The agency at the airport realized two annual reports in April. While last year's report for the AVA wastewater association presented toilets, this year the focus was on manhole covers.
The annual report for Provita Health Insurance from Winterthur is intended to show that even in difficult times, the health insurance company does everything it can to maintain its friendliness, for which it received an award in the Comparis comparison. The advertising agency used pictures and stories of Swiss circus clowns for this purpose.

Responsible at AVA Abwasserverband, Altenrhein: Robert Raths (Chairman and President), Christoph Egli (Managing Director). Responsible at the agency at the airport, Altenrhein: René Eugstair (CD), Dominique Rutishauser (AD). Photography: Hans Scherrer, Rorschach.

Responsible at Provita Health Insurance, Winterthur: Enrico Giovanoli (Managing Director), Herbert Strasser (Marketing). Responsible at the agency at the airport, Altenrhein: René Eugstair (CD), Dominique Rutishauser (AD), Désirée Schmid (text).

Helvetic Medical AG has decided to collaborate with BMB Baertschi, Meroni & Bolleter. The Zollikon-based company develops and markets contemporary lifestyle care products with medical functionality under the brand name Silkmed. The collaboration includes the development of a new communication presence and various other advertising measures for the launch of a new product range, according to a statement from the Zurich-based communications agency. The first works will be on display from June 2009.

One winner of this year's Cannes Lions has already been announced: Volkswagen has been named Advertiser of the Year. The prize is awarded in each case to advertisers who distinguish themselves through inspiring, motivating marketing and who encourage their agencies to work creatively, according to the media release. Since 1961, VW has won a total of 150 awards in nearly every category. The automaker has also swept several Grand Prix. The first in the Cinema category in 1970, followed by the Launch II campaign in 1988; two Press Grand Prix in 1988 (Beetle campaign) and 2004 (Polo "Cops" campaign); a Promo Grand Prix in 2006 and a Cyber Grand Prix in 2006 for the GTI campaign. The Advertiser of the Year award will be presented to Jochen Sengpiehl, Head of Marketing at Volkswagen, on June 27, 2009.

German airline Lufthansa appoints Holger Hätty as the new Chief Commercial Officer of its subsidiary Swiss, making him a member of the Executive Board. In this position, the 50-year-old is responsible for revenue management, global sales, marketing and product & service. The new top manager previously held a leading position at Lufthansa.

Migros Media, the media competence center of Limmatdruck, will have a new structure as of June 1, 2009. The previously independent publishing houses of Migros-Magazin and Saisonküche will be merged into a new publishing house. This is revealed in the annual report published on Tuesday. The new joint publishing house will be managed by Bernt Maulaz, while Reto Feurer will become the new Deputy Publishing Director. Hans Schneeberger, Editor-in-Chief of the Swiss-German Migros magazine, will also coordinate more between the media in order to promote cross-platform editorial solutions even more strongly.
The merger of the two publishing houses will lead to a reduction of 3.8 to 4.8 jobs. The entire Migros Media division employs 161 people in Zurich and Lausanne. Thanks to the merger, synergies can be exploited and flexibility increased, as Migros Media wrote on Tuesday. The reorganization takes account of the rapid developments in the media industry and at the Federation of Migros Cooperatives at an early stage. In addition to Migros Magazine and Saisonküche, Migros Media also includes corporate publishing and the entire online sector.

From June 9 to 14, 2009, the "Swiss Art Awards 2009" exhibition will be held at Messe Basel in parallel with the international art fair Art. Participants and prizewinners from the second round of the Swiss Federal Art Competition in the fields of art, architecture and mediation as well as the Kiefer Hablitzel Competition will be presented. The Dr. Georg and Josi Guggenheim Foundation Prize and the Prix Mobilière Young Art will also be awarded. At the invitation of the Federal Office of Culture (Bak), the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia will be presenting its "Collection Cahiers d'Artistes", a series of first publications for artists, for the first time.

Together with Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett, the Zurich-based media and Internet agency Update has realized a direct marketing campaign for Volvo that combines offline and online advertising. Around 10,000 people have recently been sent a personalized CD with multimedia information on the new V70 and XC70 models, including an application to view the two estate cars from all angles. The mailings are linked to the Swedish car manufacturer's website. Anyone interested in a test drive or wanting additional information can click directly to the forms already pre-filled with their details. A competition with the opportunity to test drive the two models for two months rounds off the offer.
The campaign was created using the cross-media eBridge disc mailing technology from Sony DADC.

