Marketing change in an existential crisis

Weltbild

In 2014, the well-known publishing house and bookstore Weltbild had to file for insolvency. The fact that the Catholic Church was the owner exacerbated the explosive situation. komm.passion took over internal and external corporate communications and assumed the role of press spokesperson for the insolvency administrator of the Weltbild Group.

The most important task for crisis communication: establishing internal and external acceptance in a highly emotional environment and presenting complex legal facts in a comprehensible way.

komm.passion professionally handled hundreds of media enquiries: Regional newspapers, national media, radio, television, trade press. Furthermore, the agency assisted with crisis communication in the social media channels of the publishing house. But above all, internal communication played an important role: alleviating fears, maintaining motivation and explaining difficult decisions and tough measures in a comprehensible way, as well as keeping staff informed and supporting them during this difficult time. This included, among other things, official language regulations and assistance for the branches and customer service.

Parallel to this classic crisis communication, an important change process took place, which mainly affected marketing. Komm.passion successfully repositioned ‘Weltbild 2.0’. These efforts also included reorganisation of marketing. Key components in this endeavour: networking of the marketing departments, many of which had previously operated separately; introduction of common themes across all sales channels; and expansion of search engine optimisation (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) as well as the catalogue.

Crucial: during the crisis, this change or transformation process could not be accomplished in the usual time. The company had to be made ‘fit’ for the talks with investors. The changes were implemented in a record time of three months – with help of the publishing house’s departments and support of the staff.

All things considered, the marketing change became a success in the acute crisis. In the end, instead of crisis communication, there was also good news in press relations: Weltbild will continue to operate.

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