The staff association Societé du personel des rédactions (SPREI) has announced that journalists at the Neuchâtel newspapers L'Express and L'Impartial will face sanctions for their strike in mid-November. The publisher of the two newspapers will withhold their wages for the duration of the strike. The SPREI regrets this retaliatory measure.
The employees of the two newspapers walked off the job on November 14 and stopped two days later. The journalists and the management of the publisher, the Société Neuchâteloise de Presse (SNP), then agreed on how to proceed. Four jobs will be cut. A permit for short-time working was also to be obtained from the canton.
If the request is rejected, the original restructuring plan to cut a total of 15 jobs will have to be implemented. The SNP, which belongs to the French media group Hersant, had announced cost-cutting measures due to a slump in advertising revenue.

From now on, outdoor advertising, ambient media and promotions will complement the advertising campaign launched by Scholz & Friends Zurich for Blick am Abend at the beginning of November with the claim "Here's what you can do". The campaign includes ambient posters in fitness studios with the slogan "And what do you do for your head?" and pizza boxes that pick up on the theme with the question "In which club can you get your calories down?". Woolly hats with the inner label "Nice that you are doing something for your head", bus rear windows and window stickers as well as streetcar hanging boxes complete the campaign, which will be present in the cities of Basel, Bern and Zurich until mid-December.
Responsible at Blick Group, Ringier: Thomas Passen (Head of Blick Group), Corina E. Schneider (Head of Reader Market), Marie-Eve Aegerter (Head of Advertising). Responsible at Scholz & Friends Zurich: Joerg Jahn (overall responsibility for creation), Markus Hammer (AD), Björn Blöchlinger (graphics), Andreas Troxler, Conrad Malcher (text), Erich Baumgartner, Raphael Brinkert (overall responsibility for consulting), Pascal Baumgartner, Mathias Rösch.

Radios are not allowed to provide information about the location of mobile police speed traps. The Federal Council made this clear once again on Thursday in its response to an interpellation by CVP National Councillor Dominique de Buman.
According to the Federal Council, the licensing authority can "prohibit the broadcasting of certain types of programs that run counter to the fulfillment of the service mandate". This is undoubtedly the case with radar warnings: such warnings counteract the efforts of the federal government and the cantons to promote road safety.

Bloggers live dangerously. It's probably because of this news from Burma that we haven't heard from Swiss superbloggers Moritz Leuenberger (Uvek) and Ueli Haldimann (Swiss television) for a long time:
An internet blogger has been sentenced to 20 years in prison in Burma in connection with last year's protests against the military junta. The 28-year-old Nay Phone Latt, a former member of the National League for Democracy (NLD), was sentenced along with four NLD members and a poet, an opposition spokesman said. Nay Phone Latt is being held in the notorious Insein prison. In his blog, he had described the hurdles of everyday life in Burma, such as the regular power cuts and the high cost of living. The military junta banned the blog and had the author arrested in January. Around 200 NLD members were arrested in the course of the protests. The wave of protests began in August 2007 with demonstrations against rising fuel prices and expanded in September under the leadership of Buddhist monks to rallies with an estimated 100,000 people. At the height of the protests, the junta shut down the internet.
Perhaps the new Federal Councillor Ueli Maurer will once again allay his unloved future colleague Leuenberger's renewed fear of the Internet.

As of December 1, 2008, Daniel Comte will take over the management of the creative department at Draftfcb/Lowe Group Switzerland. At the same time, he will become a member of the Zurich agency's management team.
Draftfcb/Group opted for Comte because he has an understanding of the new credo as well as the experience and expertise for international and national communication solutions, writes Managing Director Cornelia Harder in a press release on Thursday. The agency plans to implement a consistent realignment in view of the "changed requirements of the communications market". The new agency philosophy "Return on ideas" is essentially based on radically interdisciplinary, success-oriented creative processes and focuses on meta-media concepts, writes Managing Director Cornelia Harder. What this means in detail is still unclear.
Comte can already look back on a long career in the advertising business. He has worked for agencies including GGK and WHS as Art Director and Matter Leo Burnett, McCann Erickson and Advico Young & Rubicam as Creative Director. He has been a member of the Art Directors Club Switzerland since 1995. According to his new employer, he has won over 250 national and international creative and efficiency awards.

