Former radio presenter Max Rüeger died on Saturday at the age of 75 after a long illness. Until last summer, he was still active as an author and repeatedly read from his texts. Max Rüeger became famous in the 1960s, when he became one of the most popular radio and television presenters. He presented the programs "Autoradio Schweiz", "Espresso" and "Guete Morge", among others. According to NZZ online, his "Saturday poems and songs" on Swiss radio DRS 1 were also particularly popular, resulting in the book "Heb Sorg" in 2004. Rüeger was also one of the best-known authors of cabarets and entertainment programs in Switzerland. He worked as a television writer for "Teleboy", among others. He also wrote stage texts, for example for the "Cabaret Rotstift" and the "Trio Eugster".
Rüeger was honored with numerous awards for his work. He received two gold records and won the "Golden Rose of Montreux" in 1969 for the musical "Holiday in Switzerland". He also received the literary recognition prize of the canton of Zurich for "Heb Sorg".

The film awards for Die Klappe were presented in Hamburg on Saturday night. In this most important competition for moving images in the German-speaking world, 40 prizes were awarded. Unlike in the past, it didn't work out for the Swiss this year. "Only" a single place on the shortlist for the agency Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett.
Germany's only interdisciplinary professional association for the communications industry, Kommunikationsverband e.V., presented the coveted awards for moving image communications in Hamburg. A total of 40 entries - 1 gold, 15 silver and 24 bronze - were honored in 10 categories. The jury, chaired by Martin Schmid, was very heterogeneous with well-known names from the fields of clients, agencies, directors, composers and producers as well as representatives from the media. The jury had to make a decision from 300 submissions. The submissions had to be exclusively for the German-speaking market, i.e. for Germany, Austria or Switzerland, and had to be submitted since March 2008.
have been published at least once. Adaptations from other language areas were not permitted. These strict specifications of this competition were intended to ensure the relevance of the entries and their evaluation by the jury for the market and its reality.
After more than 400 in the previous year, the number of submissions declined significantly. However, this can partly be explained by a shorter deadline for submission. Fewer than ten entries were sent to Hamburg from Switzerland. They remained luckless, except for "Felsenputzer" from the Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett agency. The tongue-in-cheek film launched a campaign for Switzerland Tourism on April 1, which subsequently found great success in viral representation and also triggered a worldwide echo in the media. In Hamburg, this should not be appreciated, because in this competition only the film and its making and not a whole case is judged.
Imagination" for Hornbach thus became the cinematic winner with gold and other ancillary prizes. In the spot by the Heimat agency and Trigger Film Happy Production, a man in a completely dilapidated house dreams of how he could make it habitable again - with materials and tools from the DIY store, of course. Memorable Moments" by Tribal / DDB and Erste Liebe Filmproduktion also won several awards. The film for Deutsche Telekom shows how the now legendary Paul Potts wins a casting show and moves a wide variety of viewers to tears with his operatic singing - everywhere at the same time, thanks to the distribution of the TV signal via Telekom to the most diverse
Terminals.
The complete list with all awarded films and other moving images is available on www.dieklappe.de to find.
Andreas Panzeri

