Although the cute cuddly bear Knut has now grown into a full-grown polar bear, it seems he is not allowed to rest: Now he is causing a dispute between the zoological gardens in Berlin and Neumünster. Neumünster Zoo is demanding a share of the profit of around five million euros that Berlin Zoo made from the public's favorite last year. According to SDA, it is referring to an agreement according to which it owns Knut as the first living offspring of polar bear dad Lars. Lars had been loaned from Neumünster to Berlin. If Neumünster had known that their polar bear cub Lars would bring in around five million euros from ticket and advertising revenue, they probably wouldn't have simply loaned him to their Berlin colleagues. But who knows...then perhaps everything would have turned out very differently - the polar bear lady with whom Lars would have mated in Neumünster would perhaps not have rejected Knut like the one in Berlin, there would never have been any little plush Knuts and other cuteness to buy, and no Knut film would ever make the box office ring...So at least the whole thing was financially worthwhile - for the Berlin Zoo for sure, for the Neumünster Zoo only perhaps...

Swedish fashion label Filippa K has signed former Miss Switzerland and current journalist Fiona Hefti as its ambassador. The partnership was conceived and implemented by Zurich-based branded entertainment agency Creative Assets. Hefti's first public appearance as a testimonial took place on Thursday at the opening of the second Filippa K concept store on Schweizergasse in Zurich, the agency announced, adding that she was proud to be the new ambassador for the fashion label. The fashion suits her taste: minimalist yet stylish.
Patrick Kamm from Filippa K Switzerland is also looking forward to the collaboration. With the new ambassador, Filippa K is taking a further step towards consolidating its position in the Swiss market.

 Tele 2 has chosen a new lead agency following a multi-stage competitive presentation: Euro RSCG Zurich came out on top against several well-known agencies, according to a press release issued on Thursday. The decisive factors for winning the pitch were a clear strategy and a refreshing concept. The agency will soon be launching an overall campaign for the company.

In addition to the service campaign for Swisscom (see ), Jung von Matt/Limmat is also creating a microsite for the company. According to the agency, visitors to the site are encouraged to complete the new Swisscom logo in the form of a mosaic with their own photos against a red, blue or white background. For each completed logo, an iPod Touch from Apple will be raffled off among the participants. Participation is possible via web upload or MMS.  
This will be flanked by online advertising for the entire duration of the campaign.
Responsible at Swisscom:
Marc Werner (Head of Marketing & Sales), Thomas Ulrich (Head of Marketing Communication), Sake Jacqueline Goekbas, Peter Schilde, Patrizio Pivirotto (Advertising Management). Responsible at Jung von Matt/Limmat: Alexander Jaggy, Markus Rottmann (Creative Direction), Bruno Manser (Art Direction), Iris Alder (Text), Martin Samsel (Strategy), Matthias Adolf (Head of Online Consulting), Notarmon Buchli, Severin Gehring, Bert Hofmänner (Programming).

