If your car breaks down, you know who you can rely on: With the Touring Club of Switzerland, the journey will soon continue again. "Getting on" is therefore the clear brand promise in a completely new communication presence that Contexta has designed for TCS. The Bern-based agency won the comprehensive contract in a pitch among four agencies. The primary goal of the campaign: to anchor the TCS as a strong umbrella brand with the clear brand promise "Getting ahead" in the minds of the target group.
The second aim is to publicize the many attractive offers of Switzerland's largest club in an appealing way in order to attract new members and retain existing policyholders. The forward strategy in this campaign aims to make it widely known that the TCS not only offers over 650 patrol and breakdown vehicles that provide assistance around the clock, but also offers legal protection insurance, car insurance, ETI travel assistance and other services in addition to this breakdown assistance.
Contexta is now cleverly linking these numerous TCS products to the brand promise "Getting ahead". In four films as well as in the print subjects, the TCS member is in the foreground in terms of both form and content. This clearly shows how the TCS member can "enjoy life in a relaxed manner", even if something unforeseen suddenly happens - as can be seen in the background of each subject and only at second glance. The campaign combines happy, smiling people and a not-so-everyday claim in each subject or commercial. The visuals come across as fresh, modern and with a pinch of humor. The point: despite the damage in the background, life goes on without a hitch in the foreground. For example, two Porsche drivers crossing paths on a mountain pass lose their mirrors - but before they lose their nerve, the TCS legal protection offer comes into the picture.
A new campaign design was also developed, which gives all communication materials an unmistakable face and a clear structure: the arrow, which is color-coordinated with the corresponding products, visually symbolizes "getting ahead" and runs as a common thread through every advertising medium. A uniform call-to-action element draws attention to competitions, discounts and benefits in a harmoniously striking way. For future publications, Contexta has also had a completely new visual world photographed with over 2000 images.
The new TCS campaign was launched on March 9 and plays in all disciplines from classic to dialog to online and promotions and is coordinated in such a way that everyone in Switzerland will soon know: With TCS you can get ahead.
Andreas Panzeri

More and more companies are using their own journalistic media, such as customer and employee magazines, newsletters and websites, to regularly communicate information and interact with their target groups. The fact that the corporate publishing sector has been growing continuously at double-digit rates for several years is due to various developments.
Differentiation in competition
On the one hand, alongside large companies, more and more SMEs are recognizing that systematic communication work can be a key factor in differentiating themselves from the competition, especially in times of increasingly homogeneous offers and exhausted price competition, and that the quality of communication determines the image of a company, the perception of its range of services and, last but not least, the identification of employees with their employer. In a study conducted by the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland in 2006, almost 84% of the Swiss SMEs (up to 250 employees) surveyed from a sample of 684 companies stated that communication was important or very important for the company's success.
On the other hand, there is a growing realization that, above all, appealingly designed corporate media that offer the reader added value in terms of content and credibly convey information can create lasting relationships with customers without major wastage and at a manageable cost. A study by Herger of 261 large Swiss companies in 2002 showed that 91% of the companies surveyed were already carrying out corporate publishing at that time, 32% of which outsourced this to external service providers with the primary aim of purchasing specialized expertise more cost-effectively.
External communication service providers
The study conducted by the Lucerne University of Applied Sciences and Arts and the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland also confirmed these findings with regard to Swiss SMEs. Almost 55% of the companies surveyed use image brochures as part of their external communication, 41% rely on customer magazines, 30% use annual reports and almost 85% have a website. For dialog with employees, 31 percent use their own employee magazines and 40 percent rely on an intranet.
The subsequent analysis regarding responsibility for corporate publishing activities showed that 73% of the Swiss SMEs surveyed, and thus a higher proportion than in large companies, commission external communication service providers with the planning and realization of their print products. Just under 36 percent of companies have their website managed by an external communications service provider. The intranet is primarily managed by the companies themselves. Here, only just under 6 percent of companies use external providers.
Further information on the SME study by the Lucerne and Northwestern Switzerland Universities of Applied Sciences and Arts as well as opportunities to participate in the survey and create a communication benchmark can be found on the Kommunikationsaudit.ch website.
Michael Boenigk

