Media & IT

The Industry
Groundbreaking Ideas

More than any other industry, the media and IT sector relies on a central, urban location and effective information networks. Hamburg is an ideal environment for innovation where new ideas can be brought to fruition.

The local media and IT industry comprises 22,823 enterprises with a total of almost 114,100 employees. Apart from traditional publishing companies and broadcasters, the emerging entertainment software segment has earned Hamburg the moniker "Gamecity" among experts.

Embracing the recent evolution of digital full video, a regional industry cluster was formed to support "New TV" trends and market developments in IPTV, web TV, video on demand and mobile phone TV. 

Key Areas
From the Hamburg Metropolitan Region Out Into the World

The Hamburg metropolitan region is home to long-established publishing companies, it is a hotbed of creative advertising, "Gamecity", and a hub of film production and high-quality television news and entertainment programmes: It is a major European media centre. There are 13,568 businesses with more than 63,600 employees working in advertising, public relations, publishing, print, music and film, radio and television production. The big publishing houses, Axel Springer, Gruner + Jahr and Heinrich Bauer, have a combined market share of just under 50 percent. Hamburg offers media companies a unique set of advantages: A media landscape in which all segments of the industry are amply represented – a significant aspect in view of increasing convergence –, a large number of competent service providers and highly qualified and experienced specialists – in short: a creative and innovative environment. 

Publishing

Hamburg’s second press boom ensued after 1945. Notable figures like Rudolf Augstein, Heinrich Bauer, Gerd Bucerius, Thomas Ganske, John Jahr, Henri Nannen or Axel Springer, to name but a few, are publishers who set benchmarks and whose success is inextricably linked to Hamburg. The city still is Germany’s top location for newspaper and magazine publishing, spanning the range from daily papers, high-circulation consumer media and magazines to professional journals. London was the example which Hamburg’s publishing world aspired to follow, in a time when The Times and the BBC effectively became institutions that defined serious news journalism.

Home of Stern, Spiegel, Die Zeit – to this day, Hamburg epitomizes journalistic diversity and is the place where some of Germany’s most respected publications are created. 15 of the 20 top-selling magazines are edited in Hamburg. In addition to publishing companies, the full breadth of traditional media and other information and communication technologies is represented in the city.

Apart newspapers and magazine publishers, the figure includes book publishers, news agencies and specialized companies producing telephone directories or address books, as well as printing firms that render valuable services to the publishing industry.

Advertising

The list of long-established advertising agencies in Hamburg is tantamount to a "who’s who" of the German advertising industry: Draftfcb, Jung v. Matt, Lowe or Scholz & Friends – all of these Hamburg-based companies have made advertising history. Even those once counted among the "young rebels", such as Grabartz & Partner, Kolle Rebbe, Philipp & Keuntje, KNSK and Zum Goldenen Hirschen, have become fixtures in the German advertising landscape. And the next generation of the young "creative class" is already raring to go.

Hamburg’s advertising professionals are regarded as highly creative: From the international New York Festival to the German Effie Awards and the ADC competition – the top-ranking German advertisers in recent years have almost exclusively been Hamburg-based agencies. Thus, it comes as no surprise that Hamburg is considered to be the nation’s hotbed of creative advertising.

The Miami Ad School, one of the world’s leading providers of training in advertising, opened Miami Ad School Europe at the Finkenau Media Campus in Hamburg.

Hamburg has also been Germany’s design capital for many years, owing its reputation to such enterprising figures as Lothar Böhm, Rolf Heide, Peter Maly and Peter Schmidt. The city is home to 1,568 design firms – not even counting freelance designers.