According to the press release, the animated damage sketch will be on air in cinemas throughout Switzerland from March.

Responsible at Mobiliar: Marianne Sterchi (Advertising Project Manager), Christoph Ott (Advertising & CI/CD Manager). Responsible at Wirz Advertising: Hanning Beland, Raul Serrat (art), Bianca Kury (text), Philipp Skrabal (CD), Yves Rückert, Stefan Schmid (consulting). Little Green Bag (production). Jingle Jungle (scoring).

 

It’s very rare for an advertising medium to be used for more than a year or two. That makes it all the more remarkable when an idea remains relevant for over 10 years. This is the case with Migros’ non-food shopping bags, which have been in use unchanged since 2002. They were launched by Weber Harbeke Partners.

This consistency speaks to the quality of the idea. The strategic approach: Migros’ positive image in the food sector is extended to the (at that time still) less prominent non-food sector. To achieve this, non-food items were presented as if they were food products. At first glance, you see scampi, ice cream, a roulade, or a salad, but upon closer inspection, you discover a wall plug, a tennis ball, terry cloth towels, and a green T-shirt. Thanks to this strong visual concept, the bags can be used from Basel to Lugano and from Geneva to Romanshorn without needing to change the language. 

WW: The Brander has been making waves online for a year now. What has stuck with you?
Olivia El Sayed: We launched The Brander in March 2011, initially with 15 feature stories that we had produced in advance. This initial collection has since been regularly expanded with new articles, and there are now 47 in-depth features online. Once published, the stories remain there. Over time, this creates a kind of visual reference work on brands and their creators.

How has the audience responded?
We get a lot of feedback, and that’s the beauty of being online: the feedback is very direct. We’ve noticed that, in addition to Switzerland, we also reach a large number of readers in Germany. Our second-largest audience is in the U.S., followed by the U.K. Our magazine is available in both German and English. Our statistics show a striking number of subscribers from Los Angeles and New York. We now have correspondents in both cities.

What can you tell us about click-through rates?
On a day when we publish a new story, we reach about 4,000 readers, and we currently record approximately 30,000 page views per month. That’s not a huge number, but it represents an interested, brand-conscious, and—above all—returning readership. What’s particularly striking is the time spent on the site. This is likely above average because both the articles and the photo galleries are very detailed. And thanks to our relatively short history, we’re still growing every month.

How is the magazine promoted?
We always send out a newsletter to our subscribers whenever we post a new story. We also use social media. Over the past year, we’ve also expanded The Brander to include a blog-style section within the magazine. There, we share fun ideas and inspiration from the world of branding with our readers every day. This gives us the opportunity to actively engage with our readers.

The Brander as a specialized portal: What has become of it?
The Brander combines the lifestyle of brands with a content-driven branding perspective. Theory and practice are brought together in a new way, and the topic of branding becomes an experience through the style of the articles and the photo spreads. We’ve noticed that our magazine has had a tremendous impact on our image. For example, we’re seeing more international applications for positions at the agency. And the quality of the applications has also improved: there are more and more applicants who share and appreciate our approach to branding.

What's next?
We want to maintain and further improve our quality, and remain independent. We feature brands whose stories or founders inspire us, and we are not a PR platform. While we receive many requests along these lines, The Brander would lose its value and character if we were to accept them.

Interview: Andreas Panzeri
 

At first there was just this name that echoed through all my interactive channels: Kony. A new evil Chinese exploitative company or the abbreviation for a particularly cool campaigning tool? Only when the first mainstream media jumped on the social media hype did I also click on this masterfully manipulative work of art, which by the time this issue went to press had been seen by more than three times as many people worldwide as Uganda has inhabitants. 90 million pairs of eyes followed a US filmmaker and self-made development aid worker to the Central African country where the war criminal Joseph Kony, who has been internationally wanted since 2005, and his army of children have been wreaking their bestial havoc for many years. 

Regardless of whether the Hollywoodesque staging of a mass murderer actually achieves its declared goal with his capture, the viral video is already a global success and a benchmark for future campaigns on YouTube (75 million views), Facebook (3 million followers for the NGO responsible, "Invisible Children") and Twitter (top topic for days). Now Joseph Kony, and with him the collectively repressed because almost unbearable topic of "child soldiers", is finally making the headlines that it has long deserved, and in doing so shows "en passant" the moral perversion of our attention economy: the decisive news values of our media system are not child suffering or outrageous crimes against humanity, but emotional closeness and personal concern. 

