20 Minuti rejects animal welfare ad

On June 12, the responsible agency Q Kommunikation, which commissioned the placement with Tamedia/20 Minuten in Basel, received written confirmation for June 17, 2015. Four days later, it was informed by telephone that 20 Minuti would reject the ad. When asked, it was told: "Without justification".

The advertisement is directed at the Migros cooperative. It will soon decide whether it also wants to ban the animal-cruel foie gras from its range in western Switzerland and Ticino. Migros has not sold it in German-speaking Switzerland for years. Competitor Coop already threw the product, which cannot be produced in Switzerland due to animal protection laws and must be imported, off the shelves throughout Switzerland in the 1990s and now only offers unstuffed poultry liver. This step is demanded by the STS on said advertisement now also by Migros. Foie gras is being sold by the Swiss Animal Protection referred to as "one of the worst forms of animal abuse."

One-sided nomination problematic

Since it is rather unusual in this day and age for publishers to reject paying advertisers, Werbewoche.ch asked Tamedia for the reasons. The decision was made not to accept because the ad only plays against one market player, although other retailers also have foie gras in their assortment, Michele Paparone, Project Manager Corporate Communications at Tamedia, told Werbewoche.ch. The one-sided naming of Migros in the ad must therefore be classified as legally problematic, he said, as the exemplary denunciation of a single market participant could fall within the scope of unfair competition. "If all major retailers offering the product in question had been listed in the ad, we would have published the ad," Paparone said.

After initial indignation, the STS takes note of the reasoning calmly and with a certain understanding. "You can see it that way - we could have listed the other offending retailers as well," media officer Helen Sandmeier told Werbewoche.ch. However, in Switzerland, only Coop is comparable to Migros in terms of economic importance, she said, which is why they limited themselves to naming the two main competitors - especially since other foie gras sellers such as Denner, Globus or Manor belong to Migros anyway. "Our aim was to specifically address the respective Migros cooperatives, because we noticed that the product would be discussed internally there in the near future - surprisingly, the publication in French-speaking Switzerland, where foie gras is much more popular and is partly regarded as a cultural asset, worked out without any problems," says Sandmeier. The advertising medium: Le Matin from Tamedia. (hae)