Two Magazines I Like – Or: Paper that Deserves to be Read.
brand eins & enorm!
I started “blogging” and publishing my experiences and ideas in the IF blog in 2008. It was a true delight for me to primarily do this for myself. Then I enjoyed noticing how many readers I have and also liked the many events and contacts that developed from it. Then I looked for and found a few co-authors, not many of whom actually remain to this day.
IF-Blog.de was also responsible for me finding brand eins. But more on this later in this article.
The history (Geschichte) of brand eins officially starts in August, 1999. In 2008, brand eins was already in its ninth year. In fact, the early stages of its history were even three years before that, in 1996. And yet, like many of my friends, I did not yet know anything about brand eins.
The beginning of the brand eins story was probably with an interview by Jost Stollmann (1996). At the time, Jost was the boss of Compunet; the InterFace Connection GmbH was twelve years old at the time. My personal connection with Jost Stollmann is not only that we are both IT enterprises. No: he was also one of Rupert Lay’s students.
At the time, Rupert drove a red Series-Three-BMW (including a 2.0-litre machine), which was rather extraordinary for a Jesuit pastor. In fact, his car looked a lot like my red Series-Three-BMW (including 2.3-litre machine). That was something we enjoyed very much. Rupert’s BMW, however, was not a business car, but a gift (or item on loan) from Jost. And Rupert very much delighted in his fast red BMW and especially in its origin.
Incidentally, Jost Stollmann remained faithful to brand eins – he gave more interviews with them (in 2009 and in 2012).
(Unfortunately, I could not find the 1996 interview anywhere. I would really like to read it. If any of you has a link or a pdf for it, you could make me happy by sending it).
brand eins is something I first came upon through Florian. At the time, Dr. Florian Prange had just started working for InterFace as a senior consultant. He was a very refined, young and socially active type of person. Today, he has his own enterprise and is treasurer in the board of directors of FÖS (Forum Ökologisch-Soziale Marktwirtschaft), which is also a very interesting address.
Florian liked my articles and consequently pointed me towards brand eins. In his opinion, my articles deserved a few more readers – and he thought that maybe this could be achieved through brand eins.
In fact, I did not know about brand eins at the time, regardless of the fact that it had already been on the market for nine years. For managers, the “must” magazines were the Manager Magazin or the Wirtschaftswoche. Both are anathema to me – and I saw that brand eins was totally different and much better.
Consequently, I was fascinated by brand eins and quite a few friends and business partners were given a copy or two of the magazine over time. Giving it to them was always a huge success – many had never heard about it and were surprised. They were happy to get totally new impulses.
It was even beneficial in terms of business. One of my friends (If-blog author Edwin Ederle) managed to be mentioned in one of their editions with his enterprise data2impact (Feine Klitsche). And the reviews (Rezensionen) on brand eins I wrote in IF-blog for quite a few years were also often read.
This is also how I first met Gabriele Fischer, the founder of brand eins. My contact with her led to a great presentation by Frau Fischer at the IF-Forum.
Unfortunately, Frau Fischer did not want to become a “Youtube-Toussie“ (this is how she herself formulated it), which means we cannot offer you a video documentation of her excellent presentation.
And this is how posterity will really miss something very important.
brand eins still exists today – and it is now the established business magazine, not only for managers! And it is still the only paper I deem worthy of reading. …
Wrong!
I should have written: Was. Because now I found enorm . That is a magazine dealing more with life than with business.
Here is how it happened. On Friday one week ago, I was introduced to Peter Felixberger (who, incidentally, is good friends with Gabriele Fischer). Among other things, Peter was also the founder of changeX.
Today, he is programming manager of Murmann Publishers. He is the editor and responsible for the edition of kursbuch.edition and of the magazine enorm, as well as publisher of »Kursbuch auf Weltreise« (Goethe-Institut). And there are many other things he does on top of that. My friend Andreas Zeuch also published his latest book at Murmann.
On that Friday, I had a wonderful conversation with Peter Felixberger. I noticed that there are many similarities between our ideas of value, interests and needs. Consequently, it was very nice for me to listen to him. He really made me quite enthusiastic about his publishing company and his products.
He also showed me enorm, which is a magazine directed at the age group between 20 and 40, but in my estimation it will find and has already found many followers among the younger and older readers.
I can easily imagine enorm in less than ten years being as much of a success as brand eins is today. Consequently, I will now give you a short mini review of the current edition 06 (December/January 2016/2017).
What is it that fascinates me about enorm?
There are two elements that fascinate me: the basic concept of the magazine and the topics.
I would say the basic concept is one of fairness and considerateness.
I rather like the topics because everything I find in the magazine is of high relevance for me. The structure is GET-UNDER-WAY, BECOME-ACTIVE and LIVE.. Under the subsection “Against All Odds”, I find a beautiful collection of topics that I consider extremely important today. After all, enorm has been available since January 2010. You will find all the editions since 2010 in the archive archive on their website. Also full of important topics. Many articles, however, are “not yet set public” – dependent on the edition. I find that reasonable, because especially if you write about important topics, you should also be able to earn money with what you write. Besides, there is still enough to read.
Now I wonder if it is perhaps a good idea to make some enorm editions gifts to my friends and business partners – as I formerly did with brand eins. Especially in the departments with the impossible name “Human Resource“ (HR), enorm might perhaps be extremely helpful in small and big German enterprises when it comes to better understanding the values, expectations, interests and needs of the employees. And there is probably no enterprise that could not potentially benefit from such understanding.
Withbrand eins, it was possible to read all archived articles for free. That seems to be a thing of the past. But I find many brand eins articles on the internet – see also the two Jost Stollmann interviews. And the Inspiration section on the brand eins website also looks very attractive to me.
Incidentally, it is also very rewarding to follow both magazines on twitter. Here are the “accounts“:
@brandeins and @enorm_magazin. So: #FF!
Buy and Pay!
I think it is a matter of fairness to, once in a while, also buy paper articles. If you do not wish to read it yourself, you can make a gift of it. And that will inspire other persons.
So here is what you want to do: walk to the kiosk on February, 24th and buy the next enorm edition.
RMD
(Translated by EG)
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