The Walliseller agency Initiative is founding a new online department. With immediate effect, Initiative Digital will develop media strategies and conceptual implementations for digital media for the agency's clients. The focus is on neutral planning expertise that concentrates exclusively on the advertising objectives and advertising efficiency within the client target groups, the company announced on Monday. Marco Wölfli is responsible for the new department, and the Swiss Initiative offshoot is thus following the instructions of CEO Richard Beaven. He has set himself the goal of refocusing the company on the fields of media, marketing and digital. The new strategy has already proven its worth, according to Swiss Managing Director Stephan Küng. Customers such as Red Bull, Engadin St. Moritz, Similasan, Eterna and the watch company Porsche Design have recently been acquired.
As an agency for communication intelligence, Initiative combines strategy, planning, media and creation. At the Wallisellen location, 21 employees are currently responsible for clients such as Coop, Credit Suisse, Axa Winterthur, Zweifel Pomy Chips, CSS Versicherung, Continental, Bank Sarasin and Bang & Olufsen.
 
 

 Anyone watching Euro 2008 on television will not see everything: the European Football Association (Uefa), as the organizer, selects the images itself - and makes sure that no scenes it does not like flicker into the good rooms. On Saturday, for example, the smoke petards set off by Croatian fans were only visible on television for about a second in the background. The camera quickly panned away to show images of cheering in another part of the stadium. In the 67th minute, a Croatian fan also broke through the security barriers, apparently with the intention of running onto the pitch. According to SDA, all that was shown on television later was the man being taken away.
Massive technical effort The selection of images is no coincidence. For the first time, UEFA is producing the international TV signal itself. There are 30 cameras, a helicopter, seven super slow-motion cameras and a high-speed camera that records over 500 images per second.
But what is shown is not necessarily subject to journalistic criteria. The people responsible on the ground "decide according to the situation", Pascale Voegeli from Euro 2008 SA told SDA. However, she admits that Uefa has no interest in broadly presenting unpleasant incidents. "If a few disturbed people bang their heads in the stands, we certainly won't show that."
"No platform for chaos" Television broadcasts should "not be a platform for chaos", says Voegeli and also points out the copycat effect: Images of speedsters, for example, could encourage other visitors to run onto the pitch as well.
However, Uefa does not have absolute sovereignty over the broadcast material. This is because the national television broadcasters can position their own cameras in the stadium and feed their own images into the broadcast accordingly. Whether they have an interest in broadcasting images of violence or speedsters, for example, is another question.
"It is clear that we would show the images in an appropriate setting," explained SF press officer Urs Durrer. "On the one hand, we want to depict reality, but on the other, we are careful not to give individual troublemakers - and they are always individuals - the platform they are looking for."
Alternatives on the internet If you want to find out the whole truth about the games, you have to rely on the internet. Alternative photo material is spread at lightning speed in blogs and forums.

 As a result of the discontinuation of the Winterthur Stadtblatt, the Zuvo delivery organization is making redundancies. Due to the significant reduction in the size of the carrier network, which was expanded at the beginning of 2008 for the delivery of the Stadtblatt on Sundays, 7.3 full-time positions will have to be cut. These were divided among 82 carriers, as Zuvo announced. According to Zuvo, all measures are subject to the results of the employee consultation.

 There has long been a dispute in Germany about what the public broadcasters ARD and ZDF are allowed to do on their internet portals. The EU Commission has now commented on this. If the limits for ARD and ZDF Internet offerings are not tightened, it is threatening the federal states with legal action. "Anyone who believes that they can leave it at the regulation that ARD and ZDF are only not allowed to offer newspapers and magazines in electronic form obviously does not want to play by the European rules," said EU Media Commissioner Viviane Reding to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. The new Interstate Broadcasting Treaty must contain "clear and unambiguous rules". In the current issue of Focus, Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner also expressed his concern as to why the money collected from licence fee payers should be used to engage in unfair competition with the private sector on the Internet. Some public service online offerings, such as the dating platform Liebesalarm.de or e-commerce activities, have nothing to do with the broadcasters' information mandate.
The German Minister Presidents will now meet on Thursday to discuss the Interstate Broadcasting Treaty. According to the draft, "non-broadcast-related offers from the electronic press" should not be permitted on the websites of ARD, ZDF and Deutschlandradio. Publishers and private broadcasters see such offers as a distortion of competition.
The EU's statement is also interesting for Switzerland. After all, publishers in this country also repeatedly criticize the SRG's internet activities.

