Tanja Hackenbruch and Mirko Marr join Mediapulse
The Mediapulse Foundation, which measures official radio and TV ratings in Switzerland, is once again undergoing a change in leadership: Managing Director Franz Bürgi must step down from his position and will be replaced by Tanja Hackenbruch.
Following the turbulence in 2013, OFCOM, the supervisory authority, was keen to reorganize and, in particular, to unbundle Mediapulse's management bodies and ensure their independence from broadcasters and the advertising industry, as stipulated in the Federal Law on Radio and Television (RTVA) and in the foundation charter. Against this background, Franziska von Weissenfluh was elected as President by DETEC in the fall of 2014 and the new Managing Director Franz Bürgi was elected by the Mediapulse Board of Directors in the summer of 2015.
The demands on the management and research management are constantly evolving due to the very dynamic market development. For this reason, the Board of Directors has decided to make a change in management in parallel with the filling of the vacancy in the research management and to fill the operational management with a personality with a research background. The Board of Directors appoints Tanja Hackenbruch as Managing Director and Mirko Marr as Head of Research at Mediapulse. Tanja Hackenbruch, currently Head of Market and Audience Research, will join Mediapulse on a date to be agreed with SRG, while Mirko Marr, previously Head of Research at Goldbach Media, will take up the post of Head of Research on March 1.
The extended management and staff were informed together on Wednesday and all were surprised by the news, Wehrli said. SRG and Goldbach, the current employers of the new managing directors, are Mediapulse's biggest clients and also sit on the board of directors and the foundation board.
Bürgi had only taken over the management of the foundation in November 2015. Before that, the position had been vacant for several months. The long-time managing director Manuel Dähler had left the post at the end of February 2015. His successor Alice Baumann left the company again after just one month - due to differing ideas about the management of the company.
The foundation had hit the headlines in 2013 because doubts had been raised about the data following the switch to a new measurement system. In 2016, Mediapulse and the AG für Werbemittelforschung (WEMF) began work on founding a joint venture for online research. Bürgi was among those in charge of the SwissDataHub.
"Franz Bürgi has fulfilled the expectations placed in him as managing director of Mediapulse in every respect and enjoys the full confidence of customers, stakeholders and employees," a Mediapulse statement said. He has driven the rapid implementation of the innovations and mastered major challenges at Mediapulse. The Board of Directors thanks him for his great commitment.
He now falls away as a driving force, but both Hackenbruch and Marr had previously been involved in the project on a methodological level in the research commission, Wehrli said. (SDA)
