The Storyteller: An Interview with Kai Diekmann

m&kMr. Diekmann, you have close ties to Switzerland through your friend Arthur Cohn, your colleague Roger Köppel and numerous private trips. How do you see our country?

Kai Diekmann: I love being in Switzerland. I'm in Zurich regularly because one of my closest friends, Leonhard Fischer, also spends most of his time there. Not so long ago, I was in Lausanne. And I traveled regularly to Davos in connection with the World Economic Forum. Switzerland is a place of tremendous quality of life, a place of tremendous beauty. A place in the middle of Europe that combines all the qualities you can imagine. With one small caveat: Whenever I stand on Opernplatz in Zurich and see the bratwurst for 16 francs, with the addition of "You get the mustard for free", I'm a bit startled (laughs).

You achieved international renown as editor-in-chief of the German Image-newspaper achieved. I would say you had more power than most media personalities in Europe, you yourself call it rather "Responsibility". Today you are a businessman. Do you ever miss your old job?

Believe it or not, I don't miss it anymore. I am passionate about being editor-in-chief of Image been. The brand has been incredibly fun for me, because there is no game of journalism that it doesn't allow. The brand provokes, the brand polarizes, the brand leaves no one cold. Image was actually always the loudest trumpet on stage. That's what I mean by responsibility: When you play such a loud instrument, you have to make sure that you hit the right notes. Now, however, I'm glad that I no longer have this stage presence, but instead bear responsibility myself as an entrepreneur, develop something of my own, and see how a baby turns into a very splendid boy in its third year.

"Stage presence" in your case also meant that you were recognized in public and had to listen to one or the other remark about the journalistic course of your newspaper.

It would also be a bit difficult if, of all people, the head of the Image-newspaper that demands people's visibility, makes itself invisible. Presence was part of my job, and I was happy to do it. There have been incidents other than just a stupid remark: my family has been threatened, there has been a fire attack on our car. But I think that's part of the job description. You can't complain about that. I have always felt very protected and sheltered by my publisher. And by the way, what I said earlier is true: If you dish it out, you have to be able to take it. You can't be squeamish about that. The headlines are also called headlines because they can be like blows, or at least are perceived as blows by those affected.

Here in Switzerland, too, the affair surrounding former German President Christian Wulff made enormous waves. Were you yourself surprised by the political clout your medium developed in this situation?

At that time, it was not about political power of the ImageIt was about excellent research, which was also rewarded with the Henri Nannen Prize. I must remind you again of the facts of the case. It was about Christian Wulff not telling the full truth to the then state parliament of Lower Saxony on an important issue, namely the question of his house financing, while he was still Minister President. That is the core of the story. And that there were obviously dependencies there that were not in order. And in the course of this publication, there were then other publications that revealed a pattern - a difficult relationship of the Federal President in connection with the use of material services. That was actually our journalistic theme.

But then former Federal President Wulff himself became an actor...

Exactly, namely with his famous phone call to me, in which he tried with massive words to prevent reporting on these facts. Because he was not prepared to answer our questions about it, and then provided answers, only to withdraw them again. Instead, he tried to put pressure on me as editor-in-chief with the famous statement, "Then it's war." And I think that's what demonstrated above all that someone here may not be up to the demands of his office when it comes to a crisis.

What is in your eyes, with a few years distance from the post of Editor-in-Chief, "successful" Tabloid journalism?

Nothing has really changed in that respect. First of all, tabloid journalism describes a type of newspaper that was not delivered by subscription, but was sold at newsstands in the good old analog days, so that it also required a certain presentation that was, so to speak, the sales poster for the daily edition. Today, of course, it's different; in a time when journalism is more than just printing papers and publishing a newspaper. Today, the newspaper is just one channel of many. That's why we're talking about a media brand today. The Bild media brand is certainly a tabloid brand, and a tabloid brand carries a promise. I'm very interested in this promise. It is: never to bore, but to entertain, to provoke, to polarize, to simplify things in the best sense, to be a world enlightener. In my view, all of this makes for good tabloid journalism. Especially when it succeeds in telling stories about people. People are not as interested in anything as they are in other people. In addition, the Bild newspaper is called "Bild" and not "Text" or "Headline. This has something to do with the power of the visual, with the power of images, with the power of photos. You know that silly saying "A picture is worth a thousand words" - it's simply true.

Tabloid media, like all other media, live from the attention of their recipients. This attention seems to be dwindling all the time. Are the media responding adequately to this development?

There is no such thing as "the media" - there are many different genres and business models in journalism, which react very differently to the challenges of the new media world. And that has something to do, first of all, with the changed channels, with the changed consumer habits. We also have to take into account the differences between the generations: Millennials are no longer teenagers; they will have turned 40 this year. Their media socialization did not take place on paper alone, but on all media channels. They have grown up with the fact that they don't have to actively seek out stories that are important to them, but that they simply appear in their newsfeed. And then they are relevant. Conversely, this means that what doesn't appear there isn't relevant and isn't searched for.

