Thomas Madsen- A time when you wanted to start from scratch,
where you didn't have all the old things lying around.
You are of course happy with the big
turnover you have and all the other things,
but it also makes it difficult to change something.
So it's a big cultural task.
Norwegian media.
The reason for the big thing is that we are 52 years old.
We have,
on the 2nd of January this year,
since the 52nd anniversary,
been established in 1767.
And we can really talk about growth hacking.
Established by four priests who want to go out
with their messages and establish themselves anti
-København at the time.
So that's part of the legacy we have in ours.
We have three strategic legs.
We have the Norwegian business,
where you have some newspapers,
30 newspapers,
TV channels,
radio channels and hundreds.
I think I've written 100 websites here.
We have a national business,
where we have some magazines and we have a long range of websites.
We run Denmark's largest advertising network,
where we sell ads for a long range of websites.
Here under DMI and other big sites.
We have marketplaces,
and that goes back to some of the things here,
where we establish niche markets,
vertical marketplaces.
We have,
among other things,
a large horse market,
where you buy a horse.
You can sell horses and export horses.
We have Retro,
just for the moment,
where we try to find some things up there.
So that's very exciting.
And finally we have a Scandinavian business,
which is B2B driven.
It's niche media for business life,
which we have in Denmark,
Norway and Sweden.
In December we bought a large company in Sweden,
which we are looking at.
It's just like that,
who we are and what we have.
Many people think it's just a small
newspaper in the Nordic countries.
But we actually have bigger ambitions about those things.
We have 909,000,
it says here,
who visited us last week.
338,000 unique have visited us on noris.dk.
We have 13.55 million visitors in the last
30 days.
88 million in the last 30 days on our 114 different websites.
It's like that.
It's just what we have.
And that's what you
have to win.
Our development in general is, as Hannu has
just shown, press.
We are in a market,
and that's actually something I'm coming to here,
which shows that we are those who are
probably the most disrupted at the moment.
We are not in a fight for newspaper readers.
We are in a fight for people's attention.
which they used not so long ago.
So it's people's time we are fighting for.
How can we get on people's land cards?
There are all kinds of other types of media they are involved in.
We also see a general change in the way it used to be mass media.
Now it's actually niche media.
A lot.
Tons of media.
You can find your own.
Basically, you can put together your own news.
Where it used to be just a newspaper,
there are many other platforms we need to worry about.
I think we have 25 different
platforms we distribute news on today.
Where 25
years ago, there was only one single platform.
That was actually a newspaper.
So that's the reality we are in.
It's not because I'm standing here and bragging.
It's not because I think it's difficult.
It's just the reality.
And there are a lot of factors here that make it so.
That we
need to master something else.
And that's what I'm getting to here.
It's a transformation of our business.
And if we look around the world,
there are actually no one who has solved the
problem for a traditional news media like we are.
So we have chosen an approach.
We have to try a lot of different things.
We have chosen four main points on how we want to create growth.
Or how we want to create new business.
Because that's what it's all about.
To create a new turnover.
And of course we have to look at the existing organization.
It has to be transformed digitally.
Not because we want to save the old print or the old media.
But because the employees we have have to master new media,
new ways of working,
and a new approach.
And a new mindset.
And that's probably one of the things
that's difficult.
We have also chosen to say,
well,
we could have some inspiration from outside.
We have established an
incubator environment.
We have also seen that we are actually
losing turnover on our print business.
So we may have to buy some new turnover.
Which will also be part of recruiting employees.
And finally we have a lab where we have,
it's actually via an acquisition,
we have gotten an office here in Aarhus.
Klostergade.
Where we have 25 people sitting down
and who are developing new things.
We take,
there is a gentleman sitting here,
I can see.
We take some of the things we go and deal with there.
And then try to get it into
our business.
In our mothership, let's put it that way.
To transform an existing company with 800 employees.
Where many of them have been for many years.
As they have been in our existing business.
It is actually to put words on many of the things we have done.
And we have done that now with this as an example.
I'm not going through it all.
But we have actually thought about the
digital through many of the processes.
Many of the flow we have through what
impact it has on our existing work.
Our existing processes and things.
And then we put words on it.
And that's something we take up once in a while.
It is to the employees.
So they can sit and see,
well,
there are some things we should think.
And it is the direction we should think.
So that's pretty interesting.
We have also made a platform.
So it's easy.
We have a new site.
We have a payment platform.
We have a sign-on system.
We have an appointment system.
And all sorts of other things we plug
into some of the solutions we have.
That are more or less plug and play.
Sometimes a little less plug and play.
But the point is that it should be plug and play.
So it's easy when we have some new things.
And connect some of the things.
Some
digital services and other things on our products.
So that's what we do for the existing business.
Regarding incubator environment.
Well, we invite companies from outside.
That can sit with us.
We would like to have someone who is related to our industry.
So we have three companies sitting here for a moment.
There are some fact-checkers.
Viral checkers.
Fact-checkers.
That are called purely factual.
We have a job thing.
Things that we look at the job area.
From a new area that is called CarryHub.
And then we have some internet security people.
SafeMove.
SafeMove.
That are sitting up there.
We give them space,
local infrastructure,
canteen.
If we can find someone who knows something about the area.
And they also give us a lot of good energy.
A lot of new ways to think about and work on.
It's pretty interesting.
We have some external partners.
That we facilitate with this.
The next thing we do is to say.
We can't invent it ourselves.
So we have actually also bought businesses.
We have bought niche markets later.
We have bought digital media.
We have bought a service company.
HandyHands.
