The campaign follows on seamlessly from the current one. The canton has been carrying out marketing measures since 1998. According to the SDA, the government wrote in a press release on Thursday that this could improve the canton's image as a place to live, work and do business. The campaign to date has proved successful and the level of attention has been high in relation to the resources used. This is also shown by the increasing number of private individuals and companies settling here. Thurgau is increasingly perceived as an attractive location, according to the government.
The aim is to further develop the Thurgau brand as a destination and designation of origin. To this end, those responsible will continue to rely primarily on classic instruments such as posters, advertisements, events, trade fair and web presences as well as media work.

The boycott is justified by the political content of the SP commercial, according to a statement from the SP Switzerland. According to the SP, the short film meets all the requirements of cinema advertising. No one is offended or hurt. "Nevertheless, it is now falling victim to censorship and the arbitrariness of a cinema multinational. Both the management and the legal department of Kitag refuse to show the commercial because of its political content."
Kitag's No means that the SP will have to do without advertising in 85 cinemas in Zurich, Basel, Bern, St. Gallen and Lucerne. Nevertheless, according to SP President Christian Levrat, the SP clip will be shown in around 30 cinemas in all major German-speaking Swiss cities. He could not understand the reasons for the advertising boycott, Levrat told the media on Thursday, according to SDA. Kitag had merely informed the SP that the company's legal department and management had decided against the SP advertisement. However, Kitag is not always politically neutral: During the referendum campaign on the free movement of persons, the cinema operator had allowed political advertising in its auditoriums. The SP is examining the "legal situation" in order to protest against the decision. If necessary, the party will distribute flyers outside Kitag cinemas to draw attention to the "censorship".
Not censorship, but a fundamental stance
The renunciation has nothing to do with censorship, but is a fundamental stance, Kitag said on Thursday: "Kitag, like radio and television, does not do any political advertising," said Kitag Director Philippe Täschler when asked by SDA. The commercials on the free movement of persons mentioned by Levrat were a mistake. "After we got wind of this, we took the commercial out," said Täschler. It can happen that Cinecom, the Publicitas subsidiary responsible for advertising, does not recognize a political commercial as such.
The SP commercial is also no ordinary political advertisement, noted SP President Christian Levrat. The SP is the first party in Switzerland to make such a film. With relevant statements and symbolic images, the party primarily wants to make its new logo and the slogan "Yes" better known. The clip does not contain any obvious political messages.
The commercial will be broadcast immediately, with a focus on Zurich and Bern - due to the upcoming elections to replace the cantonal government, the cantonal government and the cantonal parliament. In French-speaking Switzerland, however, the spot will not be shown until after the elections in Geneva. Until then, the old SP logo will still be used in French-speaking Switzerland, Levrat said, explaining the later launch of the film.

In the new issue, "Diebündner Zeitung" reports on successful gastronomy advertising, important dialog approaches in the pharmaceutical industry and a modern appearance for a traditional craft. Contact persons on the customer side also have their say. The project manager of the Zurich Women's Association (ZfV) is interviewed about the new appearance of their restaurant "Piccard" in the Museum of Transport in Lucerne, which was created in collaboration with Diebündner Zurich. And the client of the emergency practice mediX at Stauffacher Zurich, where the agency communicated the opening last fall. Likewise the marketing manager of Montana Sport, for whom Diebündner Zürich was able to implement the relaunch of the website. As did the board of directors of Orgelbau Felsberg, for whom the agency created a website with an integrated database.

You can order the newspaper via [email protected] or in the Internet.

Overall, the surplus between July and September fell by 29 percent to 350 million dollars (234.6 million euros) compared to the same period last year, as the company announced in San Francisco. At the same time, however, revenues rose by almost six percent to 2.24 billion dollars, exceeding analysts' expectations. In the previous three quarters, Ebay had recorded declining sales for the year. According to the information provided, one of the reasons for the contrasting development of sales and profits is the company's increasing focus on fast-growing, low-margin businesses. At its online payment service PayPal, the number of customers rose by a fifth between June and September. The internet telephone subsidiary Skype gained 40 million new users and now has 521 million customers. (dpa)