Responsible at Volvo Automobile: Dr. Andreas Block (Director of Marketing and PR), Maja Kaufmann (Customer Relationship Manager). Responsible at Update: Oliver Arnoczky (project manager), Philipp Urlich (Flash programming). Responsible at SFLB: Rolf Zimmermann (overall responsibility), Martin Spillmann (CD), Simon Staub (CD/AD), Patrick Suter (CD/text), Patrick Dubach (text), Friederike Coninx (graphics), Patricia Balliana, Dominik Laubscher (consulting).

Change at the SBB media office in Berne: Reto Kormann will be the SBB company spokesman for German-speaking Switzerland from June 1, 2009. Kormann will take over from Roland Binz, who is going into business for himself after more than eight years as spokesman. According to a press release issued on Tuesday, 43-year-old Kormann from Berne knows SBB very well: he completed his apprenticeship with SBB in the early 1980s and has worked for the company ever since - with the exception of a detour to the federal government in 2002/2003.
As a trained SBB operations dispatcher and qualified PR consultant, Kormann has in-depth knowledge of the railroad world and communications. He is also very familiar with the job of SBB press spokesman: Kormann worked as a company spokesman for five years back in the 1990s. In recent years, he has also worked regularly in the on-call organization of the media office. Reto Kormann is married and has two children. He lives with his family near Berne.
Roland Binz is leaving SBB at the end of May. He is moving to the private sector, where he will work as an independent communications consultant with his own office in Winterthur. The SBB media spokesperson team will in future consist of Reto Kormann and Jean-Louis Scherz (Berne), Roman Marti and Daniele Pallecchi (Zurich), Frédéric Revaz and Jean-Philippe Schmidt (Lausanne) and Alessandro Malfanti (Ticino). The SBB press officer is Danni Härry.

The Imax Filmtheater Lucerne now also shows current 3D movies on the big screen in addition to the short films. Cinema advertising for the feature films can be placed at no extra charge. The films are all shown in German and are primarily aimed at families and children. They start at 6 p.m. from Wednesday to Sunday. On Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays there is an additional screening at 8.15 pm.

The Eurovision Song Contest is taking place this weekend, an event that mysteriously attracts hundreds of thousands of people to the screens every year. For this symbol of international understanding, Google has launched a popularity and forecast barometer, which uses a ranking list to show the popularity of the songs and nations. Norway is currently at the top of the list, followed by Turkey and Greece. The list is based on search queries on Google, which are then calculated in the same way as the real competition.
Particularly exciting for Eurovision fans is the accompanying colorful graph showing the progression of the top five countries' scores. Switzerland is, not so surprisingly, absent here, but of course we don't want to give up hope that this will change in the course of the week. Last but not least, the song by our Basel lovebirds, The Highest Heights, would actually fit in quite well with some of the swings on the election barometer. You shouldn't be put off by people who first think of armed exterminators when they hear Lovebugs. The guys deserve it, honestly.

Publicis has developed a TV campaign for Nescafé to promote soluble coffee. The core message of the commercials is that Nestlé's coffee doesn't need a staged show, but is simply good coffee. One commercial shows a speaker on television who puts on a show to great effect but doesn't actually have anything to say. Instead of continuing to watch this show, a young man prefers to enjoy his cup of instant coffee. In a second commercial, a woman enters an elevator. The men in the elevator hurriedly pull in their stomachs. As soon as the woman has left the elevator, the bellies reappear. Somewhat amused by the show, she drinks her coffee.
The two TV commercials by Swiss director Daniel Levy have been available on over 11 TV channels since mid-April.

> To the spot 1
> To the spot 2

Responsible at Nestlé/Nescafé: Alexander Mock (Head of Coffee & Beverages), Florian Schmied (Product Manager Nescafé). Responsible at Publicis : Ralph Halder (CD), Lori Fischer (AD), Felix Freese (text), Valentin Cheli (graphics), Agency Producer (Derya Derdiyok), Muriel Asté (Senior Brand Director), Silvia Holend (Brand Director). Film production: Condor Films, Daniel Levy (director).

The Zurich advertising agency GGK has revised Voilà!, Swiss Post's customer brochure. It now appears under a new umbrella theme and with a refined layout and redefined visual language. In future, it will have more of a magazine character in order to create greater differentiation from Voilà aktuell, the flyer offering postal services, according to a press release issued on Monday. The magazine, which is available at post offices, will cover a wide range of topics relating to the products and services sold there. Four issues are planned for 2009. The April issue deals with the topic of collecting and the passion of very different people for their collectibles.
Responsible at Swiss Post (post offices and sales): Sandra Jann, Andreas Etter and Angela Hächler. Responsible at GGK: Jean-Marc Demeulemeester (concept and design), Nicole Berger (graphics), Martina Steffen (consulting), Jürg Freudiger (text) and Michi Sieber (photography).