 As expected, the two Tamedia broadcasters Radio 24 and Tele Züri are not happy with the Zurich cantonal government's position on licenses. It is regrettable that the government would not support the applications of "the oldest Swiss private radio station and the oldest regional television station in Switzerland". Radio 24 and Tele Züri are convinced, based on their track records and the applications submitted, that they "best" meet all the requirements for the award of the licenses, according to a statement. Zurich is the second canton after Schaffhausen to give preference to Tele Top. The licenses will be awarded in early summer by the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC). Although the opinions of the cantonal governments are not binding for the department, they are part of the opinion-finding process.
What would happen if Tele Züri or Radio 24 were to miss out? "In the event of a negative decision by the Uvek, Tele Züri would have to rethink its concept and it would no longer be possible for Radio 24 to operate as an FM radio station as before," said Tamedia spokesperson Sonja Levy. "For Tele Züri, a negative decision would mean that it would have to compete against a state-supported broadcaster and fight for transmission on the cable network."
However, the Zurich government assumes that Tele Züri would be able to survive without license fee money and guaranteed network space. The consequences would be more serious for Radio 24, which would also lose its FM slot with the license. Its reach would be dramatically reduced, even though the station would still be available via cable and the internet.
Switch to smaller license for radios not possible
Radio 24 - like its competitor Energy Zurich - has only applied for the large Zurich-Glarus area, but not for the smaller license in the Zurich region. According to the Federal Office of Communications, it is not possible for the two stations to switch to the smaller area as an emergency solution if they are not considered for the larger one. "That is not possible. The deadline for applications has expired; the broadcasters can no longer apply for another area," said Bakom spokesman Bernhard Bürki at the request of Werbewoche.
Tamedia would examine legal steps against a possible negative decision from the Federal Council, as Levy further explained. She is convinced that Radio 24 and Tele Züri can also keep up with the competition in terms of diversity of opinion. "In our view, the diversity of opinion and offerings is primarily about the quality of the program and not about the owners," said the spokesperson. "In terms of journalistic performance and investment in staff and programming, we are ahead," the media company's statement said. The Zurich government had justified its statement primarily with considerations relating to diversity of opinion and media.
Carole Scheidegger

The Publicis Group Switzerland appoints Erik Neumann as Managing Director of Publicis Dialog, which emerged from Fisch.Meier.Direkt, effective April 1, 2008. Neumann replaces Christian Hansen, who has headed Fisch.Meier.Direkt until now. It had already been announced last fall that he would be leaving the agency in the spring (see ). Erik Neumann joins Publicis from Saatchi & Saatchi. The 41-year-old started his career on the industry side after studying business administration and sociology. This was followed by positions with a focus on dialog marketing at international agencies such as Ogilvy, New York Communications and Lowe/GGK. In 2002, he joined Saatchi & Saatchi Germany, where he built up the Saatchi & Saatchi X Germany subsidiary network specializing in shopper marketing from 2005. He will remain Managing Director until the end of March 2008.
Erik Neumann is to drive forward the rebranding of Fisch.Meier.Direkt to Publicis Dialog, which was initiated at the beginning of 2008
as announced by Publicis. He is looking forward to continuing the course of integrating all communication disciplines under one roof with Erik Neumann and his 40-strong Dialog team, explained Fredy Collioud, Chairman and Delegate of the Board of Directors of Publicis Group.

 
Swiss television suffered a drop in ratings in February: with SF 1, SF zwei and SF info, it achieved an average market share of 32.1 percent for the whole day. Compared to February 2007, this represents a drop of three percentage points. In comparison to the same month last year, the World Ski Championships and the popular hit "Music Star" were missing in the evening before and especially during the day, according to the press release on Thursday. SF is also feeling the increasing competition from smaller channels and special interest channels. Digitalization and the Internet are also opening up new forms of media consumption, which is reflected in the steadily growing interest in the supplementary programming on Sf.tv.On the Internet, all SF platforms recorded an increase in visits compared to the same month last year. With 1,097,100 visits, "SF Sport" is again the most visited service on Sf.tv in February 2008. The number of visits per month on the sports platform rose by 27 percent compared to the 2007 annual average. Around 327,000 podcasts were downloaded in February 2008, an increase of over 90 percent compared to February 2007.

 
Health For the past five years, Och Sport has been running the prevention campaign "Do some sport again", making a contribution to public health. The new campaign for 2008 runs on two tracks: People are encouraged to burn calories on trampoline posters, while TV commercials explain to the target groups how to keep sports equipment in a species-appropriate manner.

