The magazine publisher Gruner+Jahr has lowered its profit expectations for Germany. The lowering of its long-term return targets for the coming years is due to the overall economic situation, G+J Germany CEO Bernd Buchholz told Horizont.net on Wednesday.
The magazine publisher's current cost-cutting plans include laying off 110 editors from "Capital", "Impulse" and "Börse Online" and merging the editorial teams. A new central editorial office for business topics is to be set up in Hamburg. The society magazine Park Avenue will also be discontinued from January next year.
The internal redundancies are now being negotiated as part of social plans. According to Buchholz, there can be no talk of a harsh approach. The conditions of their severance agreements and social plans are significantly fairer than at other media companies.

Surprise on Tuesday morning: A magazine is on the desk, Christa Rigozzi is beaming from the cover. The cover is okay. But which magazine is it? Is it a new media product? It would have to be a Swiss product, because a foreign title would probably not put Rigozzi on the cover. Strange. There is no logo to be seen. Is it perhaps a zero number? Has the accompanying letter perhaps disappeared? No letter can be found. It's all much simpler than one would think, it's the current Swiss Illustrated. Without logo.
The Ringier press office will then respond to our verbal questions in writing as usual. Here is the original text of the e-mail:
Question 1: Is it true that the cover of Schweizer Illustrierte was printed without a logo?
Answer 1: Yes, this is so true.
Question 2: When did this happen?
Answer 2: In the current issue of Monday, November 24, 2008.
Question 3: Why did it happen?
Answer 3: A mistake made by an employee.
Question 4: How many copies were printed?
Answer 4: The entire circulation of 250,000 copies.
The answers are short and to the point, as is apparently appropriate for professional public relations staff. Perhaps a bit too laconic.
There are a few things that surprise me about the whole thing. Firstly, the new Schweizer Illustrierte is always available at newsstands on Monday. Until noon on Tuesday, no one from the media guild seems to have noticed that Schweizer Illustrierte was published without a logo. That's the only explanation for the astonished question from the Ringier communications lady, who said that everyone was suddenly asking about it after we published the story on Werbewoche.ch.
Secondly, when a magazine appears without a title logo, it's quite a gau. But there is no room for gloating, because anyone who knows the trade knows how quickly such a mistake can happen. And then - in keeping with Murphy's Law - it continues beyond all control. So it can happen. But if it does happen, one should perhaps consider how to inform proactively, and not hope in blind faith that no one will notice. That would be professional communication.
If, for some reason, you also slept through this (Murphy sends his regards), then perhaps you should formulate your answer with a little more tact. Some poor anonymous devil is now solely to blame for the fact that Schweizer Illustrierte was published without a logo this week.
Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]

The Zurich agency Krieg Schlupp Bürge/Springer & Jacoby has been nominated three times at Eurobest. In the Outdoor and Print categories with "Lath", created for the VW Golf Variant on behalf of AMAG, and in the Sales Promotion category with "Crashed Cars" for AXA Winterthur.