The 84th general meeting of the Swiss Advertising Association SW on Advertising Day focused on the threat to advertising freedom and succession issues within the association. Federal Councillor Evelyne Widmer-Schlumpf called for a greater sense of responsibility from the media.
According to the association's press release, publisher Hanspeter Lebrument criticized the increasingly difficult framework conditions in the form of advertising bans for the media. At the same time, however, the President of the Swiss Press Association expressed his satisfaction at the fact that it has recently been possible to bring together more communication associations within the framework of the Forum Freie Kommunikation in order to jointly counter the impending danger. He concluded with the vague hope that the current poor economic situation would help to stem the wave of bans, as advertising is, after all, an instrument that helps to keep the economy going and thus secure jobs.
SW President Carlo Schmid-Sutter opened his speech with a historical review of the 17th century: "Compared to those days, the party skirmishes in Swiss politics today are as harmless as children's songs. And the verbal disputes with certain foreign politicians and international organizations seem rather teasing against this historical background," said Carlo Schmid.
No SW initiative for national law
The SW President considers the current policy, which has provoked a real legal confusion and corresponding legal uncertainty with its ban mentality, to be decidedly less amusing. In this context, the SW has asked itself whether it would not make more sense to strive for a national law that corresponds to the Geneva model. The SW therefore commissioned Felix Uhlmann, a professor of constitutional law, to draw up a corresponding report. Uhlmann's conclusion: "Under constitutional law, the federal government would be perfectly entitled to issue regulations on advertising." Nevertheless, the SW has decided not to pursue this path any further. Not least because the mood in parliament is not currently in favor of the industry's concerns.
Schmid's successor: Filippo Lombardi
Carlo Schmid will relinquish his office at the 2010 General Meeting. He was delighted that his potential successor, Filippo Lombardi, a member of the Council of States, had agreed to take over the chairmanship of the association. The first step towards this change was Lombardi's election to the SW Board by acclamation. No successor has yet been found for the Managing Director, Monika Luck, who is leaving her post at the end of 2009. However, a successor has been found for the Communications Officer, who will also be leaving during the course of the year. It is the former editor-in-chief of the Media Trend Journal magazine, Urs Schnider. Schmid bid farewell to outgoing Board members Norbert Neininger (Media), Thomas Bargetzi (Clients), Peter Leutenegger (Advertising Agencies) and Jakob Nef (Direct Marketing). He paid special tribute to the latter two. To thank them for their many years of service, he made them honorary members of SW.

Trust creates openness to the message
In the afternoon, Federal Councillor Evelyne Widmer Schlumpf took to the podium. She began her remarks by asking whether advertising and the media in Switzerland were up to the task. In various studies, she said, the media ranked low in terms of trustworthiness among the population, even behind parliament and the Federal Council. This concerns her as a citizen, as a media consumer and also as a politician. This rating should undoubtedly also give advertisers pause for thought because, after all, the media are the most important conveyors of their messages. She called on advertisers to motivate publishers to pay more attention to the trust of readers and viewers. Her conclusion, which she described as a milk carton calculation: "If I have trust in the carrier, I also tend to be more open to messages."

APG celebrated "outstanding" posters with a big party at the Posternight and invited its guests to the Maag Event Hall. It turned out that the Ruf Lanz advertising agency was the evening's winner. In addition to gold and silver in the various categories, it also won the Swiss Poster Award with its "Winter Prevention" poster for Suvaliv. Silver went to the Spillmann / Felser / Leo Burnett agency for the youth session in the "Public Service" category. The poster campaign "100 Posters" for Tamedia also earned SFLB the special prize. In future, the jury intends to award this in a separate category for imaginative works. After the show, which was hosted by Frank Baumann, the catering team served up a rich buffet that left nothing to be desired.
(az)

Ivan Schultheiss (l.), Managing Director APG, and Erich Baumgartner, former CEO of Scholz & Friends Switzerland.

Christian Siegrist (l.), Publicis, Lukas Tenger of Diem & Tenger.

Peter Schneider, Claudia Mühlebach, both Mediaschneider, Beat Holenstein, APG, Marlise Schneider, Union 3 Communications.

Patricia Aebi (l.) and Barbara Sieber, both Milus International.

Daniel Ettlinger (l.), Multicolor Print, Oliver Achermann, Affichage Holding.

Christian Kauter (l.), CEO APG, with Beat Lauber, NZZ Group.

The Swiss TV station 3 + has been honored with the Swiss Economic Award. CEO Dominik Kaiser won the young entrepreneur prize worth 75,000 Swiss francs in the services category.
On Friday in Thun, 3+ received the Swiss Economic Award in the services category for "outstanding entrepreneurial achievements". This award was preceded by an in-depth examination: around 200 dossiers were submitted for this year's competition. Over 120 fully met the entry requirements. From these, the preliminary jury nominated 15 award-worthy companies for the award. A group of nine experts visited these candidates and, after a thorough examination, selected the 3 finalists for each category. In total, more than 700 hours were spent analyzing and evaluating the applications, writes the Forum in a press release on Friday.

