Schibsted WAC

Q1) Important success breeding turn in schibsted life a result of mere luck or
could you trace any elements of strategic planning?
Important success breeding turn in schibsted life was not because of mere
luck but there had been some strategic planning behind it.
Aftenposten was a family owned business that launched its first newspaper
by the name of aaftenposten. VG (verden gangs) newspaper was acquired by
aftenposten after World War 2 and it remained independent competitor to
Aftenposten. When VG developed its strong nationwide distribution channels
and overtook aftenposten in circulation, afenposten owners balanced the
management of two competing paper and established a department called
The schibsted group. Schibsted started to acquire smaller papers in order
to expand their portfolio. Schibsted reorganized its firm and established two
of its subsidiaries. One leading he aftenposten and other VG. After listing as a
public company it began to persue new investments. It started up its own
media company.
For any public listed company, growth is very important but management
acknowledge that transditional newspaper will not provide them so they
decided to uterlize their strong position, cashflow and strong competitive
advantage of two traditional newspaper to take aggressive position in the
online market.
Changes were done in the organization. Two part vision was announced by
schibsted. Firstly there will be a transformation from print media to electronic
media and transformation of norwagian company to scandinavian company.
Secondly, schibsted will be divided into 3 business units such as print
media,TV/film and multimedia.they also made online ventures such as SOL
and online newspaper.
The burst of dot.com resulted in mild but lengthy recession period that
impacted new and old media firms including schibsted that faced heavy
losses to the firm. At the point of the crises, senior management pressurized
to cutback new media investments but aamot and his team chooses a
different strategy. They narrow down their focus and continue to emphasize
the development of online newspaper, classified advertising and free dailies
while cutting cost and selling certain assets. They had a strong belief that
they were not just newspaper but a part of media industry.
In 1996, schibsted came up with classified ad strategy with five regional
newspaper in which they stated that they will put a copy of their newspaper
ads on the internet. The failure of this venture caused the schibsted to

change their classified ad strategy. Now this model was redesigned and its
ownership was divided according to the market share in print classified
arena. Firstly print classified section was re-branded with the new name FINN
which was not an internet brand nor individual company brand but was
perceived as a sub- brand of readers trusted print newspaper.
Later on, in 2000 two days after stock market bubble crashed it launched its
online classified service. Hiring people from outside print media for online
operations was also a part of their planning. They opted to be a part of
media group rather than operating as a pure play. Their initial reliance was
on the assets of the print operations. tHey piggy back on both the content
and the brand of the print paper.this strategy was refered as dramaturgy.
Online news site should be developed over the premises of online media.
Schibsted also noted other ways in which online news philosophy
manifested itself. They put energy into big news in order to build awareness
and credibilty for the firm.
The launch of free newpaper 2o minutes is another milestone achieved by
schibsted. They adopted the entrepreneurial model of free newspaper
publisher. They enter the new market with a new product: capital and dont
cannibalize.success in online business led them to have an additional
investment in anoher online trade and traditional newspaper E24.se.its
success lead them to open a sister company that gained within 7 hours of its
launch. They also launched their sarch engine by the b=name of sesam . in
2005, they articulated their ambition schibsted is to create tomorrowmediatoday, and be the most attractive media group in euorpe.
Q2) how do you proposed should schibsted find growth in online classified
business?

Q3) should schibsted online new sites move aggressively to develop motion
picture capability that would further lead to compete with broad cast media?
Yes they should go because more users are doing more, user expectations
are increasing, there are more intitutive websites, techno is improving,

abid.khawaja@nbs.nust.edu.pk by noon, April 04, 2015.

The subject is Schibsted WAC