The Cityplus advertising combination, which includes the St. Galler Tagblatt (SGT), the Neue Luzerner Zeitung and the Zürcher Landzeitung (ZLZ), is being expanded to include a further partner. As of January 1, 2009, the Mittelland Zeitung (MZ) will also be a member. This will increase the reach of the combined newspaper in its maximum version from 807,000 today to 1.272 million readers - and in a contiguous geographical area to boot.
But what does maximum variant mean here? "It means that the enhanced Cityplus is not a fixed combination. You can book it as a whole, but you don't have to, because all the titles involved can be freely combined with each other," explains SGT Publishing Director Daniel Ehrat. For example, it is also possible to book only two or three Cityplus titles together. And because ZLZ and MZ also have large print runs on certain days, the combination options are extended. "Cityplus can be booked in a total of 51 different modules," says Ehrat.
The rates are simple: if you book at least two Cityplus titles together, you will receive a combined discount of 10 percent. In the maximum variant (called the Cityplus 1 module), a full-page, four-color ad costs CHF 76,166.70 gross instead of CHF 84,563. However, each title now grants a separate final discount on the mono title amount.
Now, however, media planners could lose track of the many modules, ranges and tariffs. The Cityplus partners have also thought of this. From November 27, they are therefore launching a calculator on www.cityplus.ch, which shows the relevant information on name, circulation, gross readership and price depending on the module selected.
Cityplus is available not only in print, but also as an online combination, although for the time being it will continue to be available exclusively in the existing combination of SGT and Neue LZ. However, the next step planned is to add ZLZ and MZ in the first quarter of 2009.
The founding of Cityplus goes back to the dissolution of Swisspool four years ago. At that time, Tages-Anzeiger, Basler Zeitung and Berner Zeitung decided to found Metropool in 2005, which is why the previous Swisspool members SGT and Neue LZ lost their direct connection to a national combined newspaper. As a result, the two regional newspapers belonging to the NZZ Group merged to form Cityplus. The ZLZ, also an NZZ title, then docked on a year ago. It not only increased the reach of Cityplus, but also formed a geographical bridge between eastern and central Switzerland.
With the MZ, a non-NZZ title is now involved for the first time, thanks to which the Kombi now has a greater reach than the Metropool. However, the MZ and in particular the Aargauer Zeitung not only strengthened the Kombi, the MZ also needs help itself, as it is currently in the headlock of Basler Zeitung Medien and Tamedia. Seen in this light, the long-awaited MZ entry into Cityplus can be seen as AZ Medien's rapprochement with the NZZ Group.
Incidentally, Cityplus is not finished with the MZ. An expansion towards south-eastern Switzerland would also be conceivable. Or into western Switzerland. But nothing will come of it for the time being. "We are basically open to other partners," says Ehrat, "but we will not reassess the situation until mid-2009."
Markus Knöpfli

The temporary Zurich radio station Rundfunk.fm will be broadcasting from December 1 to 24 this year. Instead of in the fall as in previous years, Zurich radio producer Oliver Scotoni has chosen Advent for his month-long DJ radio project. Until Christmas Eve, the station will be broadcasting a music program of "exquisite quality" from a store at Strehlgasse 24 in Zurich, as Scotoni announced in an e-mail sent out on Wednesday. The program is scheduled to start at 7 a.m. on Monday.
In addition to Scotoni, the music editorial team this year consists of the well-known Zurich DJs Alex Dallas and Lexx. The program will also be supplemented with occasional guest appearances by various music experts.
The station can be received via FM (ZH Süd 90.1 MHz and ZH Nord 92.2 MHz), Cablecom and the Internet. A music player specially designed for the "Christmas Session" can be downloaded from Rundfunk.fm.

Weltwoche has to make savings. In addition to various savings, a reduction in staff is also unavoidable, said editor-in-chief and publisher Roger Köppel in a press release on Wednesday. The measures are necessary to ensure the company's success even in an increasingly difficult environment. An acceptable solution is being sought with those affected.
Taking a clear jab at the recipients of state aid, the press release continues: "Cost-cutting and restructuring are a duty of care and responsibility for all companies that cannot hope to receive state aid in the face of the crisis." The number of employees affected was not disclosed.
(Image: Keystone)

AZ Medien will acquire a 20 percent stake in Lautundspitz Schweiz AG on December 1. The publishing house, which also publishes the Aargauer Zeitung, wants to strengthen its Internet presence with the party photo portal. In addition, the AZ spin-off magazine Live will be discontinued in 2009.
New multimedia and cross-media offerings are planned, AZ Medien announced on Wednesday according to SDA. No details were given on the purchase price of the minority stake. A joint Internet presence is to be developed for the Mittelland and Northwestern Switzerland market area. The aim is to achieve faster growth and benefits in terms of sales and content management, according to the statement.
The weekly event magazine Live will be discontinued in spring 2009. The magazine will be inserted in the AZ on Thursdays. As a replacement, a cultural calendar with previews and reviews will appear once a week in the AZ.

SRG wants to abandon its current corporate structure. In future, the national Board of Directors will have sole responsibility for strategic management. The Boards of Directors of the four regional companies will be given new management tasks. In this way, the delegates want to adapt the structures to today's corporate management requirements and are thus following a mandate given to SRG by the Federal Council in November 2007.
As the company announced, the SRG delegates in Bern on Wednesday voted 35 to 6 in favor of this approach. SRG intends to present the new statutes by the end of June next year, which should come into force in 2010. As a first step, the national government will now comment on the proposal.
SRG currently still has divided strategic management. The directors of the regional radio and television stations report to their regional boards of directors, but are also members of the national management. However, SRG writes that this intertwined system contradicts the rules of conduct for good corporate governance, which require management with overall responsibility and a gradual delegation of tasks.
General Director Armin Walpen will continue to manage the entire company. The radio and television directors of the four regional companies will report to him. Walpen will no longer be a member of the regional boards of directors.
The new regional administrative boards to be formed should continue to have a right to participate in certain transactions at national level. This includes, for example, decisions on program concepts and the allocation of funds for them, proposals for the election of directors of the various radio and television stations, or proposals for studio locations. The presidents of the new regional boards of directors should continue to be members of the national board of directors. This is essential for mutual information and decision-making in the national Board of Directors, SRG continues.