So far, so banal - especially for media professionals (which also means PR people). Unfortunately, cynicism, like rattling, has long been part of the trade here. It is precisely from this perspective that it seems breathtakingly consistent how the Kony campaign creates that situational relevance that captivates the viewer and keeps them on the edge of their seat for half an hour, which incidentally gives the lie to all prophecies of doom that the attention span on the net is tending towards zero. The main trick is the recurring thematization of the situation in which most viewers find themselves at the moment of reception: They are on Facebook. The solidarity of the online community is therefore dramaturgically placed in front of the solidarity with Kony's victims in such a way that at the end you almost can't help but point out this epochal social media event to your friends and followers - and thus help to spread the core message "Catch Kony!". 

"Kony2012" uses this mechanism of self-reinforcement almost frighteningly perfectly and is an example of how a maximum number of people can be manipulated and mobilized within days with a minimum of information. At the same time, the current division of tasks between traditional and new media becomes clear: first, the echo chamber of social channels is mercilessly emotionalized and effectively sensitized, then this virtual background noise is analysed and criticized in mainstream media. Of course, the Kony campaigners can be accused of political naivety, post-colonial arrogance or mere fundraising. What seems more important to me, however, is that frustration over opportunistic interest politics (in this case the USA) and powerless judicial apparatuses (in this case the World Criminal Court in The Hague) is being transformed into moral motivation. And not only among the interactive people. Angela Merkel's government spokesperson tweeted a few days ago.

"#Kony - DEU has brought the issue to the UN Security Council. We support Afr. union in the fight against these crimes."

 

After graduating from high school and part-time studies in journalism at the University of Zurich, Sebastian Durband entered the world of advertising. He traveled the world for a year with the well-known creativity researcher Hermann Vaske to interview luminaries such as Dennis Hopper, Michel Houellebecq, Harvey Keitel, Damien Hirst, Steven Spielberg, Johnny Depp and Steven Soderbergh. He then trained for two years as an advertising and marketing specialist at the Bavarian Academy for Advertising and Marketing BAW in Munich. This was followed by two years as a consultant at Serviceplan in Munich, Germany's largest owner-managed agency. After his return to his native Switzerland, other creative agencies followed. Most recently, Durband spent more than four years at Jung von Matt/Limmat overseeing mandates for Swisscom, Panasonic and Vögele Shoes.

Markus Ruf and Danielle Lanz are pleased about the reinforcement: "With his broad cultural and advertising background, Durband is the ideal complement for us creatives."

 

WW: As editor-in-chief of *Spick*, you write for children and teenagers. Do you have children of your own?
Yes, two. The older one is 19, the younger one is 11, which puts him right in the target audience for *Spick*. He’s been an active member of the editorial team for years. Time and again, I bring home cover designs and ask him, “Which one do you think is the coolest?” Which poster should we make? Having kids of my own is definitely helpful for this job.

The cliché is that kids don't read much these days. What topics do you use to engage the boys?
The topics in *Spick* today aren’t much different from what they were 30 years ago—the kind you might call educationally valuable or thought-provoking. We’re not *Bravo* or *Mickey Mouse*. Sure, we have celebrity pages where we feature stars, as well as comics, jokes, and puzzles. But the in-depth articles dealing with topics like «Children from Faraway Lands» or «The Life of Indian Tigers» are still there. The key to engaging kids is, above all, getting the content right.

In what way?
Today, we have to draw children more deeply into history than we did 30 years ago, when competition from other media like television, the Internet, or the PlayStation wasn’t as intense. Many media are becoming increasingly fragmented and fleeting. The internet offers bite-sized content; with one click, I’m gone. *Spick* has to measure up to this media environment.

How exactly do you do that?
In addition to the long articles, I also need to offer short snippets. In the current issue, we have a story on climate change. There are still long passages of text, but we’re also trying to tell a story within the story through the captions. We use boxes, info boxes, call-outs, or small badges that contain facts you can share with your friends on the playground: «Did you know that…?»

