This is an edited version of a case study that originally appeared on our Innovate Local website.
By Niklas Jonason
For this webinar we had invited Russmedia Austria to tell their story on how a visit to two competing news organisations in Bergen in Norway inspired them to adjust its strategy both content- and business wise. The Russmedia Group runs businesses in several European countries (see box above). However its very core, and where it all started, is the newsroom in Bregenz and the group’s aim is to keep the newsroom growing.
The case was presented by Isabel Russ, Editor in Chief of Vorarlberger Nachrichten and Managing Director and Georg Burtscher, who is also Managing Director at Russmedia Austria. Isabel joined the organisation in Bregenz in February this year. Georg has worked in different roles on the business side in the group since 2006.
A case inspired by Bergen in Norway
Georg Burtscher started, and as we will see also ended, by concluding that their case really started with an international exchange with Norwegian colleagues at the respectively Shipsted- and Amedia-owned competing news properties Bergens Tidende and Bergenavisen, both in the town of Bergen, and what they learned about subscriptions and reader focus in the newsroom and what the the sales team learned about content marketing as a complement to traditional advertising. The team from Russmedia visited Bergen about a year ago, in mid 2023.
“It completely changed the way we work today and how we will work in the future,” means Georg and gave the word to Isabel to start with the newsroom side.
A new way of working on the editorial side
”During the visit to Bergen, two storytelling approaches stood out to us. First it was putting people at the centre of stories and secondly, powerful breaking news coverage.”
Isabel Russ then showed how the team implemented these approaches in the Bregenz newsroom, using real examples from the past few weeks.
Starting with people
In Bergen, Isabel’s team learned the importance of telling human stories that tap into community concerns by making them much more relatable and impactful.
“The most impactful stories are the ones that put people and their emotions at the forefront. Therefore we start with people at the centre. And people don’t connect with politicians, they don’t connect with CEOs, they do connect with their friends, their neighbours and those that they can relate to,” she said. “One of the stories that we recently did was about the closure of a Kindergarten. And the easiest approach would have been to interview the mayor who explains the decision why they closed this kindergarten. But that’s not what we did. Instead, we spoke to the parents whose children attended the kindergarten. So one family had to buy a second car just to manage the new commute. Another mother told us that they felt betrayed. And her words alone capture the frustration they felt. In Bergen, we learned how vital it is to convey emotion by letting people tell their own stories and making their experiences the heart of the narrative. This creates a much deeper connection with readers.”
“A second example is the missing sheep. The story unfolds like a mystery novel, with living sheep that disappear. The local community was puzzled. It turns out that the trail of the sheep leads to a potential culprit. And the reporter brought readers into the scene, making them feel like they were standing right there staring at the empty field with the owner of the sheep. A simple report on missing sheep, you know, wouldn’t be interesting. However it is interesting in the way that the story is told.”
Powerful breaking news
One of the most important lessons from Bergen was how to handle breaking news.
”Speed, of course, is crucial. In Bergen. They have a one minute rule to respond to breaking news, but just as important is incorporating eyewitness accounts. So not only relying on police reports, as they say in Bergen, “we’re not the parents of the police.” So for an example, just last week actually, a body was found in a village in Vorarlberg. Our in-house editorial team got the story out online quickly. And our breaking news team, on the other hand, was on site almost immediately.”
“In Bergen, we learned how critical it is to speak to eyewitnesses. And that’s what we did. We talked to the couple who discovered the body. And their shock added emotional depth to the story. So unfortunately, we didn’t have a picture of the couple there. Usually we would have preferred to have a picture of the couple, but sometimes you have to go with what you get. This personal account still made the story much more engaging than if we just had talked to the police or just gotten a statement from a policeman on scene. And maybe an interesting side note, we spoke with neighbours who mentioned seeing a Spanish couple nearby days before. And the police later asked us to hold that information. So apparently, this turned out to be relevant to the case. So you can see, we weren’t repeating what the police told us. We were really no parrots, as they would say in Bergen.”
