The western Swiss publishing house Edipresse is expanding in Asia. Edipresse Asia has agreed a joint venture with the Indian company Mediascope, owned by entrepreneur Marzban Patel. The new entity will be called Edipresse India, the Group announced on Tuesday.
Together, the two companies want to produce high-quality publications. The first magazine is due to appear in 2009. Further titles are to follow shortly.
Patel has founded and managed various media companies. He has created luxury and lifestyle magazines for financial service providers and airlines as well as for industry associations and parts of the government.

Seed has produced an image film for the cable specialist Huber + Suhner. It focuses on people and their needs for communication, mobility and safety. Three parallel stories at different locations - on the Jungfraujoch, in China and in California - tell what the company is doing to meet these needs with electrical and optical connection technology solutions.
The agency for audiovisual media developed the concept and script and planned and realized the production.

> To the spot

The Zurich advertising agency By Heart is already relaunching the winter fashion for the coming fall and winter for the textile company Ragman in the textile trade press. A winter landscape with huskies and knitwear fluttering in the wind is intended to whet the appetite for the new collection. Under the motto "I'm free", the agency - now in its third season - developed an emotional brand identity that is intended to attractively showcase the new clothing freedoms, as the advertisers wrote in a press release on Tuesday.
In addition to the image subjects, a wide variety of advertising measures are used, from the collection catalog to POS advertising materials and carrier bags. These have been in circulation in Germany and Switzerland since January 2009.

Responsible at Ragman: Jürg Brändli (Owner), Andreas Wasmer (Managing Director), Tatjana Matouskova (Project Management). Responsible at By Heart, Zurich: Hans Siegwart (CD), Markus Bircher (Strategy), Rolf Burkhardt (Text), Alan Castioni (AD), Sonja Wolf (Graphics), Peter Krebs (Client Service Direction), Misha Gambetta (Consulting), Dominik Mory (Production Management), Natascha Breu (Realization), Franz Rindlisbacher (Photo). Litho: Detail.

Even Western Union is jumping on the optimism bandwagon during these times of economic crisis—a bandwagon that Barack Obama, among others, is riding. The global advertising agency Publicis Hong Kong has developed the money transfer company’s first global campaign. It is designed to radiate optimism and positive thinking. The message, aptly titled «Yes!», captures this perfectly.
In addition to various advertising campaigns, an eye-catching TV commercial was created: In a wide variety of locations around the world, the letters Y, E, and S fly around—large and three-dimensional, they dance through the air like balloons, their appearance as light and fluffy as an appetizer pastry. The dancing elements eventually come together above the city’s rooftops to form “Yes!”.

Among the creative minds behind the campaign are film director Antoine Bardou-Jacquet, photojournalist Steve McCurry, and typographer David Carson. The music for the TV commercial was composed by Moroccan musician Hindi Zahra. The campaign’s imagery was captured in locations including Morocco, Singapore, Los Angeles, and Cape Town.
The commercial targets approximately 200 million people living outside their home countries. With this campaign, the money transfer company aims to position itself as a service provider that enables people around the world to maintain connections across the globe. The brand communication was designed for more than 200 countries where Western Union operates and has been translated into over 40 different languages.

Vizner Borel showcases the fine wines of Villa Visconti. The aim is to convey an Italian attitude to life and send the palate on a journey of pleasure to Italy. The advertising motif shows an avenue with trees in the shape of a wine bottle leading to a villa with Italian flair. The scenery is reinforced by the message "Villa Visconti: Welcome to the fine art of wine".
Due to the strong focus on the international market, the overall appearance of the new wine brand has been designed to be locally authentic, the agency writes in a press release on Monday: from CI/CD, packaging, key visuals to the website.

Responsible at Enoswiss/Villa Visconti: Adrian Zürcher (overall responsibility). Responsible at Vizner Borel: Lajos Vizner, Guillaume Borel (overall responsibility), Gian Maurizio, Livio Reutlinger (AD), Andrea Vizzarro (consulting), Robi Fazio (Internet). Image/key visual: Pixlerei.