What topics inspire you when you write for children?
I’m a biologist by training. Before I started writing for *Spick*, I worked for *Tierfreund* for a long time. Stories about animals, science stories, and experiments—these are still the topics I enjoy most. The same goes for those little curious discoveries.

What are you thinking about?
For example, on World Pillow Fight Day. Or for the May issue, I discovered a Hungarian guy who carves little figurines out of fruit, vegetables, and bread rolls. They look incredibly funny.

Are you fascinated by quirky things?
Absolutely. That's what we find in Spick under the «Curiosities» section.

Your target audience is children between the ages of 8 and 15. How do you manage to reach different age groups at the same time?
Our target audience isn’t evenly distributed between the ages of 8 and 15; rather, there’s a peak between the ages of 10 and 12. I think primarily of this age group when I’m writing. We also aim for a mix within a single issue as well as across different issues. Something for the younger kids, for the older ones, for girls and boys. It’s clear that not every craft idea will appeal to a 9-year-old boy in the same way it does to a 14-year-old girl.

You write for the generation of digital natives—children who have grown up with digital media. How do you use new media?
Of course, these topics are always present. In *Spick*, we’ve established a section called «Total Digital» that focuses on these topics. We actively guide the children, take them by the hand, and show them things they might not know yet. In the current issue, for example, we cover cloud computing. Anyone who’s read *Spick* knows what it’s all about. Plus, every issue features plenty of cross-media elements. We reveal the results of the online voting in the magazine. You can listen to the texts in the «English» section as MP3s online …

How important are these elements to you?
I'm proud of the multimedia content that complements the magazine. It's a great addition—even if you never click on it.

I don't understand that. Why?
Well, I think just pointing out that such elements exist enriches the magazine. One of my favorite books as a child was a book of experiments and crafts. It was called *Play That Creates Knowledge*—a classic. I never actually tried any of those experiments, though. But I was always sure: Someday I’d make the invisible ink. I thought the idea was great.

Do Spick readers make just as little use of the cross-media offerings?
Very few readers actually use these elements.

Not even the website?
This one, yes. But what's most important there are the funny elements and the community—the kids chat with each other. My personal opinion is that Spick would do well to position itself as a counterbalance to electronic media.

Do you want to strengthen *Spick* as a print medium?
Exactly—as a print medium, as a tactile medium, as a medium with long texts that you can really sink your teeth into. Maybe there will be an iPad edition of Spick someday, but I think kids should definitely get to experience what it feels like to turn a page, rather than just swiping with their finger. I believe this is also in the best interest of the adults who pay for Spick.

Do you collaborate with educators when it comes to individual articles?
It's not institutionalized. But some of the freelance authors are teachers or come from an educational background. And, of course, we also receive feedback from schools.

*Spick* positions itself as a magazine that focuses on Swiss topics. In the anniversary issue, however, the articles are about Madagascar and India. Where are the Swiss topics?
We don’t want to report only from Switzerland, but we always find a way to connect our stories to Switzerland. When we report on children from the South Pacific, they’re obviously not Swiss. But if we report on a blind person who finds his way through the city despite his lack of sight, then he’s in Zurich—not in Berlin. When we visit a school class, it’s in St. Gallen or Basel. You’ll read about Madagascar, but you’ll also get a tip for a field trip to the Masoala Hall at the Zurich Zoo. The lifestyle pages feature tips related to Swiss events. In addition, Spick adheres to Swiss spelling conventions. We’ve hired a Swiss proofreader specifically for this purpose. We write “Baumnuss” instead of “Walnuss,” and “Velo” instead of “Fahrrad.”.

Regarding your plans for the Spick: What else do you want to change?
To be honest, I'm quite happy with the way things are. I hope that we can keep this print magazine going and that we'll still be able to reach children with a print product ten years from now. I hope that what we’re doing—high-quality journalism for children—will still resonate with readers ten years from now.

How much longer will you remain editor-in-chief at Spick?
Good question. I ask myself that sometimes, too …

Haven't you had enough yet?
I’m far from bored. Of course, you gradually get to know the jokes that are submitted. But I still enjoy it every single time. If you want to do this job, you have to put your heart and soul into it. For example, I have a new photo of myself taken for every editorial. Nothing’s too silly for me—I’m happy to make a fool of myself every now and then. In the February issue, for example, I put on a frog mask. If I ever get too old to take these photos, it’ll be time to quit the job.

