Driving at excessive speeds can have serious consequences. We learn this almost daily from the media. What is less well known is that slow driving is even more dangerous, at least statistically. Various studies show that 75 percent of all collisions occur at speeds of less than 30 km/h. The most common type of accident is the rear-end collision. In 50 percent of all cases, this happens without braking. According to Suva, up to 25,000 people in Switzerland suffer whiplash injuries in such rear-end collisions every year. In the worst case, such traumas can lead to incapacity to work. In the best-case scenario, collisions in urban traffic still result in significant repair costs, most of which have to be covered by insurance.
Volvo now wants to remedy this. The Swedes are the first vehicle manufacturer in the world to offer the "City Safety" safety system as standard equipment in the new Volvo XC60. This unique safety system helps the driver to avoid rear-end collisions in slow-moving city traffic or traffic jams, or at least to reduce their impact. If the vehicle threatens to collide with another car without the driver reacting, the car brakes automatically. The laser-based "City Safety" braking system of the Volvo XC60 is active up to 30 km/h. If the driving speed or the speed difference between the vehicles is less than 15 km/h, "City Safety" can even prevent the collision completely.
50 years ago, Volvo was the first manufacturer in the world to launch the three-point safety belt. This now ranks 8th among the "most useful inventions of mankind". In order to properly communicate a new quantum leap in car safety with "City Safety", Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett has set itself the challenge of bringing unbridled creativity to the road. "Normally, when launching new cars, the focus is on the vehicle," explains Rolf Zimmermann, the person responsible for this campaign at SFLB. Not so with the Volvo XC60. Here, the agency started with a teaser campaign that focused solely on an anonymously formulated question: "How can rear-end collisions be prevented?" Without a recognizable brand as the sender, funny print and online subjects were placed, showing original suggestions with a wink as to how rear-end collisions can be avoided. As a form of interaction, the Swiss population was invited to post their own suggestions on a website as to how car safety could be massively improved.
The result was a surprisingly original campaign launch, in which the public also played a very active and creative role. After just a few days, over a hundred suggestions were posted online. On City-safety.ch these ideas could be evaluated, which generated over 10,000 visitors in just a few days. Voting was coupled with a competition prize of CHF 10,000. The campaign was further enriched with the integration of Facebook and interviews on the website, in which people from the street presented their ideas for preventing rear-end collisions. The term "City Safety" was thus tangibly linked to the topic of "rear-end collisions". The teaser campaign could then be resolved.
The secret under the hood has now been revealed. The Volvo is presented as "the first car that can independently prevent rear-end collisions". To bring the promise to life for potential customers, the Swedish car manufacturer held a roadshow in Bern last week, with more to follow in Zurich and Basel as well as during the Geneva Motor Show. Here, "City Safety" can be tested on a specially equipped track. With a Volvo coach in the passenger seat, the automatic braking system can be experienced at first hand in a real rear-end collision. Anyone who has previously passed a blood alcohol test with 0.0 per mille alcohol in their blood is allowed to take part, for example from January 29 in the hall of Zurich main station.
Convinced car brakemen can post their personal impressions of such test drives as testimonials in a life ticker on the microsite City-safety.ch. The agency, led by the CD team of Simon Staub, Patrick Suter and Martin Spillmann, also wants to put photos and videos of these roadshows online with the greatest possible advertising impact. The campaign will be communicated with prominently placed advertisements, for example as a cover on 20 Minuten. Various online and viral marketing measures complement the campaign. For example, you can also "brake" in a video game on the website. Anyone who is impressed by the real crash drive will immediately receive an offer for another test drive from their local Volvo representative. Further special measures are planned and will ensure that the Volvo XC60 and "City Safety" remain a talking point in February.
Incidentally, Basler Versicherung also proves that the automatic brake is more than just an advertising gimmick from Volvo. Anyone who drives an XC60 will pay lower premiums in future.

Andreas Panzeri

This is how advertisers imagined more safety: Teaser from the SFLB workshop.

On City-safety.ch there are testimonials and a video game about rear-end collisions.

The resolution and invitation to the roadshow is made with double-placed advertisements.

Google is out 350,000 euros. A French court ordered the Californian search engine operator to pay this amount in damages to the French tour operators Terres d'aventure (150,000 euros) and Voyageurs du monde (200,000 euros). The two companies had filed a lawsuit against Google France because they had noticed that advertising links from competitors were appearing when their names were entered into Google. Apparently, Easyjet and Co. had been able to book AdWords for terms for which the two travel companies own the trademark rights. According to the Paris Regional Court, Google should have stopped this. In addition, the competitor ads were not sufficiently labeled as advertising. Google had already lost the landmark case against the two travel companies in October 2008. The ruling initially only affects France. Nevertheless, more caution is obviously required in future when advertising via AdWords.

