Ingrid Schindler will head the text department. As editor-in-chief, she has managed the seasonal kitchen (Migros) and worked as a freelance journalist for the NZZ am Sonntag, the Tages-Anzeiger, the Basler Zeitung, among others.
 

André Frensch is to shape the look of the magazine as Art, according to a Ringier release. As AD at Schweizer Illustrierte and creative director at SonntagsBlick and SonntagsBlick magazine, he was responsible for their visual appearance and helped develop Landliebe.

The magazine was launched in April 2011 and has been published six times a year since then. The June/July issue of the magazine will be available on newsstands from May 10. It is 196 pages thick. According to the Ringier release, it features ".

 

With a twinkle in its eye, it addresses a phenomenon that has become particularly apparent in recent years: Men are increasingly forgetting who they are: They shave their chests, drink green tea, wear pink sweaters, go shopping and wear slippers, the agency said in a statement on Thursday. However, none of this fits in with the stronger sex, and so Bell cheerfully and with an unmistakable slogan calls for a change: "Men, back to the barbecue". This would not only make the men happy, but also the women. Because they love manly men and this campaign brings them back, according to the campaign's motto.

In the three new Bell Barbecue TV commercials, a Zumba dancer, a barbecue shaver and a karaoke singer are brought back to the path of virtue and made into what they were born to be: "real men". The commercials can be seen on all Swiss TV channels and the advertisements appear in the daily and Sunday press.

Responsible at Bell: Davide Elia (Head of Marketing/Communications), Micha Roth (Marketing Project Manager), Nicole Schaad (Advertising Project Manager), Urs Graf (Culinary Arts). Responsible at KSB: Uwe Schlupp, Samuel Knaus (Creative Direction), Samuel Knaus (Text/Concept), Andrea Reinhart (Art Direction), Dany Kielholz (Consulting Management), Flavia Salvisberg, Kristin Enzler (Consulting), Michèle Seligmann (Agency Producing). Responsible at Stories: Christian Aeby (director), Michael Krautter (camera), Angelika Götz (set), Yves Bollag (producer), Jonathan Heyer (photo), Karin Frey (food styling).

 

This was reported in 20 Minuten, Blick and Tagi, among others. Ruf Lanz reacted quickly for Haus Hiltl and showed him from a new angle: as an indulgent vegetarian. "Because everyone in Zurich likes to eat vegetarian" is the campaign's motto. The subject is currently going viral.

 

The specialist journalist from Germany claims to have such a tight schedule that he could only make it to the "christening" of the Swiss Highland Single Malt Whiskey Ice Label Century on the Jungfraujoch by helicopter. The group of less rushed media people experience the breathtaking ride on the Jungfrau Railway up to the Joch surrounded by Japanese tourists without any extra sausage. There, the Century matures at minus four degrees in an ancient oak barrel in the even older glacier ice at 3454 meters above sea level. "When we heard about maturing in ice, we thought it was a marketing stunt," says Sonja Petignat, an expert at the Swiss Federal Research Institute Agroscope, "but every single vintage of this whisky has its own bouquet, which also depends heavily on the particular American oak barrel. The cold and humidity cause a special maturation process that we can't fully explain, but the result is striking and convincing!" The interview with the ETH graduate expert takes place in an enchanted cave in the Ice Palace. Several barrels of Swiss Highland Single Malt Whiskey Ice Label serve as a backdrop, which blossoms into a full bouquet in the glacial ice.

Brewers on new paths

How did Rugenbräu, the traditional beer brewery in Interlaken, come to distil whisky in the first place? "Our company has always been innovative," explains Bruno Hofweber, CEO and co-owner of the family business. "When the revised Alcohol Ordinance allowed whisky to be brewed in Switzerland in 1999, we immediately gave it a try. Our expertise in beer production helped us here, as the basic ingredients - barley malt, water and yeast - are the same."

The first edition of the Swiss Highland Single Malt Whiskey in 2008 was soon sold out in an edition of 3500 bottles and at the proud price of 129 francs. The efforts were rewarded with awards and medals. The effort required for this quality product is considerable and the quantities are small compared to the whiskies from international distilleries.

