The Biel-based agency Erdmannpeisker is turning BLS Cargo into thoroughbred alpinists in order to give the rail freight transport provider a clear international profile. The positioning was developed by Input's management consultants together with the management of BLS Cargo. The focus is on mastering Alpine transit. Erdmannpeisker positions BLS Cargo as real alpinists and says so in the claim: BLS Cargo. The Alpinists. In terms of content, the four motifs are intended to communicate the company's key values in gripping mountain conquest stories: Flexibility, top performance and partnership. Responsible at BLS Cargo:
Stefanie Pfander (Head of Communications). Responsible at Erdmannpeisker: Gabriel Peisker (CD), Jörg Fassnarr (AD), Selina Helbling (Consulting).  

 

 Google has developed a new tool called Insight for Search. It is designed to provide an overview of the most popular search terms on the Internet. The new service is aimed at advertisers, marketers and normal Internet users, as detailed in a press release. The tool can be used, for example, to query search trends over a certain period of time - making it possible to see how user interest in a certain topic increases and decreases. The "Regional interests" function shows which countries, cities and regions have the greatest interest in a particular topic. Insight for Search also finds out which search queries are the most popular and which are currently becoming more popular. "Differentiation of search queries" shows the top search queries by category, for example particularly popular search terms in the celebrities or car brands category. In contrast to Google Trends, the results can be displayed by date, region or topic.

 We have known that Hape Kerkeling is Germany's praline among comedians at least since Horst Schlämmer came along. We now also know that he is mutating into an extremely sought-after test character: in addition to Celebrations (Hape as Kerkeling himself) and VW (Hape as Schlämmer), Krüger Kaffee has now also acquired a taste for him - Kerkeling is soon to be seen as Gisela in several TV commercials. In an interview with Horizont.net, Kerkeling said that he was quite surprised that Gisela was also to become an advertising figure, as she is not as well-known as he himself or Horst Schlämmer. But it was never a question for him whether he would be involved or not - the commercial ideas are so anarchic. When asked which of the three - Hape, Horst and Gisela - earns the most, he replies: "Gisela - please! She's a woman and has completely different expectations." And adds: "No. All the same. In the end, it's still me." Seen in this light, it's worth slipping into different roles. So it will be interesting to see what other characters Hape comes up with. TV viewers would certainly be delighted. And if the gentleman earns the odd euro or two for advertising: all the better for him.

 Telecom provider Orange is gaining experience with advertising on cell phones: in Switzerland, together with solution provider Amobee Media Systems, it conducted a test with advertising within text messages. Customers who signed up for the test received a credit on their bill in return for the advertising that was integrated into their incoming text messages. The advertising was integrated in the unused area of the text messages and the maximum SMS capacity was limited to 160 characters.Orange cites the wide reach and target group-specific placement as advantages of SMS advertising. In addition, advertising integrated into SMS is less disruptive than conventional advertising SMS from third-party providers. This form of advertising offers the addressee a choice of various interactions: Click-to-WAP, Click-to-Call or Click-to-Download. It is not yet clear whether and when Orange will convert the test into a normal offer.

 Lesch+Frei has implemented a campaign for the APG profit center eAd, marketer and operator of eBoards, to raise awareness of the eBoard medium in the media and communications industry. The Zurich-based agency has developed a platform for this, with which eAd is present in the trade press every week. In order to avoid boring the target group with endless repetitions of the same three advertisements, Media(co)mix was created, according to a press release issued on Thursday. Under this name, a new story will appear every week from August 2008 until at least the end of December 2009, caricaturing the normal madness of the advertising world and taking it to extremes.
Responsible at Lesch+Frei:
Thomas Lüber (CD), Matthias Kadlubsky (AD), Susanne Fürst (consulting), Barbara Meier (polygraphy). Responsible at eAd: Ulrich Ritschard (Managing Director), Ariane Vuagneux.

 The news network of Tagesanzeiger.ch, Bernerzeitung.ch and Bazonline.ch, which was first announced last September, went online on Thursday evening. The countdown did not run smoothly: "We have had so many technical problems in the past few days that hardly anything can go wrong now. Everything that can go wrong has already gone wrong," said Editor-in-Chief Peter Wälty shortly before the launch. Launching three new sites at the same time doesn't seem like child's play. "The coordination of the three portals still has to settle in - we hardly had time to gather much experience," says Wälty. He and his editorial team provide content for all three sites, which the local editorial teams can then present as they see fit. It remains to be seen whether the news network, touted as the "new big thing", can also be a commercial success. "We all don't know exactly how the economy will develop," said Wälty. "The three sites together have a wide reach. The task now is to market the sites successfully. As we are linked to quality titles, we naturally can't take part in every mess when it comes to marketing," said Wälty. "In any case, we have the best sales team there is."
How does Wälty comment on the online plans of six regional publishers who announced a joint portal at News1.ch on Wednesday? "It's an ambitious project and I wish the creators the best of luck. I imagine it will be difficult to reconcile the interests of six publishers with their different titles. What's more, some of these websites have a very limited reach, so it's questionable whether it's worth the effort," said Wälty about the newly announced online competition. "It is just as challenging to establish a completely new brand with News1.ch." This is easier with Newsnetz: it can build on the existing strong online brands.

