In the past financial year, the Gütersloh-based media giant Bertelsmann's consolidated profit slumped to 410 million euros, compared to 616 million francs a year earlier. The reasons for this included provisions for restructuring and write-downs in the British TV business. "The global economic crisis, with its impact on consumer behavior and advertising bookings, is also putting Bertelsmann to the test in some areas," Bertelsmann CEO Hartmut Ostrowski told Werben & Verkauf. The publishing house's Executive Board members have announced that they will forgo at least 50 percent of their salaries in the current year to help cut costs.
Hamburg-based magazine publisher Gruner + Jahr also suffered a decline in profits in 2008. Operating EBIT fell by 14.8 percent to 342 (previous year: 401) million francs. The return on sales fell significantly to 8.1 percent, compared to 9.3 percent in 2007. The reason for this was a "slump in the advertising markets in the second half of the year and the continuing weakness in consumption", according to the statement. Group sales also fell by 2.2 percent to 4.3 billion Swiss francs. This affected the German, Spanish, French and Polish markets.
Gruner + Jahr discontinued several titles last year that were no longer economically viable. These included Park Avenue in Germany, Gala in the Netherlands, Life & Style in Russia and Bien dans ma vie in France. In addition, the weakening business press was realigned with its magazines Capital, Impulse and Börse Online.

As part of an agency evaluation, the Spar Group Switzerland has decided to work with the Zurich agency MediaCom. The media agency will be responsible for communications planning and media buying for the St. Gallen-based retailer from April 1, 2009. In a press release, Lennart Hintz, responsible for strategic communications planning at MediaCom in Zurich, writes that the Spar Group Switzerland will focus on a multimedia strategy in order to fully exploit the brand's potential.

Just in time for the start of the season, Sportplausch Wider hosted a bike aperitif in Wallisellen, where new bike-related products were presented in a convivial atmosphere. As an invitation, there were sticker cards created by Advico Y&R with sayings that could be stuck on other bikes and thus bluntly point out the special highlights of the evening. For example, the free spring cleaning, which was advertised with the words "Your bike looks like shit". The bike wash salon set up especially for the bike aperitif then surprised even the most hardened bikers: two pretty bikini girls scrubbed the bikes to a high shine in a foaming bubble bath - there's no better way to start the bike season.
" To the girls in the spa
Responsible at Sportplausch Wider: Peter Wider (owner). Responsible at Advico Y&R: CCO Markus Gut, Philipp Skrabal (ECD), Annik Weber (graphics), Julia Brandstätter (text). Responsible at Allaccess: Patrizia Trento (Project Executive), Reto Stöckli (Project Executive).