But why an ice whisky? "In a conversation with a renowned Scottish whisky distiller, he said that the nearby sea contributes a lot to the quality of the Scotch," explains Hofweber. "We don't have a sea, but we do have a sea of ice on the Jungfraujoch." This is how the project that Rugenbräu is implementing in collaboration with the Jungfrau Railway came to fruition.

The "Century" is the birthday whisky of the Jungfrau Railway, which began operations on August 1, 1912. 1291 bottles of the Century Ice Label are filled in special bottles - to commemorate the year the Swiss Confederation was founded. A lot of numerical magic for a malt distillate! Adolf Guyer-Zeller (1839-1899) was also invited to the launch. Wearing a period tailcoat, the builder of the Jungfrau Railway, impersonated by an actor, emerges from an artificial fog bank to the applause of the guests and celebrates the railroad and whisky with some apt remarks. Urs Kessler, CEO of the jubilant Alpine Railway, also joins in the applause.

Bruno Hofweber and Silvia Mettler, his communications consultant also based in Interlaken, are turning the launch of the Century Ice Label into an informative top event with impressive venues at the distillery in Interlaken and on top of the Jungfraujoch.

Technical poetry in the ice palace

The tasting in the crystal-clear, high alpine natural cellar brings a smile of pleasure to everyone's face. "Dark amber to oak-coloured, with a hint of golden mountain sunshine" is how the whisky is characterized, "with a body of pleasantly soft texture".

The whisky lyricism reaches its peak when a connoisseur describes how the "slightly woody aromas and tart notes are combined with vanilla and caramel to create a beautiful interplay and an impressive balance".

After so much specialist poetry, the audience, warmed from the inside, also understands that each bottle of the ice-matured "Century" costs a proud 345.40 Swiss francs (the figure is based on the altitude of the ice grotto - albeit with a decimal point). Packaged in handmade wooden boxes, accompanied by a certificate and a leather pouch with original stones from the excavated material used to build the Jungfrau Railway. The anniversary distillate is so exquisite that some of the precious bottles will probably never be opened, but kept in whisky collections for posterity. Incidentally, the busy specialist journalist from Germany missed the event on the Jungfraujoch because the storm of the century made the helicopter flight to the eternal ice impossible. Here's to a "Century" on the rocks! Werner Catrina

WW: Cash was once a well-known weekly business newspaper, then mutated into a daily free title and finally became an online portal without print support. Now comes the merger with a bank. What are you aiming to achieve with this?
André Michel: Most online media have realized in recent years that it is not easy to refinance online activities. Most publishers have been very disappointed to learn that selling content only works to a limited extent. At the same time, prices for online advertising are falling steadily. In addition, entire areas of online marketing, such as search advertising, are dominated by companies like Google. For this reason, Ringier, and not just cash, has been thinking about how else to earn money online. We see the solution in transaction-based sources of income.

When did you start thinking about this?
AM: When I took over the management of cash daily after it was discontinued, I quickly realized that it would be very difficult to achieve the ambitious business plans with the business model at the time. I therefore thought that we should try to give cash users - 95% of whom are investors - the opportunity to trade securities on our portal. After all, 70% of our users are active in online trading. The users come to us because they obviously value our information more than that of the banks where they can trade online. However, as we did not have a corresponding offering until now, our users had to trade elsewhere. This led us to the conclusion that cash would become more attractive if we were to offer our own trading solution to investors who trade online and already obtain information on cash. We wanted to find a strong partner for a new business model that would bring in more than just compensation via the thousand contact price. We wanted to earn money from the bank customers that we acquire in a partnership.

Who did you contact then?
AM: We held talks with various potential partners. Christoph Hartgens, then CEO of Trade-Jet, and Alfred Moeckli, CEO of bank zweiplus, have known cash for years. They knew that we were looking for a partner and approached us with a very concrete proposal. It was a very good fit, although we at cash had not necessarily originally envisaged such a far-reaching joint venture.

An interim question: Who owns bank zweiplus?
Christoph Hartgens: Bank Sarasin and Falcon Private Bank. The bank had exactly the opposite problem. We had 30,000 clients who didn't actually know where they were clients. bank zweiplus was not an established brand among private clients. In the sales customer business, however, with partners such as Swisslife, AWD and AXA, it certainly had a name. I knew cash from my previous job. The planned collaboration was therefore a classic win-win situation.

