To all those who do not yet know you in France, could you explain to us, in a few words, what is the meaning of your service and what need(s) is it supposed to respond to?
Petra: Whether it’s a product launch, location opening, statement, personnel change or international merger: Companies and organisations of all types and sizes have something to say and need reach and visibility to do so. As a 100% subsidiary of the Deutsche Presse-Agentur (dpa) news aktuell gives them effective access to media and consumers and supports them in telling their stories.
Vithunan: Using our digital tools ots and zimpel, PR content reaches all media formats such as classic print titles, high-click online portals or social networks. In addition, we publish all of our clients’ PR content on www.presseportal.de, one of the PR portals with the widest reach in Germany. This means that all relevant target groups worldwide can be reached, from editorial teams to specialist blogs and digital influencers to interested private individuals.
Today, how many customers do you have and what type of customers are they?
Petra: news aktuell offers these services to the professional communications market – and has been doing so for over 30 years. Accordingly, we cover customers from all industries and company sizes – from start-ups to corporations. Political organisations, government agencies, media companies, NGOs and PR agencies also use our tools and services.
The majority of our customers come from the communications departments of companies, institutions and the PR service sector. In addition, marketing and advertising professionals have been our customers for some time, as we also offer paid media formats such as native advertising.
How many journalists use your services today? Have you encountered any difficulties in your evangelization strategy with these information professionals? How did you manage to attract them?
Petra: Since our founding, we have been working to expand our relationships with media professionals. We rely on a trusting collaboration that focuses on the mutual benefit for editorial teams and PR professionals. Of course, this trust needs to be earned and maintained on an ongoing basis. In real terms, this means that we are constantly in contact with many media professionals in order to get to know their requirements and needs and to tailor our services accordingly. As an interface between media and press work, we pass on our knowledge of journalistic work and the requirements for professional PR material to PR professionals and subsequently improve mutual understanding.
In addition to trusting collaboration, the added value of our services must of course be clearly visible for media professionals. Therefore we use both a push and a pull strategy. In other words, on the one hand, media professionals can proactively obtain information on our press portal, yet on the other hand, they can also receive targeted information on the key topics relevant to them via an entry in our zimpel journalist database.
With accreditation in zimpel, media professionals indicate their areas of interest and receive much more targeted inquiries and tailored information. Of course, the stored data can be adjusted at any time – data sovereignty always lies with the journalist. 612,000 authorised contacts worldwide are a testament to the great acceptance that zimpel has among journalists, bloggers, podcasters and influencers.
With over 12,000 newsrooms from companies, organisations, media houses and police departments, Presseportal.de is a real treasure trove for media professionals looking for information. Basically, it’s a kind of easily and freely accessible quarry of all kinds of raw material. Text messages, images in print quality, broadcast-ready audio material and videos – the contents of our portal are a source of news, ad hoc advisers and suppliers of quotes. The entire press portal content can be used freely by media professionals and employed to produce stories and articles.
The same goes for communicators: have you encountered any obstacles regarding them? If so, how did you manage to remove all these obstacles?
Vithunan: In today's information society, it is becoming increasingly difficult for companies to attract the attention of their target group. It is therefore crucial to identify the right channels and to take place exactly where the relevant target groups are. This is exactly where we come in: As a player in the market for decades, we have built a large network of agencies, media, journalists and content partners in more than 170 countries. Our value proposition: We increase the performance of stories among media professionals, on social media, on news sites and, of course, on Google. We precisely ensure the visibility and reach that the respective communication strategy requires. We support our customers along the entire communication chain: from content creation to distribution to evaluation and success control of communication measures.
Despite largely automated processes, the human factor also has a very important role to play for us. Specifically, human quality control is established in various places, be it when checking the message senders and message content or when processing the messages. In addition, our support is multi-pronged, from chatbot to technical support to individual advice, the service concept is at the top of our list. The fact that we have hit a nerve here is reflected in our customers, some of whom have been loyal to us for decades.
Last but not least, being embedded in the dpa group also strengthens our standing, because here we benefit from a broad network of experts and an infrastructure that enables us to respond flexibly to the changing requirements of PR professionals. As part of the dpa group, news aktuell has always stood for reliability, professionalism and quality – and the trust that we have received from our customers for many years shows that we are on the right path.
Today, seen from France, your position seems hegemonic in the field of public relations in Germany and beyond. Do you have any figures to illustrate this strong position?
Petra: We are happy to provide a few numbers:
* Expertise in the PR and communications market for over 30 years
* 12.5 million visits per month (IVW checked: Average value Jul 21 – Jun 22)
* 12,000 company newsrooms
* 612,000 data records worldwide
* more than 1,750 topic areas
* 170 countries where your information can be distributed
In a world hit by ‘infobesity’ and the proliferation of communication channels, what place do you think press releases occupy? What do you respond to those who say this channel has become obsolete?
Petra: We are convinced that classic media will continue to play an important role in the information landscape in the future. Media professionals will therefore continue to be an important target group for companies and organisations in the future in order to proactively distribute their information and thereby maintain credibility. A professionally written press release is, and remains, one of the most effective tools for addressing this target group. Because it provides short, factual and precise information and enables journalists, who are working under ever-increasing time pressure, to quickly classify things.
It is therefore not surprising that surveys among media professionals repeatedly show that press releases continue to be classed as one of the most important sources of research. If press releases meet journalistic requirements and are addressed in a targeted manner, they continue to reach exactly the relevant media target groups and give them an important impulse for their work.
To keep pace with this changing world, what tools and/or services do you have/are you considering developing?
Vithunan: In order to see and, in the best case, even anticipate the changes in the media and PR industry, we regularly listen to the communications industry and are very close to the market and its challenges. We invest a lot of time in industry studies, customer surveys and focus groups to further develop our tools and services based on needs.
We can see that reach and visibility will not lose relevance in the future. With our distribution tool ots and our media directory zimpel, we are meeting a basic need in the PR industry now, and will continue to do so in the future. We also see that data-driven communication as well as the measurability of communication measures are becoming increasingly important.
Two further trends that have become increasingly important in recent years are paid media and influencer relations. We therefore now offer native advertising in the environment of selected, high-quality media houses throughout the GSA region (Germany, Switzerland, Austria), just as we have been expanding our zimpel media directory for some time now with contacts to influencers.
We are also continually examining how we can use artificial intelligence for our services and tools. The use of AI is specifically conceivable as support in topic research, in the creation and optimisation of various content formats, in the keywording of content, or in the analysis and evaluation of communication measures. Last but not least, we have new products on the agenda for the next few years. We can't reveal much here at the moment – but we have a lot in development that our customers can look forward to.
Interview conducted by Hugues Dago