The current Head of News, Stefan Regez, will take over as Editor-in-Chief of News in the spring. The 37-year-old has been a member of the editorial team since the launch of the commuter newspaper in December 2007. He replaces Philippe Pfister, who is moving to Sonntagsblick.
Stefan Regez previously worked for a Zurich communications agency. From 1999 to the end of 2006, he was on the management board of Gossweiler Media for seven years, including five years as editor-in-chief of the Jungfrau Zeitung. Stefan Regez began his professional career as a freelance journalist. He was also personal advisor to the Mayor of Thun, Hans-Ueli von Allmen.
The commuter newspaper News is published by Basler Zeitung Medien, Espace Media and Tamedia. The Mittelland edition was discontinued last November.

TBWA Zurich is integrating its sister agency, the online and dialog agency Tequila Switzerland, into the client units. In future, the Swiss advertising agency will realize cross-media concepts and their implementation from a single source. The Tequila team of project managers and producers will be split between the two existing client units. The unit management will offer the entire spectrum of communication from a single source.
Experience in recent years has shown that cross-media communication works most efficiently when it is developed jointly from the outset in an interdisciplinary team of specialists, the agency explained in a press release on Monday. Clients such as SBB, McDonalds, Say Chocolate, Avia Vereinigung and Quisisana have already taken advantage of the cross-media services offered by TBWA and Tequila.

Hans-Peter Scholl has been appointed as a new member of the management of Impacta, Ecofer and Interplakat in Berne as of February 1, 2009. The 45-year-old thus ensures the succession within the Affichage Holding subsidiaries. The previous members of the Executive Board, Jürg Wyss and Ueli Schneider, will retire in 2010.
The trained marketing manager was, among other things, Head of Sales and a member of the Executive Board at Publisuisse. Here he was responsible for the commercial marketing of Swiss television, TSR, TSI and Euronews. Before joining the poster company in 2008, he managed the business of a dialog marketing company in Zurich.

Roland Luder is leaving the program "Schweiz aktuell" at the end of April 2009 at his own request to take a creative break. After six years, the time has come to "take a break from the screen", Luder was quoted as saying in a press release on Monday. The presenter and editor has been part of the team since June 1, 2003. His successor is still open.

In a multi-stage pitch, Unikat was able to secure the communication budget of the two associations Schweizer Früchte and Schweizer Gemüse. The agency will implement a joint communications presence for the Swiss Fruit Association and the Swiss Vegetable Producers Association.
The campaign presented at the competition presentation will be implemented in the coming months, according to a press release issued on Monday. The first results will be seen throughout Switzerland from summer 2009 onwards in high-impact media - especially on television.

Swiss Post is testing a new business model with "Personal News": the personalized newspaper that is sent to subscribers either by post or by e-mail. Around 300 people from Zurich are currently taking part in the test, which will run until the end of February. Swiss Post will then decide whether the service should be offered throughout Switzerland. The decision date is still open.
The basic idea is simple: readers can put together their own newspaper from the individual parts of newspapers - sections or bundles - using an online tool. "The service is intended to offer publishers a supplement for distribution," said Swiss Post spokesman Mariano Masserini to the Tages-Anzeiger. Swiss Post does not want to compete with them. Around 20 domestic and foreign newspapers are available for the test and are willing to take part in the trial.
There are currently four Swiss newspapers to choose from: the Tages-Anzeiger, Freiburger Nachrichten, Südostschweiz and Zofinger Tagblatt. Other newspapers from Germany, Austria, Spain and the USA complete the range. As Masserini said, the price of a subscription would be higher than that of a daily newspaper. The reason for this is the printing costs, as the paper version is printed in A3 format.
Similar test series are underway abroad, and the idea is not new. Its realization was made possible by software that is now available and controls the entire production of "Personal News" at low cost. The flexible newspaper subscription also comes at a time when many paid newspapers are struggling with falling readership figures. Perhaps the new model can provide a remedy.