“Of course, there are challenges with this type of storytelling. Our biggest challenge since visiting Bergen has been finding eyewitnesses. Often by the time we arrive, people are gone. And it can be tough to track them down. It means chasing people, knocking on doors, and having lots of awkward conversations with strangers. In that sense it’s far easier for reporters to stay in the newsroom, make phone calls, and report from the desk. But really anyone can make calls and rewrite statements. And that is essential. In fact, you can do that from anywhere in the world. But what sets us apart, as a local newspaper, is being on site and capturing firsthand accounts, speaking to the people, being part of the community. Despite the challenge, despite this being a very difficult storytelling approach, we’ve had major successes,” Isabel said.
”Stories like in the case with the murder, where we featured eyewitness reports, significantly boost reader engagement and lead to more subscriptions. And being first with human-focused reporting also strengthens trust. And we’re seeing more and more people willing to pay for this kind of journalism. So we’re definitely on the right track here.”
Isabel then handed over to her colleague Georg Burtscher to cover “the other side” of what they brought back from Norway, a new secret sauce for the advertising sales.
The new way of working on the sales side
“On the editorial side the big take-away from Bergen was to focus on the story. In the sales team we thought that maybe that could work for us too.” And now he knows it does work for them. Georg started from the beginning.
“We are flooded with information and advertising, and we, in advertising sales, are thinking about how to stand out among all these messages. That is the challenge for our clients. And I mean, storytelling is not something new, but at the end, it’s about relationships.”
“Every day, companies are telling us that they have the best CEO, the best products, the best new building etc., and everything is focused on the company itself. However at the end, they don’t ask you how it fits to the needs of the reader and the audience. What we should ask ourselves is what the people really want to know?”
“It is actually a similar challenge as in the editorial department. People out there are saying, okay, if you have the best product, how does it affect me? How do you have the best office building? How is it to work there? And if you have a great CEO, it’s okay, but I don’t care if he or she is perfect at this moment. People do not want to see the perfect world, they want to see how it really is. They don’t want to hear from the police, they want to see the eyewitness report.
A unique ad product based on honest people stories
“It’s the same with advertising. So, just as journalists, we started with what we see. We had to learn to write our clients stories and stop spreading the stories that clients sent us. And we should write with the knowhow we have built up during more than 100 years in the history of our company.”
Georg also described what is different from the journalistic job at that is that in sales the stories “are written for the clients and not for the readers” and quickly ads “however you still need to be honest.”
What Georg is referring to is not new. It goes by the name of the general term “content marketing” or “native advertising” when content is published on an independent news site in an identical way to editorial stories however marked as advertising. At Russmedia they call their format “Premium Story” (that can be compared, as below in the slide, another much simpler new format called simply “sitelink”).
“In the end, it’s similar to when you book a hotel on Booking.com or when you buy a product on Amazon. First you read what other people tell you about the product, then you decide what to buy. If you see there are only two stars, you will not buy that product or you will not go to that hotel. But if you do, please tell us how it really was. What people tell then is normally true. And it’s more authentic than saying that it’s the best product and showing images from the best photographers in town. We want to tell stories in a different way for our clients.”
“For example, when we talk about hearing aids. The manufacturer wants to sell his product, by telling us that it is the best product that you can get. Instead we tell the story about a young woman who’s wearing these hearing aids and how it improves her life quality through being able to participate in daily life much better than before. It’s a completely different approach and a completely different story. However with the same ultimate goal as a normal print ad, billboard ad or banner ad in any digital channel.”
“Or if you have a store opening, you can tell the story that this is a great building and the store is open, or you can, as we try to do, tell the story of the people who are working there and how happy they are that they can work in a new store, how the preparations is going and what the first clients will say you about the store. At the end, it has the same goal, to bring people to this store or to bring new employees and so on. We do not tell the audience that the building is so cool and that the CEO is the greatest. Instead we let the client’s employees say that they are working for the best company in town and that everyone should come and see for themselves.”
