Sitting down next to the priest in the confessional and hoping for forgiveness was yesterday. Modern Catholics no longer need to make a pilgrimage to church, but can confess from the comfort of their own homes - the Internet makes it possible. At confessional.com, the virtual confessional, anyone can get their worries off their chest or write them. At the same time, they can compare their own sins with those of others.
Since confessions can be made completely anonymously, the inhibition threshold does not seem to be particularly high. So the curious user is not spared intimate details of the fantasies and misdeeds of his fellow sinners. For example, one can read: "I hate my ex-boyfriend so much that I can't even put it into words. Since yesterday I have the test results from the routine smear test at the gynecologist. I caught chlamydia from my ex who cheated on me".
There is even a category for hobby psychologists: "Help & Comment. If all is lost, the sinner will find various suggestions in the Google ads further down: Clicking on the link "Fremdgehen" (cheating) takes you to various ads that promise women from the Ukraine or beautiful Thai women, among other things.

Thomas Bargetzi, CEO Sales Switzerland, is leaving the media marketer Publicitas to return to independence after completing the first reorganization phase. He is leaving Publicitas with immediate effect, and Publicitas CEO Robert Schmidli will take over his responsibilities as head of the Swiss sales region.
Bargetzi has worked for Publigroupe and Publicitas since summer 2006. He initially worked as a consultant on the "Publicitas Dynamic Pricing" innovation project. From autumn 2007, he helped to build up the new Publicitas organization in Switzerland as CEO Sales Switzerland. After completing the important first phase of the reorganization, he decided to work as an independent entrepreneur again.
Publicitas CEO Robert Schmidli on Bargetzi's departure: "Thomas Bargetzi did a great deal for the new Publicitas during an important and very challenging phase. His energy and perseverance were a great help to us all. We would like to thank him for his extraordinary commitment."
"I will have fond memories of my two and a half years at PubliGroupe and Publicitas," said Bargetzi. "P and its employees have already achieved a great deal on the challenging path to becoming an all-media marketer. I wish Publicitas and its teams every success in the future."

TBWA\Zurich has developed a poster campaign for McDonald's. The aim is to make it clear that you get more for your money at the fast food giant. In keeping with the different language regions of Switzerland, the advertising subjects compare the prices of regionally popular products with those of the cheeseburger: bratwurst and popcorn in German-speaking Switzerland, ramequin and popcorn in French-speaking Switzerland and pizza and piadina in Ticino.

Responsible at McDonald's Switzerland: Thomas Truttmann (Marketing & Communications Director), Jan De Schepper (Marketing Manager), Sonia Milici (Marketing Coordinator). Responsible at TBWA\Zurich: Urs Schrepfer (CD), Martin Friedlin (AD), Simon Smit (text), Toni Rubera (image editing), Tina Kazimir (consulting).

Ruf Lanz gains a new client with the private bank Lienhardt & Partner. The Zurich bank, founded in 1868, is investing in public advertising for the first time. According to Christian Lienhardt, the agency from Zurich's Löwenplatz won over the client with a campaign that intelligently gets to the heart of the bank's advantages, as detailed in a press release on Monday. The result will soon be seen in the business press.

Switzerland ranks eighth in the world in terms of communications technology penetration. This is one place lower than in 2004, according to a study by the International Telecommunications Union (UIT). However, modern means of communication are more expensive in Switzerland than in many other countries. In terms of cost, Switzerland is only in 12th place. While access to communication technologies has improved, the number of cell phones in Switzerland has grown less than in the northern countries.
The level of communication technology is particularly high in the Nordic countries: Sweden is in first place, Denmark in third place, Iceland in fifth place and Norway in sixth place. South Korea is in second place and the Netherlands in fourth place. Luxembourg (7th place) is also stronger than Switzerland. Finland is in 9th place ahead of the UK, Hong Kong, Japan and Germany. The USA dropped from 11th to 17th place, as the UN office announced on Monday.

Communication technologies on the rise worldwide
All countries have improved their performance in the last five years, but some more than others. Eastern Europe, in particular the Baltic states and Romania, are developing particularly dynamically, the report continues. Among the developing countries, Pakistan, China, Vietnam and Saudi Arabia made particular progress. China has improved from 90th to 73rd place since 2004. Fixed network connections, as well as the number of cell phones and Internet connections, increased particularly strongly.
According to the UIT, 23 out of every 100 people worldwide had access to the Internet at the end of the year.
Africa lags far behind this average with a prevalence of five percent. The country comparison is based on twelve indicators.