Over the past six months, there has been some buzz within the ADC community about the volume of creative competitions and their judging. Various groups, initiators, critics spoke out in talks, policy papers, circular letters, others expressed themselves publicly in the press. As it happens, everyone was concerned with the same thing and everyone with something different.
Complaining about the proliferation of juries and awards is anything but new, nor is it limited to the Swiss market. In view of today's pressure on earnings and costs, however, the question of how far the investment in participation in all these competitions is justified is more topical than ever. The fact that the jury organizations are aware of their own economic interests and therefore also try to get enough entries with shortlist placements and additional categories cannot be blamed on them. Which is why the agencies have to ask themselves why they don't simply limit themselves to fewer entries with fewer juries - which no one is preventing them from doing.
The reason for this is that no agency wants to declare a unilateral truce in the war for trophies. The more awards won, the better the reputation of the creatives - and the more attractive the agencies are to them. Add to that the chance that clients will at least recognize the agencies' validation through awards as an additional qualification. The desired reduction in the volume of awards is therefore not left to the market; it is to be achieved, please, through a gentle regulatory measure.
So the official creative ranking of Werbewoche is supposed to fix it. By taking fewer competitions into account (a maximum of 10, compared with 18 just two years ago) and by recognizing fewer awards (for example, the shortlists of Swiss competitions are no longer recognized), while increasing the number of points awarded in favor of the higher awards. At the expense of the opportunity to be honored for a variety of above-average works, only the absolute creative highlights are to be increasingly recognized. Because they will therefore be far more selective in their submissions, this will, according to the calculation, ultimately ease the burden on the accounts of all agencies.
Werbewoche is to be thanked for allowing ADC, which as a jury organization is also a party, to help decide how the creative ranking should be structured. In the last round, the ADC board has now dealt intensively with all the facts as well as all the proposals - and has even gone beyond them in some cases. With a larger and progressive gradient between upper and lower ranks (from Grand Prix to Shortlist) and between competitions (from Cannes to Crossmedia), it clearly promotes "class over mass". The shortlists of the Swiss awards, which are rated much lower in this context, can thus remain considered without further ado (like those of all others). On the other hand, the errors that resulted from the additional differences in the allocation of points (counters) for the individual awards between the competitions for the past two years have been corrected. Suddenly, a bronze lion was worth far more than a bronze cube than a gold lion was worth than a gold cube - and the latter was worth four times more than a shortlist placement, while the gold lion in Cannes was only worth two and a half times more. The crux lies in the details here, too.
After heated discussion, the board also accepted that all competitions focused on a single media genre (such as Edi Film and Swiss Poster Award) should be disregarded in the creative ranking. This despite the ambivalence of ADC members sitting on their juries. As far as ADC is concerned, the budget reductions of the agencies with 30 percent less entries this year are already a fact. With its resolutions and their renewed coordination with the positions of Werbewoche (see box), the ADC board hopes to bring the discussions to a close for the time being. In the face of the often individual and thus very different interests, it also had to safeguard those of the ADC Institute.
The award business has also become a cut-throat market. Of course, ADC Switzerland also has to qualify for one of the remaining places. So it has to position itself correctly for this future. It stands in the environment of all juries for the creative Natio¬nalliga. The fact that this is being further devalued cannot be in its interest - nor in that of its members, who like to point out that today they jury far more strictly (according to the Cannes mode), and that their awards have therefore gained in value and not the opposite. Add to this the fact that ADC, on its new course since 2006, has consistently improved the desired relevance of its judging for advertising clients, the media and all market partners. The fact that these as partners, colleagues, promoters and sponsors today make common cause with the creatives of ADC will continue to be the case only if the latter lives up to its recognition.
Jean Etienne Aebi, President of ADC Switzerland

The creative ranking
The competitions for the creative ranking of Werbewoche are now fixed, in brackets the respective weighting factor of the competition: Cannes (5), Clio (5), D&AD (5), One Show (5), The Cup (5), ADC*E (4), Eurobest (3), ADC Switzerland (3), Effie (2), Crossmedia (1). Werbewoche has decided that in addition to these competitions, each agency can choose for itself from two international and two national awards those two that should also count for the ranking. These are: Epica (1), London International Award (1), Swiss Poster Award (1) and Edi (1). This is in response to the request of many agencies. The weighting factors for the individual ranks are as follows: 1 for Shortlist (Finalist, Merit, Book), 2 for Bronze (do. Edi: Special Edi, D&AD: Silver "Nomination"), 4 for Silver, 7 for Gold, 11 for Grand Prix (SPA: Overall Winner). For The Cup, 11 for Grand Cup, 7 for Cup, 4 for Nomination, for ADC*E 7 for Gold, 4 for Nomination. For LIA 7 for Grand Prize, 4 for Winner, 1 for Finalist. In addition, it was decided that for the Creative Ranking, only the highest award given applies if a campaign has won several (for several individual subjects) in the same jury category of a competition.

