The Zurich Public Relations Association (ZPRG) elected its Board of Directors for a further year in office at its 22nd Annual General Meeting at the Sonnenberg Convention Center. President Christian Wick (Wick PR) and board members Pascale Lehmann (APR AG für Public Relations), Myriam Ziesack (Swisscom), Dr. Luca Roncoroni (Zurich Homeowners Association) and Peter Müller (Change Communications) were re-elected. New members are Eva-Maria Bauder (communications specialist), Grazia Grassi (Denner) and Dominik Allemann (Bernet PR). After more than eight years with the association, Renzo Radice (Charles Vögele Trading) is leaving the Board. Iris Heer from Wick PR has been managing the ZPRG secretariat for more than six months. The association's main sponsors are Argus der Presse, Raiffeisen Switzerland and Orange. Other sponsors are Neidhart + Schön Group, Nose Design Intelligence and K&O Eventmanagement. With over 600 members, the ZPRG is the largest regional association of the umbrella organization Swiss Public Relations Association (SPRG).
Picture: The ZPRG Board of Directors from left to right: Dr. Luca Roncoroni, Pascale Lehmann, Christian Wick, President, Grazia Grassi, Peter Müller, Myriam Ziesack, Dominik Allemann and Eva-Maria Bauder.

 
Feeling papers and enjoying delicacies at the event - this was the combination that Sihl + Eika Papier AG used for its first Designer Brunch in Zurich. 
Sihl + Eika Papier AG chose an unusual way to introduce new and proven paper qualities to advertising agencies and graphics studios and to present its "trends to plug in". At a designer brunch on April 1 at Zurich's Hiltl restaurant, participants had the opportunity not only to see creative papers, but also to touch them. There was also plenty of opportunity to talk shop with colleagues. "The aim of the event was to address the target group of agencies with a special invitation - visually and in terms of content - and to arouse their curiosity," says Nicole Isenring, Head of Marketing, Sihl + Eika Papier AG. It was important to Isenring to provide the participants from the agencies with information in an appropriate atmosphere that also matched the beautiful products. 45 employees from various agencies took the opportunity to have breakfast, find out about interesting new paper products and meet colleagues. The response was extremely positive. Sihl + Eika is therefore planning another event in Bern in the coming months and a repeat in Zurich in the second half of the year. (sf)

 
For this year's Peugeot sales campaign, in which brand-new cars are offered at special conditions, the Zurich-based Euro RSCG has sent Peugeot promoters to rather exclusive events. In the three TV commercials, they burst into a UN General Assembly, a tennis match and a ballet performance with their messages. They clearly point out that Peugeot's top offers are not to be missed. The campaign continues in advertisements and at the POS, according to a press release issued by the agency on Wednesday:
/ / Responsible at Peugeot:
Aymeric Duval (Marketing Director), Maya Hitz (Advertising and Promotion Manager), Marion Pfäffli (Advertising Manager) and Lukas Vasvary (Trade Marketing). Responsible at Euro RSCG: Frank Bodin (overall responsibility), Jürg Aemmer (CD), Barbara Strahm (AD), Alexander Fuerer, Nemi Gajic (text), Samuel Huber and Regine Cavicchioli (graphics), Maya Iseli and Caroline Webb (art buying), Niklaus Huwyler and Christine Leitl (consulting) and Edi Burri (production). Photography: Jos Schmid. Film production: Pacha Productions.

The traditional Park Hotel Waldhaus in Flims has undergone a name change and is now called "Waldhaus Flims Mountain Resort & Spa". The agency Scholtysik Niederberger Kraft (SNK) has developed the new, more internationally oriented brand positioning in close cooperation with the hotel management. It is intended to focus on the characteristic combination of nature and luxury, according to a press release. The new name will simplify international marketing. Externally, the revised positioning manifests itself in a completely new brand image. The logo at the heart of the new image is a golden squirrel with a baroque curved tail. The new image will be introduced gradually by the fall of this year.