 
Television There are few topics that divide opinion as much as the future of television. However, one thing is clear: television will remain the central medium. Although television will redefine itself, this change is taking place at a manageable pace and TV remains the central medium. Since 2006, the strategy consultancy Zehnvier, together with Publisuisse, has been continuously analyzing the changes shaping the media landscape. The investigations began with the broad-based empirical study "TV - Medium of the Future". Since then, the analyses have been continued by systematically tracking market research studies and industry reports. News from Switzerland, the rest of Europe, Asia and the USA is recorded. No digital tsunamiThe market observations indicate that the much-predicted giant digital wave will not materialize. The change in media use is not coming over us radically. This is shown, for example, by the MindSet Study 2007. In this study, 1923 people were given a PDA for three days and asked about their media use every hour. The study's more than 77,000 snapshots allow detailed statements to be made about the early adopters as media consumers of the future and thus also valuable conclusions about how media will be used tomorrow. The MindSet study defines early adopters by their new media equipment. They have a cell phone, a private online broadband connection with a flat rate and a device that allows "new television" (digital TV receiver or DVD recorder with hard disk). Early adopters can be between 16 and 59 years old.
Early adopters use all media intensively, especially the Internet and mobile devices. The Internet offers them topicality, utility and information. Cell phones are used intensively, but primarily for making calls and texting. Traditional media such as TV and radio remain in play for early adopters. They are used in particular for social orientation, i.e. to find out what is important in society and to have a say. In fact, TV remains by far the most widely used medium among tomorrow's consumers. It offers entertainment, is relaxing and makes people feel good. Television will not be replaced by the Internet, because the function and context of use are too different, even though both are audiovisual media.
Despite these results, it cannot be overlooked that the TV sector is undergoing significant changes. David Brennan, Director of Research and Strategy at the British industry organization Thinkbox, puts it in a nutshell: "TV is not dying - it's having babies." However, the changes are taking place at a manageable pace, as the following examples show.
Mobile TV is strugglingMobile TV has already been hailed as the "next big thing" several times. But the breakthrough is still a long time coming. A look at Germany shows why. Although almost every new cell phone is now TV-capable, Germans still mainly use their cell phones for telephony, texting and photos. One of the reasons for this is the picture quality: mobile services are still unable to keep up with traditional end devices in everyday life. There is also a lack of real demand: Only 13 percent of Germans are interested in mobile television. The costs are also perceived as too high. This and other hurdles (such as technical fragmentation) mean that the development of mobile TV is likely to be hesitant. Three million users are expected in Germany in 2012 - earlier estimates still assumed nine to twelve million.
Mobile TV is also far from booming in Switzerland. Only 6.9% of the population own a TV-capable cell phone (2006: 4.2%), and usage remains a marginal phenomenon. Only 1.2% of the Swiss state that they use mobile TV (2006: 0.7%). It remains to be seen whether Swisscom's DVB-H license and Euro 2008 will help mobile TV achieve a breakthrough.
IPTV is not a mass marketThe situation is similar with IPTV, often hailed as the next generation of TV. Objective observation shows: Internet protocol-based TV reception on a PC or television is growing, but is still far from being a mass market. In Germany, for example, around 270,000 IPTV subscribers were expected at the end of 2007. With 35 million German TV households, this means a penetration rate of 0.8 percent. Management consultants Deloitte expect around 2.2 million IPTV users in 2010, with other studies coming up with similar forecasts. IPTV will therefore gain momentum, but in relation to the total number of German TV households, penetration will only be between five and seven percent.
Internet-based television does not yet have a broad user base in Switzerland either. Swisscom expected around 80,000 Bluewin TV subscribers at the end of 2007 - around 2.7 percent of Swiss TV households. The web TV provider Zattoo has around 500,000 registered users in Switzerland, but these do not generate more than around 400,000 channel changes per month.
Personal Video Recorder marginalFor the future, it is often assumed that media consumption will be largely individualized, i.e. that consumers will primarily watch TV time-shifted and on demand. However, studies and market observations show that people will continue to watch mainly live.
This is particularly evident in the example of the personal video recorder, which makes time-shifted media consumption possible. Although it has been available for some time now, its popularity is still lagging behind forecasts. In the UK, for example: Jupiter Research had assumed that around 28% of British households would own a PVR in 2007. However, the actual penetration rate in mid-2007 was only 12%. In Switzerland, too, PVRs are still not very widespread. According to the latest KommTech study, 6.1% of Swiss people own a PVR, and 9% of the younger target groups Live TV will not only remain influential because PVRs are slower to catch on than often predicted. The decisive factor is also how they affect TV behavior. Here, international studies show that PVR owners also continue to watch mainly live TV. Measurements by Nielsen, for example, show that American PVR owners watch 85% of primetime programs unchanged at the time of broadcast.
Evolution instead of revolutionMobile TV, IPTV and PVR will certainly change the TV market, but the transition to next-generation television will be an evolution, not a revolution. And: TV will remain the central anchor point in the media ensemble of the future.
Roland Kopf, Clemens Koob, Kerstin Schoegel
 
