Martin Schumacher: New Paths With kicker business solutions

Mr. Schumacher, why was kicker business solutions founded?

Martin Schumacher: At “kicker”, we have always had a strong sales team that understood our customers' wishes and offered appropriate solutions. Today, marketing is no longer just about thousand-contact prices (CPMs), how many pages a customer books and what discounts they get. We were already well positioned digitally at an early stage and thought across all channels. This enabled us to offer creative solutions that convey an emotional message for all customer-relevant channels – in other words, we hit the touchpoint between the customer's brand message and the target group's expectations. I saw this as a business model and presented a business plan for the agency to the publisher – the management trusted us to get started.

What are the advantages of the foundation for your current marketing business?

Schumacher: Today, we serve all touchpoints from print magazines to podcasts. kicker” is a love brand; readers associate positive emotions with the brand. We know our target group very well and talk to customers about how they can benefit from this strong brand. The establishment of kicker business solutions has given us a great deal of freedom. We also advise our customers outside of “kicker”. With the independent limited company, we don't have any conflicts of interest. For example, if we report critically on Oliver Kahn in “kicker”, we would have no editorial conflicts of conscience if we were to simultaneously run a testimonial campaign with the Bayern-HERO STORY board member for other clients on other channels. At the same time, we benefit from our proximity to the Olympia publishing house and work very agilely because we are supported by a broad network of employees, from market research to the video team, and we can offer appropriate content.

Major events offer the opportunity to reach an even broader target group. How do you deal with this and how sustainable is the effect?

Schumacher: The great thing is that we can often retain these target groups. We verticalize sports such as handball, basketball, ice hockey and American football. Anyone who visited our platform during the European Championships discovered that “kicker” does more than just soccer. This makes our target groups both more female and younger. Younger people are particularly interested in other sports and primarily use our digital channels, where we provide in-depth information for all sports. Overall, we reach every second person in Germany who is interested in sport.

And what about print?

Schumacher: By and large, readers want everything to stay as it is, with a focus on soccer. The target group is somewhat older and, unlike younger people, very loyal to the club. I find print products particularly exciting when they are used tactically. For example, we did a free EMS special that was handed out in pharmacies. People who didn't want to spend money on the big European Championship special took it. In this way, we draw the attention of new target groups to our brand, which we can then lead to other channels.