"We are in a gigantic crisis," Marc Walder from Ringier is quoted as saying in a press release. Consumers' new media usage and the economic crisis have hit the industry. Media companies need to focus on strong brands, make their companies more efficient and develop new business areas. "There is no general media crisis, but a new reality," said Professor Otfried Jarren from the University of Zurich. There is, however, a "home-made crisis" for daily newspapers and publishing house management. With high quality, the media should create journalistic value that consumers are happy to pay for. The industry alone is in a position to turn the tide. Hans Peter Rohner from Publigroupe explained that the future belongs to "cleverly calculating and innovative media companies". Tradition and size could be helpful, but could also be an obstacle.
Ways out of the crisis
Is online journalism a way out of the crisis? It is "light-footed, flexible and immediate" and offers the best conditions for up-to-date and in-depth information, said Peter Knechtli from Online Reports. The online community wants news in "real time". Advertising revenues have developed positively and the advertising crisis has hardly affected the free newspaper 20 Minuten, said Managing Director Marcel Kohler. On the other hand, there is no crisis on the readership market, on the contrary: readership figures are increasing, particularly thanks to the 14 to 19-year-old target group, which is important for advertising customers. On the other hand, Ann Axelsson and Magnus Gylje regretted that the Swedish newspaper Svenska Dagblat was struggling with falling readership figures. In order to provide readers with information that meets their needs, they have streamlined the editions and simplified complex topics with informative graphics. At the weekend, a magazine is published that reports on specific topics in more detail. The results are pleasing: the newspaper has won several awards for its layout and readership figures are rising.
Does the quality suffer?
"I can tell you few catastrophic things about the threat to the quality of our journalism," Hanspeter Lebrument, President of the Swiss Press Association, encouraged the Comdays participants. When we talk about a crisis, we are talking about a few titles and a few people. Local and regional media are experiencing an upswing thanks to their local reporting and professional work. This is the reason why Switzerland is excellently equipped in terms of media and why the quality of the media has improved. Online journalism, on the other hand, is a "classic reduction in quality" because the time pressure does not allow for more detailed research, and in the USA, online journalism is the reason why American quality journalism is in acute danger. "Newspapers are in a death spiral," lamented Stephan Russ-Mohl from the University of Lugano. Traditional titles have already disappeared. To ensure that journalistic quality does not continue to suffer, readers should pay. Flat rates and online subscriptions are possible, he said, adding that working conditions must also be right for high-quality journalism. According to Philipp Cueni from the Swiss media union SSM, training and further education are essential. In addition, the job cuts to date should not be neglected. They are relatively high and lead to a loss of specialized knowledge.
Selling information, not advertisements
At one panel, media representatives agreed that a rethink was needed: The readers are the customers - not the advertisers. In future, readers must be taken seriously and information, not advertising space, must be sold, said Markus Somm from Weltwoche. Publicist Roger de Weck also called for more reader loyalty: a good newspaper is like a dialog; the reader wants a good conversation partner. This is the success model of the Bieler Tagblatt, explained editor-in-chief Catherine Duttweiler. Her newspaper is characterized by local reporting, reports on events that move readers and facilitates dialogue. The participants in the discussion agreed that quality was still in demand and that print media would not die out. However, Dominique von Burg, President of the Swiss Press Council, regretted that all media were currently reporting the same thing. It was therefore time to rethink.
Media future?
At the end of Comdays, Nils Müller from TrendONE predicted that the future of media is the expansion of reality. With multifunctional mobile devices, it will soon be possible to jump from one world to another. For example, people will be able to go shopping virtually and try on clothes online as early as 2010. We will always be online: "Always on, always connected" is the motto.

This is the conclusion reached by the Press Council in its statement published on Thursday, according to SDA. On February 19, Blick reported under the title "We are afraid that Alisha will die" about a baby who was fighting for her life because pneumonia had been mistaken for a harmless cold at Wil Hospital. The Fürstenland-Toggenburg hospital region responded the same day with a media briefing. It said that the staff at the Wil emergency ward had not sent the parents home but, contrary to the Blick story, had advised them to contact the Eastern Switzerland Children's Hospital in St. Gallen immediately.
On February 20, Blick continued its coverage of the case. According to the Press Council, the tabloid unfairly gave the impression that Wil Hospital had not responded to the parents' accusation of medical malpractice with serious objections, but with "hair-raising excuses". Based on the requirement not to withhold important information, however, the newspaper would have been obliged to at least present the hospital's point of view in a concise and fair manner, writes the Press Council in its statement.

According to a press release issued on Thursday, this significant growth marks the agency's first important step towards its targeted expansion. Denner operates over 700 branches throughout Switzerland.
Universal McCann (UM) is part of the IPG network with 90 agencies in 66 countries. In Switzerland, UM manages a media volume of over CHF 40 million with eleven employees in Zurich and Geneva.

