have 30 brands, for example, that they now have over 30 web solutions that are all individual. Instead, the trend is very much towards coming up with a great solution that is then designed differently for 30 brands. But which are also designed in such a way in terms of the entire display and the editorial workflows that they can simply come from a central editorial office. We have developed our product strategy to ensure that everyone knows exactly how this works and to increase these efficiencies, and we are seeing this across the board.

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Christian Kallenberg: Mark, what's it like for you in terms of collaboration between the different editorial teams? Has anything changed there in recent years?

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Mark Wittland: Something has happened there too. We are also growing closer together. Ultimately, it's also the case that we have a mantle that comes from Mannheim and, in addition, there is now much stronger cooperation between the editorial teams in the digital area and then also much stronger cooperation with the reader market or product topics. And we simply have a lot of expertise in this area, which we bundle to a certain extent in Mannheim and then make available to all editorial teams. In our case, we really do run on exactly the same technological platform with the five titles, so that we can also have a good exchange at this point.

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Christian Kallenberg: And what about the collaboration between editorial staff and publishers? Because that also has to change in order to be able to build successful digital products in the future?

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Mark Wittland: Yes, absolutely! We've already changed a lot in the last two years. We've grown closer together. This has developed from the first major relaunch project that we did together from a project structure and these are also topics that we are actually constantly looking at and then trying to develop further. This goes so far that we now work very much in cross-functional teams, where editorial, product, technology and sales are heavily involved. Where we develop topics together along the user funnel for the Digital Plus product, develop features together and then take a holistic look at this product. And it's also about the editorial team and publisher coming together to a certain extent under a common objective and aligning themselves accordingly. Our editorial team is now also looking very closely at subscription figures and we are making sure that we develop it together.

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Benjamin Kolb:. It's Friday, you have to know that. Friday is probably the day when we do most of our work from home. Of course, I also know from our customers that they had some difficulties getting into the remote situation at the start of the pandemic, simply because of technical hurdles. And now, of course, they also have to deal with the fact that remote working is here to stay for them. What is your strategy when it comes to the whole issue of corporate culture, working remotely and so on?

Mark Wittland: Yes, the pandemic has indeed changed a lot for us. We used to have a very traditional approach. We actually worked almost 100% in the company and we have now changed that a lot. In other words, we have a rule that we normally work 60% in the office and 40% remotely from home. But we also have team-specific regulations that are even more different. And we actually try to combine the best of both worlds. And that can also mean, for example, that a web development team that is organized in the Scrum process also works more from home.
A major challenge for us - as for most other companies - is the issue of personnel. Finding, developing and retaining the right people is becoming increasingly difficult and, of course, the topic of working from home and the possibility of having a larger search radius for new employees plays a very important role for us. In fact, we now have many people who no longer work or live at our site and who we are integrating into the team, and this is of course an opportunity that we are now using very actively via remote working.

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Christian Kallenberg: And you're a prime example of how it works, aren't you? Because we're sitting in the office here in Berlin, you live in Berlin, if I may say so. It works, doesn't it?

Mark Wittland: That works, yes. I commute back and forth between both worlds, Mannheim and Berlin. And that's why I'm a bit of a role model in my department, which is probably why we have a slightly different approach when it comes to office and home office.

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Benjamin Kolb: Did you ever have a moment when, at some point, a year after a new employee started working for you and you met them for the first time, you thought: "He's much taller than I thought."?

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Mark Wittland: Oh yes, I actually had that with several employees. Because for me, it was really the case that I started in Mannheim in February 2020 and then we went into lockdown four weeks later. And that went on in stages for the first one or two years. So for me, it was really the case that I only saw a whole series of employees live a few months later.

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Benjamin Kolb: And when you started, it was certainly, or my assumption, that it was the same with you as with many other publishers, that there were at least silos. In other words, that the print editorial team had decoupled itself from or was never linked to the digital editorial team. Has the pandemic changed that? Has it changed as a result of corporate culture change, change management?

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Mark Wittland: Yes, it's still a process, to be honest. We are now looking at how we can divide up our space and change our office situation in order to facilitate more meetings. We will develop in such a way that we will also work in more flexible desk solutions, reduce traditional workstations and create more space for meeting rooms, workshops, encounters and the like. And we simply want to take this situation into account: when people are at home, they tend to work on topics in a very concentrated manner. When you're in the office, the focus is on exchange, creativity and a different form of collaboration. That's a topic for us in the reader market. Of course, it is also a challenge here to network and bring people together. It is also very important to us that we have a very good exchange here in this process chain with product, with the technology units, with sales, and that we also develop products holistically and then, of course, it goes on to the editorial department, where we also make sure that we work more in joint workshops. And then we also develop products together.

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Christian Kallenberg: I would like to come back to the subject of recruitment. My impression is that many publishers can't find the people they actually need or are looking for. At least as far as young people are concerned, because there has been no training for them so far. So the training is still journalistic traineeships, maybe you get a bit of SEO and something like that and reaction systems explained. But you don't actually learn the big picture until you're on the job. How is it with you and what is your perception?

Mark Wittland: Yes, I share that perception. It's the same with us. We also have big problems filling some positions. In the past, we have increasingly gone out of our way to train people ourselves. In our web development department, for example, almost all of the people who are currently employed as developers have also trained with us. This means that we have a relatively large focus on training people ourselves using the various systems we have. This includes traditional apprenticeships and dual study programs, where people study and are then already with us in the company and then join our teams later on.

Christian Kallenberg: Do you actually read all your products? Do you have to read them by default? Do you read the Mannheimer Morgen first thing in the morning with your coffee?

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Mark Wittland: Well, I definitely read our products! Not all of them every day, there are too many for that. But of course I look to see what we have today, both in print and online. Because of course I'm interested in what we're doing there.

Christian Kallenberg: Do you listen to podcasts? As I've probably already said, there are really many different formats.

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Mark Wittland: Again, I certainly haven't listened to every podcast we've done. But I do enjoy listening to the fact that we always have exciting topics and I also listen to them.

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Christian Kallenberg: And you already told me in the preliminary interview that today is a podcast premiere for you. It was the first time that you were a live guest yourself. I think you did a great job. Many, many thanks for all the interesting insights. Benni, any unctuous last words?

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Benjamin Kolb: I found the interview really, really interesting. Above all, I found the in-depth insight you gave us, including the figures and so on, super exciting. Thank you very much.

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Mark Wittland: Yes, thank you very much for the invitation. It was a lot of fun!

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Christian Kallenberg: And if you like this podcast, I would be delighted if you would subscribe to it on the platform of your choice. See you next time.