The study - how the results came aboutThe Publisuisse project
"TV - Medium of the Future" consists of a mix of Delphi study, focus group discussions, online survey, expert interviews and secondary research. In this way, the creators ensure that the opinions of all market participants are expressed in the following steps:
Expert view
by means of a Delphi study: which technical developments are foreseeable, how is their relevance assessed, what is realistic in what time horizon? group discussions
with TV consumers: Survey of media usage behavior and future needs, what would the future television look like in terms of quality, content, availability and interactivity? online survey
the advertising industry (clients, advertising and media agencies): Assessment of technical developments with regard to changes and handling in the context of own marketing and advertising activities. Deepening
the consumer and expert view through individual assessment from a scientific perspective (advertising psychology, trend research, etc.)
Desk research: Extensive secondary research with a review of existing studies, articles and reports.

 
Advertising statistics Be careful with data taken from the VSW statistics before February 28, 2008. On February 28, Wemf published the VSW advertising statistics for January 2008 - two weeks late. Better late than wrong, was probably the motto. A wise decision. As previously reported, the previous statistics were incorrect, which is why Wemf changed the statistics regulations as of 2008. Following the new start, Wemf advised publishers intensively so that they could report their advertising volumes in accordance with the regulations. "Errors should be in the per mille range", Wemf Director Marco Bernasconi is convinced, and it is also clear that the new figures are not comparable with the incorrect ones. This also applies to the 2007 data - and this is where it gets tricky. Since February 28, two different 2007 data sets have been in circulation - an incorrect old one and a corrected new one. Wemf has taken the old data set off the web and only put the corrected one online. However, it failed to make clear reference to this data exchange when it was published last week. However, countless old, incorrect evaluations and analyses still exist in the publishing houses, which suddenly appear unseen and are likely to cause confusion. This is exactly what happened during the last system change three years ago. A reference would also have been important because the old data set conveyed false and even market-distorting impressions throughout last year. A few examples show just how market-distorting this is:
Anyone who consulted the VSW statistics on February 27 and compared 20 Minuten with Heute was informed that Heute Basel had outstripped the Basel edition of 20 Minuten by 500 advertising pages in 2007. Since February 28, when the corrected 2007 dataset went online, we know: The situation is exactly the opposite, 20 Minuten Basel is clearly ahead.
Such blatant errors were no exception. Le Matin Bleu and Le Matin semaine together show around 1500 more advertising pages according to the old data set than according to the corrected version. At the Neue Zuger Zeitung, the difference is as much as 3200 pages. The differences are not so great everywhere, but they very often amount to more than 100 pages. Here and there there are even differences in the number of issues. Four newspapers - Basler Zeitung, Landbote, Schaffhauser Nachrichten, Thurgauer Zeitung - were consistent: they start from scratch and show a blank zero for 2007.
The ultimate Advertising Week tip: 2007 figures taken from the VSW statistics before February 28 should be marked as incorrect - or deleted.
Markus Knöpfli

 
Newspapers Only one daily newspaper writes clearly and in German about what is happening in the canton of Fribourg: the Freiburger Nachrichten. For its relaunch on March 6, the paper has given itself a redesign and strengthened its editorial team. So that it can report even more attractively on everything relevant, entertaining and worth reading from the region. Neue LGK from Bern and Zurich won the pitch to publicize the relaunch. Based on the guiding principle "That's worth news to us. Freiburger Nachrichten.", the agency realized a campaign. It focuses on the core competence and value of local reporting. From image ads and radio spots to a sticker campaign, all measures involve and connect the editorial team and the target audience. For the campaign, photographer Tobias Madörin portrayed people from Freiburg who make the news. Readers take their own photos in a competition to track down news - and appear in the newspaper. An advertisement in industry media points out to potential advertisers that only the Freiburger Nachrichten can reach the large proportion of German speakers in the canton.

