Bachmann Medien is gaining reinforcements in Basel: Robert Bösiger will join the consultancy firm of former Beobachter and Basler Zeitung editor-in-chief Ivo Bachmann on July 1, 2008. According to a press release, Bösiger has extensive experience as a media professional: the 50-year-old economist was managing director and editor-in-chief at the former Radio Raurauch, editor at the Basellandschaftliche Zeitung, editor-in-chief and publishing director at the Volksstimme and business editor, head of department and member of the editorial board at the Basler Zeitung. Bösiger will work as a consultant and Head of Content at Bachmann Medien.

 In Geneva, Euro 08 will not be a goldmine for NEPSA, the company responsible for organizing the fan infrastructure: at best, it will only be able to cover its costs, explained its head Frédéric Hohl to the media on Monday. The reason for the barely balanced account is the lack of sponsorship income. Despite Uefa's promises, support from Uefa's official partners, with the exception of UBS, Swisscom and Ferrero, has been disappointing, said Hohl. Other sponsors had only contributed CHF 50,000 to the CHF 4.58 million budget. Less than CHF 100,000 was generated by the advertising shown on the big screens in the fan zones.
Hohl explained that his company had only been able to gain an image boost. He hopes that the costs can just about be covered. However, he expects a slight deficit.

 
The Basel-based advertising agency SMP has developed an advertising campaign for the Mercedes dealership in Kestenholz. The campaign aims to increase brand awareness and promote the dealership's services. The Kestenholz Group operates four Mercedes garages in north-western Switzerland and one branch in southern Germany. The group wanted to be present in the region's lead medium at least twice a week. Each subject of the SMP campaign picks up on a current headline from the content of the Basler Zeitung and provides the answer from the Mercedes dealer's perspective on the following day. In this way, advertisements are created week after week that establish a dialog between the advertising medium and the target group:
Stephan Kestenholz (CEO), Thomas Hoffmann (Head of Marketing Communications). Responsible at SMP Werbeagentur: Rolf Schenk (CD), Hannes Müller (CD/text), Daniel Bard (AD), Mirjam Lundström (graphics), Markus Binggeli, Maya Strauch (consulting), BZM (media).

 The Affichage subsidiary Sportart, which specializes in sports marketing, lost two important mandates at the end of last year and is now being integrated into APG as a result. In future, it will no longer be managed as a separate public limited company, but as a profit center within APG. At the beginning of August, Jürg Müller will take over from the previous Managing Director Jakob Huber, who is leaving the company at his own request. As Sportart will no longer be a separate public limited company, the two members of the Board of Directors Edwin Rudolf and Peter Weigelt are stepping down. At the end of 2007, Sportart had to accept the loss of its mandates for the Swiss national football team and the Football Cup and Swisscom Cup. The national team is now marketed by the Swiss Football Association SFV itself. Sportart decided not to extend the contract for the Swisscom Cup: "We received an offer from the SFA that we felt could not be refinanced. That's why we pulled out," explained Müller when asked by Werbewoche. Incidentally, main sponsor Swisscom and the two sponsors Basler Versicherungen and OBI will also withdraw from the Cup.
Sportart AG has gone through a general phase of change. "Three years ago we employed 17 people, today we employ six," said Müller. This is why the parent company Affichage decided to restructure, which will take effect on August 1. The aim is for the sport to employ three or four people in future, explained the designated managing director. However, there have been no redundancies. Sportart will continue to be active in sports marketing even after the restructuring. Clients include the Swiss Handball Association, the Watch Cup and the women's beach volleyball duo Kuhn/Schwer. Growth is of course the aim, Müller continues. However, he assumes that this will not happen "overnight", as marketing contracts are often arranged on a long-term basis.

The new Publicitas has another change in its management team: Ueli Weber, Managing Director Electronic & Interactive, has decided to leave the company after a ten-year career. The operational management of Publicitas Cinecom, Publicitas Radiotele and Publicitas Web2com will be taken over by 38-year-old Tim Dührkoop.
Weber joined the company in 1998. He played a key role in the founding of Publicitas Webservices around five years ago as Managing Director. In 2005, following the merger with Publimedia Webadvertising, he assumed overall responsibility for the newly founded Web2com. Since the beginning of the year, Weber has been in charge of marketing electronic and interactive media in the Swiss sales organization of the new Publicitas (see
).
Publigroupe praised the departing manager in a press release: "In Ueli Weber we are losing a pioneer of the interactive business at Publicitas, but also in Switzerland as a whole", summarized Thomas Bargetzi, CEO/Sales Director Switzerland at Publicitas. Under Weber's leadership, Web2com has positioned and established itself as a major player in the Swiss online market.
Weber's successor Tim Dührkoop has worked in online media since 1995, from 1997 at the online agency Namics, which is now part of Publigroupe, most recently as a partner and head of the Swiss business. In 2006, he joined what is now Publicitas, where he initially managed an online project in the USA. Since September 2007, Dührkoop has been responsible for strategy development at the new Publicitas and deals with all types of media.

 There has already been speculation about possible partnerships between the Sonntag newspaper and the new title Zentralschweiz am Sonntag, which will be published in September. It is now clear that they will be working together: The two Sonntagszeitungen will be present with a joint advertising combination from September. In addition, the editorial teams of the two titles intend to work together on a selective basis, according to a press release issued on Monday. The combination of the Mittelland newspaper title Sonntag and the Sonntagsblatt of the Neue Luzerner Zeitung called Zentralschweiz am Sonntag is called "Sonntagspool". Advertisers will receive a combined discount of 10 percent on commercial advertisements and brochure inserts and 5 percent on job advertisements. The two newspapers will have a combined circulation of 320,000 copies: Zentralschweiz am Sonntag has a circulation of 120,000 copies, Sonntag is published with a circulation of 200,000 copies.
Those responsible at both publishers had already stated that they were open to partnerships, but never mentioned specific names (see
and ).

