What are the Swiss good at? Until recently, you might have said: making cheese and stirring chocolate. Or, of course, being neutral and discreet and looking after other people's money. However, at a time when the two largest Swiss banks are posting losses in the billions, confidence in their competence in these areas has been considerably shaken. We would rather emphasize a new Swiss strength: television suitability. First, 18-year-old Stefanie Heinzmann from Valais swept all her rivals out of the studio with her powerful voice on Stefan Raab's talent show SSDSDSSWEMUGABRTLAD on ProSieben, then Swiss-French dual national Quentin Mosimann won the Star Academy show produced by French broadcaster TF1, and finally, on Tuesday, Bernese magician Vincent Raven won the title of "The Next Uri Geller". The magician impressed with his mental skills and mystical performance and was chosen as the winner by the audience. "The flapping wings of my ravens will watch over you!" Raven assured his fans in a press release. Let's hope they don't defecate in the process. Anyone interested in the resolution of the tricks can find important information on YouTube. Vincent Raven will amaze everyone else once again with his magic next week on the show "The Next Uri Geller - The Best Mentalists in the World". Incidentally, Raven plans to use the prize money of 100,000 euros to build a raven farm.

 
Newspapers I ViznerBorel shows how the Schaffhauser Nachrichten seeks proximity to the country and its people. 
As a "regional newspaper of the world", the Schaffhauser Nachrichten is a mega-newspaper that travels through its distribution area and visits the country and its people. Because "only those who live with the people and visit them can report credibly on life in the region," says publishing director Alexandra Strohm at the Schaffhausen News. The "Number 1 in the region" is published by Editor-in-Chief Norbert Neininger and is read by 45,000 people every day. Schaffhauser Nachrichten has been reporting on the latest and most interesting news from around the world since 1861. However, the main focus has always been on life in the region, "on what happens on our doorstep every day", as the paper's own advertising puts it.
ViznerBorel has now packed this basic idea into a campaign. It takes up the regionalization strategy of Schaffhauser Nachrichten and shows in a striking way that the paper is simply part of the Schaffhausen region. Small and large stories from the regional and global world of culture, politics, society, business and sport find their place in the Schaffhauser Nachrichten and are now visible to everyone throughout the region. This positions Schaffhauser Nachrichten as a first-class newspaper with a strong focus on regional news.
As far as advertisements are concerned, these can be booked individually directly with the publisher and, since January 2008, also in a further intensified cooperation via the advertising combination "Die Nordostschweiz" with the Winterthurer Landbote and Thurgauer Zeitung. This reaches around 200,000 readers.
Andreas Panzeri

 The Zurich office of Saatchi & Saatchi Simko is now strengthening its consulting services after signing up the two creatives John Leuppi and Sascha Fanetti. Joining the team at Bäckerstrasse is consultant Marie-Theres Ott. She comes from Young & Rubicam, where she most recently served as consulting group leader for four years. Marie-Theres Ott has learned communication from scratch not only at well-known agencies, but also on the client side, according to a statement from Saatchi & Saatchi Simko. She has gained great experience with brands in financial services, telecommunications, food, cars and publishing, it said. "Marie-Theres was one of our preferred candidates and I am delighted that she is joining us," CEO Kaspar Loeb said in a communiqué. Saatchi & Saatchi Simko employs eleven people after the initial set-up phase in Zurich.

 On April 1, the children's channel Nick will be launched on cable television in Switzerland. Marketing for the Swiss advertising window will be handled exclusively by IP Multimedia. Nick shows popular series such as "Sponge Bob" and "Jimmy Neutron" and, like MTV and Viva Switzerland, is part of the MTV Networks Group. The channel will be available via signal splitting from Monday to Friday from 8.00 a.m. to 2.00 p.m. and at weekends from 6.00 a.m. to 12.00 noon on the MTV signal. With Nick, IP Multimedia will be able to supplement the existing advertising offerings of the children's channels Super RTL and Cartoon Network in the children's segment.