 
Column: Socially respected victims and perpetrators who serve as targets for prejudice: In the case of the most recent homicides, the media have refrained from reporting verified facts. 
«It was a brutal execution,» claimed Martin Meyer, editor-in-chief of the NZZ’s arts section, recently, calling it an «act of concentrated destruction.» The victim, he said, had confronted «his persecutors as a source of disruption.» But—what crime is Meyer referring to?
In Bussigny, near Lausanne, a 19-year-old set fire to the pants of a sleeping homeless man. The victim woke up in time to put out the fire but suffered second- and third-degree burns.
In Aarau, a 17-year-old entered a massage parlor, strangled a 40-year-old prostitute, and left the scene through the window.
A 22-year-old student died in Locarno after being knocked down in an alley in the old town. Shortly afterward, the police arrested three young men…
These three crimes—two completed homicides and one attempted homicide—were committed by young men in Switzerland in recent weeks. They received widely varying levels of media coverage and only a few heated comments.
The Vaud Cantonal Police did not consider the arson attack on a homeless person worthy of a media release or a police alert. It was only after media investigations five weeks later that the incident came to public attention. After receiving tips, journalists interview the perpetrator—a 19-year-old Swiss painting apprentice—even before the police do. A few German-language Swiss newspapers carry a wire service report; only the *Blick* publishes its own story. Not a word in the NZZ, not even in the arts section; not a word about youth violence; no questions about integration—whether regarding Swiss citizens or painting apprentices; no questions about how a family man loses his footing in society and becomes homeless. Nor is there a statement from any political party, neither from the SVP nor from any others. The victim is socially vulnerable, and since the perpetrator—who is neither a foreigner, nor a naturalized citizen, nor a user of illegal drugs—cannot be used to fuel political campaigns.
The strangling of the 40-year-old prostitute, a mother of three, received little media attention—except in a Swiss German tabloid. The perpetrator is a 17-year-old Swiss national who had been placed in a foster home months earlier by child welfare authorities and his foster parents. Little attention is paid to indications that the young man had been involved in the far-right scene. Here, too, there is no commentary, no questions about the integration of foster children.
On Carnival Saturday, a 22-year-old student was found lying on the street in Locarno; he later died in the hospital from head injuries. Within hours, the police arrest three young men—one Bosnian and two Swiss nationals, both of whom were born in Ticino to Bosnian parents and have since become naturalized citizens. It is this case that prompts Meyer—as well as other commentators—to take to the computer. While he does not propagate racist stereotypes, he does suggest a connection between the crime and the suspects« origins: »We are all—in part—defined by where we come from, the stories that shape our emotions, and the worlds in which our consciences are rooted.” And we must not ignore statistics. However, these statistics should be comprehensive and also disclose income levels. After all, the rule of thumb still holds true: crime is male, it is young, and it comes from socially disadvantaged backgrounds.
Two weeks after Meyer’s comment, the NZZ also reported that a fourth suspect had been arrested—a minor from Ticino. It continued: «It remains unclear what happened in Locarno on the night of February 2, when a 22-year-old man from Ticino lost his life following a brawl.»
But why are media professionals publishing comments at a time when the facts have not yet been established? It’s political opportunism! The student from Ticino wasn’t even dead yet when right-wing parties and opportunistic politicians in the Ticino government were already demanding measures: revocation of citizenship, immediate deportation, and preventive detention. The media picks up on this and sets the carousel of political demands in motion until commentary becomes inevitable. Once the mood has been stoked, there’s no need for verified facts. All it takes are victims who are held in high regard by society and perpetrators on whom prejudices can be vented.
 
Hans Stutz is a freelance journalist