And the generation before Millennials - how do they use media?

I was born in '64, and if you grew up with paper as a medium like I did, then you learned how to decode a newspaper. And that I don't read it from top left to bottom right, but very quickly recognize what content is relevant to me, what's important or exciting. The average newspaper reader gets exactly ten percent of the content of a newspaper from the newspaper. And so, technologically, a paradigm shift has taken place in media use, to which I as a publisher can react or not react.

Other areas that don't involve the written word are feeling that, too, aren't they?

Absolutely. In TV, there is a complete stall from linear TV to streaming and subscription services. The most-watched German TV channel is still ZDF. But the share of viewers under 20 is just 0.8 percent. But only if you include live soccer. If you leave that out, the share is no longer measurable. I have four children, and they all still watch TV, but none of them watch linear anymore. There's a nice story that I always like to tell. When the Wi-Fi went down at our house, my 14-year-old son called me and said, "Dad, I'm totally the victim now, I even have to watch TV, and whatever they want me to watch." In other words, for a 14-year-old, the idea of being tied to certain times in order to consume certain content is as absurd as the idea of planning a trip from Zurich to Berlin or vice versa by stagecoach is for both of us.

Speaking of change: You witnessed the beginnings of the print advertising crisis as head of Bild. Can you understand why advertisers are relying less and less on print ads?

But of course. I'll say it brutally and exaggeratedly: advertising on newsprint is like going out into the dark forest at midnight. It's pitch black and you have a shotgun with you. And you spin around a few times and shoot and hope you hit someone. In comparison, advertising in the digital world is like working with a drone, with night vision, with infrared, and you only pay when you hit something. That's what makes the big difference. I can target advertising in the digital world much more precisely. I can target exactly who I want to reach. Facebook or Google know a lot more about their users than the editor-in-chief of a paper brand. And then you also have to know that a large part of the audience no longer reaches for paper, but fewer and fewer are doing so.

But that can make a seasoned ex-editor-in-chief like you a bit wistful, can't it?

No. From a journalistic point of view, you always have to say that our core business is not printing on dead wood. Our core business is telling stories. That's much more exciting and much easier and much more exciting in the digital world than it ever was in the paper world. Because I have completely different opportunities. After all, the music industry and Madonna's success doesn't depend on whether she presses records, but whether her songs are good. The shellac record has become the CD, and the CD has become the online stream. Physical possession is no longer the decisive criterion.

So the printed newspaper - like the record - is becoming a collector's item?

The fact that circulation is falling more slowly in Germany and Switzerland than elsewhere has to do with the learned media usage behavior of my generation. Because there are still so many of us - and because so many of us are still glued to paper. There will always be niches. There is also a niche for vinyl. And there are still people who ride horses. But they don't ride horses to the office anymore. Paper has had its day as a mass medium. And that's why print advertising is also in crisis, of course.

How did that affect Bild at the time?

We didn't notice it as much at the time. For two reasons: One, when budgets are cut, the leftovers are concentrated where I still reach a lot of people. And that's where Bild played a special role. And secondly, I think we've digitized the brand faster than anyone else. You know that I was in Silicon Valley between 2012 and 2013, and after that we radically digitized the brand, with all the consequences. Right up to the introduction of paid content. At the time, we were thought to be crazy for doing that. It was the right decision, and I think Bild picked up the ball at the right time.

Swiss media companies such as Ringier or the TX Group are also focusing on activities to the left and right of their actual core business - such as entering the digital platform business. A good idea?

Of course. It's not enough to simply project the old business model of printing paper and selling reach onto the new digital worlds. That's why I also believe in paid content. And if I feel that my content is not valuable enough for someone to be willing to put something on the table for it - then I should generally ask myself whether it needs me out there. Brutally. The Economist can charge for its content, of course. The Financial Times, of course, the New York Times, too. Like this. And if I can't do that, I have a raison d'être.

But quasi "on the side" evaluate other opportunities, you would recommend that as well?

It's clever to say: I look at what belongs to me on the left and on the right - and platforms and classified ads belong to the media. We've always had that in newspapers. If I'm now in a position to acquire a digital classified business, then that makes perfect sense.

Today you are - together with Philipp Jessen and Michael Mronz - successful as the founder of Storymachine. You may no longer be an active journalist, but you're still all about good stories. What exactly does your company do?

We talked earlier about the changes in media usage behavior. That I simply no longer pick up a large part of the audience at the newsstand or reach them via linear television. Instead, this audience gets its information and content via social media. If I as a company, be it with a product, be it with a service or be it as a future potential employer, do not appear in this world, then I do not exist in the reality of life of almost two generations by now. And communication via these channels is a professional craft. It is just as much a professional craft as corporate communications or marketing - but diametrically different from them.