Compass Catering Technopark, part of the Compass Group, is sponsoring Euro Pride 09, which takes place in Zurich from May 2 to June 7. Technopark will be catering several events during the event. These include the VIP aperitif at the opening ceremony, the gala dinner on June 4, the party tent at the parade on June 6 and the closing brunch in the Giessereihalle Puls 5.
Compass Group Switzerland offers services in the communal catering sector. Its core business is business & industry as well as the education and healthcare sectors. In Switzerland, Compass Group is represented by the brands Eurest, Restorama, Scolarest and Eurest Services. The Compass Group manages around 300 restaurants throughout Switzerland and employs around 22,00 people.

At the beginning of the 2009 festival year, Audi will become a new automotive partner of the Lucerne Festival. The agreement secures Audi's status as Official Car Carrier of the three classical music festivals at Easter, in the summer and at the piano, as well as its status as sponsor of the festival in the summer. The German car manufacturer has committed to supporting the festival for the next three years with a sponsorship contribution and will provide the vehicles for artist support. It has been agreed not to disclose the amount of the contribution.

Aquaclean is a toilet that takes its acronym very seriously: The water closet not only flushes wet after every flush, it also cleans your bottom with a warm jet of water and then blows it dry. The fresh and hygienic idea comes from the Jona-based sanitary technology company Geberit - and is over 30 years old. That's how long Geberit has been selling shower toilets that rinse twice with water.
As pleasant as the invention is, it is difficult to advertise. After all, everything that happens in the bathroom is a very private matter - especially when it's not about the design of the advertised toilet bowl, but about its "inner values". So how to advertise the benefits of increased hygiene without accusing the potential buyer of uncleanliness? Geberit commissioned the Y&R Group to find a solution to this question. The agency's mandate included the complete relaunch of the AquaClean brand, from market analysis, naming, development of the logo and brand world to the appearance for all communication measures in all channels for business and end customers.
A clean affair
The solution is the slogan "I Love Water". It carries the entire campaign, which was launched on Tuesday. The message: not cleaning yourself with water after using the toilet is just as absurd as rubbing yourself down with a towel in the morning without having showered first. The logo is also committed to the central message: the agency replaced the heart symbolizing "love" in "I love water" with a crisp, clean rear end in the shape of a heart. This type of humor generates attention and sympathy and also conveys the message that it's not just about love for water, but also for clean bottoms. Clever.
The case of water
The pictures taken by star photographer Michel Comte for some of the ads and TV commercials in the Swiss mountains near St. Moritz range from aesthetic to subtly erotic. Comte shows Melanie Winiger and Barbara Becker in drenched dresses in their element: water. Winiger kneels in front of a waterfall, Becker indulges in romantic reveries on the banks of a mountain lake. "I love water," both ladies are quoted as saying. There is no doubt that the ads, like the TV commercials featuring the two celebrity water lovers, are a wet eye-catcher that effectively draws attention to the "water principle" used by Geberit in its shower toilet.
> Spot Barbara Becker
> Spot Melanie Winiger
In addition to the Becker and Winiger subjects, the campaign also includes advertisements with the I-love-water logo. Classic images of a stylish bathroom equipped with the hygienic water closet are also used. The campaign is supported by a communication package consisting of a trade fair presence, POS equipment, sales promotion measures, sales aids, brochures, a partner concept and training material. The campaign was launched on Tuesday in Switzerland, Germany and Austria to coincide with the presentation of the shower toilet at the ISH international sanitary trade fair in Frankfurt am Main.
Wet and thorough
Before Geberit and the Y&R Group developed the advertising campaign, Geberit commissioned a feel-good and hygiene study. The survey institutes GfK and Market Institute interviewed people in Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain and Japan. Three quarters of those surveyed believe that cleaning with water after using the toilet would be more thorough, and one in two could imagine buying a toilet such as AquaClean. Geberit is therefore hoping for a cultural change in the toilet. Incidentally, shower toilets are already commonplace in Japan and Finland.