The left-wing weekly newspaper WOZ is launching a major coup: it wants to take over none other than the major bank UBS - and gain new readers at the same time. The aim of the takeover is to turn "a money-grabbing lottery store into the first decent big bank", according to the specially created website Wozkauftubs.ch. The takeover of UBS by WOZ is to take place piece by piece, share by share. Anyone wishing to support WOZ in this process can now purchase a special "WOZ-plus-UBS subscription": The price for this is made up of CHF 235 for the WOZ subscription plus CHF 35 for the UBS share. For each subscription purchased, the weekly newspaper will buy one UBS share.
"With this campaign, we want to send out a signal that we can work together to influence the business practices of the big banks. It should make people think about the fact that there are always losers in global financial transactions," explained editorial director Susan Boos when asked by Werbewoche. At the same time, it is hoped to reach new readers.
It is also clear to WOZ that it will take many, many new readers to swallow up the big bank: "1,036,773,672 subscriptions left until the takeover," it said rather self-deprecatingly on its website on Wednesday evening. "But our voice will not go unheard. The Ethos Foundation, for example, shows that this kind of commitment has an impact," Boos continued.
The campaign will certainly cause a stir. The left-wing weekly has already anticipated the reactions of its media colleagues and shows a Blick front page that opens with "UBS bosses tremble before WOZ freaks". Or the headline "UBS bosses: soon only 3,900 francs salary?".
The idea was developed jointly by the WOZ crew and the Zurich agency Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett, as Boos said. The UBS takeover will be launched in the WOZ on Thursday, including an advertisement by SFLB. The subject will appear in other titles over the next few days. Further measures are also planned.
Ruedi Widmer, WOZ employee and designated member of the UBS Board of Directors on crisis management.

Responsible at WOZ:
The collective of the weekly newspaper WOZ. Responsible at Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett: Simon Staub (AD), Diana Rossi, Peter Brönnimann (text), Martin Spillmann (CD), Moritz Stillhard (graphics), Mirjam Eberle (consulting).

 
Nightlife The eleventh edition of the Lucerne Bar Guide 08/09 is in print and will be published from April 21, 2008. At the back of the guide there is again a practical A to Z index, which guarantees an overview of more than 150 establishments. Address, opening hours, telephone numbers and, in some cases, a photo and brief description are published in this handy reference book. This makes the "Carlsberg Bar Guide", as it is officially called, undisputedly the most comprehensive work in its class in Central Switzerland. Launched by Ludek Martschini in 1997, the bar guide has been a successful and indispensable companion through Lucerne's nightlife under the patronage of the dream team Insider, Carlsberg and Ideart.

 
Gastronomy Ruf Lanz communicates for Hiltl: "There's a vegetarian in every footballer." 
The good old bratwurst is part of the tradition of a football match. But eating habits are also subject to constant change. The country wants healthy food. In recent years, vegetarian restaurants have sprung up like mushrooms in Switzerland, and Hiltl in Zurich is the original. Delicious vegetarian specialties have been served here - in the most traditional vegetarian restaurant in Europe - since 1898. It is therefore a logical move that, thanks to Hiltl, there will also be a valid alternative to bratwurst, cervelat and the like during Euro 08.
In the special Hiltl European Championship tent on Zurich's Münsterplatz, a whole selection of fine vegetarian specialties will be served from June 6 to 29, 2008, along with live broadcasts of all matches on large plasma screens. A European Championship bar, a VIP lounge, live bands and parties with popular DJs will ensure a festive atmosphere.
The Ruf Lanz agency gladly accepted this opportunity and designed a campaign to publicize the European Championship tent with a wink: There is a vegetarian in every footballer or football fan. For the campaign, images of footballers sticking their heads in the grass for a variety of reasons were cheekily interpreted in the spirit of Hiltl. The print campaign with a total of six motifs will run from the beginning of May.
Andreas Panzeri