Adrian Peter (54) loves language. And he knows what he doesn't want. That has always been the case. As a boy at boarding school in Schiers and Samedan, he wrote dirty stories and wore his hair long. A lateral thinker and rebel who also stands out from the crowd. After graduating from business school, Peter discovered an ad from Young & Rubicam in Berne: "Copywriter wanted. "I had nothing to do with advertising," Peter recounts. "But I was good at writing. So I called the agency and asked for the job."
"Just come over," says the former CD of the agency Hansjörg Zürcher. Peter, who is currently in the shower, replies, "I can't, I'm all wet." "It's now or never," is the reply. Peter sets off - and gets the job: the starting signal for his copywriting career in Switzerland and Germany.
Adrian Peter works as a junior copywriter at Young & Rubicam for a year, then moves to GGK in Frankfurt as a copywriter. "I really wanted to work with Uwe Ortstein, the inventor of the purple cow," he recalls. "I didn't even intend to stay there long - but in the end it turned out to be twelve years." From Ortstein, the young language worker learned that advertising works particularly well when it is reduced and alienated. "Advertising is like a poem," Peter says. "Poem in the sense of condensation. It compresses messages and gets thoughts to the point. That's always fascinated me."
In 1979, parallel to his copywriting work, Adrian Peter founded the translation service AG USG in Bern-Ittigen. The young creative speaks not only Bärndütsch and High German, but also fluent English, French and Italian - and is asked more and more frequently whether he could produce the slogan he has just thought up in German in one of "his" foreign languages. "That's when I had the idea of setting up a translation service. That was a real gap in the market 30 years ago," says Peter. The idea took off: Within five years, USG matures into one of the largest translation companies in Switzerland. In 1987, branches opened in Geneva and Zurich, and in 1991 USG broke the magic barrier of 30 employees. Peter later sells the Geneva and Zurich branches and concentrates fully on the Bern headquarters. Today, USG has 21 permanent employees and over 95 freelancers translating texts into 33 languages: German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch, Flemish, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Finnish, Czech, Slovak, Bulgarian, Hungarian, Polish, Slovenian, Croatian, Serbian, Russian, Romanian, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Thai, Chinese, Korean and Japanese. Around 1,000 customers rely on USG's language expertise, many of them since the language service was founded.
"Many of our translators have also been with us for a long time," says Peter. "Building a base of qualified translators has taken time. Professionals like the ones we work with just aren't found everywhere." All USG employees translate exclusively into their native languages. In its 33 languages, USG covers finance, business, technology, communications and advertising. In addition, Peter's employees are native to Swiss as well as German and Austrian idioms.
Peters Sprachenservice celebrates success in Switzerland, while he himself continues his career in Germany: After working for GGK in Düsseldorf and Munich, the Bern native moves to Hamburg in 1981. At DMM (now D'Arcy), he worked as a CD for Mars, Colgate-Palmolive and Stimorol, among others. In 1985, Peter participated in the founding of the Cat Advertising agency in Bern and Düsseldorf, which served clients such as Grundig, Mack, Circus Knie and the Banca della Svizzera Italiana with clever ideas. In 1993, Peter joins BMZ Düsseldorf as a CD. "In six months, under my creative direction, we won over 60 million euros in new business with contracts for Gore-Tex, CMA and Sat.1," Peter reports. "I simply have a feel for how advertising has to be in order for it to be received. And when I have a vision, I get it down on paper."
In 1995, a new contract makes Peter's coffers ring: Dieter Meier and Boris Blank's Swiss electropop duo Yello awards Adrian Peter the worldwide rights for the commercial marketing of their music for two years. From 2006 on, Peter's music is mainly played in Switzerland again: He works as a CD at Lang Gysi Knoll (today Neue LGK) and takes over the management of USG again. But this does not mean that Germany is over: Peter maintains a joint venture with the Stuttgart advertising agency "die Insel" and the Ludwigsburg agency Wensauer & Partner. In 2000, Peter and Marc Brunner from Destruct and their two-man agency Cat won the pitch for the Swiss Post's Yellowworld Internet portal. With their ideas, they beat out Farner Publicis, among others. Since 2002, Peter has also worked as a freelance CD, screenwriter, copywriter and journalist for SoDa magazine. Peter's latest coup: the opening of a USG branch in Stuttgart. He currently employs two people at the branch, which opened in February.
Adrian Peter says what he thinks. And he also writes it. He has something against "Werbetüdelidü" and euphemisms, against language slurring and unnecessarily rigid rules that restrict the creativity of language. "We're allowed to be bolder," Peter says provocatively. "Other languages do it that way, too: the plural of bratwurst in English is called bratwursts, not bratwursts. No Brit or American gets upset about this un-German plural formation. So let's dare to be a little more daring and just say 'shopped,' 'mailed,' and 'designed' until someone else imitates it." After a while, the "German look" of the language then spreads, Peter says, and is understood without difficulty. "Language is wonderful," he enthuses. "It's so alive and receptive. And it's the toughest weapon of all: language can build people up - and it can destroy them." Peter has no problem with anglicisms or youth language. That one understands what is meant by "Do you have subway? - Nah, I've got a bike!" is a testament to the fantastic power and vitality of language. What would he do if he were mute? Peter laughs. "Then I would write. I would learn shorthand so I could write as fast as I could speak. I would fight for my language and not let it be taken away from me." Peter also demonstrates his love of language with his sharp-tongued newsletter, which he sends out to around 13,000 subscribers every month.
Peter benefits from his linguistic creativity when translating advertising copy and slogans. It is the field he plows at USG together with three employees. "USG is the only office in the area that offers translations of advertising texts into German, French, English and Italian," Peter proudly emphasizes. The difficult type of text often works with puns, proverbs, metaphors or other linguistic devices that only work in the original language. Anyone who wants to translate slogans or advertising texts into a foreign language therefore needs not only a precise knowledge of the source and target languages, but also a great deal of intuition. An example: USG was asked to translate the word "Bärenhunger" (bear hunger) for a national campaign that had already been designed - but this word does not exist in the target language. What to do? "Then you make it wolf hunger," Peter explains. "In Italian, for example, you speak of 'fame di lupo,' 'fame d'orso' doesn't exist. In German, on the other hand, you also understand wolf hunger. So in that language, you can safely use that term as well."
After all the comprehension pitfalls had been removed from the text, however, the subject no longer matched the text: For the agency had depicted the bear suffering from hunger. A bear with a wolf's appetite - that would have pleased neither the wolves nor the consumers. So the agency turned the bear into a wolf and thus avoided an embarrassing advertising mishap. It is a truism for advertising professionals that successful advertising measures should speak the language of the target group. At USG, this insight takes on a double meaning.
Depending on the complexity of the texts, Peter and his colleagues offer different translation modes: from a simple literal translation to the six-eye principle, which includes proofreading and editorial work. High-quality image brochures, advertising copy, or slogans for TV commercials are usually reformulated in the target language. "We try to transfer texts without interpretation or judgment in such a way that they come as close as possible to the author's intention and that they are definitely understood correctly in the foreign language," Peter explains. "That's back-breaking work. We're not interested in vanity; we're interested in the matter at hand."
USG is radically committed to making language work. This can sometimes mean that USG customers hear "That's not how it's understood." See Bear Hunger. That's exactly what Peter means when he pointedly says on the USG company brochure, "Good translators go to heaven, bad ones go into business with you." In Bern-Ittigen, the bad is the enemy of the good.
Anne-Friederike Wilhelm