Shortly after each other, Microsoft and Google announced at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco that their search engines will also search Twitter's short messages, so-called tweets, in future. This means that the status messages of Twitter users will soon be included directly in search results. This once again demonstrates the increasing importance of the so-called "real-time web". Google says it intends to launch the function "in the next few months", and the integration of Twitter into Bing will probably take a few more weeks or months. However, Microsoft is not only using the development time to build an interface for tweets, but also to integrate Facebook status updates into its search. This will enable Bing to search the two most popular Web 2.0 services in future and will apparently be one step ahead of Google.

A member of the BPRA (Association of Public Relations Agencies in Switzerland) since 2009, the Pleon C-Matrix Group now employs over 20 people in Zurich. It is the Swiss organization of the European Pleon Group, which announced its merger with the global agency network Ketchum in June 2009, effective January 1, 2010. This merger will create the largest European public relations agency and one of the leading global communications service providers. The Pleon C-Matrix Group in Zurich and the new presence of Pleon C-Matrix Suisse romande Sàrl in Lausanne are part of this network with 103 offices in 66 countries.
Rochat & Partenaires Lausanne has been the exclusive partner of Pleon C-Matrix in French-speaking Switzerland since January 1, 2009.

In Jon Erni, Sunrise is gaining a high-profile executive who is very familiar with both the Swiss market and the telecommunications environment, according to a press release issued on Thursday. In his new role at Sunrise, Jon Erni will head up the business customers division, which includes large, medium-sized and small companies. The business customer division is Sunrise's second core segment alongside the private customer business.
Erni has several years of experience in the Swiss telecommunications industry. He has been with Alcatel-Lucent for 14 years, most recently as Interim CEO Switzerland. Previously, he was responsible for Sales and Marketing as well as Services. The 41-year-old Swiss engineer is married and has a daughter.
The previous Head of Business Clients, René Fischer, will leave the company once the handover to Jon Erni has been completed. Until then, he will retain full responsibility as Head of Business Customers and member of the management team. Fischer has successfully restructured Sunrise's business customer segment since the beginning of 2008, making a significant contribution to Sunrise's growth.

The PR and communications agency Burson-Marsteller has announced a change in management. After more than ten years in Switzerland, former CEO Roman Geiser is taking on a new challenge as Chief Operating Officer for Burson-Marsteller Emea. In Switzerland, he replaces Ulrich Bollmann after 30 years as Chairman of the Board of Directors. The operational management of the Swiss agency with offices in Zurich, Bern and Geneva will be placed in new hands.
In his new role, Roman Geiser will be responsible for strategic business development in the Emea region as well as continuing to manage the growing agency network. With this step, the operational management of the Swiss agency will be placed in new hands as soon as possible and the corresponding succession planning has been initiated. At the same time, Geiser will continue to work as a consultant and will take over the chairmanship of the Association of Public Relations Agencies in Switzerland (BPRA) as planned in January.

In order to improve its tarnished image, the British Advertising Association (AA) is now even planning to set up its own foundation to dispel widespread negative prejudices, according to the press release.
"The time has come for the advertising industry to restore its own reputation and faith in what we do," explains Tim Lefroy, Chief Executive of the AA, at the Media Guardian Changing Advertising Summit in London. If the industry does not seriously address its growing image problem, there is a risk that in a few years there will be more people against advertising than in favor of it for the first time.
"As far as the public image of advertising is concerned, a distinction must be made between the image of the advertisers themselves and that of the actual advertising content," Volker Nickel, spokesman for the Central Association of the German Advertising Industry (ZAW), told Pressetext. At least with regard to the first point, the expert agrees with the current AA concerns. "Advertising professions generally have a very poor image in Germany and are only just behind politicians on the popularity scale," explains Nickel.
Increased reputation of advertising content
The image of what advertisers produce, on the other hand, looks quite different. "The latest data from the consumer analysis in Germany shows that the public image of advertising content has risen sensationally in recent years," emphasizes Nickel. According to this, in 2009 around 59 percent of German citizens agreed that advertising can be helpful for consumers. According to the ZAW spokesperson, the corresponding figure in 2004 was only 44 percent. In view of the miserable image values, the AA chairman fears that the call for a stronger legal framework for advertising could become ever louder. "The loss of public trust opens the door to those politicians who take the rather arrogant view that consumers lack their own judgment and therefore need to be protected from what we do to them," Lefroy is quoted as saying by the Guardian. "Although the situation in the UK is very different to that in Germany, I see this danger in principle in this country too. As far as the corset of guidelines into which advertising is forced is concerned, however, the problem from Germany's point of view clearly lies in Brussels, where the strongest interventions are taking place," says Nickel.