Please do not imitate at home

Magazines With the help of Superman and co., Catapult wants to position the Ringier magazine Tele as the Swiss media magazine. "If it were a movie, you'd give it four stars and watch it all the time," said Steven Reddicliffe last fall in praise of the newly revamped TV magazine Tele. And the editor-in-chief of TV-Guide New York/Los Angeles was not the only laudator with this opinion. Less flattering judgments, such as Kurt-Emil Merki's review in the Aargauer Zeitung, also made the rounds. But if you believe those responsible at Tele, the facelift was and is a success across the board. Even if the total renovation was not (or no longer) able to compensate for the loss of circulation of the Ringier magazine, as the current Wemf figures show: The number of copies of Tele sold in 2002 fell by 4.3 percent to 214214. "These surveys are lagging behind," Petra Gayko, consultant at Tele's in-house agency Catapult, is convinced. She assures: "Both circulation and readership are currently on the upswing again." The team at the Euro-RSCG subsidiary has been working on a new campaign for the magazine since April. The main aim of this is to anchor Tele even more firmly as the Swiss media magazine. The current campaign focuses on two TV commercials that use black humour to dramatize the potential impact of Tele content on its readers: For example, a Superman throws himself off a balcony by his own mercy. And a big-city Tarzan mistakes his hanging lamp for a vine. The acoustic binder brand of muffled impact is reminiscent of TV presenters who introduce a daring experiment with "Dear children, you mustn't do that at home". The new claim "Attention, Tele is changing your leisure time" is also aimed in this direction. The print subjects "Baywatch", "101 Dalmatians" and "Pacman" are less successful. Based on the Tele sections TV, Movie and Multimedia, the three visuals are intended to dramatize the variety of topics covered by the magazine.
If you browse through Tele for too long, you end up becoming a cake baker or a lifeguard in your own bathtub.
Simone Keller