« Back to blog

Bonnier's Annual Review | Bonnier AB

The year 2009 was the best and the worst ever, depending on which media you talk about.

Download the complete 2009 Annual Review (pdf) here.

Click here for a reader-friendly version.

A word from our CEO, Jonas Bonnier:

At last: the year that shook up the media industry and put us back on the right track.

For a few months this past spring, our advertising sales in the U.S. dropped by 30 percent from the previous year. In August the advertising volume in our Swedish business newspaper was just half the volume of the year before. These figures were hard to swallow at the time. We spoke of a paradigm shift and painted the world in black and white. But now that 2009 has come to a close, we can once again confirm: It's not black or white, but black and white.

The year 2009 was when the high tide of an economic boom receded, suddenly and dramatically revealing truths we had always known but had managed to repress. At the increasingly frenzied pace of the first decade of the millennium, we ran ever faster, and in ever tighter circles, until suddenly, our conclusions about the future were obvious:

1. The audience

The media have traditionally aimed to give the public what it wants. Paradoxically, at the same time the assumption has been that the public didn't really know what it wanted, and that the media should provide what it thought would be appropriate - and profitable. Today we can no longer pretend we don't know what our audience wants. They tell us - every day, every minute - exactly what they think of what we produce. And we have to listen, not reluctantly but eagerly. It's still about the element of surprise, about creative development and refinement. But clearly the starting point is our audience's demands.

2. Efficiency

Good years create bad habits. And many good years create a host of bad habits, which, added together over time, become increasingly difficult to escape. By neglecting to adapt cost structures and working methods for a new age, we posed risks to our operations, brands and business opportunities. Thankfully, 2009 finally presented us with a chance to correct our course.

3. Digitization

According to rough estimates, more than 100 million consumers purchased our books, read our magazines and newspapers, and saw our films and TV programs last year. Tens of thousands of advertisers used us as a channel to convey their messages. Practically all of these buyers, viewers, readers and advertisers were connected to the Internet for much of the year. The digitization we spoke of for so long had already happened, and it was time to stop speaking of it as something new. The business models we had searched so long for were actually the same business models we had always used: We get paid for producing products that people like. It's as simple as that. But it took a year like 2009 for us to realize this.

In numbers, 2009 was a year of extremes.

Several of our print media recorded some of the worst figures of the past decade. For SF Bio and our combined book publishing operations, 2009 was the best year of the companies' 100- and 200-year histories, respectively.

Reality is seldom only black or white.

Jonas Bonnier

CEO, Bonnier AB

Stockholm, March 2010

Annual review 2008:

Download the complete 2008 Bonnier Annual Review here. (pdf)

Download the 2008 Bonnier Annual Report here. (pdf)

  • Delicious

    Delicious

  • Digg

    Digg

  • Facebook

    Facebook

  • Google

    Google

  • Technorati

    Technorati

Välitän tässä Jaanan linkkaaman vinkin Facebookista. Samalla demoan kommentointia.

Comments (0)

Leave a comment...