The focus is on the hotel’s long tradition of hospitality, its location in Zurich’s Old Town, and its role as a vibrant «meeting place.» The newly developed logo is also intended to reflect this repositioning: It references an old relief carved into stone in the hotel lobby and, in its design, embodies savoir-vivre and a long-standing tradition.
As part of the repositioning effort, Scholtysik Niederberger Kraft SNK was entrusted with the ongoing update of the brand identity, as well as the conceptualization and design of communication and correspondence materials. The first showcase of the new brand identity is the completely revamped Storchen website.

It was so successful that we’re following it up with a sequel this year. Once again, the focus is on the main advantage of wooden toys: they spark the imagination. And they turn a little girl into a great pilot or a boy into a pirate. The designs were created in the playrooms at Lesch + Frei.

Semiannual reports are dry reading for investors and financial analysts! Anyone who thinks that way misses out on a major opportunity once a year. The example of Implenia shows that there’s another way: Switzerland’s largest construction services company uses its half-year report to communicate its core business, value creation, and future potential.
Brand Management in the Semiannual Report
In the 2009 Annual Report, Schneiter Meier Külling brought Implenia’s brand to life in the publishing sector. With its semi-annual report, Implenia is consistently continuing along this path. As with the annual report, the new concept developed by Schneiter Meier Külling centers on Implenia’s achievements: showcase projects illustrate the divisions’ activities and highlight key themes and services. The feature on the new NEAT trans-Alpine railway line, for example—the world’s longest tunnel—impressively demonstrates the caliber of Switzerland’s largest construction services company and recognizes the achievements of its employees.
Added Value for the Target Audiences and Implenia
The new concept changes the nature of the semiannual report—and creates added value: for current employees, whose achievements are being recognized; for potential employees, who are introduced to the company’s values; and for investors and journalists, to whom the half-year report clearly conveys Implenia’s strengths and potential. And last but not least, for the Implenia brand: Thanks to its journalistic writing styles, the half-year report takes on the character of a modern image brochure that Implenia can use throughout the year as a platform for launching current topics. As a result, what was once a dry, routine exercise in providing information to analysts becomes—alongside the annual report—the second driving force behind corporate communications and a platform for consistent brand management and agenda setting in corporate publishing.
Journalistic Approach
In implementing the new concept, Implenia—through its Corporate Communications department—and Schneiter Meier Külling consistently took a journalistic approach. This resulted in a compelling report from the container village in Sedrun. The story paints a vivid picture of the challenges of tunnel construction, the extraordinary technical, engineering, and planning achievements, and the daily life of the 500 miners from over 30 countries living together in the Sedrun container village. As a result, the semi-annual report provides journalists with ideas and background material for compelling coverage of Implenia.
Modern Journalism
In the design implementation as well, conveying information takes priority: graphics and the division of content across multiple sections create additional entry points for readers and provide intuitive navigation. Executive summaries cater to online reading habits and convey key messages quickly and accessibly. By implementing this new concept, Schneiter Meier Külling optimally tailors Implenia’s reporting to the company’s communication needs, thereby laying the foundation for a consistent publishing landscape—and the systematic cultivation and management of the brand in corporate publishing. Gregor Herbst

In French-speaking Switzerland, the name Sottens has the same significance as «Beromünster» once did in German-speaking Switzerland. In 1939, an antenna mast for the medium-wave broadcasts of French-speaking Switzerland’s national radio station was installed in this small village in the canton of Vaud. As was the case with Beromünster, Sottens subsequently became synonymous with this station. And just as with Beromünster, those days are now a thing of the past. The radio station «Option Musique»—the counterpart to «Musigwälle»—will broadcast exclusively via DAB starting December 6. For the 100,000 fans of «Option Musique,» this switch means they’ll need to purchase a DAB receiver immediately. To communicate this, Radio Television Suisse has commissioned the advertising agency Numéro 10 to create a branding campaign. Gilles Aeby and Cendrine Gafner are highlighting Sottens as a «place of pioneers.» In the old days, the first antenna was erected here. In modern times, Sottens is the first village in Switzerland to be fully equipped with DAB transmitters. To ensure this core message of the campaign rings true, Numéro 10 carried out a nighttime guerrilla campaign, placing a gift package containing a DAB receiver on the doorstep of every household. Since then, the campaign has portrayed the 280 residents of Sottens as the great pioneers of DAB radio. Three print ads and two TV spots also demonstrate that listening to the radio via DAB is technically very easy to use. The agency worked with people who were as authentic as possible to serve as “DAB pioneers.” They have since become internationally known. The second TV commercial playfully shows how tourists from Japan are already traveling to Sottens to marvel at the first village in the world where radio is received exclusively via DAB. Andreas Panzeri

