"Native advertising only works with a large editorial output"

Christian Schiller (39) founded Hello Zurich in September 2017. Today, the Zurich city magazine has 26,000 to 32,000 unique visitors per month. The approach: to be independent, ad-free and not profit-oriented. The father of two works 60 percent for Hello Zurich - the same as Co-Editor-in-Chief Eva Hediger. Freelancers contribute about a third of the articles. In addition to Hello Zurich, Schiller runs his own communications agency. After starting his career at a bank, Schiller first switched to journalism and later to communications.

Werbewoche: When you currently read an article on Hellozurich.ch, a message appears saying that Hello Zurich is only possible thanks to a lot of idealism. What do you want to move with the digital city magazine?

Christian Schiller: We want to offer the city a bilingual, high-quality online magazine with strong photos that puts people and their stories in the spotlight. This gives city residents the opportunity to look behind the facade and immerse themselves in local stories. Along the lines of "Ah, really now, that's where I always walk by ...". But a quarter of our readers are also expats and tourists. That's why the most important facts are summarized briefly at the top of each article - with a photo gallery and map link.

Has the content orientation changed since the launch a year ago?

Yes, in the meantime we have the claim not only to offer a city guide, but also to be an important voice in the city in other ways. That's why we have also launched the "News" section.

Meanwhile, we have the claim to be an important voice of the city.

How did the Hello Zurich project come about?

It all started when I moved back to the Niederdorf neighborhood. I was fascinated by how the neighborhood had changed since my youth, but also how much had stayed the same. That's why I wanted to publish a magazine-like guide that revolved around Niederdorf and brought the neighborhood back into the conversation. Then one thing led to another: I published a few stories with a few freelancers and posted photos on social media. The project got bigger and bigger and we didn't limit ourselves to the Niederdorf anymore. Soon we were counting up to 32,000 unique visitors a month. I realized: Wow, what we're doing is going down well. At some point we had to think about how we could cover the costs of the project.

On the subject of financing ...

Oh yes, a difficult subject (laughs).

Initially, your strategy was to focus on native advertising. What were the reasons for this at the time and what was the strategy behind it?

After half a year, the first inquiries from companies started coming in: How does one get into the magazine with you? The website and the production of the stories cost something, of course, and I wanted to pay back the small loans from my private environment quickly. So, as an experiment, we relied on native advertising. But the stories of most of the companies that were interested in this advertising format didn't fit well into the magazine. We quickly realized that native advertising only works with a large editorial output. Then you can also run an advertising story in between. But if you only publish one story a week on average, as we did at the time, the magazine loses its charm. That's why we decided not to do it.

Next, you communicated that Hello Zurich is ad-free.

Yes. Instead of thinking about funding at this early stage, we wanted to get our feet on the ground and improve the magazine further first. Despite our success, we are a small city magazine that first has to prove itself. In the meantime, after a year, we are entering into our first collaborations. We are therefore no longer advertising-free, but still ad-free.

The reason why you have taken the step of no longer appearing completely free of advertising is that the magazine cannot be financed in any other way in the long term?

Yes, of course. But you have to emphasize: We've only been around for a year. We're trying out a lot of things, and not just in terms of financing. What works, we keep. In short, since the launch, no two weeks have been the same.

We are therefore no longer free of advertising, but we are still free of advertisements.

Now, in September, you are launching a new financing model in which members and supporters play a major role. What is your idea behind this model?

Private individuals can now become members of Hello Zurich for five francs a month and benefit from advantages. The same applies to small businesses and SMEs, who pay 50 francs a month. Our goal is to gain 1500 members in two years. That will be difficult. I don't think it will work from a desk. We want to be more present at events and other public places. In this regard, however, our resources are limited. We only have 120 full-time positions available - my colleague Eva Hediger and I each work 60 percent. We do almost everything ourselves: editing, production, photo shoots, social media and marketing. In addition, locations and organizations that we report on now bear half of the production costs on a partnership basis. This corresponds to 400 to 1200 Swiss francs, which can also be paid with vouchers that we raffle among the members. This is already working very well. Even if one can object that our approach is not entirely journalistic.

You say so yourself: This approach is not journalistic. In your opinion, is it still possible to report independently?

We call ourselves independent because we have no pressure from a publisher or shareholders. If we work in partnership with locations and organizations, we indicate this with a banner in the article. In addition, the editors alone are responsible for the selection of topics and the implementation. You can't buy content from us.

And the goal is not to report critically about places?

No, we want to present people and places that shape Zurich. But our next goal is to get an author on board who will report on the city in column style and illuminate it from a different angle.

The website says you want to break even by the end of 2020?

Yes, I am confident that it will work. Also because we keep getting inquiries from big companies that want to be partners. But any partners have to fit in with us. We want to take care of our brand.

Any partners must fit in with us. We want to take care of the brand.

Why is your goal to work not for profit?

We do not want to enrich ourselves. Hello Zurich is a lover's project and we want to make users aware of that. But: It would be a dream if I could pay myself an industry-standard salary in the future.

What do you think about government subsidies?

Basically, we prefer to remain independent and then have no conditions. But of course, we would also consider this option.

"Various contributors, editors and photographers have waived compensation or accommodated us in price since the launch in September 2017," the website says. Do your freelancers receive a salary at all?

Absolutely! We pay industry-standard fees. Some freelancers have come our way because they find Hello Zurich a great project. I'm mainly the one who sacrifices a lot of free time for the magazine. Although we get good feedback, we will have to put in a lot of effort ourselves to make the project self-sustaining. If it doesn't work out, we will be able to publish fewer stories and continue to run Hello Zurich as an enthusiast project. But everything indicates that we will make it. We have already come a long way in just one year.

Interview: Ann-Kathrin Kübler