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# Zeit Online: hunting the millennial online – and offline.
- URL: https://onemanandhisblog.com/2017/04/zeit-online-hunting-millennial-online-offline/
- Published: 2017-04-24T12:35:40.000Z
- Updated: 2017-04-24T12:57:03.000Z
- Author: Adam Tinworth
- Tags: #dme17, audience development, community management, millennials, publishing strategy

*I’m at WAN-IFRA’s [Digital Media Europe conference](https://events.wan-ifra.org/events/digital-media-europe-2017?ref=onemanandhisblog.com) in Copenhagen for the next few days. This is the first of my liveblogged session notes from the event.*

## Christian Röpke, CEO, ZEIT ONLINE

![Christian Röpke](https://i2.wp.com/www.onemanandhisblog.com/content/images/2017/04/christian-ropke.jpg?resize=900%2C657&ssl=1 "christian-ropke.jpg")

[*Die Zeit*](http://www.zeit.de/index?ref=onemanandhisblog.com) has a 500,000 paid circulation as a weekly newspaper – and their weekly nature means that they lack many of the problems dailies have in balancing print and digital operations. Their circulation is 10% digital, and is growing 30% year on year. Online they reach 11.4m uniques per month.

35% of their audience in under 29 – higher than their competitors. It’s a stable figure – they’re young, but they want to get even younger. Why? Because you can’t just focus on today’s customers – you need to put effort into creating your future customers.

### Four strategic aims

1. **Quality advertising of premium reach** – display advertising isn’t dead – and as publisher we need to tell that story. Their business grew by 10% last year.
2. **Digital circulation/paid content** – they’ve sold through apps, but now they’re adding paid content on the websites.
3. **Classified offerings** – in niches (academic positions, top positions at NGOs)
4. **Focus on millennials** – you can’t look at the future without looking at your future readers.

They’ve focused on mobile to reach millennials – and with mobile “cards” in particular – a design language that works for “flipping” behaviour for millennials. “We are not afraid of mobile”. Mobile display advertising is growing *strongly* for them.

[![](https://i1.wp.com/www.onemanandhisblog.com/content/images/2017/04/img_5857.jpg?resize=960%2C680&ssl=1)](https://i1.wp.com/www.onemanandhisblog.com/content/images/2017/04/img%5F5857.jpg?ssl=1&ref=onemanandhisblog.com)  
Up until now *Die Zeit* has been sold as a single product, and *Zeit Online* was a separate thing – the print articles only hit the websites three or four weeks longer. They’ve now mixed the two in [the Z+ product](http://blog.zeit.de/fragen/2017/03/30/z-die-gedruckte-zeit-im-internet/?ref=onemanandhisblog.com).

Digital-only and digital-and -print bundles are growing strongly – app store revenue is pretty much flat.

### Targeting young readers

[*Zeit Campus*](http://www.zeit.de/campus/index?ref=onemanandhisblog.com) – is a new editorial platform for students. It has a distinct design feel from the main part of *Zeit Online*, but it is still part of the wider product. Their first article – about ghostwriting of articles – went strongly viral. The key idea is *orientation* – helping students figure out what they want to *do* at university. They built an online tool to help people make those decisions.

They’re also reaching out to the younger demographic with events. event: [Z2X – the Festival of New Visionaries](http://www.zeit.de/z2x/?ref=onemanandhisblog.com) in Berlin for 600 people. It’s not a one-off – they’re doing series of them.

And their launching niche sites. For example, [ze.tt](http://ze.tt/?ref=onemanandhisblog.com) – launched in July 2015 and run by a small, separate team, based in a loft in Berlin. It targets the 18 to 30 year old demographic. They run recruiting events called “work & play”. These are at least partially gamified, so rather than “speed dating” potential employers or employees, you play escape room games with them.

### Key lessons

- Find your own fundamental laws on display, mobile and homepage traffic.
- The homepage is **not** dead.
- Keep adding and expanding business models,
- Understand young readers
- Understand your market position. They *choose* to be premium.

## Analysis

A couple of core points here:

### Community development

The strategy for developing young, mobile readers is a classic community play:

- Identify a target audience
- Identify content that they will find useful
- Develop that content
- Give them a sense of involvement through distinct branding
- Grow that out into events.

That creates an emotional/intellectual double whammy that builds loyalty to your brand – and that loyalty is more likely to convert into paid subscriptions, if you can prove value.

### Income diversity

Like many larger businesses, *Dei Zeit* is realising that there won’t be a single saviour business model that will enable transition to digital. A diverse range of business models targeting different sections of your audience is much more viable – and provides a greater safety net.

Nothing especially innovative in the ideas underlying the approaches shown here – but some good, thoughtful and sustainable execution.