The Board of Directors of AZ Medien AG has appointed 34-year-old Philipp Mäder as the new deputy editor-in-chief and page-maker of the Aargauer Zeitung. He will take up his new post on March 1, 2009, succeeding 47-year-old Urs Helbling, who - as already announced - will be leaving the company at the end of January 2009.
Philipp Mäder is currently still working as a federal house correspondent for the Tages-Anzeiger. Mäder previously worked for the same employer as domestic editor. Before that, he spent a year on the local editorial staff of the Toggenburger in Wil. Between 1999 and 2002, he completed internships and assignments as a freelance journalist and editor at the Taz and the Berliner Zeitung, among others.
Mäder studied general history, sociology and constitutional law at the University of Zurich. During his studies, he completed individual semesters at the Free University of Berlin, the Université de Genève and the Humboldt University of Berlin. He attended elementary school, high school and cantonal school in St. Gallen, Mörschwil and Goldach.
Philipp Mäder will be the deputy of Christian Dorer (33), who will take up his position on February 1, 2009.

In a communiqué, the media union Comedia criticizes the 22 redundancies at the Ringier media company. It appeals to the publishing house to take its social and journalistic responsibility seriously, even in less rosy economic times, and to reconsider the redundancies. For those employees whose dismissal is unavoidable, the union is calling for the negotiation of a generous social plan with the staff committee and the social partners.
Although there are indeed signs of a slowdown in the advertising market at the moment, the company can look back on a very good business performance in the current year as well as in 2006/2007. "This is not least thanks to the employees," writes the union, "and with such massive cuts, the employees of the entire media industry are being unsettled, and the Ringier media company is proactively turning the crisis wheel."
The same demands are also directed at Gassmann AG, publisher of the Bieler Tagblatt among others, and Weltwoche Verlags AG, which also want to cut jobs and lay off staff.

After posters for the Schauspielhaus Zürich subscription advertisement appeared in late summer, TBWA Zürich has now produced an advertising film with the same aim. It will be shown in various cinemas and on Tele Züri in December and January. The film shows a couple arguing in Bullet Time. As the camera moves around the frozen couple, an off-screen voice explains the scene with scientific theory.
The highly aesthetic film was created in close collaboration between TBWA\Zürich, Condor Films and Schauspielhaus Zürich. Both protagonists are under contract to the Schauspielhaus and the set design was created by Schauspielhaus Zürich employees.
" Watch spot
Responsible at Schauspielhaus Zürich: Markus Sulzer (Head of Marketing) and Tina Kornfeld (Marketing Assistant). Responsible at TBWA\Zurich: Urs Schrepfer (CD), Martin Friedlin (AD), Simon Smit (text), Adrian Egger (graphics), Diana Magnaguagno (art buying/FFF), Charlotte Stampfli and Matthias Kiess (consulting). Responsible at Condor Films: Patrick Senn (Director), Philipp Petersson (Executive Producer) and Michael Gloor (Producer).

Continuing falls in advertising revenue due to the global financial and economic crisis have prompted Ringier to take various steps, including 16 redundancies and six early retirements. A social plan will be applied in all cases. Various areas of the company are affected, including editorial offices. Press spokesman Marco Castellaneta did not wish to provide detailed information to Werbewoche. The people affected were informed on Wednesday morning.
The redundancies and early retirements will take place in accordance with the contractual deadlines. The company is not communicating any further measures in Switzerland. According to Castellaneta, no further job cuts are currently planned abroad. However, it goes without saying that such reductions cannot be ruled out completely.
However, Castellaneta does not want to make any further predictions about the current crisis. "In connection with the financial crisis, the advertising and media markets have come under additional pressure worldwide, and Ringier AG is feeling the effects throughout the Group. It would not be serious to venture reliable medium and long-term forecasts."
As part of a program to increase efficiency, Ringier has reviewed all expenditure and various services are now to be cut. The measures are intended to enable the company to remain successful on the market even in this economically turbulent environment and to be able to make investments, according to the press release issued on Wednesday. Ringier employed 2034 people in Switzerland at the end of 2007 and expects an increase in turnover of at least ten percent in 2008.
(Photo: Picswiss.ch)