In what way?
CH: Cash has comprehensive news, the reach and a well-positioned brand. We have the banking and a motivated advisory team. We therefore complement each other well. It was always clear to me that you can't just give customers a computer, they have to have confidence and they have to be able to contact someone for advice. That's why we have a team of around 30 advisors at cash zweiplus. This is what sets us apart from our competitors.

Is cash now a bank with a newspaper or a newspaper with a bank?
AM: Neither! We are an integrated financial platform. For the first time, someone in Switzerland is trying to offer financial information and banking services together, a business model that brings together things that belong together. An example: Swissquote was one of cash's best advertising customers. Why did Swissquote advertise so much with us? Quite clearly, we had a lot of users who came to us for information and then wanted to trade. Now we offer these users an alternative.

What exactly do you mean by integrated?
AM: Users can choose what they want to use. As before the joint venture, they can use all the information on cash.ch free of charge, and if they absolutely have to (laughs), they can make their trade somewhere else or they can have everything conveniently on the same platform.

Does a customer who also has an account with you receive more information than an info-only user?
CH: At the moment he has the same information with one big difference: he gets the share prices free of charge in real time. Non-bank customers pay CHF 120 per year for this (based on Swiss shares). They also receive the so-called order book, in which they can see the current orders for a particular share, free of charge. For non-bank customers, this costs CHF 890 per year. These are the advantages that the bank client gains from the joint venture.

What is planned for the future?
AM: It is conceivable that we will develop one or two new offers that we will provide to bank customers free of charge or at a reduced price. We will also offer our bank customers certain services that are currently subject to a charge at cash at a reduced price or even for free. However, there is no intention to suddenly charge for content that is currently free of charge in order to force existing users to make use of banking services.

How do you want to win new customers?
CH: By providing them with good stories! This is very important to me. If nothing is written about a company, then nothing will happen in trading.

Isn't there then a danger that more will be written about certain companies?
CH: Journalistic independence is very important. If I start to control the stories, the customer notices, our credibility dwindles and we lose the customer.

Have you had any reactions to the joint venture?
AM: Initially, the reactions of some media agencies and advertising clients were rather negative. The agencies feared a lack of independence in the journalistic field. Advertising clients from the financial industry suddenly saw us as competitors. However, when the concept was presented to clients in detail, practically everyone's opinion changed. The advertisers realized that they could now address bank customers directly, something they had never been able to do before. For advertisers from the financial sector, independence is particularly important. bank zweiplus has neither its own investment funds nor structured products. Not even the asset management comes from the bank itself. So it is always third-party banks that offer this. One of our very large financial advertising clients, an investment fund issuer, was initially very negative. Until he realized that he could use cash as a distribution channel in future. For users, on the other hand, it is interesting that they can choose what they want from a wide range of different banks. We don't have our own products that we have to push on them.
CH: The neutral, product-independent platform is a cool thing. But the problem for the customer is finding the right product. And that's where independent, neutral journalism is important. It helps the customer to find the right product.
AM: The credibility of our cash brand must remain as it was, otherwise the joint venture would have been a bad investment from the bank's point of view. Without independence, we would destroy our business model.

How big is the editorial team?
AM: Seven permanent employees plus two permanent freelancers. A relatively large editorial team for the business sector.

Do you already have initial success figures?
CH: We have made a good start and are gaining new customers every day. However, as we have only just launched our advertising campaign, it is still a little early to take stock.

One last question: will cash be available as a print product again?
AM: We publish a magazine four times a year under the name cash Value. However, I can't imagine that we will ever publish a weekly or daily newspaper again. This market is still oversaturated in Switzerland and information behavior in the financial sector in particular has shifted strongly towards online.

Where will you be in a year's time?
CH: We want cash to establish itself as an online bank and become a clear alternative to other banking relationships. We want to retain our number 1 position in the area of financial information.

Interview: Pierre C. Meier
 

Tamedia and Basler Zeitung Medien made this announcement in a joint press release. The two media companies jointly offer the Metropool advertising combination of Basler Zeitung, BZ Berner Zeitung, Der Bund and Tages-Anzeiger and work together on the news network Newsnet. In addition, Basler Zeitung, Berner Zeitung, Der Bund and Tages-Anzeiger jointly publish the weekend supplement Das Magazin. Following the change of ownership at Basler Zeitung Medien last December, the two media companies agreed to review their cooperation. According to the press release, the continuation of the cooperation, which dates back to 1993 in the advertising combination, will strengthen the two media companies and the media offering in the Basel, Bern and Zurich regions.

