The print archive of brand and advertising subjects Adsandbrands.com has been online since Wednesday, April 2. The website currently presents over 20,000 subjects from international and German-language media. Users can browse through the archive using a fragmentary keyword search, as the owner and founder of ADS and Brands (AaB) Hans Böck explains to Pressetext. The aim of the online portal is to provide a comprehensive documentation of brand and advertising history spanning several centuries. All subjects can be downloaded free of charge.
Around four years ago, the company began auctioning original media from three different continents via Ebay and digitizing the subject material contained therein. In the longer term, the offer is to be made available to companies for a fee, says Böck. At present, however, only five to seven percent of all the collected material is online.

The International Herald Tribune (IHT) is optimistic about the future of print, thanks to a more prominent business section, the Nytimes.com website—which has been merged with that of The New York Times—and the support of a growing global readership. Publisher Stephen Dunbar-Johnson sees «increasingly global times» as a reason for the IHT’s growing readership, as he told the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He said the difficult phase would soon be over and that the IHT was already positioning itself for the future.
During the week, the business section of the Paris-based IHT is now set to feature more prominently. At the same time, according to the FAZ, the Iht.com website will be integrated into the Nytimes.com portal, thereby reaching a total audience of over ten million readers. In addition, since March 30, the IHT has been appearing with a new logo, larger images, and a new design that is more closely modeled after The New York Times.

After more than ten years in a leadership role in communications at Grey, Charris Yadigaroglou is leaving the Geneva-based agency. On May 1, he will join the marketing leadership team at the Kempinski hotel chain. Franck Belaich and Damien Gentilhomme will jointly take over as directors in his place.

The internet giant Google is apparently negotiating an acquisition with the microblogging service Twitter. This was reported by the US magazine Tech Crunch, citing well-informed sources. According to the report, talks are close to being concluded.
Google has reportedly made an offer of 250 million dollars. A few months ago, the blogging service rejected an offer of 500 million dollars from Facebook.com. The benefit for Google could lie in a kind of "real-time search engine for news and opinions", as the number of Twitter members is growing enormously day by day. With just 29 employees, the service has increased its traffic by 900 percent in the past year, writes Fox News. The offer nevertheless comes as a surprise: at the beginning of the month, Google boss Eric Schmidt described Twitter as "a poor man's email system" during a speech in San Francisco.
In a recent update, Tech Crunch reports that the talks are still at a very early stage. They are also discussing the joint development of a real-time search engine for Google.

Heads has designed a poster and flyer campaign to motivate the residents of Meilen to take part in the current municipal assembly. The campaign also calls for the approval of the loan applications for an artificial football pitch and an adventure playground worth a total of CHF 2.36 million. The posters and flyers are intended to convey that the two projects are not just about infrastructure, but about space for the unlimited imagination of children, according to a statement from Heads.
The campaign was commissioned by FC Meilen and the Meilen Parents' Association.
Responsible at Heads Corporate Communication: Marco Simonetti (Creative Direction), Ralph Hermann (Text), Johannes Just (Graphics), Nadia Francioso (Consulting).

What do you do when the burger you've just bought surprises you with a song when you open the packaging? You have to be able to use such a unique burger to your advantage! - The Network BBDO agency has developed a highly amusing commercial for the South African fast food chain Chicken Licken. Take a look for yourself.

Partyguide.ch has expanded its offerings. A gaming platform has been integrated into the leisure portal. Under www.partyguide.ch/entertainment/games Starting now, our editorial team will regularly provide reviews, tips, previews, and download options for the latest games for Xbox, PlayStation, Wii, and others.

With a record attendance of almost 300 entries, the Best of Swiss Web took place on Thursday evening. The award night on April 2, 2009 was held under the motto women wired in web. This year's Master of Swiss Web was Gottago, the interactive guide for urban nomads from Liipp. Gottago was followed by Videoguide Schweizer Fernsehen, House34.ch, SBB Ticket Shop and Quadrat Schmuck Online Shop.
The winners in the individual categories are: Callyouback.ch ( Hinderling Volkart Web Identity), Gottago.demo.liip.ch (Liip), Web2print.roche (F. Hoffmann-La Roche / Straumann), the relaunch websites of the Mammut Sports Group (MSG) (Mammut Sports Group / Unic), Connect2earth (WWF International / Getunik), the Videoguide Schweizer Fernsehen (Schweizer Fernsehen, SF Wissen / Eyekon),House34.ch (Abbott / X-Site). The special category with the annual theme women wired in web was won by the promotional campaign SBB international rail travel online (IPS Ticket Shop) (Schweizerische Bundesbahnen SBB / Maxomedia. Agentur für Crossmedia-Kommunikation BSW). No gold was awarded in the Technology Quality category.
Christian Wanner was awarded the Best of Swiss Web honorary prize for his pioneering work in online grocery retail (Leshop.ch).
The awards in the categories Creation, Online Marketing, Online and Mobile Campaigns and Usability were particularly coveted this year. The record participation reflects the continued strong growth of the Swiss web and online advertising industry in the past year, as Best of swiss web writes in a press release.

The annual Publishing Forum conference will take place this year as a day dedicated to entrepreneurs and decision-makers as part of «swiss publishing week.».
The main theme of this year’s trade conference in Winterthur is Publishing 3.0—Efficiency, Automation, and Standardization in Media Production. This year’s «swiss publishing week» will take place from September 7 to 11, 2009, at the Kongresshaus am Stadtpark in Winterthur.
From Monday through Thursday, the program offers an in-depth look at the most important publishing tools. The Publishing Forum on Friday is aimed at professionals and executives and focuses on the topic of identifying opportunities and trends early on, developing strategies, and planning investments. With Publishing 3.0 In areas such as media databases or Web2Print tools, the customer side is also addressed.
The detailed event schedule for the entire week will be released in mid-April.

Following an agency evaluation, the British airline Blue Islands has selected the agency Lesch+Frei to promote its offerings in Switzerland.
Blue Islands is the only airline offering direct flights from Zurich and Geneva to the British Channel Islands. Lesch+Frei has been tasked with raising awareness of the airline and highlighting the islands’ appeal. The first communication initiatives from the agency, led by Peter Lesch (owner and chairman) and Thomas Lüber (creative director), are set to launch as early as May.

The Winterthur newspaper Stadtblatt was discontinued in mid-2008. Now a new start is to be ventured. However, according to the SDA report, the paper is looking for sponsors via a full-page advertisement in Weltwoche.
Most recently, the local newspaper was distributed to all 50,000 letterboxes in Winterthur as a free Sunday newspaper. The response from the public was positive, as publisher Guido Blumer writes in the advertisement text of the current Weltwoche. However, the resources available were not sufficient to establish the product in the advertising market.
Potential advertisers and partners are now asked to make themselves heard on an entire page.

After the discontinuation of the German edition was announced at the end of March, the British edition of the men's magazine Maxim is now also coming to an end. The magazine will be published for the last time on April 23. Maxim UK is published by the British publishing house Dennis Publishing, which also publishes the US version of Maxim. This and the Internet portal Maxim.co.uk, which attracts around 500,000 visitors per month, will continue to exist in the future.

Maxim UK was launched in 1995 and has always been the third force in the men's magazine segment on the island, behind Loaded and FHM. In 2000, the magazine reached its highest circulation with 328,000 copies sold.