Not sporty, but fit," is how BSW President Frank Bodin wants the ranking of the major Swiss agencies to be understood. This is therefore not to be understood as a sporting competition with winners and losers. "The ranking serves to provide transparency and guidance for clients." The fact that the results nevertheless reveal a healthy level of fitness makes the industry optimistic. Everyone is talking about the coming crisis. "But it will hit the media harder than the agencies," Urs Schneider from Media Schneider is convinced. Peter Felser puts it in figures: "The 6 billion franc advertising billings will undergo more painful changes than the agencies' fees." In other words, advertising clients will continue to need good and perhaps even more help from creative agencies even in tougher times. However, the ideas found will no longer find their way into the media in such a broad way. In addition, a constantly growing proportion will shift to the cheaper Internet.
The summary of the ranking shows: The 55 advertising and specialist agencies in the BSW realized a total of 331.3 million francs in gross operating income in 2007, an increase of 7.5 percent compared to 2006. In 2007, the BSW agencies were responsible for advertising money amounting to around CHF 2 billion for their clients. "The importance of BSW agencies is demonstrated by the fact that they only account for around 7 percent of all advertising agencies in Switzerland, but manage two thirds of all advertising money that is deployed via agencies," Bodin calculated.
With regard to the development of the Internet, Schneider explained that 120 million Swiss francs are already invested in online advertising every year. Last year, the media specialist calculated an increase of 400 percent, "albeit at a low level". However, Schneider believes that this development cannot continue indefinitely. Advertising space on the portals is limited, usually to two banners per page. Felser also wants to dispel some of this fear of the almighty online. He is convinced that online advertising is not an easy way to achieve broadcasting - i.e. broad brand awareness - because online advertising has to be "approved" by the user and is only noticed with annoyance, especially in the most popular communities.
When interpreting advertising spendings, it should not be forgotten that in today's multi-layered campaigns, more and more money is also being invested in below-the-line measures.
As far as the development of print is concerned, Schneider sees a widening price-performance gap. The number of readers is decreasing - the cost of advertising, on the other hand, is trending upwards. But those who want to address the highly positioned target group of a particular newspaper will perhaps interpret such figures differently.
Schneider estimates that print advertising will decline by 10 percent in the coming year. In the discussion surrounding this development, it became clear that some advertisers are currently also seeing an oversupply of competing print titles. However, Peter Felser also wanted to see a counter-trend in that his two daughters are not only constantly online, but also read two newspapers today, which teenagers would never have done in the past. And the situation where we now have to fight our way through at least four well-made weekend editions on a Sunday has never been seen before in the history of the newspaper. In all this talk about the print crisis, it is also forgotten that expenditure on traditional advertising amounted to CHF 3.2 billion in 2001 and is now at least CHF 4 billion.
With regard to the outlook, the BSW Management Board believes that 2008 will be "just as successful as 2007". At least the first half of the year shows this trend.
BSW still sees the traditional model as the agency model of the future. But "everything is done" there today, and online is already used by 90 percent of all customers. Just as naturally as the former "advertising agencies" supplemented their posters with the advent of TV advertising. However, posters in particular will soon be experiencing a small boom again.
After a five-year hiatus due to stock market regulations, the ranking is now back for the second time - with categories based on millions in revenue. A new addition is a separate ranking of media agencies.
Andreas Panzeri

Frank Bodin, President.

Urs Schneider, Chairman.

Peter Felser, Vice President.

Publicis has won the Swiss children's goods specialist Mac Baby as a client. An image campaign is now to enhance its brand image. Publicis has designed the first images, which are to be used shortly.
Until now, the specialist baby supplies store has mainly advertised with DM activities and special offer advertisements. Now the communication is being supplemented by an image campaign with advertisements, posters and advertising media at points of sale, which is intended to emotionally enhance the Mac Baby brand image, Publicis said in a press release.