 
Car magazines Some titles expanded the online area - for more reader benefit and to counter the migration of classified ads. 
Of the two dozen or so car and motorcycle magazines on sale at Swiss newsstands, 13 titles have their reach reported by Wemf. Specifically, these are the Tamedia titles Automobil Revue and Motor Sport Schweiz with their French-speaking Swiss counterparts, then AutoBörse, in which PubliGroupe has a stake, the TCS member magazine Touring, which is published in three languages, and finally five titles published or managed by Motor Presse Schweiz: Auto Motor und Sport, MotorSport Aktuell, Töff, Motorrad and Auto-Illustrierte.Significant loss of readershipAs different as these titles are, they have one thing in common: overall, they are losing reach. With the exception of Töff and Motorrad, all titles have lost readership significantly at least once since 2004. The biggest loss in absolute terms was recorded by Touring, which has 265,000 fewer readers (-17%) across Switzerland than four years ago. In percentage terms, however, AutoBörse is the biggest loser with a loss of 48,000 readers (-51%). This is followed by Automobil-Revue (German and French), which lost a total of 70,000 readers (-23%), and Moto Sport Schweiz/Suisse, which is now read by a total of 35,000 fewer people (-18%). The losses for the other titles are less severe.
Overall, this is a strange development, as more and more cars are being registered in Switzerland. An anachronism that is exemplified by the member magazine Touring: its total circulation is rising slightly (probably in line with the number of TCS members), but readership has fallen significantly.
Publishers have also noticed this trend. However, a general explanation is not available. Touring publishing director Reto Kammermann, for example, did not want to comment. At Tamedia, Rehne Herzig, Managing Director of Fachmedien Mobil, points to the growing competition. "The variety of magazines and special interest titles on the subject of cars, tuning or rims has increased significantly in recent years, but the number of interested readers has remained more or less the same," he says.
Herzig sees another reason for the decline in reach at Automobil-Revue (AR): two years ago, the publisher canceled around 3,000 free subscriptions. "From today's perspective, that was perhaps a mistake," he says. Which probably also plays a role: There have been several personnel changes in the publishing house and editorial team at AR recently. The next departure is already imminent: Editor-in-chief Max Nötzli is leaving the paper in May. Herzig does not mention this, as he only took up his post at the beginning of April. He prefers to point to positive trends: the rising individual sales at AR and Motor Sport Schweiz/Suisse (MSS). In German-speaking Switzerland, 39 percent more copies of AR and 28 percent more copies of MSS were sold via newsstands in the first few months of 2008 than in the same period in 2007. In French-speaking Switzerland, Revue Automobile sold 26 percent more copies and MSS 138 percent more copies. In terms of advertising, the two titles were also up on the previous year and above budget.
Foreign competitionAt rival publisher Motor Presse Schweiz, publishing director August Hug does not see the situation for his five titles as dramatic either. The losses of the two motorcycle titles have remained within the confidence range even in the long term, and the same applies to AutoMotor und Sport, Motor Sport Aktuell and Auto-Illustrierte: for these three titles, the declines are only significant when measured against interim highs in 2006, but they are stable in a long-term comparison, says Hug. In fact, Auto-Illustrierte, for example, is in a slightly better position today than it was in 2004. From this point of view, he is quite satisfied, says Hug, especially when he considers that the density of car and motorcycle titles here in Switzerland is significantly greater than in Germany. This is because the Swiss magazines, which are hardly noticed in the neighboring country, carry additional weight. Hug, who oversees two German titles, Motorrad and Auto Motor und Sport, is primarily concerned with his three Swiss magazines Töff, Auto-Illustrierte and MotorSport Aktuell. He wants to push these first and foremost. Auto-Illustrierte, for example, has just been given a new online platform and is cooperating more closely with AutoScout24. For MotorSport Aktuell, which Hug also produces for Germany and Austria, the Motor-sport.com website has been relaunched - as a racing platform for the entire German-speaking region. "Although we only address a narrow target group segment, the site already records a total of 80,000 page impressions per day," says Hug. Töff is also planning an innovation in the online area and a closer cooperation, here with Motorradhandel.ch.
An expansion in the online area was also recently on the agenda for the AutoBörse advertising journal. For Managing Director Andreas Kühne, it is clear that classified advertisements, especially for car obsolescence, have migrated to the Internet in recent years, and some car titles, including AutoBörse, have missed out on this trend. Since February, this has changed at AutoBörse. Thanks to the industry interface, dealers who want to advertise can now conveniently send their existing advertisements to AutoBörse and advertise either online or in print - or both.
Previously, this had been too cumbersome. Thanks to the cooperation with Car4you.ch and the integration into PubliGroup's own search platform local.ch, the online offer includes 85,000 advertisements and is therefore second only to AutoScout24, says Kühne. This also means that the benefit for readers is greater again. But what does this mean for the print edition of AutoBörse? As production times have been shortened by the new system and the advertisements are therefore more up-to-date, Kühne believes a revival of the magazine - in combination with online - is entirely possible. "Higher-priced cars will remain in print anyway," he is convinced.
However, he does not rule out the possibility that the magazine could be discontinued. Or that it will be published regionally instead of nationally in future. "Only the future will tell," he says. Kühne is also currently thinking about a relaunch. He would like the AutoBörse to have "less lead, more pictures, a better overview and more editorial content".
 
Markus Knöpfli

 A traffic accident in Ostermundigen or a robbery in Kleinbasel: such reports will probably make it onto the Blick Online portal more often in future. Regional news from the regions of Zurich, Basel, Bern, Eastern Switzerland and Central Switzerland are now available. Users can select their region either in the News/Regional section or via a "Regio-Box" available on the site and are then presented with a selection of regional news, as Ringier announced. The aim is to provide more regional news than was previously available on Blick.ch.