Isabel Imper

> To the article about Spick's anniversary: Not yet a bit grown up at 30.

In a nutshell
After earning degrees in biology and journalism, Hans Schödel worked for six years at Hessischer Rundfunk in Frankfurt and, in addition, served as a freelance writer for various children’s publications—including *Tierfreund*—and as a copywriter for advertising agencies. Since 2003, he has been employed by Sailer-Verlag in Nuremberg as editor-in-chief of the Swiss children’s magazine *Spick*.

 

Evoq also designed the second issue of the in-house Shoppi Tivoli fashion magazine as well as the key visuals for the fashion events "Night Shopping" and "Miss Switzerland Casting".

Responsible at Shoppi Tivoli Management: Patrick Stäuble (Center Manager), Renato Blösch, Kevin Zimmerli (Marketing), Barbara Gasser (Public Relations). Responsible at Evoq: Christian Sutter (mandate management), Priska Krummenacher (consulting, project management), Christoph Stalder (CD), Yves Bachmann (design).

A punched-out 30, which offers a view of old Spick magazines, adorns the cover of the current anniversary issue. "Are we that old already?" asks Flitz Flosch, the frog with the small speech impediment who, together with Karl Kiebitz, has been guiding the magazine as a "certified editorial consultant" since its founding. The children's magazine wants to be cheeky, creative, different - in short, "spicky. It wants to make people "smart" and promote the reading skills of children and young people, but at the same time it also wants to entertain them - with reports on animals, technology, sports, nature and the environment, with jokes, puzzles and comics.

With a circulation of 35,000 copies, Spick is still the number 1 among Swiss children's and youth magazines. However, much has changed since its launch: The design has been adapted to the zeitgeist, new sections such as "Total Digital" have been added, readers are now kept up to date via the website Spick.ch, including a newsletter, and on the Spick blog the community discusses topics such as falling in love, climate protection, nuclear power or apps. Since Künzler Bachmann Verlag started publishing Spick, the school magazine is no longer collected by stapling, but stored in a box.

The range of services offered by Spick is constantly being expanded. In collaboration with the language organization Lia Rumantscha and subsidized by the Canton of Graubünden's language promotion program, the magazine has also been published in Romansh since last September on a trial basis for one year. "We got off to a good start and are pretty sure that we can continue the project," says publishing director Roger Hartmann, commenting on the launch. Since last year, there has also been the "Best of Spick," a free extra issue that is always included in the November edition and is available at newsstands. Furthermore, Spick publishes summer and winter guides twice a year. This year, in cooperation with Sarasani, the member newspaper of the Swiss Scout Movement and the SAC huts, a summer guide of around 72 pages is being produced, a "survival booklet" that focuses on typical scouting topics.

To celebrate the anniversary year in a fitting manner, additional promotions are planned for 2012: In addition to major competitions, games and free apps will be available for download. For example, the "Witzemixer " app, which presents the readers' jokes to children in a new form. Parents, grandparents, godparents and godmothers can congratulate the magazine via the Facebook page, and a reading competition has been launched to arouse interest in the children's magazine in schools.

In addition, a new launch is planned for this spring. With "Big Spick - das Vätermagazin ", Künzler Bachmann Verlag is now targeting the fathers of Spick readers. "Extra for big men with a certain longing for the child in the man," say the publishers. It will be launched in May with a circulation of a good 53,000 copies, and the second issue is planned for November. While advertisements are planned for Big Spick, one looks in vain for them in the children's magazine. However, there is advertising for the Spick in the form of banner ads on the website. And for competitions and anniversary campaigns, the publisher works with sponsors. For example, a new online game is available under the name Jamadu, Coop's own brand for children. "The cooperation with Jamadu exists because we think it makes sense for kids to eat healthy," Hartmann explains. "The label is a good thing." The publisher gives its cooperation partners a platform; in return, they put on the Spick and the autoguides or present the Spick logo. From a financial point of view, however, advertising and sponsoring have little impact. Most of the revenue, around 90 percent, comes from subscription sales.

