Aftonbladet is one of Sweden’s largest and oldest newspapers. Even though news consumption has become increasingly digital over the past decades, Aftonbladet’s paper edition isstill going strong and making up an important part of Aftonbladet’s business. To that end, Aftonbladet wanted to develop a future strategy to make the paper edition prosper as long as possible in a declining market.

Identifying the key customers

We approached the challenge by first looking into who the key paying customers in the market are, thereby identifying a strategic target group for the paper edition only.

We then profiled the strategic target group, making it come alive in Aftonbladet’s organization and telling the story of the target group for all divisions.

Ideation with business developers and journalists

Together with a team of editors, high-profile journalists and business developers we then ideated on how to develop the paper edition for the strategic target group.

In a final step we defined and copy wrote ten key strategic guidelines for Aftonbladet’s paper edition going forward.

Secure a winning proposition

The original work, that was conducted in 2016, resulted in a revamped paper edition, with optimized content for the strategic target group. It helped secure success for the paper even five years later in the declining market. In 2021 we revisited the strategic target group to confirm that the set strategy is still a winning proposition in the market.

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