Seven questions for Anke Mosbacher, Head Geberit Aquaclean
Do you love water?
Anke Mosbacher: Oh yes, I love the water, the freshness, the purity and naturalness. Water is invigorating for me.
Why do you advertise with the testimonials of Barbara Becker and Melanie Winiger?
They are ideal ambassadors because they convey the qualities of water through their naturalness and character: Barbara Becker, the harmonious one, hence the calm mountain lake, and Melanie Winiger, the powerful one, hence the waterfall.
Was it difficult to find models?
With the support of star photographer Michel Comte, we were able to recruit Becker and Winiger for our campaign. They all have a lot in common with Geberit because, like us, they are committed to the sustainable use of water as a valuable resource.
The ads and TV commercials featuring the two ladies seem erotic - eroticism and toilet, how does that go together?
The ads and TV commercials are an expression of love for water, a kind of declaration of love. The focus is on cleaning with water. We want this cultural change in the toilet
drive forward.
The I-love-water logo is rather humorous compared to the erotic touch of the two testimonials. Is that intentional?
It should be remembered and break the taboo in a friendly way.
Why did you conduct a consumer survey in six countries in the run-up to the campaign?
We wanted to get to know the personal hygiene behavior of our potential customers better and compare different cultures. This gave us the insight that the time is ripe for a cultural change in European restrooms.
Why did you commission the Y&R Group to implement the campaign?
The agency presented us with the best integrated concept to achieve our goal. (afw)
Anne-Friederike Wilhelm

Making-of (Barbara Becker).

Barbara Becker

Melanie Winiger

Making-of (Melanie Winiger).

The call for entries for the 29th edition of the Klappe is now open. Klappe is regarded as the most important German-language competition for moving images. Works from Germany, Austria and Switzerland are invited to take part. Die Klappe is organized by the Kommunikationsverband. The jury, which also includes several experts from Switzerland, is chaired for the third time by Amir Kassaei, Creative Director of DDB Group Germany.
Uniquely for such competitions, the Klappe jury is made up of an equal number of representatives from film productions, clients, agencies and the media. There are 11 different categories in which everything that moves on a screen, large and small screens and, increasingly trendy, on the Internet is judged.
There is also a new competition for young talent. This is being held in cooperation with the Young Lions of Cannes. The theme is "Empty fish, save the fish". The films submitted for cell phones or the Internet are intended to sensitize people to the need to treat the world's oceans with care. More information on all categories can be found at www.dieklappe.dewhere you can also log in to register. The registration deadline is April 20. The award ceremony and gala will take place on May 15 in Hamburg.

The publishing rights for the Trienger Anzeiger will be transferred to the media and print company Zofinger Tagblatt AG on April 1, 2009. The former publisher Meyer Druck AG will work more closely with Zofinger Tagblatt AG in future, but will remain an independent printing company. The Trienger Anzeiger has been published weekly in the Surental valley in Lucerne for 110 years and will continue in its current form. Publishing services for the Anzeiger will continue to be available in Triengen as well as in Reiden and Zofingen.

The poster advertising group Affichage will be introducing a new advertising strategy at its subsidiary APG from 1.
The company introduced short-time working for its logistics employees in April. The measure affects 260 people throughout Switzerland. The company is responding to the poor economic environment in the advertising market, according to a press release issued on Wednesday. The short-time working will apply until further notice.
The poor economic situation and, in particular, the associated reduced budgets in the advertising market have forced APG to take this measure, Ivan Schultheiss, Managing Director of APG, is quoted in the press release. At the same time, this means that no redundancies can be made for the time being.

Axel Springer and Publigroupe have agreed to continue to manage the online marketing service provider Zanox.de as a joint holding. This will result in an adjustment of the ownership structure: Axel Springer is relinquishing 7.5 percent of its shares and will hold 52.5 percent in future, while Publigroupe now has a 47.5 percent stake. The shareholders are thus abandoning the originally planned formation of a structure of two regional subsidiaries with reciprocal shareholdings. In future, the partnership will be reflected in Publigroupe's specific participation rights as well as in the composition of the Supervisory Board, on which both shareholders will be represented with three seats each. The previous transaction-oriented business model has proven to be forward-looking in a difficult economic environment, according to a press release issued on Monday. The two shareholders have therefore come to the conclusion that they will not form the planned business units and will continue to develop Zanox as partners.

In January, Microsoft invited young people between the ages of 14 and 18 to take part in an online survey via MSN. Over 20,000 teenagers from ten European countries took part. According to the study, it emerged that every second teenager in Switzerland has already been harassed, insulted or exposed online. The Microsoft study therefore concludes that there is a great need for protection and prevention programs.
On Wednesday, Microsoft Switzerland therefore made children's online behavior the focus of "Swiss Security Day". The risk that young people take by posting pictures and personal information online should not be underestimated. After all, more than half of those surveyed stated that they had already been harassed online. The "Security 4 Kids" initiative has been campaigning for greater internet safety for children since 2005.
In this context, it is also commendable of Microsoft to dedicate an information day to children's internet safety. Microsoft's advice to install anti-spyware, virus protection programs and a firewall to protect the child through the computer is also understandable. A solid basic knowledge and open communication are the best prerequisites for protecting your child on the Internet, writes Microsoft. The software manufacturer wants to see young surfers re-educated to become "privacy managers".