The real estate platform Nzzdomizil.ch has been expanded and given a new look. In addition to real estate, there are now also tips and trends on modern design (see ). For the accompanying campaign, the advertising agency Publicis was inspired by the nature of people interested in design. Because they are always on the lookout in some way: they compare, evaluate, indulge and dream, writes the agency. This is why the new campaign focuses on the theme of searching. With images that captivate with their special aesthetics, but are also intended to amuse. The three four-color subjects for Nzzdomizil.ch are realized on both full and half pages. They have been on display in newspapers and magazines since mid-May.
Responsible at Nzzdomizil.ch:
Maurizio Mancinone. Responsible at Publicis: Ralph Halder (Creative Director), Dominik Krattiger (Art Director), Johannes Jost (Text), Sonja Gross (Graphics), Christina Hengstmann (Art Buying), Dominique Ospel, Stephan Lanz (Consulting), Scarlett Gaus (Strategy), Andreas Caruso (Production), Bruno Helbling (Photography and Image Editing), Anja Vetsch, Madelaine Schacher, Brigitte Gubser (Media).

 The examination of the 72 projects applying for the 13 television and 41 radio licenses takes time. The federal government has now announced that Federal Councillor Moritz Leuenberger wants all radio and TV license decisions to be made by mid-September. By the beginning of July for those for which only one media company is applying, and after the summer vacations for the others. as already reported several times, the battle is raging in several regions between the various candidates (see
). In the Zurich region, it is above all the media entrepreneur Roger Schawinski with his new station Radio 1 who intends to reshuffle the cards. In these so-called "difficult" cases, the employees of the Federal Office of Communications need time to analyze all the dossiers. This is why Moritz Leuenberger will only make a decision between mid-August and mid-September, Bakom spokesman Bernhard Bürki told SDA on Monday.

 It may not have quite worked out in football, but the Swiss scored at the European Advertising Championships: last weekend, the ADC of Europe jury handed out precious metal. Three of the 28 gold awards went to Switzerland, namely to Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett, Walker and Advico Young & Rubicam. SFLB took the precious metal in the "Mixed Media" category for the overall "Singles in Underwear" campaign for Migros. Advico Young & Rubicam took gold with the "Optical Zoom" poster campaign for Leica.
Walker won the laurels in the "Public Service" category with the "Channel Hop" spot for Amnesty International.
The Grand Prix at the ADC of Europe went to Germany: the jurors honored the "Power of Wind" spot for Epuron, which was created by the agency Nordpol in Hamburg.

The casting show "Supermodel 2008" on the Swiss private channel 3+ has a new figurehead: German model Franziska Knuppe is taking over as presenter. She succeeds Nadja Schildknecht, who hosted the first season. The 33-year-old Knuppe has been in the modeling business for eleven years, gracing the covers of international fashion magazines and working for various designers. She was a guest judge during the first "Supermodel" season.
Against the backdrop of the general moaning about the many Germans in Switzerland, Knuppe's nationality is also worth a mention in the media release for the 3+ channel. The fact that she is German was a "minor matter" in her decision: "The modeling profession is international and the challenges are the same everywhere," the Potsdam native is quoted as saying.
Picture: Candidates of the first season of
"Supermodel"

 King football captivates viewers, even if the result is not to the liking of the Swiss: on Saturday, up to 1.76 million viewers watched the opening game of Euro 2008 on SF zwei. On average, 1.61 million people watched the game between Switzerland and the Czech Republic, which corresponds to a market share of 79.2 percent. This means second place on the list of most-watched matches: Only the World Cup round of 16 match between Switzerland and Ukraine at the 2006 World Cup has so far managed to attract more people to the television, namely an average of 1.73 million viewers, according to SF. The figures only show viewing at home. If the numerous guests at public viewing events were included, the number of viewers would be even higher. The live broadcast "Euro 2008 - SF Spezial" from 08.00 until after midnight on SF zwei recorded an average of 224,000 viewers and a market share of 43.4 percent. In French-speaking Switzerland, 362,000 viewers watched the game on TSR. This corresponds to a market share of 68.2 percent.