It is designed to help companies better understand the trendy "social web" and navigate it successfully. You could say that the Internet has changed the world. Until a few years ago, it was enough for a company to have a website in the city. Today, such a shop window is only a small part of the picture. The future is called the "social web", according to the founding agency of the "Shareville approach". Whether the "social web" will democratize the entire global economy as well as the Internet remains to be seen. In any case, it is not an advertising medium like TV, radio or print that can simply be added to the media mix.

The "Shareville Approach" shows how companies can gradually approach the "social web" trend quarter and successfully navigate it once they have arrived. On the way from "Shareville Visitor" to "Shareville Native", the "Shareville Approach" distinguishes between five different stages. The "Shareville Checklist" enables interested companies to carry out a self-assessment.

 

Once and for all: let the devil take the general cultural pessimism of the media industry! Fortunately, it is broken again and again when personalities bravely stand up and speak plainly because they have thought about it beforehand. Or - even better - do something that "one" didn't expect, something crazy, as unthinkable as possible. (And if it's politically incorrect, all the better ...)

Prize to Markus Somm, the Swiss editor-in-chief with the best nerves. Ever since he took over the Basler Zeitung, I've been curious about this paper again. More than a handful of colleagues, including brilliant ones, have run away from him because they jumped to conclusions about Somm's working and communication behavior based on his political paper form. I don't even want to know how many nasty little intrigues are behind all the "exclusive" stories that are gleefully spread in the hostile Zurich papers. They are all based on the left-wing journalistic mainstream's claim to infallibility and its irrefutable convictions: A liberal, a right-wing intellectual even, cannot be good or interesting journalism at all. Markus Somm is trying to oxygenate his editorial team by appointing an interesting newcomer by the name of Claudio Zanetti to a key position. It's an experiment, a risk as far as I'm concerned. But something like that has to be allowed, because it's smarter to take a risk now and then than to always produce "more of the same". I'm skeptical too, but let this Zanetti write his first pieces first.

Prize to Constantin Seibt, who surprised us the day after Labor Day with the announcement of his own blog on Newsnet and a brilliant launch production (blog.tagesanzeiger.ch/ deadline). Seibt is one of those print journalists for whom there is no need to fear for the future of journalism, because he is a lateral thinker, bulky, surprising and never boring. His "15 theses on journalism in the 21st century" are sometimes caustic ("We have sold our habits so far"), and sometimes downright spot-on ("Good manners and efficiency are deadly.") And he has recipes, this Seibt. The most obvious one for me: "Style is one of the last taboos and one of the great untapped resources in journalism. " Yet the tone of a story is half the message - and the tone of the majority of all newspaper stories is the same. And leaves the same monochrome impression - no matter what the journalist is writing about. (The content of these articles is then very similar to the joke about the hair-cutting helmet, where the inventor was asked: "But aren't heads different sizes?" To which he replied: "Yes, but only the first time.")

Prize to Heribert Prantl, the former public prosecutor and judge who is now a member of the editorial board of the Süddeutsche Zeitung. His new book impresses with its crystal-clear logic and the great optimism based on it ("Die Welt als Leitartikel: Zur Zukunft des Journalismus", Picus Verlag Vienna). Prantl predicts a bright future for quality journalism - not because quality journalists like him like to hear it so much, but because it is actually logical. According to Prantl, the core competence of quality journalism is to provide help in categorizing the multiplication of facts that has been brought about by the Internet. His credo is: "The big question is not how to generate clicks, reach and circulation. The big question is: How do you create trust? Then clicks, reach and circulation will follow. " Of course, this requires journalists who achieve specialist status by concentrating on certain core areas (dossiers) and are therefore able to gain the trust of their customers. And it requires publishers who share this conviction and invest in quality instead of promoting text engineering, which only produces yard goods anyway, for which no one will want to pay sooner or later. Somm, Seibt, Prantl - three names in one week. Exciting deeds and words - and all for a supposedly dead sport like print journalism! Walt Disney was right after all: the desert is alive!
 

