Values

THE GLOBAL DEVELOPMENT OF GEO’S EDITIONS
There are currently 19 editions of GEO magazine, which are mainly put together
and edited at the international desk in Hamburg.
Over the last three decades, the GEO family has grown consistently.
The green magazine’s most recent launch took place in Brazil in 2009.
Travel writers are offered a lot of freebies,
something that can tempt them
into biased reporting,” says Gaede by
way of explaining the skepticism. Back
then, he was working as head reporter,
and remembers having his own concerns.
It took a few years and lots of
heated discussions before editorial
staff began to accept that it was possi-
Rolf Gillhausen and his deputy
editor-in-chief, Max Scheler (sitting)
ble to create a serious, journalistic
magazine, even with “fl uffy” travel topics.
The result was “Geo Saison” – “sunshine
on paper,” as Gaede quotes the
magazine’s long-serving editor-in-chief,
Christiane Breustedt.
At the start of the new millennium,
the “Geo” family gained more members.
Some were long planned, others
Longtime editor at “Geo”:
Ernst Arthur Albaum
were created more spontaneously.
When the head of marketing for Unicef
suggested putting out an issue for children,
journalists immediately jumped
on the idea, working on it during their
free time. “Geolino” was launched to
coincide with “Geo’s” 20th anniversary.
It quickly became a hit, and began to be
produced on a regular basis. The new
titles also help to fi nd new readers for
the core publication, “Geo,” with its
trademark green cover. The group is increasingly
generating new revenues
with products outside the world of
magazines: books, calendars, reader
trips, and reference works that sell millions.
By 2003, “Geo” is an established
brand in Germany. But its foreign expansion
is somewhat sluggish. Building
up a local editorial team like that in
France or Spain takes a long time, costs a
lot of money, and for smaller countries,
makes no economic sense. And G+J
hasn’t had good experiences with the alternative
– licensing the brand to interested
publishing companies abroad.
The fi rst licensing partners in Japan and
South Korea aren’t able to implement
“Geo’s” journalistic concept. Their editions
fail on the newsstands, damaging
the reputation of G+J’s “Geo” editions.
G+J managers realize that the “Geo”
brand needs to be cultivated, so they
set up an international editorial offi ce
in Hamburg to support the foreign
publishers in producing their local
editions. Instead of translating entire
issues, the foreign partners can
choose from a pool of articles,
translate them, and supplement
the issue with their own local articles.
The concept works, and in
2005, “Geo” expands to six more
countries. Since then, each year has
seen the addition of another country.
Even India’s Outlook publishing
house borrows from the pool of articles
by German journalists for the
production of the Indian edition.
“With the international expansion
and diversifi cation of “Geo,”
we succeeded in creating one of the
strongest brands in the magazine
market. If my colleagues had given
up in the face of those fi rst few setbacks,
we’d have never made it so
far,” says G+J Chairman Bernd
Buchholz. “Sometimes, you have to
wait a bit before you can harvest the
fruits of your labor.”
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