Cosmic Bern is implementing further communication measures for the BLS Travel Centers campaign. Posters are currently advertising city trips to Berlin and Paris as well as the GA travelcard. In the area of direct marketing, a mailing provides information about current travel offers and entices customers with a competition. Further measures are being planned, as the agency writes in a press release on Monday.

Responsible at customer BLS: Damian Pfister (Head of Marketing), Mark Bachmann (Head of Communications), Patrick Sahli (Communications), Beat Theiler (Head of BLS Travel Centers). Responsible at Cosmic: Thom Pfister (CD), Julien Junghäni (AD), Isabella Jungo, Antonia Bekiaris (Text), Simon Schatzmann (Head of Consulting), Gabriela Fust (Consulting).

Martin Suter's weekly column Business Class is retiring after 15 years. With a sharp pen, Suter, once a member of the manager class himself as an advertising copywriter and creative director, pursued the comic sides and abysses of the carpet floors and their main actors, the managers. His latest collection of columns, "Das Bonus-Geheimnis", has now been published. The bonus secret is apparently one of the great mysteries of business class, so well guarded that it could lead to marriage. The manager only reveals the amount of his own remuneration to his wife. Finally, the last words in the book come after 15 years of writing a column, and they lead to the big question of how many salted nuts are in a small bowl provided at the bar with the drinks. Is it 20 or less?
Suter's bizarre characters repeatedly testified to the banality of stupidity in the managerial class, an environment of apparently so inspiring and unbridled ignorance that it provided Suter with enough material for all his columns for a decade and a half. Often, however, it did not need his satirical exaggeration at all. "I sometimes had the feeling that things couldn't go on like this," said Suter last year in the midst of the financial crisis. "But I'm amazed that things have turned out so badly." The reality of business class has overtaken Suter, but he will remain its formidable satirist.

(Photo: Keystone)

Munich-based publisher Süddeutsche Verlag is discontinuing its family magazine Wir after a test issue last November. The magazine will not be published a second time for the time being. However, Rudolf Spindler, Managing Director of Magazin Verlagsgesellschaft at Süddeutsche Verlag, told the industry service Kress that no decision had yet been made on whether to continue the magazine. The print run of the family magazine was 130,000 copies, of which at least 50,000 were to be sold. Apparently, this mark was not reached straight away. The SZ supplements SZ-Magazin, Golf spielen and Wohlfühlen will remain.

Jenni Kommunikation is taking over press relations for TomTom in Switzerland with immediate effect. The collaboration includes the writing and adaptation of press releases, the management of test devices and the organization of media events in various forms, as owner and managing director Urs Jenni told Werbewoche on request.
TomTom is a global provider of electronic navigation solutions with over 3,500 employees. The company manufactures portable navigation devices and offers smartphone solutions and applications for fleet management.

Swissinfo.ch is expanding its range of self-produced videos with Arabic and Spanish-language video contributions. These are also available on the YouTube video platform. Produced by journalists, they focus on information from the fields of society, the environment, culture, education, research and tourism. The films can be rated, sent or used directly by users. According to a press release issued on Monday, the expansion of the SRG's foreign voice will enable it to fulfill the Confederation's mandate even more effectively.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao visited the China Wide Web (the World Wide Web minus the sites censored by China) on Saturday and chatted with citizens who bombarded him with thousands of questions, according to a report by the official news agency Xinhua. The Chinese wanted to know how much the head of government earned, how many hours he slept per day and how much alcohol he could tolerate.
However, Wen failed to respond to these questions and preferred to answer questions about the economic crisis, healthcare reform and the fight against corruption. Wen also commented on the German student who had thrown a shoe at him at Cambridge University. After Bush, he was the second prominent target of the somewhat dubious Iraqi tribute.

"I acted very calmly," said the head of government. "The first thing I thought of was national dignity, people's dignity and maintaining the friendship between Britain and China," he wrote. "I had to finish the lecture without disruption. This is my personal style." With his chat on the government website www.gov.cn, the Prime Minister followed Chinese President Hu Jintao, who had already communicated with citizens via the internet in June.