 On March 7, 2009, the Swiss Film Prize "Quartz" will be awarded for the first time at the KKL Lucerne under the auspices of the SRG. The gala replaces the previous award ceremony at the Solothurn Film Festival. The new film prize is intended to be festive and become a television event: The award ceremony will form the centerpiece of a "Night of Swiss Film", which will be broadcast on SRG stations in the various language regions. The new ceremony will retain the gala that already spruced up the previously rather unglamorous award ceremony in Solothurn this year. In future, the film prize is intended to give Swiss filmmaking more recognition among the population. This was announced by SRG on Wednesday. The Swiss Film Academy will decide on the nominees for the 2009 Film Prize, which will be announced at the Solothurn Film Festival in January. As in the past, the winners will be selected by a jury.
Regarding the new KKL location, the communiqué states that the city of Lucerne now has "an ideal cultural and meeting place with national appeal". Lucerne is very pleased with the SRG's decision.
Swiss Film Academy is founded in May The SRG is responsible for the gala. Partners of the event are the Federal Office of Culture, Swiss Films and the Swiss Film Academy. The latter is to be launched in May 2008 by the members of Cinésuisse, the umbrella organization of the Swiss film and audiovisual industry. It will propose the nominations, which will be endowed by the Federal Office of Culture. The promotion agency Swiss Films takes over the management of the Swiss Film Academy and continues to run the promotional work for the Swiss Film Awards.

 
Packaging Half of consumers would do without convenient packaging in favor of the environment, according to a Nielsen study.  
While environmental awareness has long been very high in Switzerland and the surrounding area, the "rest of the world" is now also becoming increasingly conscious. Almost half of all consumers worldwide would be prepared to do without packaging that merely serves their own convenience in favor of the environment. This is the result of a study conducted by Nielsen on the subject of food packaging, in which 26,486 Internet users were surveyed. For 49% of consumers worldwide, the environment is more important than ease of transportation or storage. In Europe, environmental awareness is even higher: 58% would do without convenient packaging in favor of the environment.hygiene and freshness64% of Swiss people can imagine doing without packaging in which to cook or store goods. "The Swiss seem to tend to repackage goods after purchase. That's why it's not so important to them to be able to store or even prepare the goods in the packaging," explains Marco Bischof, Director Marketing & Communications, Switzerland. 61% of the Swiss would do without packaging for easy storage and stacking at home if it was good for the environment. Hygiene is particularly important to the Swiss. Only 20 percent of those surveyed said that they would do without packaging that keeps the product clean and protects it from being touched by other customers for the sake of the environment. The Swiss also attach importance to packaging that keeps the contents fresh for longer after purchase and packaging with cooking and/or usage instructions. Only 32% want to do without this in favor of the environment. "This is a very exciting result. Although the Swiss shop in the supermarket twice a week on average, they want packaging that keeps the goods fresh for longer," says Bischof in amazement.
Lifestyle is decisive "What is very interesting and of great importance for manufacturers is our finding that attitudes towards packaging depend very much on cultural and regional factors as well as lifestyle," explains Bischof. This includes, for example, the question of whether consumers prefer to go shopping by car or by public transport. The size of their home and, above all, the storage space in the kitchen also have an influence, and cultural differences in terms of eating habits and shopping behavior also have a huge impact on which type of packaging is preferred.
Consumers in Europe and North America agree on which types of packaging they would avoid if they could help the environment: Almost 60 percent would avoid packaging that is specifically designed for easy storage and stacking at home (stack-and-store), and 55 percent said that in principle they would not need resealable and therefore reusable containers.
In Asia, the situation is different again. Asians have less storage space for their food. They therefore often prefer stackable solutions. Convenience packaging in which food can be reheated and resealed is also appreciated. According to Nielsen, the general trend towards greater environmental awareness is unbroken and will also have an impact on packaging design.
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Sabine Flaxman

  At the 23rd International Business Film Festival in Vienna, two productions from the Biel-based film production company Twin Productions each won a silver "Prix Victoria". The road movie "The Yellow Class" was awarded in the "Internal Communication" category. The 30-minute feature film starring Massimo Rocchi (director: Alfonso Gordillo) was commissioned by PostBus Switzerland. "Gut gerüstet", an accident prevention film made on behalf of Suva (director: Hannes Stark), won the prize in the "Working environment" category.
The International Business Film Festival in Vienna is held every two years. This year, the commissioned film festival set a new record with 287 submissions.