During Wednesday's extraordinary UBS general meeting in Basel, Ruf Lanz caused red heads to turn with a guerrilla action on behalf of Ricardo.ch. The arriving UBS shareholders were greeted in front of the St. Jakobshalle with the following message: "Cheer up, dear UBS shareholders: On Ricardo.ch you can still afford a noble drop. Because on Ricardo.ch there are interesting offers for every wallet." However, the posters did not meet with universal approval: according to Ricardo.ch, they were removed by security within a few minutes. "We actually wanted to leave the posters up until around 10:30 a.m., but nothing came of it," says Marcel Sennhauser, marketing manager at the online auction house.
According to Ricardo.ch, one person involved, who was working for the Face event agency, was almost arrested. However, the Basel-Landschaft police want to know nothing about this: "This is pure fiction," says media spokesman Rolf Wirz. The police also had nothing to do with the removal of the posters; that was the sole responsibility of the security service. The action will have no criminal consequences. Ricardo.ch, however, stands by its account of the events.
The posters will now be stored for two to three days. Sennhauser added that the action was intended to cheer up the hard-pressed UBS shareholders, some of whom had suffered huge losses. Ricardo.ch intends to auction off the posters for a good cause as soon as they are back in the possession of the online auction house. The poster subject will also be seen as an advertisement in the Abendzeitung Heute and Blick.
Responsible at Ricardo.ch:
Marcel Sennhauser, Marketing & Communications Manager, Laurent Wendling, Branding & Advertising Manager. Responsible at Ruf Lanz: Danielle Lanz, Markus Ruf (Creative Direction), Thomas Schöb (Text), Lorenz Clormann (Art Direction), Gian-Marco Juon (Consulting). Realization: Face ag (Miriam Mayer).

 The Südostschweiz media group based in Chur is closing its printing plants in Arosa, Bonaduz and Samedan. Twelve employees have been made redundant, as reported by SDA on Thursday. Whether the print shop in Maienfeld will also be closed is still open. Small orders are increasingly being processed via the Internet. This is why his company has decided to close the small print shops or hand them over to the managing directors, said Südostschweiz publisher Hanspeter Lebrument on Wednesday in response to a report in the "Bündner Anzeiger". His company wants to concentrate on the printing plants in Chur, Davos, Glarus and St. Moritz. The print shop in Arosa will be taken over by the managing director. The publishing house, the regional editorial offices of Südostschweiz and the Engadiner Wochenzeitung as well as advertising sales and the editorial offices of Radio Engiadina will remain in Samedan.
 
As previously announced, Andrea Götz, who has been Head of Südostschweiz Print for many years, will be leaving the company on March 1 (see
).

 The Young & Rubicam Group has won the sanitary technology group Geberit as a client and has been awarded a Europe-wide mandate for an integrated B2C campaign. According to a statement on Wednesday, the budget was won in a competitive presentation in which the Y&R Group prevailed over two other agencies. "The Y&R Group convinced us with a fully integrated creative concept that optimally links classic advertising, online communication, POS measures and tradmarketing," said William Christensen, Head of Marketing at the Geberit Group, in the press release.
The campaign is currently being realized and the launch is planned for the beginning of 2009.