Advertising on its own behalf, on the other hand, is central to the Spick; after all, as readers outgrow the target group, the entire readership changes every few years. "The strong brand helps us find new readers," says Hartmann. "But of course we have to be very involved in marketing." To that end, the publisher works with various agencies. The agency Lasso Consulting, which specializes in youth marketing, is on its side as a consultant. The Spick also receives support from the St. Gallen agency Live Minded. The results of the collaboration will be seen as early as April. Then the Spick will draw attention to the anniversary with a TV commercial.

Isabel Imper

> To the Interview with Editor-in-Chief Hans Schödel. 

The head of the Spick editorial team, with Editor-in-Chief Hans Schödel, is based in Nuremberg. Since the then owner Tamedia outsourced the Spick editorial team in 2003, Sailer-Verlag, which publishes various children's magazines and teaching materials, has been responsible for the editorial content. It works with a large network of freelancers, most of whom are in Switzerland. At Künzler Bachmann Verlag in St. Gallen, which took over the children's magazine from Tamedia in 2005, two permanently employed editors work for the Spick. Künzler Bachmann Verlag is also responsible for advertising, printing and subscription management. 

Centralschweizerische Kraftwerke (CKW) reliably supplies 80 municipalities in the canton of Lucerne with electricity, as the agency writes in a press release. Ruf Lanz has been communicating for CKW for three years. Under the headline "Many Lucerne women would like to see our men from the on-call service more often", this time the reliability of the CKW power supply is the subject of discussion. With a supply reliability of 99.99 percent, the likelihood of women ever seeing these experts is vanishingly small.

Responsible at Centralschweizerische Kraftwerke AG (CKW): Simona Gambini (Head of Corporate Communications), Dorothea Ditze (Media Specialist). Responsible at Ruf Lanz: Danielle Lanz, Markus Ruf (CD), Marcel Schläfe (AD), Andreas Hornung (text), Florian Fleischmann (graphics), Sabrina Luck (consulting), Heike Rindfleisch (consulting manager). Photo: Oliver Nanzig. Image processing: Patrick Rohner.

New Tilllate.com will also regularly supply all 20 Minuten titles with content on the topic of nightlife, according to a statement on Wednesday. But not only the editorial content is new: Tilllate.com appears with a fresh design and new navigation.

 

To mark its 125th anniversary, the KSA has set itself the goal of making hospital preparation for children more innovative and attractive, as Station writes in a press release. The young patients discover Online game the clinic and are thus informed about everyday life in the hospital.

The game is designed for children between the ages of 3 and 8 and can also be played with parents. This allows parents to answer questions directly and reduce possible fears. In collaboration with Station, an interactive game was developed that takes away the fears of young patients and - with a twinkle in the eye - provides a look behind the scenes. After all, preparation is everything.

Responsible at KSA: Henrik Köhler (overall responsibility), Claudia Penta, Pentacom (project management & consulting), Scilla Turla, Daniela Hunziker, Andrea Hopmann, Nora Imbach, Helen Winkler, Raphael Widmann (project collaboration). Responsible at Station, Zurich: Patman (CD), Patrick Stoll (consulting), Michael Meister, Luisa Low Pew, Nils Oskamp, Natalie Töppe (illustration), Luisa Low Pew, Osiris Roost, Mike Fischer, Michel Luarasi (production), Dennis Schärer (content).

Today, homeless people and other marginalized individuals typically sell print publications—in Switzerland, specifically *Surprise* magazine. However, it is widely known that printed paper is slowly but surely being replaced by digital files and e-readers. The future of street vendors seems uncertain. Not so, if a U.S. marketing firm has its way. Its project «Homeless Hot Spots» turns people into hardware: The roaming Wi-Fi vendors, who carry a hotspot with them, wear T-shirts with their name, a phone number, and the charming slogan «I am a hotspot.» If you send a text message, you can get a quarter-hour of Internet access for two dollars.

Practical, charitable, discriminatory, or even inhumane? The project is likely to be divisive. However, these walking internet hotspots would certainly be much better received by the general public if the T-shirt read «I have a hotspot» instead of «I am a hotspot» …

(Source: Spiegel.de)