“And a great asset that makes us different when working like this is that we are a locally based media company with a certain audience. To sell, reach is not so difficult. Advertisers can go to Facebook and Google and put an ad there for 15 cents per click. However with us the audience is staying in the client’s story, under our brand brand, for three to four minutes. Engagement and time spent is the most important criteria, not reach. What we realise is that with this strategy we are really the number one media outlet in this region, also in advertising. We have more than 30% reach on a daily level. So if you want to advertise or create advertising in our region, you should talk to us. We are even bigger than Facebook and Google. So in combining our local reach with local storytelling, building on the knowhow of our editorial team, we can boost the campaigns of our clients. Nor Facebook, neither Google, can match this, not even a media agency can, because they do not have the media reach and neither the local foot print.”
This is actually a job ad. Put your smart phone camera on the bar code up in the upper right corner (or click at this link) and you will be able to read (in German or your preferred language with a tool like Google translate) about the company “Getzner” that is looking for employees. This innovative ad format combines print with digital and content marketing with traditional advertising.
Strong numbers prove the format
Georg says to look carefully at the advertising in their examples.
“Do you see any CEO? Do you see any buildings? No everywhere you see people, people and people. You see the people who are living there and working there.”
In the language of the sales people, the client, that is the advertiser, gets 100% share of voice on the website, compared to a banner ad where an ad slot normally is shared by several advertisers. The client’s story looks like an editorial article, but it’s branded as advertising and with the logo of the client.
This means it is clear also to the reader that this is advertising. Russmedia includes A/B testing with up to 20 different text and image elements to find out what works the best. The content ads are sold in “all-inclusive” packages. The client has no work to do. Russmedia does it all. Customers that insist on having their own pictures and copy will be refused. Russmedia has a formula and there is no compromise.
The ad effects are great, Burtscher says. For example, client stories told through these formats have up to 50% more people reading the message than a traditional PR-message or even compared to a display ad. Russmedia sees a minimum of a 12 times higher CTR – Click Through Rate, which is much better than for normal campaigns. Readers stay in average 3-4 minutes with the content. On average, they have more than 10,000 people reading a client’s story and sometimes up to 20,000. A traditional PR message has about 5,000 readers.
This is an ad for a skiing area. Put your smart phone camera on the bar code up in the upper right corner (or click at this link) and you will get to know people working at the ski station, the owner and a lot more (in german or your preferred language with a tool like Google translate). In some ways you can see that the page is inspired by the “immersive storytelling” from The New York Times “Snowfall,” story.
From 0 to 15% in 6 months
“What we offer, Facebook and Google, can not offer. What we do, only a local media company can provide” Georg states and continues. “We started this six months ago and it now makes 15% of our digital ad revenue. And we already have a digital to print ad ratio of about 40% digital ad revenue. The rest is print ad revenue.”
Before taking questions, George and Isabel emphasised the importance of sharing experiences in our industry, as they did in Bergen and as we aim to do in the WAN-IFRA Innovate Local program.
He means that the competitors are in the States and in China, but not here over the street. “We have to work together and inspire each other to see new concepts. And then we have to copy, really on a concrete level, because what is working in Norway, also should work in Austria, in both editorial and in advertising.
Useful links
Thanks to the presenters, here is some useful information if you want to dig deeper:
The webinar presentation can be downloaded here.
The Russmedia Group web site is: https://www.russmedia.com/en/
The website of Vorarlberger Nachrichten is: https://www.vn.at/ and its subscription offering is here.
Concerning the news media companies that the Russmedia team visited in Bergen Norway;
Bergens Tidende: www.bt.no part of the Schibsted Media Group. You can also watch a case from Stavanger Aftenblad, another Schibsted newspaper, here on WAN-IFRA Innovate Local.
Bergenavisen: www.ba.no part of the Amedia group. You can also watch three cases from Amedia here:
This post was first published on our Innovate Local website. It has been lightly edited and slightly shortened for republication here. To see the original version, please click here.