 Just two years ago, car manufacturer General Motors was still making a fortune with gigantomania. The Hummer, an oversized army vehicle originally designed for use in the desert, was considered the ultimate status symbol at the time. The American entertainment industry was responsible for promoting the product: hip-hop and sports stars such as 50 Cent and Shaquille O'Neal drove the bus-wide monsters through video clips, while appearances in TV series such as "Entourage" lent the vehicle Hollywood glamor. Suddenly everyone wanted to own one of these extremely impractical vehicles. Ecological concerns and the fact that the chances of finding a parking space were around 1:1,000,000 completely faded into the background. Now, these huge metal hulks have become a heavy block on the leg of manufacturer General Motors. In times of constantly rising fuel prices and increasing ecological awareness, the Hummers have developed into first-class shelf warmers. Sales have slumped so much that GM's top management is considering a complete overhaul of the fleet and even discontinuing production. In May 2008, the brand's sales figures fell by over 60 percent compared to the same month last year, from 4636 to just 1843 vehicles. "At this point, we are looking at all options," said GM CEO Rick Wagoner at the annual meeting of car manufacturers last week. Gone are the days when DJ Antoine was able to sell his Hummer with his own lettering to a fan after two years at a high profit. A very reassuring development, and not just for ecologically-minded people.

 15 cinematographers and editors received the German Camera Award in Cologne on Sunday evening. Among them are three Swiss cameramen who received a special prize: Patrick Gautschy, Simon Usteri and Christian Witschi were honored "for their daring filming of the Tour de Suisse 2007 from a motorcycle socius", according to a press release from the organizers.

The award ceremony, hosted by Sandra Maischberger, took place as part of the Medienforum.nrw in Cologne's Vulkanhalle.

Shortly before the Euro 2008 kick-off, the Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett agency brought four well-known players' wives from Germany, France, Italy and the Netherlands to Switzerland: Luca Toni's girlfriend Marta Cecchetto, William Gallas' wife Nadège Gallas, Rafael van der Vaart's wife Sylvie van der Vaart and Marcel Jansen's girlfriend Julia Gödicke discovered the many facets of the Alpine nation. According to the press release, the four Swiss host cities are the focus of this federal location marketing project for Euro 08. In each city, a female player was photographed by photographer Lado Alexi. In the Bernese Oberland, there was even a picnic with three of the four women in the great outdoors. The results of this photo shoot appear as an 8-page photo spread in Gala Deutschland, Holland, France, Italy, Russia and Poland. And in Switzerland in Blick and Sonntagsblick magazine as well as in other national and international media. Television teams from Holland (RTL), Germany (ARD) and Switzerland (SF1) accompanied the shoot and will be reporting in the coming days.

From mid-June, the original pictures with the signature of the respective player's wife will be auctioned on Ebay.ch. All proceeds will go to the Red Cross and its "Score for the Red Cross" initiative. Further information on the planned sales campaign will be available on Switzerland.com in the coming days.

Responsible at Standortmarketing Schweiz:
Jörg Krebs (Head of Location Marketing Euro 2008), Matthias Schneider (Deputy Head of Location Marketing Euro 2008). Responsible at SFLB: Martin Spillmann (CD), Mathias Babst, Natasha La Marca (AD), Diana Rossi (Text), Rolf Zimmermann, Patricia Balliana (Consulting), Sebahat Derdiyok and Suzana Kovacevic (Art Buying). Photographer: Lado Alexi.