Can you elaborate on that?

I always say I can also go to KaDeWe here in Berlin and buy a canvas, a brush and paints; but that doesn't make me Markus Lüpertz, I remain the bungler I always was in art class. On social media, it's all about factual storytelling. It's not about the fictional idea, it's about how I tell the story of a company. And who can do that best? Journalists. That's why we decided to build a large newsroom from which we not only provide strategic advice to companies, but also create the content for them. Like ghostwriters for social media, so to speak. "Ghostposter" is what we call ourselves. And it's perfectly legitimate for a CEO, a politician, to have a ghostwriter who supports him in his messages. You could also compare this with music producers. Madonna is good for 85 percent, and her music producer gets the last 15 percent. And that's exactly the role we see ourselves in.

At the same time, you remain strictly in the background.

Just as the music producer doesn't stand up on stage or Angela Merkel's speechwriter says "But that was me" after the Harvard speech, we don't stand up and say "That's our performance". We are service providers and as such we work behind the scenes. The opportunity that exists for companies in the new media reality is a great one, a brilliant one... In the old world, nobody got past the editor-in-chief of a media outlet. I was the agenda-setter, the gatekeeper, the lock-keeper. I decided who got access to a mass medium with which messages. That's over with social media. With social media, I can communicate directly with my audience, bypassing the old, traditional media brands.

US President Trump, who was voted out of office, is a good example, don't you think?

Yes, whether you like it or not, no one has demonstrated this principle more successfully and better than U.S. President Trump. He would never have been elected without Twitter, because the traditional media would not have given him the space or the stage to become a candidate in the first place. But you have to be able to deal with the new possibilities. And that's the point where we said, that's where we put a business model. We make sure that the tools that are available are used successfully. That's a journalistic approach that we're aligning ourselves with. But not independent journalism, of course. What we do is commissioned communication. I always say: journalism is printing something that someone doesn't want printed. With us, it's the opposite.

Wasn't the market in the area of commissioned communication already saturated when you started Storymachine three years ago?

Yes, but not in the area of social media. And not with our model. Imagine a company like a large German bank that has perhaps 250,000 or 500,000 followers on Facebook and puts out content there - and this content is then liked by a double-digit number of people. That should set off alarm bells, because something is obviously going very wrong. What is often not understood, even in these large companies, is that the content that is played out on the web is by no means seen by 250,000 people, but by a small fraction. The algorithm then decides whether the content is attractive or not. Of course, the algorithm does not see itself or the platform as a service provider for the company in order to make its content visible. Rather, it wants to keep the user on the platform as long as possible in order to learn as much as possible about him. This means that content that does not catch on there is ranked further and further down, and in the end even such a large brand no longer has any visibility in these media.

And those who are not visible do not take place.

Yes, we have already talked about demographics in Germany on various occasions today. Demographics in Switzerland are no different, nor are they in Austria. If you discuss today with business leaders about their biggest concerns, it's not China. It's not the climate. It's the question of where the skilled workers of the future will actually come from. Where do we find the right employees in a demographic where, at the bottom end, every company is competing with every other company? When I graduated from high school in Bielefeld in 1983 and Deutsche Bank said, "Yes, we'll take ten trainees," long lines formed around Bielefeld's Jahnplatz. Young people who all wanted to become bank trainees. Today, that's no longer the case. And if you as a bank do not appear in the cosmos of this generation, then you will not only fail as a service provider, not only with your bank products, but you will simply fail as an employer. You do not exist.

This all sounds very understandable and coherent. Why are many companies still having such a hard time in this area?

Today, when we go to a DAX company for our first interview, we often find that the people there are quite proud to say, "We do social media, too. Those two over there, part-time". However, this does not reflect the true communication situation as it exists today. Rather, because we have this demographic situation, the social media understanding of the decision-makers in the Group: The people in their mid-fifties who are now in charge in the boardrooms are often very accustomed to media usage habits that must be described as totally outdated.

You said earlier when Image-Chief, you needed resilience. When German media publicize that Storymachine works for certain politicians - or supports Covid studies in PR - you are also exposed to criticism. A comparable situation?

I'm completely relaxed about that. First of all, I'm no longer obliged to provide information; we have a very firm company policy: We don't talk about our customers and we don't talk about our non-customers. No matter what, there are no comments. And by the way, it's completely logical that when you have such high-profile company founders as Storymachine, of course this also triggers special attention. And that there is a lot of envy in the industry and jealousy because our access to interesting clients is different, better. But, as I said, I'm relaxed about it. On the condition that the name of the company is always spelled correctly, even in critical reports - that's important to me (laughs).