Class instead of mass

WW: What distinguishes News and Sport Factory SA from other marketers?
Patrick Zanello: We have a special positioning because we work for niche channels and niche media. For us, it's not about the size of the channels, but about specific and high-quality content. That is our priority. When I left Ringier, I wanted to work for a smaller company. I want to be close to the customers, but also close to the broadcasters. Quality content is very important to me. There is a place for the qualitative marketing of different target groups, e.g. for cosmetic products, the automotive industry, banks and insurance companies. In print, there are ideal titles for these target groups. It's not so easy on television.

WW: Television is primarily a mass medium ...
PZ: That's only partly true, there are countless niche channels that cover interesting target groups and also allow for storytelling. It's also about credibility. Today, you can find enough cases where a Chanel product or an Audi is advertised in the same commercial break as a discount store or a cheap fashion line. That makes no sense. It's not about reach or meaningful placement, but about reach and meaningful placement. I think advertisers prefer the second option.

WW: Do the small transmitters provide enough power?
PZ: It depends on how you market them. A single small channel can't deliver the performance, but several small channels with an aggregated offering can deliver interesting performance for customers and agencies. Today, ROI is very important. So we have to deliver good performance. But this is only possible with aggregated offerings.

WW: What do you offer specifically?
PZ: We have two types of offer. One is the aggregated offering with good services. The second type of offer is then topic-related. Topics can be, for example, the next Olympic Games or the WEF. For the WEF, for example, we can make a good offer with different channels. There are customers, for example the watch industry, who are looking for just such a qualitative environment - the quantitative performance is then secondary.

WW: What kind of channels do you market?
Goce Nikoloski: When observing the market, we quickly realized that practically all entertainment channels have already been developed. But we also realized that there are very attractive channels in the news, sports and culture sectors that had not been marketed before. Hence the name of our company: News and Sport Factory. Patrik Zanello: We market the Swiss advertising windows of BFMTV, a French news channel, Escales TV, travel documentaries, Eurosport (German-speaking Switzerland) and Golf Channel France. It was important for us to also have a Swiss channel on offer, it is the Swiss television channel CHTV. We also market the Swiss traffic of the online and mobile offerings of the corresponding channels and Euronews. We do this in collaboration with Romandie Network. There is also SPORTAL HD, a sports web TV channel that will be launched next year.

WW: Despite all the qualitative aspects, media agencies and clients also want performance data. What is the situation there?
GN: We work together with Mediapulse. As far as the advertising market is concerned, we aggregate the usage data within a time slot in a pool, but each channel can be booked individually at the advertising block level. We currently have our own planning tool. However, we are planning to work with Publiplan in the second half of 2014. PZ: The collaboration with Mediapulse is important for us. We can't work without these figures.

WW: You are now starting with these five channels, what's next?
PZ: We think that we will be marketing seven to eight channels by the end of 2014. However, the channels' online and mobile offerings are also important to us. So we also offer video ads on the broadcasters' corresponding sites. The future will be digital; we cannot limit ourselves to television alone. We can put together attractive offers with TV and digital.
 
Interview: Pierre C. Meier