After McCann Erickson launched the non-alcoholic aperitif drink Angel by Cardinal on the Swiss market last fall, the Zurich agency has now also been commissioned to handle communications for the two drinks Eve by Cardinal and Cardinal Lager beer from the Feldschlösschen Group.
For Eve, the commitment of former Miss Switzerland Mahara McKay has been extended, according to a statement from the agency. Christa Rigozzi will continue to act as ambassador for Angel.
McCann Erickson is now responsible for all communications for all three products. The first works will be on display from March 2009.

Publigroupe is selling the Stadtanzeiger Olten. The marketing, sales and services group for media and advertisers is selling 100 percent of the capital of Stadtanzeiger Olten AG, which publishes the free weekly newspaper of the same name with a circulation of 49,000 copies, to AZ Medien AG. However, Publicitas, which belongs to Publigroupe, will continue to market the Stadtanzeiger Olten exclusively.
Publigroupe had already sold AZ Medien its 35% stake in Vogt-Schild-Holding, the publisher of the Solothurner Zeitung, in 2005. This transaction will enable AZ Medien to further expand its market position in the Mittelland region. For Publigroupe, the sale of Stadtanzeiger Olten is also part of the strategy it has been pursuing for several years to gradually reduce its publishing holdings in Switzerland, the company wrote in a press release on Wednesday.

After Joël Gilgen hosted his last episode of "Swiss Date" on January 3, he will start his new show "Ganz privat" at the end of January. However, the 38-year-old will not be spilling the beans from his own sewing box: "I ring up people I don't know at all and have them show me their homes and tell me about their lives," the presenter was quoted as saying in a press release on Wednesday. "This new format is a great challenge and requires a high degree of flexibility from everyone involved." The program, produced by Prime Time, will be broadcast daily at 5 pm on Tele Züri from Monday, January 26, 2009.
The format is sponsored by Erdgas Ostschweiz, Merkur Confiserien and Gottlieber Hüppen.
Who will succeed Joël Gilgen on the matchmaking show "Swiss Date" will be decided at the current casting. At the moment, ten candidates are still in the running for the presenter's job.

Fast Track turned Zurich into a crime scene for the 3+ channel. Crime scenes were constructed at various locations, at the X-tra, on Langstrasse and in the Jelmoli parking garage. Behind the barriers, however, there were no corpses to be seen, but TV sets showing clips from US crime series such as "CSI". The aim was to draw attention to the range of crime series on the private channel.

Responsible at 3+: Dominik Kaiser (overall responsibility), Cindy Muff (Head of Communications). Responsible at Fast Track: Florian Beck (CD), Thomas Berger (AD), Raphael Monsch (AD).

Management change at the Swiss PR and communications agency Burson-Marsteller: Executive Board member Theo Zijdenbos replaces Marie-Louise Baumann as Head of Public Affairs. Baumann is moving to the Board of Directors.
Before joining Burson-Marsteller, Zijdenbos worked for Economiesuisse, where he was head of the Berne office and responsible for establishing and maintaining contacts with parliament and the administration. Prior to that, he headed the Economiesuisse office in Brussels. Theo Zijdenbos grew up in Germany, Tunisia, Singapore, Australia and Switzerland, studied economics and constitutional law in Bern and completed an Executive Master of Science in Communications Management at the University of Lugano.
Marie-Louise Baumann has headed the Public Affairs division of Burson-Marsteller as a member of the Executive Board since 2000. Prior to that, she worked for many years as political secretary for the Swiss Free Democratic Party (FDP) and as section head for the Legal Service of the Federal Chancellery. She will continue to work for Burson-Marsteller as Senior Advisor and is moving from the Executive Board to the Board of Directors.
Burson-Marsteller is represented in Switzerland with a total of 60 employees in Zurich, Bern and Geneva. The global network of Burson-Marsteller International comprises 72 branches and 59 affiliated offices.

The radio business in the USA is in a bad way, even worse than the ailing newspaper business, according to many industry observers. When the industry association Radio Advertising Bureau (RAB) in New York recently published its sales figures for the month of November last year, it was met with a hail of bad headlines. No wonder: sales fell by an average of 20 percent compared to the previous year, with national advertising down by as much as 24 percent. "You have to go back to 1954 to find a similarly bad situation," says James Boyle from market research company C. L. King & Associates.

