This little movie is about enjoying life and freedom of choice. No queues at the checkout, no crowded shopping centers, no annoying sales clerks. The only thing you need is a plastic card. It's as simple as that...
The aim is to show how easy, convenient and secure it is for customers to shop online with their Mastercard credit card, says Head of Marketing Dagmar Nedbal. The fun-loving film can be seen on RTL, Vox, Sat 1 and ARD, among others. It promotes the natural use of the payment method over the next two months. The 30-second film is accompanied by online activities and a longer film version on Yoube.com.
Mastercard has already been advertising the supposed freedom of credit cards for several weeks in titles such as Focus, Stern and Bunte, as Horizont.net writes. The agency responsible for creating the ads is McCann-Erickson in Frankfurt. The film was produced by Bakery Films in Hamburg. Planning and production is in the hands of Universal McCann, Frankfurt.

Together with the media and communications union Syndicom and the professional association of Swiss journalists Impressum, the media are today calling on Swiss Post to back down in an open letter to CEO Jürg Bucher. Swiss Post should reinstate all affected newspapers on the list of those eligible for subsidies. According to a Syndicom statement, it is unacceptable for Swiss Post to make cuts to indirect press subsidies during the current revision of postal legislation, which defines these press subsidies.
 
The ordinance on the new Postal Services Act - passed by Parliament in December 2010 - which sets out the criteria for granting Posttax discounts for newspapers, is not even in the consultation process yet. The new interpretation of the criteria that Swiss Post has adopted in recent months is therefore particularly inappropriate. Courrier has backed down and postponed the deletion, as the press release explains.
 
In the open letter, the signatories demand the same postponement until the new postal law and its ordinance come into force, probably on January 1, 2012, for all other affected newspapers. The signatories will also be submitting a request to the Federal Council in the next few days to ensure that the criteria for granting the post do not miss their target, namely to preserve the diversity of the regional and association press. As the trade union for the postal sector, Syndicom will be officially consulted on the draft ordinance.

On Wednesday, the Federal Council decided on various measures to alleviate the disadvantages resulting from the high valuation of the Swiss franc. Tourism and the export industry in particular are set to benefit.

According to the Department of Economic Affairs, funding for advertising measures for Swiss tourism abroad is to be increased by CHF 12 million this year and CHF 12 million next year. With regard to export risk insurance, the Federal Council intends to extend the additional instruments approved as part of the stabilization package.

If Switzerland Tourism were to benefit from the additional CHF 24 million proposed by the Federal Council to parliament on Wednesday, the intended use would already be clear: the money would be used primarily in Switzerland. Daniela Bär, spokesperson for Switzerland Tourism, explained to the SDA news agency that the money would primarily be used in Switzerland. It is important to be able to keep the Swiss in their own country, even if vacations abroad are currently cheap due to the strong franc.
 
In addition to the domestic market, Switzerland Tourism would focus on those countries that have potential and are not in the eurozone. Bär cites Brazil as an example. Other countries in which Switzerland Tourism would step up its advertising activities are the Gulf States, Russia, China and India. Advertising measures in the eurozone, on the other hand, would make little sense. Switzerland Tourism expects that the effect of the strong franc will already be felt in this year's summer business.

According to information on its homepage, the newspaper was ordered to pay 1,500 francs in the first instance. For his part, Eric Stauffer, president of the populist Mouvement citoyens genevois (MCG), must pay 4,500 francs. On his blog under the label of the Tribune de Genève, Stauffer had railed against a former member of the management of the Cantonal Bank of Geneva and held him jointly responsible for the bank's financial difficulties.
 
Tribune de Genève editor-in-chief Pierre Ruetschi criticized the ruling on the newspaper's website Wednesday. The newspaper had already filed an appeal against the ruling. Because under the logo of the newspapers run the blog about a hundred people, Rüetschi said. In addition, everyone who runs his own blog must sign that he himself is responsible for the content, and the content of the blogs is regularly controlled by the newspaper. But in the case of Eric Stauffer, there was nothing to indicate that he had written anything unauthorized, writes Rüetschi. The newspaper does not have the means to monitor all blogs.

The journalists have lost confidence in their department head, says the letter, which the union-oriented "Group Information RSI" GIR published on its website on Tuesday. This refers to Edy Salmina, who was entrusted with the management of the newly merged information department of radio, television and Internet in Ticino three years ago.
 
According to the journalists, the changes that have been made since then have not brought any qualitative improvements. New broadcast formats, such as the morning news, have proved to be a flop. Others have been canceled for no reason. Suggestions from the editors were not listened to.
 
As a result, a staff meeting last week produced a letter calling for a revision of the department's organizational concept. 110 journalists out of a total of around 180 in the department signed it, according to the website. According to SDA, no comment on the journalists' criticism was available from the RSI management until early Wednesday afternoon.