A year ago, the organizers of this year's symposium could not have imagined how topical the choice of venue would become. In our days, the stock exchange symbolizes the connection between business and emotions like no other place. The Chairman of the Board of Directors of SIX Group, Prof. Dr. Peter Gomez, recommended directing emotions in our difficult times in such a way that they sustainably link society and the economy. This means that not only the economy, but all stakeholders, down to the individual shareholder, employee and consumer, must show understanding for the whole. And that also means, for example, building up risk acceptance. General uncertainty can only be reduced if responsibility is not only demanded, but also assumed.
Games, the new leading medium?
Much has been written about the crisis in the print media and also that young people are beginning to turn away from television. What is less well known is that sales of sound recordings, including downloads, as well as films and DVDs, have also been falling steadily in Switzerland since 2006. However, the sales curve for games is on a steep upward trend. Prof. Daniel Süss from the Zurich University of Applied Sciences sees electronic games as the leading medium of the future. He recommends that corporate communications managers learn to better understand the gamer generation. Gamers are characterized by a greater willingness to take risks, prefer trial-and-error strategies, are less easily discouraged by failure, and display a strong social orientation with a willingness to benefit from the expert knowledge of others. According to Süss, the more negative characteristics of this new generation are that gamers trust information too easily, are strongly influenced by emotional signals and show an increasing reduction in attention span. However, he was unable to provide any patent remedies for communications managers. On the one hand, it is certainly important not to miss the trend of online communication, including the creation of game offers. On the other hand, this flood of online and mail information triggers great stress experiences, which could reactivate the willingness to use "old" media such as print.
Clear trend toward emotainment
Miriam Meckel, Professor at the Institute for Media and Communication Management at the University of St. Gallen, gave an impressive presentation on the trend away from the pure communication of information. To this end, she looked at Barack Obama's communications during the presidential election campaign. The campaign team consciously used social networks. It was no longer television that set the agenda, but rather Obama's supporters themselves, inspired by SMS messages, video clips on YouTube or personalized e-mails, who disseminated the election messages tens of millions of times, thus demonstrating the potential of viral community communication in an impressive way. This was accompanied by what Meckel calls emotainment. In addition to the level of factual information, it encompasses the participation of the target groups and relies on the highest possible level of transparency and authenticity.

HARBOURCLUB
The HarbourClub offers its members, heads of communications at major Swiss companies and organizations, a platform for personal exchange of experience. Founded in 2000, the club also aims to promote the professionalization of the corporate communications function and to communicate its importance. Once a year, the HarbourClub organizes a public symposium on the current state of corporate communications in Switzerland. www.harbourclub.ch

Prof. Daniel Süss, Zurich University of Applied Sciences
Sciences.

Moderator Dani Nieth and Gabriela Manser.

Bruno Schmidt, Metadesign, and Erhart von Ammon,
Amoeba.

Peter Gomez, Six Group.