The producers are racking their brains as to how they can become less dependent on their only source of revenue, radio commercials. In the current market, their prices are being mercilessly negotiated down by advertising companies. One idea is to enter into partnerships with sponsors who sponsor entire broadcasting areas over a longer period of time. There is also a focus on so-called off-air advertising, i.e. mobile or online advertising, as well as concerts, events and merchandising - the only category that is showing slight growth. "We have experimented a lot with new advertising platforms such as sponsoring entire program blocks and the option of downloading individual programs to an iPhone," says RAB Head of Communications Renee Cassis. "The more platforms we have where radio is available, the more time people will spend listening to it."
In addition, the RAB has partnered with the National Association of Broadcasters to launch a nationwide marketing campaign called "Radio Heard Here" to "remind both listeners and advertisers of the important role radio plays in the everyday lives of Americans," says Cassis. After all, 92 percent of all Americans say they listen to the radio. The two associations want to raise awareness of the fact that radio has jumped on the bandwagon in the development of new technologies. However, the measure is attracting critics. "A marketing campaign for a medium is ridiculous," says David Rogers, marketing professor at Columbia University in New York. "Maybe it makes sense if you want to appeal to advertisers, but in terms of media consumers, such a project is useless."
Business turns its back on radio
One of the biggest challenges is to extend radio into other media areas, as print and television do. "Radio stations don't have the content that fits well with Internet technology, they don't have video, they don't have sophisticated news, they don't have ads," says Gordon Borrell, founder of newspaper consulting firm Borrell Associates. So radio's traditional key advertising sectors, such as retail, automotive, communications and financial services, are looking to other platforms.
Not even the industry's great beacon of hope, satellite radio, is providing confidence. The two broadcasters, Sirius and XM, launched their service around seven years ago and merged last summer. They did so in the hope of containing the horrendous costs. Sirius XM, as the fee-based service is now called, offers its subscribers over 100 ad-free music channels as well as dozens of other stations with news, talk, entertainment and sports. However, the company's total debts amount to around one billion dollars, a sum that was mainly caused by the expensive transponder technology and the high salaries of some of its stars. "Shock-Jock" Howard Stern alone, who entertains his fans with porn monzettes and fecal humor, collected 500 million dollars for his five-year contract. And although subscriber numbers look relatively good at 20 million and continue to rise due to many new cars being equipped with the service, the company has not yet been able to make a profit because the debt burden is too great and cannot be reduced in the foreseeable future. It is uncertain whether the company can survive in the face of this challenge.
Gerti Schön

Sirius XM (here a sports talk) now has around one billion dollars in debt.

Stars like "Shock-Jock" (here with media diva Martha Stewart) are still raking in millions.

The power of Mark Zuckerberg's community platform Facebook extends to our state-owned companies. Even postmen and train drivers like to dive into the Internet to visit their "friends" while at work. But now a stop is being put to this activity: With immediate effect, Swiss Post and SBB are banning their employees from accessing the Internet - albeit for different reasons. Swiss Post fears attacks by viruses, while SBB fears abuse by its staff.
As the yellow giant writes in its staff newspaper Die Post, there has not yet been a virus incident due to Facebook. The step was taken as a prophylactic measure. The risk of virus transmission is increasing. There are also fears that criminals active on the social network could gain access to confidential data under a false identity. SBB employees are also not allowed to use Facebook. The reason is that the network was very often used for private purposes. What else would it be used for?

After three years, Soda-Club has returned to Amrein-Pieren. According to a press release issued on Wednesday, the agency based in Herrenschwanden/Bern and Geneva was able to prevail over the previous agency in an agency evaluation and regain the budget for Soda-Club Sprudelsysteme.
Amrein-Pieren is responsible for the company's communication within Switzerland. The first works will be on display in the first quarter of 2009.

The stupidity of the 1818 twins is the secret of their success: the two moustaches in their light blue 70s outfits almost hang themselves on the ski lift, tangle together to form an avalanche or give a remarkably silly performance with their après-ski gymnastics to the hit "Daddy Cool".
Despite their clumsiness, they always know where to call if another mishap occurs: the 24-hour information service. Whether day or night, on the road or at home, in normal cases or in weird or critical situations - 1818 always helps, according to the message of the two chaotic characters. The four new commercials have been shown on all Swiss television channels and on the Internet since mid-January.
Since its launch in 2006, the twin campaign has found many fans thanks to its skillful mix of quirky comedy and well thought-out marketing. But what comes across as a light-hearted, goofy campaign is, of course, planned down to the last detail: "The choice of episodes is more difficult than is generally assumed," says Daniel Comte, Executive Creative Director at the Draftfcb/Lowe Group. That's why it's important for the communications managers at 1818 to work with their agency to find the right ideas and situations for the two dolts. The 1818 campaigns filmed in Interlaken are also demanding in terms of production: "We always include at least one action scene in the TV commercials," explains Comte. "This year's action shoot took place at minus 14 degrees and with a 250-kilo snow globe rolling down a slope. Some of us came home from the shoot with frostbite, sore muscles and bruises."
In return, advertisers have the laughs on their side. And those who laugh can remember the content better later - because emotions pave the way into the memory. This should benefit the helpful number.

The new White House website went online just in time for Barack Obama to take the oath of office. Whitehouse.gov is to become a flagship of the promised transparency - or a window for all Americans into the business of the government, as the site states.
In addition to current videos, photos and a blog, every bill that is not in a hurry to be passed will be posted on the site for five days before Obama signs it off or vetoes it. This should give all voters the opportunity to make comments.
None of his predecessors used the internet as skillfully as Obama. Even during the election campaign, he made contact with his voters via the short message service Twitter or networks such as Facebook and collected millions in donations on his website.