 
As CD at Cosmic Bern, Thom Pfister is now also involved as a partner and is looking forward to further expansion with the agency in French-speaking Switzerland. 
Things are happening on the Bernese scene. New agencies are being founded. Others are being expanded. One architecturally beautiful example is the expansion of Cosmic. The agency has converted an old carpenter's workshop on Uferweg into a loft. "We have found the outer shell that has suited us for a long time," says Thom Pfister about the inspiring design of his workplace. Cosmic was founded in Zurich in 1985 and employs 16 people there today. Because he "believed in the power of this agency", Marcel Durst opened a second, independent agency in Bern in 1999 under the name Cosmic together with Gabriela Fust. They started in the Swiss capital with 4 employees. There are now 16, and Thom Pfister has been part of the team for five years. The CD has now been accepted as co-owner and third partner, which Cosmic Bern celebrated with a "Big Bang!" party on February 14.
It was also announced at this event that Cosmic intends to expand into French-speaking Switzerland. The managing director of this branch is Suzanne Scherer. She is currently busy setting up the new unit from Bern. However, the plan is to move into its own office in Neuchâtel or Lausanne soon. "We are not overconfident, but realize that there is a need and huge potential," says Pfister about this expansion to the west.
All three Cosmic agencies function independently. However, they benefit from close cooperation and see each other "as different teams". Depending on the assignment, these are put together according to expertise. The most important clients in Zurich include Roche Diagnostics worldwide, Swiss Milk Producers (SMP) and AMS Agro-Marketing Suisse or Interio. CD Richard Rau has been looking after the furniture store for sixteen years. Bern and Zurich successfully pitched together for Smart in the past and recently for Steiner AG's Lagerhaus 62. Another joint client is Sika, for whom Cosmic handles editorial work worldwide - "one of our core competencies", as Pfister explains.
The rise of the young creatives began in Bern with their three-year engagement for Smart. "It's been a long time since a Bernese agency was allowed to look after a car brand." In the meantime, the most important Bernese clients include BLS, Strom Chronos Uhren, Berner Kantonalbank, Ypsomed and now the Zentrum Paul Klee - "a wonderful story on a cultural level".
The designs on display can make Pfister's anticipation understandable. The agency should communicate that the Zentrum Paul Klee is not just a museum. In addition to the large exhibition, there are also workshops, a children's museum and "a very good restaurant". Concerts, dance and theater take place in the auditorium. To communicate the ten different sections of the Paul Klee meeting place, CD Pfister works with elements from the painter's works of art in his advertisements and posters, which he combines with modern photos.
Art, design, advertising. At Cosmic, these are three elements that are always cross-fertilized in an ideal way. Art flows into design. And advertising inspires art. A mailing that Cosmic sent out to various museums and cultural institutes was greeted with positive responses. "The fine arts also have to actively market themselves today."
The expertise with which such creativity and visual worlds are processed at Cosmic in conjunction with marketing is also demonstrated by the fact that an AD from Cosmic Bern was awarded gold at the creative school both this year and last year. "The talent potential is there. The support we are providing for the future can take effect."
The creative head of this team showed an interest in this designed world very early on. "Even as a boy, I stole my mother's women's magazines and tore them apart," recalls Pfister. He used the torn-out pages to create folders on topics such as men's fashion, women, style, living and decor. Pfister experienced a backflash in his professional life. "In Beda Achermann's design studio, they collected all kinds of things from international magazines and filed them in folders. That's when I realized: Now I earn my money with this."
This design world became concrete for Pfister when he trained as a graphic designer at the Bern School of Applied Arts. He got to know people from the fashion industry and soon had "many commissions" from this scene. He was given the opportunity to work for Levi's Switzerland and considered for the first time whether he should set up his own business. However, he was even more attracted to Zurich because he saw "what was going on in advertising there".
Pfister developed at McCann-Erickson as an AD assistant under Edi Andrist and Eric Voser. When he finished creative school and heard that Beda Achermann was looking for new people for a smart book, Pfister moved to this specialized studio and stayed on Zurich's Langstrasse for four years. He also worked with Achermann on an annual report for Migros. This was awarded ADC Gold and Best of Europe in 2000.
Pfister had something to show, ventured out into the wide world and eventually found a job at the Tomato design studio in London. However, because long-term development in his familiar homeland promised more potential, Pfister returned to Bern in 2003 and worked as a freelancer for two years. "I had the mentality of Zurich and London in my head. Integrating them here was a great idea," he says today, happy with his path. Even though his London ideas may have initially offended some people in Bern, "people here have come to respect the spirit of the times," says Pfister. And from his office, he lets his gaze wander contentedly over the glittering Aare.
Andreas Panzeri

 Until now, hard disk recorders have been considered poison for advertising because TV viewers can use them to fast-forward the commercials. NBC Universal is currently looking for ways to appeal to fast-forward viewers after all. According to a study conducted by the American media company, some of the fast-forwarded advertising still sticks with users. Even at six times the video speed, they remember commercials or parts of them, as Digitalfernsehen.de reports. This is because viewers concentrate on the screen when fast-forwarding so that they can stop in time when the desired program continues. As many as 25 percent of fast-forward viewers were still able to remember the advertisement the day after the program. The recall value was particularly high for already familiar commercials and those featuring popular figures or stars. This finding has consequences for the advertising industry: commercials can be prepared in such a way that they remain particularly well in the memory of those watching them. Simple sequences of action in the middle of the image are the most suitable, while text or sound fall out when fast-forwarding. The credit card company Visa, for example, ran a commercial last year in which the logo in the middle of the image was shown for a few seconds longer than normal at the end.
Media planning can also take the effects of hard disk recorders into account: As well-known commercials seem to be perceived more strongly when fast-forwarded, it is worthwhile focusing on the advertising environment during the broadcast of live events when launching a new clip. This is because most viewers will prefer the broadcast to the first broadcast - so they will also watch the commercials in full length. Commercials that are optimized for fast-forwarding are more likely to come into their own in the context of series. These are recorded particularly often.

