Jost Spantermann works in Düsseldorf today, in Hamburg tomorrow and in Frankfurt the day after. A week later, he’ll be in Cologne, Berlin and back in Frankfurt. He lives in Stuttgart. His profession: media consultant. To describe exactly what that entails, the 54-year-old has to go back a bit: “I’m actually a trained journalist; I used to write articles and research background material for daily newspapers and TV editorial teams, and later I also helped launch entire series. A few years ago, I set up my own small writing agency, but then I started getting commissions from all over Germany – I’ve created PR campaigns for companies, produced TV features on all sorts of topics, and regularly written columns for national newspapers.”
At first, Spantermann, a native of Westphalia, managed to do all this from a small office in his flat. “But then I got bored at home; somehow I felt as though the walls were closing in on me. So I rented space in a business centre, and immediately felt much more at ease – I had a desk in a co-working space, and it was brilliant to be able to chat with a few people who were also running one-man operations at the start of their businesses. You share your worries, you share the good times – like when you’ve landed a lucrative contract. A sort of community formed – we even went out for a bite to eat together in the evenings sometimes; I’m still on very good terms with some of them today.”
These days, Spantermann prepares for his presentations in business centres located where his clients are based: “For example, I run media seminars for top managers – many of them are first-class business experts or engineers, chemists, financial experts or pharmacists – but dealing with the media requires a very specific set of skills, particularly in this age of increasing digitalisation – and that’s something most of them have to learn over the course of their careers. I’ve already hired conference rooms in business centres to bring people together in one place – in Düsseldorf, for example, there are many trade fairs, so at certain times I can bring several clients from different companies together in one place and hold the seminars for everyone at the same time – this is also much more cost-effective and efficient for the clients.”
Dr André Helf, CEO of the COLLECTION Business Centre Group, understands the needs of his clients in the media industry inside out: “Few companies experience such rapid and radical change across their entire operations as service providers in the communications sector. Public image and its impact are extremely important – here at COLLECTION Business Center, we are delighted to count media professionals amongst our clients and will continue to do everything we can to support them with our state-of-the-art technology and attractive office rents.”
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