Inside Ringier Axel Springer Poland’s transformation strategy, guided by quality and responsiveness

In a market heavily disrupted by digital advertising and online platforms, Ringier Axel Springer Poland has achieved a remarkable feat.

"We managed to return back to our historical highest revenues, in fact, even exceed them," said CEO Aleksander Kutela, referring to the company's performance during the past 10+ years.

WAN-IFRA Members can view Kutela's presentationfrom World News Media Congress on our Knowledge Hub.

A relentless focus on quality has been essential: in the current media market, where content becomes a commodity, "only focusing on quality, on differentiating us from everybody else, can give us a chance," Kutela said.

He highlighted the evolution of their flagship Polish brand, Onet- a web portal and news platform which, he said, "used to be kind of a Polish Yahoo," and was somewhat associated with clickbait.

To improve the content quality and the brand's overall image, they first decided to change how success is measured on the platform. This involved moving away from page views and instead using an engagement metric that measures total time spent.

Other changes included investing in multi-format content and especially TV-quality video, hiring top journalists, investing heavily in personalisation, and the adoption of the User Needs model introduced by Dmitry Shishkin, formerly of the BBC World Service and now Strategic Editorial Advisor for Ringier Media.

These steps have allowed the platform to "differentiate us quite a lot from other publishers," according to Kutela. Over time, the public perception evolved, and the site is now among the most trusted and influential media outlets in Poland, he added.

"We managed to make this shift in perception, and this was a very strong base for further transformation," he said.

Strategy leaning on responsiveness

As mentioned, the company has embraced the User Needs model, taking an approach that also involves closely monitoring current and upcoming trends, Kutela said.

"For every new emerging trend, we launch respective new services. Today, many of them are actually leading services for these trends," he explained.

For example, the previously described transformation of Onet was partly in response to social media. The publisher aimed to stand out from social networks as a trusted content platform.

Kutela said Onet now combines the best of the publishing and social media worlds, offering premium, reliable content alongside personalisation, user experience and reach.

The platform also features content from more than 300 partners, who provide their content on a revenue-sharing basis.

The growing trend of digital subscriptions, which has also been strongly felt in Poland, is another evolution that has influenced Ringier Axel Springer Poland's strategy. However, Agora was the first Polish publisher to launch a premium digital subscription service in the country, and according to Kutela, achieved "excellent results" with their product.

"Our approach was slightly different," he said. Ringier Axel Springer Poland bundled all their premium services into one package, still under the Onet brand, achieving an average compound annual growth rate of 91 percent.

Read more: Bundling done right: How Ringier Axel Springer Poland built a winning digital subscription bundle

In response to the more recent rise of AI, Ringier Axel Springer Poland launched their own AI assistant, which was trained using content from their own services and brands. Consumers can now use it to create article summaries, get an overview of the most important news of the day, or simply as an AI chatbot.

All these changes have played a significant role in supporting Ringier Axel Springer Poland's efforts to diversify its revenue streams, Kutela said.

"Today, a significant part of our revenues come from these new initiatives, like video and digital subscriptions," he said.

Culture "an enabler of everything else"

The strategic pillars of quality, responsiveness, and ultimately, revenue diversification have been essential. However, Kutela added, "none of them would work if not for a very important enabler: culture and our people."

"We build culture based on engagement, cooperation, but most of all openness for change. We believe even the best technology will not help us unless people really want to use this technology and they are open for the change," he said.

During the Q&A session that followed the presentation, he said the publisher's strong internal culture has its roots in the 2010 merger between Ringier and Axel Springer.

At the time of the merger, "establishing a common culture was the main principle for us. Maybe because of that we've paid extremely high attention to culture from day one," he said.

"This culture [has been an] essential part of the story, it's a kind of an enabler of everything else."

Finally, Kutela advised anyone involved in transformation projects to allow sufficient time before judging the results.

"As you know, there is no magic formula for successful transformation. But I think there is one distinctive factor," he said.

"Whenever we have a new project or innovation, it's very important to do it with a certain scale, with a certain intensity, to really start to see the results."

"It is a bit like water. When we want to transform it from liquid to steam, we need to achieve a certain level of temperature: 100 degrees Celsius. It's the same with innovation. We need to achieve a certain critical mass, to exceed the tipping point, to really see the results."

Teemu Henriksson

Research Editor

[email protected]