The Amiado Group completes the management of the new online division with Oliver Diggelmann and Matthias Kern. Diggelmann is the new Chief Financial Officer and member of the extended management of Axel Springer Switzerland with immediate effect. The 37-year-old has been Head of Finance and Accounting at Axel Springer Switzerland since April 2002 and will take on his new role in addition to his existing responsibilities.
Matthias Kern will be the new Chief Sales Officer. The 30-year-old has been Key Account Manager at Google in Zurich for the past two years. From December 1, 2008, Kern will work with the sales teams at Partyguide.ch, Usgang.ch and Students.ch to develop cross-platform solutions for sponsoring and advertising customers.
Amiado Group Managing Director Adrian Bührer will also become a member of the extended Executive Board. The three portals of Axel Springer Switzerland, Partyguide.ch, Usgang.ch and Students.ch, were merged in mid-September under the name Amiado Group.

Oliver Diggelmann

Matthias Kern

Adrian Bührer

39-year-old Regula Kurz is to become the new managing director of calendar publisher Calendaria in Immensee, Switzerland. Kurz has been with Calendaria since 1998 and has been a member of the management team since 2001. The federally certified marketing manager has already headed the subsidiary of LZ Medien Holding AG since last March. As managing director, she succeeds Yvo Peter, who passed away in the summer. Calendaria employs 40 people.

Proud Mary, an agency with a special focus on women as a target group, has developed a flyer for Pierre-Fabre that advertises hair products from the René Furterer label. In the fall of 2008, the cosmetics company launched a hair care line that promises customers immediately visible results - "frizzy before, silky smooth after". The agency tried to visualize this product benefit with a flyer including samples of the hair product: The resealable flyer is adorned with a gift ribbon that is curly on one side and smooth on the other. The promotional gift is to be distributed at various business events for women.

Responsible at Pierre-Fabre: Beat Schmidig (Responsable Marketing Korane, Elancyl, René Furterer, Product Manager). Responsible at Proud Mary: Daniela Jakab (Creative Director), Claudia Zechner (Account Director), Sujata Reinhardt (Art Director).

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The Net Metrix Audit web statistics, which are published every month on the sixth working day, measured 175 websites in September. After the most visited sites Bluewin, Search.ch and Local, Blick online is still the first media site with 1.58 million unique clients, followed by Newsnetz (new), NZZ online and 20 Minuten.ch.
Media pages ranked 6 to 10
The September statistics are also interesting from a media-specific point of view because the Newsnetz, the quasi-merger of Tages-Anzeiger, Basler Zeitung and Berner Zeitung, is appearing on the Internet for the first time and already ranks behind Blick online with a gap of only 85,000 unique clients (see interview with Wälty). Although not quite at the top, media sites still occupy positions six to ten. Just a few years ago, it was said that the media industry had missed the boat on the Internet. The figures show that it has caught up.
In a comparison of page visits with the previous month of August, Das Magazin (+43.3%), the industry portal Persoenlich.com (+40.3%) and Handelszeitung online (+35.2%) recorded the strongest increases, followed by Cash/Borsalino.ch (+28.9%), Bilanz (+24%) and Le Temps (+21.5%). In view of the current economic crisis, it is not surprising that business titles are in greater demand. Blick online (-0.8%) and Sonntagszeitung.ch (-2.2%) lost page visits slightly, while sf.tv (-13.9%) and Facts.ch (-20.5%) lost a lot.
Comparison with previous year lags behind
The statistics put into perspective the positive results that Swiss Television recently reported in the media. SF compared its current September figures with the same month last year and came up with 64,600 more visits per day on sf.tv. On average, the three main platforms were able to increase their visits by 50 percent compared to the previous year.
Performance problems at Facts.ch
The creators of Facts.ch, the brand of the former and only Swiss-German news magazine selig, which has been running since September 2007, have no definitive explanation for the conspicuous drop in traffic. What is certain is that the portal had performance problems in September and was no longer able to cope with the number of articles on the database side. Since its launch, the platform has processed 1.46 million articles. "It crashed at 1.3 million," says project manager Christoph Lüscher. Things will look better again in October. Lüscher estimates that all platforms that have a lot of content online are heavily dependent on Google and are therefore more susceptible to glitches. The search engine giant seems to change the weightings in its algorithm much more frequently than before.
The strong increase in traffic to the magazine, on the other hand, is mainly due to the launch of an in-house newsletter, which is used to advertise more strongly to the public. In addition, recently
teased the magazine stories on the Tagi website.
René Worni

Web glossary
Page impression (page view): A page impression is a user-induced page view within a website.
Visit: All registered page impressions of a user on a website, between which there is no interruption of at least 30 minutes, are combined into one visit.
Unique Clients: The number of unique clients corresponds to the number of different computers from which a website is accessed. It is determined using cookies, among other things, but not all users accept them. The value can therefore not be measured exactly.

