Aiming to refresh its brand image and attract more male readers, the Hungarian publisher used its participation in Table Stakes Europe to start working on new types of automotive content, particularly around service and explanatory journalism. Success in this area has helped to build momentum for other experiments in the newsroom, from other focus audiences such as Wine and Tech, to a pilot around content monetisation.

Challenging conventional wisdom, the Abendblatt team’s journey with Table Stakes Europe has allowed them to prove that regional cultural content, when done well, CAN attract new digital subscribers. The successes of the culture desk are now inspiring change in the wider newsroom.

An important goal for Our Media during its participation in Table Stakes Europe was to start moving away from being viewed as a conservative medium towards being seen as a fresh, modern one in order to reach younger people. The publisher also wanted to increase engagement with its audiences by producing more high quality content. A key metric was to track the amount of time that their audiences spent with content.

During its year in Table Stakes Europe, the German publisher created a successful new brand for food and gastronomy content and transformed its approach to covering local music festivals. These and other audience-focused efforts have dramatically improved their performance metrics and paved the way for future digital revenue growth.

The Finnish local newspaper overhauled its entire newsroom based on lessons learned from successful audience-focused experiments. The key objective: to better engage new, younger digital subscribers. “Everything we do, every day, should only be things that support our goals. We have tried to build a structure that forces us to do that,” said
Jyrki Utriainen, Karjalainen’s Managing Editor.

2023-04-25. “We want to create emotional touchpoints that not only strengthen the loyalty of our existing readers to our brand but also engage with new audiences who have not yet experienced our platform, allowing them to form a positive first impression through one of our verticals,” says Bettina Widmer, of Switzerland’s Blick Group.

2022-12-08. The UK publisher’s newsletter “Brummie Muslims” features a mix of content from lifestyle to food tips and political news aimed at the diverse Muslim community living in the West Midlands region. Its success has generated numerous learnings about audience engagement, and has opened the door for other possible newsletters for different communities.

2022-12-08. During its participation in the Table Stakes Europe programme, the Tribune de Genève team identified several audiences they could better target. One of these is very specific to its geographical area, namely cross-border commuters, a large group of Swiss and French people who live and work between Geneva and neighbouring France.

Rheinische Post is a large and influential media group in the Rhineland, in the west of Germany, a regional giant. Their flagship title started its Table Stakes Europe, audience-centric journey with “Willkommen, Baby!”, a cluster of digital content targeted at parents-to-be. It was a game-changer, and nudged the publisher forward in its digital transformation. Here is how.

During its participation in the first edition of Table Stakes Europe in 2019, the Scottish group took a big step forward with the transformation of their newsroom from being print-focused to digital. They also began using the mini-publisher perspective, which has helped the company build a strong investigations unit.