Heiko Heinemann From BT Verlag: “AI Has Sharpened Our Senses”

In times of AI, social media and digital news: How lively is the magazine market at the moment?

Heiko Heinemann: We're sitting here and we can pay our rent. Ten years ago, I would have been even more pessimistic. The worst thought at the beginning of digitalization was that magazines could become obsolete. The biggest crisis is now behind us and the print brands that still exist are very stable. Today, the pessimism is gone and we are in a better position than ever before. We can proudly say that we make magazines because they work.

The publisher's credo is still “print first”

Why does this concept work so well for you, while other niche magazines are disappearing from the market?

Heinemann: One of our strengths is that we have never done overly well at the newsstand. (laughs) We've never had magazines that were absolute self-sellers at the newsstand. That helps when you face headwinds. We've practiced thinking about how to reach readers with our special topics. On the other hand, we always knew exactly who our opponents were on the market, namely strong online brands. Even though each of our titles has its own website and social media presence, we have always adhered to our “print first” credo. We were never under pressure to make our strong print brands number 1 on the web. That was clearly a risk - but in our case it proved to be the right strategy.

Has the financing of your products changed? How is it made up?

Heinemann: We are still mainly financed by print advertisements. Our income has not decreased in recent years. However, we earn almost nothing directly from our online presence. This is very difficult with niche topics anyway - and has become even more difficult with the development of AI models. Users no longer even have to click on a website to get answers to their questions - Google or the AI answers them itself.

How high is the risk that the smaller target groups that you address will break away?

Heinemann: We have two major magazine trends: One is buying guides for really big purchases. Our title “Haus [&] Wellness” is about swimming pools, for example. On the other hand, we publish magazines for connoisseurs, such as our coffee magazine “Crema”. Our target groups have not disappeared in these two segments. On the contrary: when it comes to big “once in a lifetime” purchases, print is still a serious anchor that conveys credibility.

In addition to print magazines, e-papers in particular have gained immense importance

What are you doing to reach and retain your target groups? What role do special display locations play in this?

Heinemann: We have always tried to be one step closer to our target group. We want to be where our target groups are. Depending on the title, for example, in pool exhibitions, bathroom exhibitions, wellness hotels and airport lounges. Although this gives us a high circulation, which we pass on free of charge, it pays off for us because it increases our reach and therefore our advertising revenue.

What other channels are used in addition to the print magazines?

Heinemann: Online plays a major role for us in finding target groups. We notice this in our single issue orders: Many readers decide to cross the information threshold from web to print and deliberately want to receive more and printed content. How actively we operate the individual social media channels depends entirely on the magazine in question. For some titles, social media plays no role at all, for others a major one, such as “Crema”. E-papers have become extremely important for us. With “Diabetes Living”, for example, we are represented in the online libraries of clinics and reach many people who correspond exactly to our target group.

Your titles appeal to very different reader groups. How is the publishing house set up editorially to cater to these target groups?

Heinemann: Very differently depending on the title. For the big magazines, we have an editorial team of around 15 permanent employees. Smaller magazines that only appear twice a year are handled by freelancers. We also have many freelance writers who are extremely knowledgeable in their respective fields. One of our top writers in “Crema”, for example, is an absolute coffee nerd, while another writer travels the world and visits cafés that she features in our magazine.

Let's take a closer look at “Crema”. The magazine has the highest circulation of any coffee magazine in Europe. What strategy has made the magazine so successful?

Heinemann: About 15 years ago, I was in a large electronics store and made an observation. There was almost nothing going on in the store, except in one aisle: all hell was breaking loose in the fully automatic coffee machines. I thought to myself, if someone is buying a coffee machine for 1000 euros, they want to have sound information about it. On this basis, we founded “Crema” on the firm assumption that people would snatch the magazines out of our hands. Unfortunately, that was a fallacy. (laughs)

It took us about five years to understand what content really works: With the beautiful portafilter machines, the craft idea came into the coffee sector. As a magazine, we evolved with the trend in terms of content, becoming more honest and relevant. If you like, we have become more and more nerdy – together with our readers. The fact that coffee became really cool at some point played into our hands.

What makes “Crema” special today?

Heinemann: Today we present coffee varieties from all over the world, test different machines and portray exciting people who are involved with coffee. Which roasts are particularly good, where does my coffee come from, which machine feels how? These are questions that interest our readers. When the new “Crema” is published, we have a lot of traffic on our social media channels – our readers look forward to every issue and they like the magazine mainly because it is in print. For them, a haptic magazine means slowing down and is almost like a status symbol. For us, this means that we have to make our magazine accordingly: like a friend who visits you every two months.

AI is an important research tool, but has its limits in the personal sphere

What role does AI currently play in publishing?

Heinemann: AI has sharpened our senses. On the one hand, for what is already possible. Like probably everyone in the industry, we sat open-mouthed in front of the screen with the first version of ChatGPT and could hardly believe what this new technology could do. If you ask AI for 18 good tips on how to get through the summer with diabetes for an advice piece, it gives you 20 good tips. AI has now become a valuable research tool for us. On the other hand, it has also shown us where its limits are. And these are personal. Conducting interviews, making contacts, finding exciting people and their stories or testing coffees or coffee machines – only people can do that. AI cannot generate relevance, that only works through personal contact.

What strategy do you want to use to lead the publishing house into the future? Will you remain loyal to the print sector?

Heinemann: We realize that existing magazine brands have their value. In our experience, however, launching new magazines no longer works. Instead, we started making books a year and a half ago. We now publish high-quality coffee-table books in our new book publishing division. We got off to a successful start with this, because the idea of enthusiasts also applies here. In this respect, the following sentence probably best describes our publishing house: Our answer to the print crisis is even more print.