USG's copywriter-translators don't just sit around the table together in their kitchen: Samy Gillioz (French), Patricia Brand (Italian), Patrick Low (English) and Adrian Peter (German).

The days of "So or so" are over: In the future, the Migros brand will appear with the slogan "Ein M besser" ("One M better"). Developed by the agency Jung von Matt/Limmat, which won the budget for Migros' umbrella brand campaign at the beginning of the year, the slogan will be launched nationwide in a few weeks together with an image campaign. It builds specifically on the retailer's unmistakable emblem - the orange M - which, according to surveys, a record-breaking 92 percent of Swiss people know.
Apparently, Jung von Matt wants to build the entire umbrella brand campaign around the M as a crystallization point. In this way, it is supposed to stand for the maximum added value that Migros provides: in its products, as a company, and as part of Switzerland. According to Migros, the slogan thus summarizes the company's core values and value proposition in a striking way. However, the upcoming campaign will also be a source of amusement, and Migros will remain true to this.
Launch of a new brand: M-Classic
According to Migros, the new "M-Classic" brand will combine articles from the existing range that represent particularly good value for money. These will be articles for everyday use, which will be given a uniform, "modern and fresh" packaging design under the new brand. However, the content, name and price of the articles will remain the same. What the products have in common is that although they are in high demand, their brand is little, or in the case of bread, non-existent.
After M-Budget and Sélection, M-Classic is a third brand that unites products across the Migros range in one line. Oskar Sager, head of marketing at Migros, says that the new brand is intended to provide orientation and decision-making assistance. The line will be available in all Migros stores and other sales channels with Migros products (LeShop, Migrolino, etc.). The first products are to be delivered soon, followed by a further 300 items after Easter and around 600 items by the end of the year, according to Migros.

First examples of the new product line/brand M-Classic

According to its operator Google, the internet portal YouTube has been blocked in China since Monday without the reasons for this being known. "We are working to restore access for our users," said a Google spokesperson on Tuesday.
Last year, YouTube was blocked following the publication of a video with images of the uprising in the Tibetan capital of Lhasa. However, as the Chinese government has the option of blocking individual videos, observers believe that this time it could be an attempt by the authorities to tighten control over internet users.