The Ruf Lanz agency won the Swiss Poster Award at the APG Poster Night on Thursday with its "Winter Prevention" poster for accident insurer Suvaliv. The agency was also awarded a gold medal in the Commercial category and two silver medals in the Public Service and Commercial categories. Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett and Stefan Bundi's studio in Boll also won gold. SFLB was awarded a gold medal in the Public Service category for the "Jugendsession - Liste 77" poster design, while Atelier Bundi received the gold medal for its work "Weisser Rose" for Theater Biel/Solothurn in the Culture category.
In addition to the silver award, SFLB also won a bronze medal in the commercial category for the "Floralp Butter" poster design for Swiss milk producers. The agency was also awarded the special prize for "100 posters to keep you going", the poster design for the Zürcher Tages-Anzeiger. Bronze medals also went to the "Juso" poster by Zurich agency Advico Young & Rubicam and to Erich Brechbühl (Mixer) for a cultural poster "Die rote Zora" for the Sempach Youth Theater.

A new law has been passed in Germany to combat unauthorized telephone advertising. Penalties of up to 50,000 euros can be imposed for violating the law.
Consumers in Germany will be better protected from telephone advertising in future. Anyone who violates the ban on unauthorized advertising calls will face fines of up to 50,000 euros. Call centers are no longer allowed to suppress their telephone number, otherwise they face a fine of up to 10,000 euros.
The law finally passed by the Bundesrat on Friday also makes it easier for customers to withdraw from contracts concluded over the phone. However, the federal states' demand that contracts concluded by telephone should always be confirmed in writing was not taken into account. Consumers now also have a right of withdrawal for newspaper and magazine contracts as well as betting and lottery offers. This right already applied to landline or cell phone contracts, but it expired when the implementation of the contract began. Now the right of withdrawal only expires when the customer has also paid.

As part of the implementation of its brand strategy, Emmi invited three agencies to present creative concepts for Caffè Latte at the beginning of 2009. By Heart emerged as the winner of this pitch after two rounds of presentations. The new campaign will already be seen on Swiss billboards this summer and will soon be adapted for international markets.

The internet culture channel Art-tv.ch celebrates its fifth birthday on Saturday. Art-tv.ch was initiated by Felix Schenker because he was bothered by the fact that culture - apart from on DRS2 - had a shadowy existence in the audiovisual media. Art-tv reports on the highlights of the Swiss cultural landscape with video contributions. Last year, the still young Internet channel reported 35 million hits and 700,000 visitors. The project is supported by several cantons, cultural institutions and foundations.
Among others, "Herbstzeitlosen" director Bettina Oberli, "Sennentuntschi" producer Michael Steiner and radio and TV presenter Mona Vetsch are expected to attend the party. The event will take place at the Zurich University of the Arts.
Art-tv.ch currently covers the regions of Aargau, Appenzell Ausserrhoden, Basel, Lucerne, St. Gallen, Schaffhausen, the city of Zurich and Thurgau, but the aim is to cover the whole of Switzerland. There are also plans to launch a culture cell phone in September, which will provide mobile media with the available cultural offerings in cooperation with German and Austrian partners in the Lake Constance, Zurich and Aargau regions.

The Ruf Lanz agency has been awarded silver at the Clio Awards for the Hiltl cinema spot "Sound Designer". The commercial shows how the final scene from Quentin Tarantino's "Death Proof" is set to music using a wide variety of fruit and vegetables. The film can be seen again this summer at the Orange Cinema am See in Zurich.
Before the Clio, the commercial had already won awards at the ADC Switzerland, the Edi, the Epica and the Eurobest. The concept was created by CD Markus Ruf, directed by Serge Hoeltschi and produced by Daniela Berther.
To the spot

The Publicitas key account business is getting reinforcements: René Brodbeck and Agi Babini are returning to Publicitas Publimedia. Both have already been with Publicitas for over ten years.
René Brodbeck worked at what is now Publicitas from 1988 until the end of 2008. He then headed the Zurich office of Key Media from January to the end of April and returned to the Key Account Management team at Publicitas Publimedia at the beginning of May.
Agnes Babini Pfund joined the Publi Group in 1990. She is currently still working at the Publicitas Zurich branch. As of August 1, she will rejoin the P-Publimedia team as Key Account Manager.

The presenter of the morning show "Ufsteller" Patrick Hässig will be stepping up his presenting activities at Radio 24. He will also be available to the program in a new role. From August 1, Hässig will become deputy head of presentation at Radio 24. In his new role, he will also train new talent, according to a statement from Radio 24.