Which is a P2P service for homework at home.
There in the garden and all kinds of other things.
If you have to cut grass.
You can cut it up.
Then someone comes and cuts grass for you.
And you calculate.
So it's very simple.
We have bought an announcement network.
Which makes us get a big digital turnover.
And we have bought some national websites.
That we run today.
And what it does.
That's actually what's interesting.
Besides.
Besides.
What can you say.
Pure turnover.
And the financial part of it.
Then it actually provides us with some extremely good competencies.
On the whole AdOperation side.
We have established a competence center.
We are one of the companies we have bought in Copenhagen.
Where there are some of the most talented in Denmark.
Who have done the whole AdOperation part.
Which ensures that you buy campaigns.
Programmatic sales of announcements.
And all kinds of other very knowledge-heavy tasks.
We could simply not attract the people.
We could maybe attract them here in Aarhus.
There is something.
But it was very difficult to find exactly that type of competence.
In the Aalborg area.
So that's one of the things that has been done.
The business development part is also
something that has been done in that way.
A digital view of our business is actually
also something that has been done.
Where we sit and say.
We have some magazines.
Which are printed.
Which actually don't even have a website.
It's the easiest thing in the world to do.
So we did that.
But actually also for saying.
Why?
We can sit and see.
Comrades.
That you have 6000 food subscriptions.
Why don't we take them.
And then make.
And then make a new description solution.
As an example of what it could be.
We have good advice for boat owners.
Back from 25 years ago.
Why don't we take them.
Make an app.
That makes you do it yourself.
With your boat.
And those things.
And that's something that we don't.
Traditionally we would have thought about.
Because as soon as a newspaper organization.
And a media organization.
Produces some news.
Then it will be put in a container.
And after that it remains old news.
It is not used for anything.
But by getting a new view.
Can you actually activate something.
Of the content we have in the process.
In some other way.
And create more revenue.
And that, that is actually quite interesting.
We have actually bought some digital revenue.
Just the little thing.
To be able to say.
As a print company.
That you have some digital revenue.
And there is a good development in it.
It gives the company a certain dynamic.
And in.
Also for our owners.
We have owned funds.
But there are still some owners on the other end.
And finally, it has given.
So buying up businesses,
having a digital placeholder,
has actually also made it
easier to attract employees.
It is difficult to be the number one
digital employee in a company like ours.
Having an environment means a lot.
And it makes it a little easier to attract software developers,
a little easier to attract adobes people,
a little easier to attract digital business development people,
because
there are some in the organization.
Lapp,
well,
it is now put in the inflection mark,
because we don't actually call it that.
It is actually a company we bought up long ago,
which has lived in Klostergade here in Aarhus,
which has evolved to be someone who is a little off the grid.
And I am actually very aware of that.
We do it.
I would very much like to keep them outside of our organization.
I would like to keep them on the edge of
our company,
because they should not be part of a corporate structure.
I actually protect it a little against all the things you have to do,
reporting and shit and shit.
I'm sorry.
But I keep them a little
on the side.
Of course, it's not that wild.
But such a little speedboat that is
next to the big mothership that we have,
that's actually what is essentially important.
There is low funding.
It's not like you're making money,
because it's the easiest thing in the world
to throw money after something like that.
It's really not what generates the good ideas.
The fact that you make funds actually
makes some extremely good ideas,
and there are some extremely creative solutions to
some things that you sit and say,
well,
you could have put in five people,
but if we just did this,
we could do it too.
And then you have a minimal viable
product access to product development.
A large
250-year-old company like ours,
you have an infrastructure.
And when I arrived half a year ago,
you sat with some infrastructure projects
that had been running for three years.
When they were done, I said, now we're done.
Now we're trying to see what we can use it for.
Then it turned out that Facebook,
Facebook again,
it couldn't handle our single sign-on solution.
And Google and so on.
What are we doing?
What the hell have you been able to do?
It was three years ago,
and then you're developed and then you're on your way.
We need to have a little more agile
access to things,
and we're putting something into practice.
And then it can well happen that we
have to handle it through the system.
If there are 500,000 users who come to it,
then we can start talking about integration
and all kinds of other things to our systems.
But let's just try to see if it works.
Let's try to see if it works.
And then we have to integrate it accordingly in our infrastructure,
if that's the way it works.
There was a IT department that just had to make an extra round there.
But
what is it?
It has actually introduced a digital mindset.
It has introduced a
product access to Norway.
So we have product owners now on all of our products who sit
and own the product and think like a user in our product.
That's something that this has introduced.
We have a new way of developing products.
A
can-do attitude that we just try.
We have some things we want to do once in a while.
Then we say, well, we'll keep up a hackathon.
Then I
take our team in Aalborg and our team in Aarhus.
Then they keep
a week where they focus on one problem,
one solution.
And then they come up with some
fantastic solutions, I would say.
So I'm deeply impressed by what you can do if
you go together for a week about these things.
It has actually introduced our business to some
digital talents that we could never have imagined.
Otherwise,
we have some people from Aarhus who are
now looking at our website as e-commerce.
So it can be conversion,
what is converted through the project.
Who are looking at design,
UX on our website.
These are things that we are of course worried about.
We have not
had the right people.
And finally,
we have actually been able to attract some good people.
Because we have had some different environments to do it with.
So it's pretty interesting.
We use all this.
What binds it all together is actually
the things we use every day to look at.
How can we produce content that we can sell,
that we can deliver to people on a given platform.
And how the hell can we build a business
model about all the things we have.
That's it.
That's probably it.
So, bring it on!