> To the winners (PDF)
 

More than 400 submissions to the recent "Best of Swiss Web" Award 2012 represent an increase of 30 percent. The industry is booming. And at the forefront of this development is the Zurich-based digital agency Hinderling Volkart. In the fast-growing and highly competitive market of creative online agencies, the company, which has been in existence for barely more than five years, has won the gold award in the "Creation" category of the industry's most important award for the fourth year in a row. No agency has ever achieved this before. The agency's broad-based expertise is also reflected in additional awards in the "Innovation", "Public Affairs" and "Digital Branding Campaigns" categories. In addition to the gold-winning 360°Langstrasse for Swiss Radio and Television, Westnetz.ch also won several awards for Zurich's public transport company (VBZ). The website for Swiss television's documentary series about Langstrasse was praised by the jury as an "excellent, trend-setting project in all respects". The international jury of the AWWWARDS also found this to be the case with 360°Langstrasse and named the project "Site of the Year". To top it all off, the project for SRF also took second place in the "Master of Swiss Web", directly behind this year's winner SBB. This success has since earned the Hinderling Volkart agency five further commissions for new Swiss television programs.

Michael Volkart explains the success of the young Zurich agency with the fact that it has clients "who are also prepared to break new ground". Michael Hinderling adds: "To turn creative ideas into inspiring user experiences, you need highly professional and highly motivated employees, good partners and great joy and enthusiasm for the work. We are very lucky to have all of this."

School friends at the F+F

Anyone who visits the agency in Zurich's Kreis 3 district can sense this atmosphere straight away. An imaginatively furnished open-plan office that is never reminiscent of a creative henhouse. Spacious furnishings, a lounge for chilling out and discussing, a secluded garden for brainstorming sessions and an executive office that joins the creative, consulting and technical fields without a dividing wall. In the basement of the loft there is a photo studio and the technical facilities of two friendly companies - Edge5 by Stephan Meier and Lauschsicht by Kevin Blanc - who work closely with Hinderling Volkart depending on the project. Michael Hinderling and Michael Volkart first came together during their training at R+F. They both attended the preliminary course at the Zurich School of Art and Media Design in 1999 and then the specialist class with the media design course, which was only the second of its kind. During this extended training in art, classic techniques such as lead typesetting and typography continued to be taught. "Classical design with space and images is important and has shaped us," say the two designers. Both of them were already intensively involved with the web and its possibilities during secondary school. Michael Volkart created one of the first websites for Zurich University for the Swiss Bank, where his father worked as a professor, while he was still at secondary school. This reference very quickly brought him further commissions.

Michael Hinderling was able to complete an internship at the motion design agency Regardez due to his school projects after finishing secondary school in Lucerne. At the time, they were designing the visual identity for the TV channels ZDF, 3+ and MTV Pop. The company has since become the agency Le Mob, which has its studio just around the corner from Hinderling Volkart and often works with them. Jürg Steudler, who now works as a producer at Encore Pictures and is also part of Hinderling Volkart's network of specialized suppliers, was also part of the team back then.

After this internship, Michael Hinderling's further path led him to ROSA, a very popular web agency run by Theophil Butz at the time. The agency worked for Swiss television and Cablecom, for example. Hinderling later joined the web agency Eykom as an AD. Then he clicked off for a trip around the world. After school, Michael Volkart continued to specialize in making websites for friends and small companies. From 2001 onwards, there were many start-ups and of course they all had to have a website "at affordable prices, but at a high level". With such orders, both Hinderling and Volkart learned early on to "meet the needs of customers".

When Hinderling returned to Zurich as a freelancer after his trip around the world and the need for websites became the new gold rush, the school friends finally came up with the idea three years after graduating together: Why don't we lump all the jobs together and do it right? That's how Hinderling Volkart was founded in January 2007.

Rapid but natural growth

Even before the business cards were printed, the duo took part in a pitch and won their first major contract, a website for the Swiss Actors' Association. A client that has remained with them to this day. The first employee soon had to be hired as an 80 percent developer. Since then, Hinderling Volkart has "grown continuously" - albeit quite quickly, as the number of employees has almost doubled every year. "We always had too much work and didn't want to turn down any projects. So we were constantly looking for new people. We found it difficult to say no."

