Zeroing in on a major local employer: Freie Presse and the Volkswagen audience

The largest news group in eastern Germany launched an initiative to target Volkswagen enthusiasts in Saxony. VW being the region’s largest employer, the newspaper focused on content that appeals to the car manufacturer’s employees, suppliers, and customers. By doubling their output of VW-related stories, Freie Presse saw notable increases in both reader engagement and subscriptions.


Freie Presse is East Germany’s largest news group, covering the Southeast of the federal state of Saxony and serving a population of about 630,000 households. In 2024 it had a circulation of 177.244. Headquartered in Chemnitz – a city voted to be Europe’s culture capital (“Kulturhauptstadt”) in 2025 – and with 19 bureaus around the region, Freie Presse is committed to producing “regional quality journalism.”


It has been a busy time for Freie Presse, with elections in June and September 2024, as well as activities around the upcoming Kulturhauptstadt for 2025, demanding considerable newsroom attention. Still, the team participating in Table Stakes Europe was determined to experiment with an audience that has proven to attract readers to their journalism for quite some time: those interested in all things Volkswagen (VW).

The car manufacturer VW Saxony, headquartered in the traditional “Motown” of Zwickau, is the region’s largest employer with about 11,000 people working directly for the company. And it is a company that gives people reason to be proud of: the site switched its production entirely to electric vehicles in 2020 when the final fossil-fuel powered vehicle left the factory. Considering the number of employees, their families, as well as those attached to the many regional manufacturers and companies that supply VW, Freie Presse’s newsroom assumed that there would be a high level of audience interest in the company.

Digging into it, they found that the numbers also backed up the idea. Benjamin Schmidt, Product Owner at Freie Presse, explains: “Summing up employees, workers in supplying companies and customers of VW, we roughly identified a reader potential of about 100.000 people.” The decision to focus on the VW audience was also supported by other data sources, such as keyword analysis, the success of previous articles about VW and user engagement on social media.

But just doing more of the same didn’t feel quite right. The team around Benjamin Schmidt and Deputy Editor-in-Chief Anne Lena Mösken discussed what they should focus on more: people with an appetite for everything around cars, ranging from discussing the latest models to navigating the visit to the repair shop, or alternatively those interested in company issues, encompassing everything from internal conflicts and business f igures to job opportunities, paychecks and cafeteria foods. There was no other way to find out than to test it.

Syncing up the newsroom and marketing

For their Table Stakes presentation at the mid-point of the programme, the Freie Presse team came up with the following commitment: “VW enthusiasts in the region and beyond will receive useful/interesting content about Volkswagen at least once a week.” The plan was to create a unique marketing style and strategy for this promise, implement push notifications, promote a newsletter, conduct content marketing for articles and develop a special paywall for VW users.

In the process there was another issue to be cracked. As is the case with most publishers, Freie Presse had yet to develop synergies between the newsroom and the marketing department. Initially, marketing was not so enthusiastic about VW. They would have preferred for the team to prioritise other audiences, such as food lovers or real estate aficionados, where commercial opportunities seemed more obvious to them.

The conflict that arose proved to be constructive: members of the different departments got together, discussed and eventually came up with a game plan that served the needs of both sides. This included sponsored posts, a landing page and a customised paywall for the VW audience. Anne Lena Mösken says: “Breaking up company silos meant stepping on unchartered territory for us when we started our VW audience. What we learned in the process will prove tremendously valuable for all future audiences we plan on targeting.”

Additionally, the team wanted to make sure the effort was really worth it. Did putting in more hours on researching and writing VW related stories really increase audience interest shown as visits and would it drive subscriptions? Like many other publishers, Freie Presse heavily banks on subscriptions to finance the newsroom of the future.

Their main goal: achieving financial independence from print subscriptions by 2030. To this end, the goal with their overall audience-work was to attract 500 additional subscribers in the under-50 age group by the end of 2024.

Outcome: ‘Notably better results than the average’

Looking at VW specifically, Benjamin ran the numbers, and the team concluded that yes, there was reason for optimism. There was reader interest in company-related news as well as in reports about new models that are produced in the region: reach as well as conversions looked good after a first check 90 days since the start of the audience content. Then, starting from late summer 2024, bad news spread about VW: the company was in a difficult strategic position. Sales were down while costs remained high.

The company, once guaranteeing its employees good salaries and job security, was struggling. And the staff did as well: people were concerned about their future.

This also changed the editorial focus to cover new topics. What about job losses? What about the future of VW in Saxony? How will the company prevent its economic downfall? Readers’ attention was as high as the concerns – which was also reflected in the numbers.

Since the start of the audience work, the editorial team increased their output by a factor of 2.4, producing around 2.7 articles per week.

The high public interest resulted in an increase of conversions by a factor of 2.9. Taking into account the higher output in articles, this still meant an increase of conversions by 20 percent per article. The average age of people converting into subscriptions was about 50.

Still, a question remained: Were these actually good numbers? So, the team ran another analysis and compared the success of the audiences with the average success of articles in the cities of Zwickau and Chemnitz. As a result, it turned out that VW was more than three times more successful than general reporting in these cities, in terms of page impressions as well as conversions. Product Owner Benjamin Schmidt concluded: “We learned the following: If you pick the right audience and deliver content very regularly, you can have notably better results than the average.”

By the end of September 2024, conversions in the VW audience reached a number of about 250. Benjamin Schmidt: “And the good results were there even before VW stumbled into crisis.” Together with other audiences, such as fans of the local basketball team and articles about the cultural capital 2025, the goal of 500 new subscriptions through audience-work seemed to be realistic.

So, there is more to come in 2025. Anne Lena Mösken: “We’re looking forward to next year. Visitors from all over Europe will visit Chemnitz during the Kulturhauptstadt. And we will provide high-quality content for them.” Benjamin Schmidt ads: “And for sure, we will continue to write about VW.”