The concept is convincing: playful and plain-colored garments that are characterized by a simple cut, excellent fabric quality, fair prices and regularly new models as well as original colors. Switcher was founded in 1981 by a student at the University of Lausanne. At the time, Robin Cornelius saw a need for wide and comfortable single-colored polo shirts without lettering. These were intended to compete with the popular rugby-style sweatshirts with the dominant logos of American universities. Since then, Switcher has developed into a cult brand. There are more than 400 fashion outlets in Switzerland alone. Until now, however, the company has done little more than advertise at the POS. Now Numéro 10 from Bremgarten in Bern is launching its first image campaign. Gilles Aeby's agency won the contract in a pitch. The strategy of the first brand campaign does not want to work with "nice fashion fiddles", but for the first time to explain across the board who Switcher actually is.
> Spot
Switcher has been working with the Indian supplier Prem Group since 1987 and has been committed to fair treatment of producers in the Third World ever since. Switcher was the first Swiss textile company to become a member of the FairWear Foundation in 2007. This foundation is committed to improving working conditions in the clothing industry. Switcher was already the first textile producer in Europe to launch an organic and Max Havelaar Fair Trade-certified collection in 2005. The producers receive a fixed price for the cotton, which is not subject to market fluctuations. In order to minimize the impact on the environment, the CO2 emissions of all products bearing the corresponding label have been neutralized and offset by the organization www.myclimate.org. For fabrics that are dyed in India, Switcher has had state-of-the-art desalination plants built to purify the dye water. Switcher also has a foundation that primarily supports children and education in production countries such as India.
Numéro 10 works with Kinetic Typography to advertise with such socio-political arguments. This trendy film style is well established among the target group of lohas and urban city dwellers. Kinetic typography is the art of transforming spoken monologues and dialogs into moving typography. With the help of simple modifications to the font, the letters and words are given an extraordinary dynamic.
Scientific studies have shown that kinetic typography can have a stronger influence on the reader. The films, which now use arguments to promote fair production, only show the Switcher products in a final pack shot. This is followed by the slogan "made with respect". More details about the products and Switcher's commitment can be found in a magalog, which was also designed by Numéro 10.
Andreas Panzeri

Euro RSCG's new poster campaign presents the Zurich-based design furniture store Zingg-Lamprecht as a planet made up of fine furniture and home accessories. "Create your own world" is the interior designer's additional invitation to the viewer, expressing its core competence of individual advice and an exclusive range of interiors, according to the press release. The campaign can be seen from March 23, 2009 on exclusive billboards in Zurich around Lake Zurich and on Bahnhofstrasse.
Responsible at Zingg-Lamprecht: Yves von Ballmoos (Managing Director, Head of Marketing & Communication). Responsible at Euro RSCG: Axel Eckstein (CD), Jota Ziogas (AD), Wolfgang Bark (text), Sarah Kahn (graphics), Caroline Ronzani and Marianne Sauter (consulting), Anna Colby (art buying), André Gutzwiller (photographer), Felix Schregenberger (image processing). Overall responsibility: Frank Bodin.

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The Chur-based daily newspaper Südostschweiz has Website has been gently expanded in terms of personnel and given a slight visual overhaul. The platform's news will now be managed by a two-person online editorial team headed by Philipp Wyss and Oscar Bergamin. They will work closely with the local editorial offices of Südostschweiz in Chur, Glarus and Uznach. This should make the latest news from the region more quickly accessible to readers on the Internet, as the Südostschweiz Media Group announced on Tuesday. The editorial team will also draw on the news sources of Radio Grischa and Tele Südostschweiz. Also new in terms of content is a financial channel, which has been launched in collaboration with Graubündner Kantonalbank and shows, among other things, the latest stock market developments.

Cosmic has designed the 24th edition of the Interio catalog for the upcoming summer season for the furnishing specialist. Under the title "summery inspiration", the Zurich agency has staged the two themes "Tropical" and "Maritime" on 68 pages. In addition to being sent to regular customers, the catalog launch was accompanied by radio spots and various POS measures such as megaposters and façade posters.
Responsible at Interio: Werner Jakob (Head of Marketing), Eveline Jakob (Head of Marketing Services). Responsible at Cosmic: Richard Rau (CD), Marc Hahn (AD), Julia Bolli (graphics), Tobias Jaggi (overall responsibility), Monica Rapp (consulting).

Flowcube Communications has acquired the Hotel Ganischgerhof Mountain Resort & Spa in South Tyrol as a new client. The Zurich-based agency with a branch office in Milan and partner agency in Munich has thus added an Italian client to its portfolio in the hotel and tourism sector. As the agency announced on Wednesday, the PR mandate for the South Tyrolean hotel includes media relations and managing the press offices for Switzerland, Germany and Austria, as well as communications consulting for the management.