The agency Dr. Peter P. Knobel supports Pirelli in marketing Metzeler tires in German-speaking countries. These are to be marketed primarily to young bikers. The PR agency focused on digital communication and established contact with bloggers and opinion leaders in the online sector. Around 90 bikers from this Europe-wide network of contacts took part in the "Experts on the Road" tire test in September. At the event, the German and Swiss group were able to ride their motorcycles as far as Munich and extensively test various tires from the manufacturer.
The agency's PR activities were carried out in cooperation with Digital PR, an agency of the international PR network Hill & Knowlton based in Milan. The digital PR activities are to be continued in Switzerland.

Ringier takes over the commercial online platform at the end of November Gift idea.ch and intends to further expand its offering. The sales platform for gift items has been active since 2002 and is the most successful provider in this segment, according to a press release from the Zofingen-based publishing house. The market position is to be further expanded through cooperation with Ringier's existing multimedia operations. The parties have agreed not to disclose the contractual details.

Nadine Hasler joined the consulting team of the Zurich event agency ID, which is part of the communication network Compresso, on October 1, 2008. Hasler will be responsible for the organization, planning and realization of product, public and B2B events.
Nadine Hasler most recently worked for Johnson & Johnson Medical in Spreitenbach in the event area. There, she organized public and customer events and coordinated the learning and visitation center for physicians. Prior to that, she worked as a Business Banking Assistant at UBS in Zurich. In June 2008 she graduated as a certified event manager (incl. sponsoring).

The Erlenbach-based agency Eclat has been commissioned to design the BKW Group's 2008 annual report. According to a press release, the Bern-based energy supplier's annual report will present its business activities in a more emotional and generous way than before. It should show what energy in its many facets means to people.
Eclat produced twelve annual reports this year. With Straumann, the agency won first place in the overall assessment of the annual report rating of the business magazine Bilanz and the Harbour Club. Eclat also won the iF communication design award (Straumann and Bâloise annual reports) and the red dot award (Basellandschaftliche Kantonalbank annual report).

Bertelsmann is getting back into the music business. After ending its collaboration with electronics giant Sony at the beginning of October and thus leaving the music industry, the media group is now focusing on the music rights business. The new subsidiary BMG Rights Management will manage and market the rights of artists and authors to the titles, said Managing Director Hartwig Masuch on Tuesday. The new company is based on music catalogs with more than 200 European artists that Bertelsmann secured in contract negotiations with Sony. These include the Scorpions, Nena, Die Prinzen and 2Raumwohnung.
BMG Rights Management intends to fully enter the music industry in 2009, focusing on online and mobile platforms, recording companies as well as film, television and advertising producers. With around 30 employees, the company currently occupies less than one percent of the market through its catalogs and is initially concentrating on Western Europe and later on the USA.

On Friday, SBB announced that *Surprise* would no longer be allowed to be sold at train stations. After just four days, there has been a reversal: The vendors of the street magazine are now permitted to continue selling at Swiss train stations. Surprise reached an agreement with the relevant SBB department, SBB Real Estate, on the future terms and conditions. The agreement covers the authorized train stations, the vendors’ locations, and the sales hours. The new contract will now be drafted jointly and will take effect on January 1, 2009, according to a statement released on Tuesday.
According to SDA, Surprise described the agreement as «very good news» for the sales staff and for the entire project. A quarter of the magazines sold to date have been sold at SBB stations. Surprise accepts the framework conditions for advertising and SBB’s quality requirements. It is also in the magazine’s interest not to disrupt the growing flow of commuters. The railway had terminated all promotional contracts effective at the end of the year, as travelers had complained about the glut of sales and promotional campaigns at the stations.

Match Communications is implementing a Western-style fall campaign for the French lingerie brand Passionata by Chantelle. A twelve-week promotional campaign is intended to increase customer proximity and frequency in the lingerie departments and thus also sales. Until the end of October 2008, promoters will be appearing in Manor, Globus, Jelmoli and Perosa stores as Western girls wearing Passionata tops under the motto "Wild Wild West" and inviting customers to draw a poker card. The poker card, an ace, contains a scratch-off box. Each card is a winner and can be redeemed as a voucher at the till. The promotion is partly supported by advertisements in the Globus and Profits magazines.

Responsible at Match Communications: Roland Sennhauser, Christian Staub. Responsible at Revam: David Kalensky (Marketing Director), Pénelope Meguini (Marketing Manager).

The advertising agency Berthoud, Schneider, Schenk, Müller has created a new advertising campaign for the Basel watch and jewelry store Mezger. Advertising presence designed. The homepage has a simple but attractive design. The homepage is an interplay of selected images of jewelry and watches. The technical implementation of the site was carried out by the company Zephir from Münchenstein.

Responsible at Mezger Watches and Jewelry: Urs Mezger. Responsible at BSSM: Urs Schneider (CD), Hans Peter Brugger, Timm Delfs (text), Pascal Rehmann (AD), Roger Berthoud, Claudia Paganini (consulting).