During this continuous expansion of the company, eight employees reached the point where Hinderling and Volkart could no longer control everything themselves. If they wanted to continue to work creatively on the design and at the same time acquire new customers, they also had to be able to delegate responsibility. So they looked for a project manager. "That required a lot of trust. We also had to hand over customer relationships for the first time. Previously, we had only employed designers and programmers." In the meantime, the consulting and project management department has been expanded to five people. In total, Hinderling Volkart now employs more than 20 specialists, from the backend under the leadership of Michael Bischof, to consulting with Remo Brunner and the frontend with Severin Klaus. As CD, Michael Hinderling has the area of creation under him. Michael Volkart has taken over the management. "I realized that I could no longer keep up with the high level of our design," he jokes. That's why he now pulls the strings and takes care of strategic issues. "But we make all the important decisions together," say the two of them.

In this shift from designing to managing, the designers have acquired a great deal of know-how about operational management through "learning by doing". They see their new role - keeping an eye on overall quality and managing processes - as an exciting "broadening of horizons". Both are grateful that their fathers - a physicist and a professor of economics - were able to pass on a lot of valuable experience to them as board members when building up the company. The two founders see what distinguishes Hinderling Volkart as a web agency today as the combination of conception, creation, design and implementation. "We have extremely high quality standards - especially in the front end, which is what brings a design to life." There are few companies of their size that combine all of this in-house. But this is precisely why "the innovative and good projects are created, because everything is so interlinked", the two are convinced. Andreas Panzeri
 

WW: Cash was once a well-known weekly business newspaper, then mutated into a daily free title and finally became an online portal without print support. Now comes the merger with a bank. What are you aiming to achieve with this?
André Michel: Most online media have realized in recent years that it is not easy to refinance online activities. Most publishers have been very disappointed to learn that selling content only works to a limited extent. At the same time, prices for online advertising are falling steadily. In addition, entire areas of online marketing, such as search advertising, are dominated by companies like Google. For this reason, Ringier, and not just cash, has been thinking about how else to earn money online. We see the solution in transaction-based sources of income.

When did you start thinking about this?
AM: When I took over the management of cash daily after it was discontinued, I quickly realized that it would be very difficult to achieve the ambitious business plans with the business model at the time. I therefore thought that we should try to give cash users - 95% of whom are investors - the opportunity to trade securities on our portal. After all, 70% of our users are active in online trading. The users come to us because they obviously value our information more than that of the banks where they can trade online. However, as we did not have a corresponding offering until now, our users had to trade elsewhere. This led us to the conclusion that cash would become more attractive if we were to offer our own trading solution to investors who trade online and already obtain information on cash. We wanted to find a strong partner for a new business model that would bring in more than just compensation via the thousand contact price. We wanted to earn money from the bank customers that we acquire in a partnership.

Who did you contact then?
AM: We held talks with various potential partners. Christoph Hartgens, then CEO of Trade-Jet, and Alfred Moeckli, CEO of bank zweiplus, have known cash for years. They knew that we were looking for a partner and approached us with a very concrete proposal. It was a very good fit, although we at cash had not necessarily originally envisaged such a far-reaching joint venture.

Read more about this in the current print edition of Werbewoche.

 

In the subjects, whose design reflects the 3-D aesthetics of the website Get-unplugged.ch the advantages of coffee are praised in text: its incomparable taste, its environmental friendliness, its unlimited flexibility in dosing, its excellent price-performance ratio, or its flexible and electricity-independent usability.

The posters in F4 and F12 formats can be seen primarily in and around Coop and Migros in German- and French-speaking Switzerland.

Responsible at Nestlé: Nicolas Huillet (Business Executive Manager), Peter Hatzfeld (Marketing Manager Soluble Beverages and Ambient Dairy), Pascale Kremer (Senior Brand Manager Nescafé), Stephanie Nägeli (Marketing Nescafé). Responsible at Publicis: Sacha Moser (CD), Nicolas Vontobel (AD), Jan Krohn (text), Mischa Müller (graphics), Kristijan Sessa (3D), Ester Elices (strategy), Muriel Asté, Olivier Pasche, Diana Kübler and Christine Rainford (consulting).