Since the IPI tightened the guidelines for acoustic trademarks in June 2005, sound sequences are only permitted for registration in conjunction with speech elements. Without these, the distinctiveness of melodies is not guaranteed.
Acoustic signs with a long tradition
Catchy tunes à la "Haribo makes children happy" in honor: Such a principled refusal to use non-linguistic audio cues is absurd. From calls to prayer and hunting appeals to alarm signals: for centuries, sounds without a linguistic background have been easily identified. Today, they make up the lion's share of acoustic branding and are based on this tradition. Hardly anyone in this country will have trouble identifying the SBB gong, the Postbus melody or the Swisscom tone sequence.
In Switzerland, there are a dozen sound marks compared to over 200,000 figurative, word or combined marks. Why the IPI maintains the strictest practice in Europe for sound marks remains a mystery. A German confectionery manufacturer, whose sound mark enjoys protection in the rest of Europe, was refused registration in Switzerland by the IPI. The company appealed to the Federal Administrative Court (FAC), creating the first Swiss precedent for sound marks.
Rebuke to the IPI
The judges consider the IPI's practice to be too restrictive. The IPI wrongly assumes an exclusive use of sound marks in advertising and equates linguistic elements with enhanced distinctiveness. The Federal Administrative Court concludes: "The distinctiveness of sound marks cannot be assessed solely on the basis of the use or non-use of linguistic elements." Non-linguistic acoustic signs would increasingly contribute to the identification of goods and services in everyday traffic and in the operation of devices.
Characteristics as a prerequisite
Surprisingly, however, the judges also refused the trademark registration application in the second instance, which means that the hoped-for paradigm shift is a long way off. According to the Federal Administrative Court, simple melodies require unusual and characteristic features for trademark protection. Sound sequences are all the more recognizable the more they deviate from everyday standard signals due to alienation, special sound quality or sound combinations.
Timbre plays an important role
Sounds good. But uncommon and atonal, alienated sounds will not be heard by the IGE if they cannot be visualized by means of a score. The scores, in turn, say little about the timbre, which plays an important role in the differentiation of sound marks.
The Federal Administrative Court's rejection argument thus remains a wide open field for interpretation: "The sequence of notes is perceived more as a play around or banal ornamentation of the fundamental 'F sharp' than as a melody. Since it contains neither a modulation of the key nor any other striking or unexpected development that could particularly shape the memory, other voices, instrumentation and dynamic indications are missing and the phrasing signs used in the musical notation only indicate that the corresponding notes are played briefly, which is hardly noticeable in the sales environment of confectionery, this mark will be perceived by the target customer circles as decoration and mood setting and will neither stick in the memory nor serve to distinguish the goods marked with it. The mark is therefore common property."
Very few of the established audio brands would meet the judges' requirements. It is advisable to bring the judges into the creation team. Who knows better what makes a good sound mark or the memory of it ...

It is a tradition that the HarbourClub symposia are held on the premises of one of its members. After IBM, Roche, PricewaterhouseCoopers and Swiss Television, this year it was the turn of the Swiss Stock Exchange to play host.
Half of the HarbourClub members and another hundred participants lined up in the morning at the ConventionPoint of the SIX Swiss Exchange to receive their name badge. Directly opposite, the stock market prices flickered across the ticker wall; unfortunately with the usual downward trend. But the hosts had come up with something special: Today, the large display board was dominated by the conference theme and the logos of the organizer and sponsors.
The high level of practical relevance is a hallmark of the HarbourClub symposia, and so four breakout sessions were held again this year in addition to the presentations. Here, the heads of communications themselves presented their cases: Thomas Truttmann, McDonald's, Matthias Graf, Google, Albert Halter, SIX Group, and Urs Rellstab, Economiesuisse, explained the extent to which they incorporate emotionality into their communication with their stakeholder groups.
Closing speaker Hansmartin Siegrist had a nice idea. He preceded each of the previous speakers' presentations with a trailer of their favorite film. This was able to characterize the people more impressively than any short CV that was read out. In his own presentation, Siegrist used these films to show how Hollywood directors manage to stimulate the emotions of viewers in a way that PR people will probably never be able to do.
At the closing aperitif, visitors expressed their satisfaction with the symposium. "The relaxed atmosphere and the personal exchange with heads of communications from major Swiss companies made the HarbourClub Symposium a very enjoyable event," said Philipp Metzler from Prime Communications. "As a specialist in internal communications, I was particularly pleased that the presentations and discussions also paid due attention to employees," said Cordula Rieger, Enzaim Communications. And Jürg Schwarz, Habegger, commented: "The theme of the symposium, 'The power of emotions', fits in perfectly with our core competencies and complements them perfectly. For over 20 years, we have been involved in creating worlds of experience in the battle for attention. That is why we are supporting the HarbourClub as a partner in the field of media scenography."
The importance of the sponsors for the HarbourClub Symposium was emphasized by Alexander Fleischer, President of the HarbourClub. "Our aim is to offer application knowledge at the highest level. For a non-profit organization like the HarbourClub, the support of sponsors is indispensable, so a big thank you to Argus der Presse, the Neidhart + Schön Group, the Swiss Public Relations Institute and the agencies Amoeba, Enzaim Communications, Prime Communications and Habegger."
The tenth HarbourClub Symposium will take place in November 2009.

Tons of food ends up as waste in Switzerland, while over 920 million people worldwide go hungry. This need not be the case: If we were more careful with resources and food, there would be more left over for the poorest. The ambient campaign by Bread for All and Fastenopfer draws attention to this. Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett is committed to this cause.