 
Newspapers II Kreisvier uses a testimonial campaign to promote the Baslerstab to the people of Basel. 
Since February 21, Basel's largest free newspaper Baslerstab has been sporting a new look and new distribution boxes. At the same time, it is also trying to set editorial and advertising accents. It has done this editorially by devoting the front and main story to the Basel dialect every day since the relaunch. Out of concern that "Baseldytsch" could disappear - because in Basel the standard language is soon to be promoted from kindergarten onwards. A father has his say who is "afraid for his children" because of this, experts who find this development "fatal" and a "catastrophe". The choice of words alone shows that this is an exaggeration, but this is part of the concept of the new Basel staff. Not only because it is pursuing an even more tabloid concept than before, but above all because it wants and needs to position itself as particularly Basel-oriented among the free papers. The Basel-focused editorial launch is flanked by an advertising concept with just as much local relevance. "Baslerstab - my favorite piece of Basel" is the slogan for the three-stage campaign developed by the Basel agency Kreisvier. Stage one consists of subjects that call on Baslerstab readers to send in a photo. This should show an object, a pet, a house or a life partner that the reader has found thanks to an advertisement in Baslerstab. In a second step, the photos will be reproduced in the Baslerstab. If the quality is insufficient, they will be taken by professionals. The third stage is to use some photos and statements as advertising for the Baslerstab - in the reader and advertising market. "We want to continue the campaign with real Baslerstab readers," says Nannette Graf, who has overall responsibility for the campaign at Kreisvier.
The appeal seems to have been successful: According to Graf, around 30 entries have already been counted in the first three days. It is also possible that the advertising idea will make the Baslerstab more popular with readers. Because here it has a shortcoming: according to surveys, the paper has been read so far, but not really liked. "That was the real tricky part of the job: making the traditional Baslerstab a popular paper again," says Graf.
Markus Knöpfli

 
Woman What do women want? Grey has examined the ladies and found that the customer is queen.  
Despite his thirty years of studying the female soul, the famous psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud was unable to answer one big question: "What does a woman want?"
The German agency Grey claims to have found an answer. Women today want babies and Blackberries. Agency boss Alina Kessel is the author of the booklet "F.E.M.A.L.E Marketing" (name explained below). The booklet is an update of the brand encyclopaedia "Werkbuch M wie Marke", published by renowned brand professional Bernd M. Michael. Anyone familiar with the anthology will notice that the pink work is a departure from the usual design framework. "But it is also a very special topic," says the author.
Dusty images of womenAlina Kessel has taken a close look at the female buyer group and explains in 50 pages why the finest hour for brand makers has begun. This much can be revealed: Women who earn money not only buy shoes and cosmetics, but also shares, cars and tools. If marketing experts want to successfully market their products in the future, they need to adapt them to women's wishes and needs. The reasons can be read in black and white. Various studies have come to the conclusion that today 80 percent of all consumer goods are bought by women. Today's women are obviously not only interested in Pampers, perfume or chocolates. The new shopping behavior is therefore not without consequences, which futurologists such as Matthias Horx are heralding as the "century of women".
Although women are, to put it bluntly, ushering in a new era and driving social change, marketing professionals are still working with outdated images of women. Alina Kessel: "Advertising is based too much on masculine ideas." There is an outdated image of women as consumers who only care about their families. However, too little attention is paid to women as independent and autonomous individuals. "Unisex strategies are still the ultimate. Yet they are the result of simplification taken to the extreme," says Alina Kessel.
Women as a power target groupAs you leaf through the magazine, it becomes clear that the "new female target group", if you want to call it that, is highly interesting. In addition to the heaps of facts and figures compiled, which will amaze many a man, the chapter "Brain research: A deep look into new consumer insights" is well worth reading. The authors come to the conclusion that the areas of the brain responsible for the so-called gut feeling are larger and more sensitive in women. The consequences for advertising: campaigns need to tell imaginative stories and focus heavily on emotional details.
For the authors, there is no doubt that women are the power target group of tomorrow. It is recommended reading for all those advertisers who have been working according to the "shrink it and pink it" principle up to now. Female marketing is far more complex, as Alina Kessel impressively demonstrates with fabric softener and shoe brands.
 
Christian Lüscher
 

F.E.M.A.L.EF
for feminine E
for emotional M
for motivatingA
for authenticL
for "linkage", women want to be perceived as a group E
for Entertaining

 The Aargau broadcaster Radio Argovia is canceling this year's free open-air festival. Because Radio Argovia wants to be "one hundred percent" involved in the big football festival in Switzerland, it is not possible to hold the open-air festival at the same time this year, the station announced. Countless sporting and cultural events will also be taking place in the Mittelland before and during Euro 08. Radio Argovia wants to focus all its efforts on this and also enter into media partnerships. In addition, there is apparently no capacity left for the simultaneous staging of the Radio Argovia Festival. Therefore, after careful consideration, the decision has been made to hold the music event again next year - which is euro-free. Last year, around 70,000 visitors attended the two-day festival and saw concerts by Gölä, Bligg, Baschi and the Swiss Jazz Orchestra & Friends.