 
David Horvitz is 25 years old, lives in New York and is passionate about traveling. As he is a penniless artist and attends an expensive school, he has come up with a very special way to finance his passion. For a few months now, people have been able to send him on a trip themselves via internet bank transfer: His website offers everything from a trip to the banks of the Hudson River (20 dollars) to a trip to the starry sands of Okinawa (1,626 dollars) or a trip to Perth in Australia (3,143 dollars), the furthest place in the world from New York. The financiers always receive something in return: pictures of receipts, a bag of sand, a stone, a postcard. Recently, he visited deserted places on Roosevelt Island every day and read Dostoyevsky's classic "Anna Karenina" there. 400 dollars were collected from all over the world. Despite all his success with this self-promotion strategy, Horvitz never really looks happy in the pictures. It is quite possible that his project is an amalgamation of art, wanderlust and emotional crisis management. In any case, a visit to the psychologist, including a tape recording of the session, is also available for purchase on Horvitz's website.

 Campaigns and advertising for climate protection are generally too negative. Instead of using gloomy messages to draw attention to climate change, public campaigns should focus more on positive, emotional stimuli to create a change in awareness among the population, according to the conclusion of a British study. The National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (Nesta) examined 3,000 different campaigns from various sectors. The researchers came to the conclusion that more confident messages would be more useful in encouraging people to take action, reports the Guardian. In addition, the advertising campaigns would have to emphasize fairness - in other words, show that the government and industry are also involved and not just the individual citizen. To achieve resounding success, ads should encourage people and try to change their behavior with compelling messages, Nesta CEO Jonathan Kestenbaum told Pressetext.

 Zanox, which is controlled by PubliGroupe and the German media group Axel Springer, achieved a turnover of 166 million euros (around 267 million Swiss francs) in 2007. This corresponds to an increase of 55 percent, which means that the German online marketing service provider grew at an above-average rate in an international industry comparison, Zanox announced on Monday. The number of branches has been further expanded, particularly since the entry of shareholders Axel Springer and PubliGroupe at the beginning of 2007. Earnings figures were not communicated.
According to Zanox, the company has 350 employees in Berlin and 25 other locations, including Switzerland.

 Swiss television is taking stock of the success of Euro 08: never before has the interest of viewers in a football tournament been as great as in this tournament. The final match last Sunday evening was watched by 1,590,000 people on SF zwei (market share 67.5 percent). On average, almost one million people (986,000, 54.8 percent market share) watched the live broadcasts of the matches on SF. For twelve matches, the average audience was over one million. 87% of viewers who watched the matches in German-speaking Switzerland watched them on SF, while the post-match analyses also generated a great deal of viewer interest, according to a Swiss television communiqué: An average of 638,000 viewers (48.2 percent of the market) watched the analysis by Matthias Hüppi, Alain Sutter, Rainer Maria Salzgeber and their guests.
A telephone survey conducted by Demoscope with a sample of 356 people in German-speaking Switzerland revealed that an estimated 270,000 people watched the final match outside the home on Swiss television. The largest public viewing figure was achieved by the match between Switzerland and Turkey with 350,000 people.
The Austrian broadcaster ORF also received excellent ratings for the final. With an average of 1.8 million viewers and a market share of 62%, the match between Spain and Germany took second place in the ranking of the most-watched Euro matches.

 
From July 1, 2008, the St. Galler Tagblatt will have a completely revamped Internet presence. Tagblatt.ch now has a dynamic news portal that is constantly updated by a five-person online editorial team. The journalistic focus is on regional content, although great attention is also paid to national and international news. Magazine articles, picture galleries and services such as a comprehensive archive, a job exchange (Ostjob.ch), a vehicle (Ostcar.ch) and real estate marketplace (Osthome.ch) or an event calendar (Ostevent.ch) round off the offering. The simple layout is designed to help users find their way around quickly, and the design and content concept were developed in collaboration with the advertising agency Festland. The relaunch campaign was also developed in the creative offices of Festland.
Responsible at the St. Galler Tagblatt:
Daniel Ehrat (project management), Umberto W. Ferrari (editorial management), Richard Schröter, Andri Rostetter, Franziska Signer Agency: Festland AG, St.Gallen/Zurich.

 Switzerland was eliminated early from the European Championships. But that didn't stop the Swiss dairy cows from cheering on the Euro 08 to the very end. Ruf Lanz taught the famous advertising cow Lovely and a whole series of other cows the La-Ola wave on behalf of the Swiss milk producers. The wave of animal enthusiasm can be seen in the form of a .Responsible for the Swiss milk producers:
Charlotte Hofstetter (Head of Advertising & Media), Martin Rüst (Head of Advertising). Responsible at Ruf Lanz: Danielle Lanz, Markus Ruf (Creative Direction), Lorenz Clormann (Art Direction), Thomas Schöb (Text), Natalie Schneider (Consulting), Production: Markenfilm Schweiz, Director: Lalli Jonsson, Producer: Uli Scheper, Music & Sounddesign: Kirschnermusic, Postproduction: UPP, Prague.