 Viral campaigns with stars such as Horst Schlämmer for VW, Matthias Reim for Sixt or Ron Hammer for Hornbach caused quite a stir. Now Oliver Voss, CEO of Jung von Matt and Head of Miami Ad School Europe, has met the creators of these campaigns. In a video documentary, they talk about how they created their heroes, what they learned from them and whether there are any recipes for good Internet campaigns. The video features Ludwig Berndl and Stefan Schulte (Schlämmer for VW/DDB), Wolf Heumann (Matthias Reim for Sixt/JvM) and Till Eckel (Ron Hammer for Hornbach/Heimat). As an extra, there is a conversation with the inventor of the famous Nike viral with Ronaldinho's multiple crossbar shot. Stefan Olander from Nike attracted a lot of attention with this and ensured that advertising agencies around the world discovered the new medium of the viral for their clients.
The talks were held in the summer of this year and have now been finalized.
(under "Online stars").

 The Bertelsmann media group is exiting the music business completely. As the Gütersloh-based company announced on Tuesday, it is selling its stake in the record company Sony BMG to the Japanese electronics group Sony. Sony BMG will thus become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America and will in future be known as Sony Music Entertainment. Only four years ago, the record giants Sony and BMG merged to form a joint venture. However, Bertelsmann had already begun its withdrawal from the struggling music business two years ago. At that time, the Gütersloh-based company sold its music publishing company BMG Music Publishing.
When he took office in December last year, Bertelsmann CEO Hartmut Ostrowski described the music division as having weak growth and subjected it to an in-depth review. This has now resulted in the sale of the shares to Sony BMG. In contrast, music fits into the portfolio of the Japanese entertainment giant. According to sources close to the company, the Bertelsmann shares changed hands for an amount in the region of 1.5 billion dollars.
According to Sony, the joint venture Sony BMG, led by former Bertelsmann manager Rolf Schmidt-Holtz, again suffered a decline in sales in the first half of 2008.
Bertelsmann also owns the Gruner & Jahr publishing group, the RTL Group and the American publishing house Random House.

 Following protests, China has backed down on its planned restrictions on journalists: foreign reporters will be allowed to move freely around Tiananmen Square and conduct spontaneous interviews during the Olympic Games. A few hours after a report about new restrictions requiring an application for interviews on the symbolic square in the heart of Beijing, the official news agency Xinhua reported on Tuesday that the requirement was "not mandatory". "But advance notice would help us provide better support," Xinhua quoted the management committee for the square as saying. The authorities also do not have the right to ban journalists from working there.
The report on the new rules had caused a lack of understanding among journalists and diplomats, as the Chinese authorities had always promised free access to Tian'anmen Square before the Games. Tian'anmen Square was the scene of the 1989 democracy movement, which was ultimately bloodily suppressed by the People's Liberation Army.
The ban on visitors was initially seen as a reaction to a protest by angry Beijing citizens on Monday against their relocation not far from the square (see
).

 Internet giant Google is planning a web platform called "Google Translation Center", which can be used to hire human experts when translations are required. Apparently, the service will allow users to upload documents and request translations into one of over 40 languages from registered translators. Volunteers will be able to offer their services free of charge, but professionals will of course also be able to offer their services for a fee. Google would apparently not be involved in the processing of any payments, as Cnet reports. The results of translation work would be stored in a Google database. This means that the offer could have a second purpose in addition to providing access to professional translation services. "There is the research field of statistical machine translation," explains Matthew W. Crocker, professor at the Institute for Computational Linguistics and Phonetics at Saarland University, in an interview with Pressetext. Such systems could be significantly improved with a large stock of sample texts.

 Thousands of Swiss people received a fake e-mail on Tuesday in which a spam hunter from Wallisellen announced his suicide. The allegedly suicidal man is well. He suspects the Russian Internet Mafia to be behind the unusual attack.A mysterious e-mail was sent to a total of 100,000 Swiss e-mail addresses during the night from Monday to Tuesday, announcing the alleged suicide of Internet expert Roman Hüssy. But the person concerned himself is not only well, he never had any suicidal intentions. For him, however, it is already clear who is behind the attack on his person. The so-called "Joe-Job" attack bears the signature of the Russian Internet Mafia, he told 20min.ch. The Russian mafia had targeted him because Hüssy regularly warns of security leaks on the Internet on his website Abuse.ch.
He recently discussed a Trojan virus that Russian Internet criminals used to gain access to bank accounts. His warning caused the Russians to lose a lot of money. Hüssy therefore sees the fake suicide threat as revenge by the Russian cyber gangsters. His servers had already been paralyzed last week. Now Hüssy has shut down his website until further notice - and filed charges against unknown persons.

 Foreign journalists are no longer allowed to visit Tiananmen Square in Beijing unannounced and conduct spontaneous interviews. In future, reporters will have to register a visit one day in advance and request an interview appointment, as the official news agency Xinhua reported on Tuesday, citing the authorities. They will also be provided with "guides". The decree came a day after a group of Beijing citizens used an organized visit by foreign Olympic journalists to a well-known Beijing Duck House south of Tiananmen Square to protest against insufficient compensation following the demolition of their homes.