Originally, the poster featured a likeness of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. When this came to light in late October, the Federal Prosecutor’s Office launched an investigation against MCG President Stauffer for insulting a foreign state. At the same time, it ordered the provisional seizure of the Gaddafi posters.
Stauffer and the MCG filed an appeal with the Federal Criminal Court against this seizure. They also requested that the measure be suspended so that they could still put up the posters until a final decision is reached. This is because on November 28, voters will decide on the SVP’s deportation initiative.
On Tuesday, the Federal Criminal Court upheld the Federal Prosecutor’s Office’s decision and rejected Stauffer’s request for a stay of execution. According to the judges in Bellinzona, the Office of the Attorney General did not ban the poster per se. It merely required that no connection be made between the deportation initiative and Muammar Gaddafi or the Libyan state.
The Federal Criminal Court states in its ruling that the decision by the Office of the Attorney General of Switzerland thus imposes only a very limited restriction on freedom of expression. On the other hand, it likely prevents a foreign state from being offended by the posters, the ruling continues. This would also help safeguard Switzerland’s interests, especially since relations between Bern and Tripoli are not the best.
The court urged the Office of the Attorney General to expedite its work on this matter. This is because the Office of the Attorney General needs permission from the Federal Department of Justice to proceed with the case. However, it has not yet received this permission. According to the court, it is absolutely necessary to know by November 28 whether the measure was justified or not.
Shortly after the posters featuring a photo of Muammar Gaddafi were confiscated, the MCG announced that it would now have posters printed bearing the likeness of his son, Hannibal. However, the right-wing populist party ultimately refrained from this provocation. Although the referendum posters have since been put up as announced, they do not feature a picture of Gaddafi. The space where the image would have been was simply left blank.

They also offer a glimpse into next year’s online marketing trends. The following companies have been nominated for «Digital Marketer of the Year»: 20 Minuten, Blick, Swiss International Air Lines, CSS Insurance, Ron Orp, Adcloud, and Wilmaa. Voting takes place online on the IAB Switzerland website. The following individuals have been nominated for «Digital Pioneer of the Year»: Daniel Grossen, Reto Hartinger, Martin Radelfinger, Imre Sinka, and Andreas Widmer. The «Digital Pioneer of the Year» is selected by the board of directors and the members of IAB Switzerland. Through the «Digital Marketing Day,» IAB Switzerland aims to advance the field of online marketing and represent the market’s shared interests in the areas of education, standards, research, events, and legal matters. The event will take place at the Papiersaal in Zurich.

Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Xing, and others are a major topic in the media industry, even though hardly anyone has yet found the right communication strategy for them—let alone implemented it effectively over the long term. Anyone who is still wondering whether community platforms should primarily be used as new sales channels, for customer retention, for PR, or for brand communication may be overlooking the most obvious solution: traditional advertising.
Nearly one in four online advertising banners in the U.S. now appears on Facebook, according to a Comscore report for the third quarter of 2010. Between July and September, the industry giant served 297 billion display ads, increasing its market share by 13.9 percent compared to the same period last year to 23.1 percent. This makes Facebook bigger in the banner ad business than Yahoo, Microsoft, Fox, and Google combined. However, because click-through rates on Facebook are comparatively low, advertising rates on Facebook are rock-bottom, with a cost per thousand impressions (CPM) of one dollar (industry estimate).
If we quickly extrapolate these figures to Switzerland (based on user numbers), this would amount to approximately 1.7 billion display ad impressions per month. At a CPM rate of one dollar, this corresponds to revenue of about 1.7 million Swiss francs, or 34 million Swiss francs if we use the standard CPM rate of 20 Swiss francs in this country as a basis. The potential that advertising on Facebook still holds here becomes clear when these figures are compared with Mediafocus’s data on the online advertising market in Switzerland. For the first half of 2010, the traditional online advertising (display) segment is reported at 70.9 million Swiss francs, which amounts to 11.67 million Swiss francs per month.
However, American industry observers see CPM rates on Facebook rising, as the platform is becoming increasingly adept at processing and utilizing users’ sociodemographic data for targeted advertising. Such improvements in targeting, along with the emerging economic recovery, are key drivers of the overall online display market, which, according to Comscore, has grown by 22 percent compared to the previous year.
Christoph J. Walther