The site with its fresh look is designed to impress with its interactive route map and intuitive user guidance. This is what the Zurich agency writes in a press release. With the interactive route map, a new presentation of the route network of a public transport company has been developed. The timetable, stop timetables, Forchbahn route map and services available at the stops are displayed on a single page.  

The maps integrated via the search.ch API show Mobility stands and bus stops in the vicinity. All relevant information for users can be found in one place. The site also displays company information, top offers from Forchbahn travel centers and excursion tips. Customers who want to go on an excursion can call up Google weather data for the Forch excursion region on the homepage.

The website is operated with the intuitive open source CMS Contao, which was extended by the agency for this project. The system is based on PHP and MySQL. jQuery is used for the interactive elements of the front end.

Responsible for With links: Lorenzo Mutti (Creative Direction), Anja von Gunten (Interaction Design), Balz Rittmeyer (Interaction Design), Watezz Bleuer (Client Side Coding), Irena Vckovski (Development), Roland Hunziker (Project Management). Responsible at the Forchbahn: Markus Buff (project management, editorial office), Silvia Haller, editorial office.

Smokers may now only be shown if this is absolutely necessary for artistic reasons or for the portrayal of a character, as can be read on the website of the state authority for radio, film and television on Tuesday. Minors may not be shown smoking or buying cigarettes. In China, almost 30 percent of adults, or 300 million people, smoke. At least one million people die there every year as a result of smoking. (SDA)

 

In the competition, over 31,500 Swiss voted in around two weeks. From 30 destinations, they chose the most popular ski resort in Switzerland. It was a neck-and-neck race between Zermatt with 2'800 votes, Flims 2,300 and Grindelwald 2,100. Lenk and Saas-Fee followed in fourth and fifth place.

Since the launch of Street View in Switzerland in August 2009, Google has photographed various Swiss cities. Last summer, a specially equipped bicycle was used to take pictures of places of tourist and historical interest, such as the Aletsch region and Château Chillon. This winter, Google will send a snowmobile to the Matterhorn. The photographs will be used to create 360-degree images that will enable Internet users on Google Maps to experience a virtual descent of the slopes at the foot of the Matterhorn. The snowmobile rides in Zermatt are to be followed by shots in other Swiss ski resorts, Google announced on Tuesday.

Switzerland sends Street View to the ski slopes
 

Both Christian Baertschi and Flavio Meroni are founding partners and associates of the agency, which has been in existence since the end of 2005, and are now taking over 100 percent. Christian Baertschi continues to head the areas of consulting and strategy. Flavio Meroni is responsible for creation. Both partners will remain fully involved in the day-to-day business, as the agency announced on Tuesday. The strategic orientation will continue as before.

Caption: Christian Baertschi (left) and Flavio Meroni (right). 
 

The frontrunners are internationally oriented brands such as Toblerone, Nescafé and Lindt. There are also a striking number of other food brands in the top 20, including Nespresso, Nestlé, Lindor, Maggi, Suchard and Ovomaltine. Brands from the watch industry such as Swatch, Hublot, Tag Heuer, Tissot, Omega and IWC are also frequently represented. With 20 Minuten, a representative of the media industry also made it into the top 20. The specialists at Unic noticed that individual products of a brand often inspire more fans than the parent brand. For example, Migros Ice Tea, with a community of 82,000 fans, is more popular than Migros itself with 35,000 fans.

The basis for the survey of the top 20 was the brand selection of the Swiss brand posters (Markenplakat.ch). The selection was based on the following criteria: The brand was founded in Switzerland, it has an official Facebook page and is highly topical. For the fan numbers on the infographic, the cut-off date is February 9, 2011. It should be noted that all brands in the top 20 gain new fans every day, with the communities growing by up to 2.6 percent per week. 

To the infographic: Unic.com/top20

Article from the Werbewoche print edition:
Social media today

 

Starting next Monday, Tele Züri will have its own health show. "Check up - Das Gesundheitsmagazin" promises valuable information from the world of medicine, exciting reports and useful tips on the subject of health. At around six minutes, the program is the "most compact TV format in the medical field. Not all that much information is likely to be included. But Tele-Züri viewers have a decisive advantage: after one hour, the regional station starts the repeat. And then it's time to put the tips from presenter Igor Zilincan into practice.

Start of broadcast: Monday, February 21, at 6:20 p.m.
 

The portal replaces the "Hochparterre Schweiz" blog and offers a video blog, picture galleries and audio contributions in addition to current articles. The site can also be used to register for events and purchase publications, subscriptions and digital products. Another new feature is a protected area for online or magazine subscribers, where selected articles, discounts and background reports can be accessed. According to the agency, great importance was attached to ensuring that the website stands out with its unique design. The design is based on the Hochparterre print publications.

Mezzanine.ch 

Responsible at Hochparterre: Urs Honegger, Andres Herzog (project management), Barbara Schrag, Antje Reineck (design). Responsible at Future Connection: Stefan Mousson (consulting/project management), Julian Karrer (consulting), Reto Moebus (design), Kilian Hann, René Alessandri, Gregory Plüss (technology).