Ralf Doller has been working in dialog marketing for over twelve years. He doesn't like to hear the word direct marketer. He prefers the term dialog designer, because it expresses what it's all about today: multi-stage campaigns that turn a potential customer into an interested one and keep him as an existing customer. To this end, the agency he founded, Interagis.com, works offline as well as online in the sense of "interactive marketing.
Ralf Doller was co-owner of Alex Schmid Direct for years before he went into business for himself 18 months ago. Since then, he has deliberately kept the success stories surrounding his interagis.com under wraps. But "a lot has happened.
interagis.com has found new offices in a house full of creative companies on Zurich's Hornbachstrasse. In addition to the four permanent employees, freelance specialists have to be called in on a regular basis. Among the first clients are Allianz Suisse, Visana, Sunrise, RE/MAX and the Engadin St. Moritz tourism organization. "To work for top brands, we need to understand the advertising campaign in order to develop solutions based on it that also lead to the appropriate response. This makes us an ideal partner for advertising agencies," explains the dialog designer, who maintains good contacts with agencies.
Ralf Doller graduated in business administration in St. Gallen in 1986 with a thesis on direct marketing. Even before entering the professional world, he was fascinated by the discipline of direct. With "great euphoria," Doller founded the student association Com,ma. For this community of interest around communication and marketing, he organized company tours and also brought in the first marketing orders for students. The highlight was a student trip to New York. "It was a tradition at St. Gallen to go on a trip in the eighth semester. But we were the first to fly to America," he is still pleased today. In the Big Apple, the Swiss were eager to see an American advertising agency and found open doors at TBWA. One of the other visits was to City Bank, known for its marketing campaigns.
In Switzerland, the students were invited to the Direct Marketing Symposium in Montreux. "We were allowed to attend because our professor Weinhold predicted a great future for direct marketing and this discipline played a correspondingly important role at his institute." Up to 3,000 DM specialists from all over the world made the pilgrimage to Montreux. Well-known companies such as IBM presented successful projects. There are other disciplines in the wide world of marketing than just classic advertising, he found at the time.
Through his work as Com,ma president, Doller has come into contact with many companies. Immediately after graduating, he was made an offer by Metro International. As a trainee, Doller wanted to put his theories into practice for the first time at the holding company of the Metro stores in Baar. However, his "euphoria after graduation" was curbed by practitioners who always "knew better". Nevertheless, he doesn't regret the experience: "If you want to be successful in marketing, you should have been on the front line of sales yourself once in your life."
After one year, Ralf Doller moved to Siemens. Here he learned a lot of new things once again as an assistant to the management in the marketing department. "The marketing manager was a seasoned salesman and knew from the ground up what selling meant. I was able to accompany his successes and was also allowed to contribute the theory," Doller recalls of his development in a "wonderful team.
Nevertheless, over time the world at Siemens became too technical for him. "Anyone who wasn't an engineer had no future in that corporate culture back then." Doller saw more opportunities for himself in the agency world. He first worked at Marc Rutschmann, where he primarily served cantonal banks, then quickly found his way to Alex Schmid Direct, where he was co-owner and senior consultant for eleven years. "It was a great time to grow from a small agency to a handsome size and to look after top brands."
Schmid and Doller were already fellow students in St. Gallen. During their time together at the agency, they initially grew thanks to their work for Schweizerische Kreditanstalt. That was the time when direct marketing agencies also had to deal with brands and campaign ideas for the first time, in order to develop solution proposals within the framework of these campaigns. "That was new for the industry, which until then had stubbornly relied on past experience and had no understanding of a concerted use of different media," says Doller, who was also allowed to sit on the Cannes Lions jury for his division in 2005.
Dialog design instead of sales promotion
Sales-related campaigns are still very much in demand today. But: "Whereas consumers used to respond well to every sales promotion because the markets were not yet saturated, multi-stage campaigns are necessary today," Doller knows. Since you can run any campaign through a wide variety of channels, Doller - instead of making compromises - wanted to implement more and more of his own ideas. That's why he founded Interagis.com. As the name suggests, the Internet has a greater role here than in Doller's earlier work. "Often a campaign starts on the Internet and is sustained over the Internet," he explains. Specifically, Doller is talking about participation portals, RSS info services or widgets, e-mail services, blogs and campaign microsites.
"Because of the ten times larger market, these techniques were always a bit more sophisticated in Germany than here in Switzerland." For this reason, it was important for Ralf Doller to transfer German know-how to Switzerland. "Through experience in large markets, many foreign agencies simply know more than they do here in Switzerland." It was therefore part of the concept of his foundation to seek cooperation with a major international player. After evaluating three "very reputable networks," Interagis.com now works with Interone Worldwide from the BBDO network. The cooperation is uncomplicated and does not require Doller to report to Germany. But he can count on the network's international specialists when it comes to interactive brand experiences or Web presences that need to function worldwide in different languages. Interone employs over 600 people around the globe. Doller is this partner's representative for Switzerland and has already visited several potential customers with CEO Marcus Kikisch. "I can open up the market for Interone. Always against the background that corporations with Swiss headquarters are looking for an international agency."
When Ralf Doller went into business for himself, he set himself a deadline for when he wanted to inform the media about his new work. "Without the big name behind me, I first wanted to see if it would work," he reveals. But now Doller is proud that Interagis.com is doing well in the marketplace. "It's a fun job to build something on your own. Especially because our customers are not contacts from the past, but newly acquired." In addition, he says, there is a very upbeat atmosphere at his agency. "We laugh a lot and are always in a champagne mood, even if we don't drink any," he says happily.
Andreas Panzeri