The Zurich agency Hochspannung has announced two new additions: Oliver Burger has joined the management team and Marco Huber has come on board as a graphic designer. Oliver Burger has been a member of the management team since February 1. In his role as Managing Director, he will be responsible for customer care and acquisition, but will also contribute conceptually and strategically to the team led by Matthew Katumba and Alex Taiganidis. Burger has been working in advertising for around 20 years, as the agency announced. First as a consultant, later as a copywriter/concept developer at DDB Needham, ASGS/BBDO, Lintas/Bonaparte and as CD Text at Wunderman Zurich. Since 2005, he has worked as a freelance copywriter/concept developer and creative consultant.
Marco Huber has recently joined Hochspannung as a graphic designer. He attended the Lucerne School of Art and Design (now: Lucerne School of Art and Design), from which he graduated in 2005. He then worked for Cavegnwerbung.
Picture from left: Marco Huber and Oliver Burger

 An advertising campaign with the cabaret artist Emil Steinberger is to promote the Swiss drink Rivella in Germany. An advertising campaign featuring the cabaret artist Emil Steinberger is to promote the Swiss drink Rivella in Germany. Rivella Head of Communications Monika Christener told the NZZ am Sonntag that the drink is to be marketed more intensively in countries close to the border. The main target regions are Baden-Württemberg and southern Bavaria, where the company has been working on building up the market since 2003. Apparently, Rivella now wants to appear there on a larger scale, writes the NZZ am Sonntag. Christener confirms the intentions to launch a campaign with Emil Steinberger, who is very well known in Germany. However, she did not want to disclose any details yet. The campaign is scheduled to start in mid-April. According to the newspaper report, Rivella intends to focus on the major cities of Stuttgart and Munich in southern Germany in future. The two metropolitan areas offer a corresponding population density, high purchasing power, modern stores and attractive marketing opportunities, said Christener. Rivella is also to be sold in German restaurants, after the drink had previously only been available in stores. According to NZZ am Sonntag, attempts to establish Rivella on the market in England and the USA have failed.

 The London Underground has made a U-turn on the art poster ban: the naked Venus by Lucas Cranach the Elder is now allowed to hang on the Tube after all. The public transport company had originally shown the exhibition poster the stop sign (see ). Now comes the remorseful reversal: the poster with the artwork by the German Renaissance painter should not have been banned, said a spokesman for London's public transport company. He was confirming a report in the news magazine Der Spiegel. "But thousands and thousands of advertisements are reviewed every year, so we can't always get everything right," the spokesman said on Saturday. The transport company had previously banned the poster on the grounds that the naked Venus with necklace and veil could disturb travelers. It's nice to see that the sense of art has gained the upper hand with the responsible authorities after all. Especially when you consider the company the poor Venus would otherwise have been in: according to Der Spiegel, the last poster banned by the transport company was from an English sex toy manufacturer - it advertised a vibrator under the brand name "Rampant Rabbit".

The Ruf Lanz agency uses an Asian-looking George W. Bush to show that American goods are available at Chinese prices in the Airport Outlet. The target audience for the Airport Outlet is not only the many Swiss visitors to the airport, but also all the foreign tourists. That is why the poster motifs that advertise it have to be internationally understandable, as Ruf Lanz explained. The agency has already created numerous motifs - including the poster featuring Prince Charles, who has been vacationing in Switzerland in the same mouse-grey ski suit for 20 years. The new motif is intended to convey that the Airport Outlet sells genuine top-quality goods from the USA, only the prices are more Chinese, according to the press release. The motif appears as an F200 poster and a postcard. Further subjects are already in preparation, including Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Responsible at the Airport Outlet:
Peter Wider (overall responsibility). Responsible at Ruf Lanz: Markus Ruf, Danielle Lanz (CD), Markus Ruf (text), Grit Wolany (art direction), Michèle Leibacher (consulting).

 The Cash Group and the Topjobs job portal are working together on their print and online services in the area of careers and management positions. Cash.ch users will now be able to find the entire Topjobs offering and can find out about job vacancies via a newsletter service. Ringier announced that the two companies want to expand their competencies in the career and job sector in a cross-media way and appeal to well-educated and financially strong users. According to a Demoscope study conducted in November 2007, the Topjobs job portal is the best-known Swiss online job exchange for management positions. Around 300 Swiss companies advertise on the portal and post 3,000 jobs every month.

 Publigroupe wants to expand its custom publishing business and is taking over the Rapperswil-based Denon Group, which includes Persönlich Verlags AG in addition to its corporate publishing activities. The latter publishes the Persönlich media. Publigroupe is taking over the Denon Group from its previous owners Oliver Prange and Bruno Hug and integrating it into its Custom Publishing division. Prange will continue to be responsible for the Denon Group and will now also be responsible for the development and implementation of Publigroupe's custom publishing strategy in Central Europe. The cultural magazine Du, on the other hand, will remain in the ownership of Prange as publisher. The custom publishing division, which operates through Emphasis Ltd. with headquarters in Hong Kong and branches in Singapore, Shanghai, Beijing and Taipei, and is managed by Monica Woo, produces and markets corporate publications and other advertising media for specific customer groups. The Denon Group is to form the bridgehead for the planned expansion of PubliGroupe's custom publishing network in Europe.
The Denon Group focuses on publishing, film and the web, employs 35 people and generates annual sales of around CHF 10 million. "The acquisition of the Denon Group is a breakthrough for our dynamically growing custom publishing division," comments Hans-Peter Rohner, CEO of Publigroupe. "The acquisition enables us to expand the division into Europe, where we see promising development opportunities in a rapidly growing custom publishing business."
Denon's custom publishing activities comprise three divisions: Denon Publizistik AG produces customer and employee magazines as well as books for well-known national and international companies. Denon Film AG produces advertising and corporate films and operates its own advertising windows on various television stations. Denon Interactive AG specializes in websites. Persönlich Verlags AG is also part of the Denon Group. It publishes the media of the same name for the marketing and communications industry and operates Persoenlich.com. Matthias Ackeret will continue to manage the Persönlich media in the current style as editor-in-chief.

 
Former CVP functionary Halil Sütlü must pay a fine of 1,200 Swiss francs for tearing down six election posters of SVP National Council candidate Andreas Glarner from Aargau during the 2007 National Council election campaign. This was decided by the district court of Aarau. The posters showed a woman wearing a burka and the slogan "Aarau or Ankara?" and a minaret with the slogan "Baden or Baghdad?" respectively. Sütlü, a management consultant of Turkish origin, told the free newspaper News on Thursday that he had "only resisted because the rule of law did not work". The judiciary had dealt with Glarner's controversial Muslim posters, but did not consider the anti-racism penal norm to have been violated. Commenting on the court ruling, Sütlü said that he had been made an example of. He was shocked that he and not Glarner had been punished.
SVP candidate Andreas Glarner had offered Halil Sütlü a settlement following his complaint: If he made a donation of 500 francs to a charitable organization and apologized, he would withdraw the complaint. Sütlü refused. "Glarner is a man without virtue. If anything, he should apologize."
Glarner hopes that the ruling will send a signal. "What the CVP's model Muslim has done is simply unacceptable," Glarner told News. Sütlü, on the other hand, would do it again: "Nobody plays with my dignity and that of my children."

 
The new Swiss TV series is called «Tag und Nacht» and, as a medical drama, is set in a joint medical and psychiatric practice located in the main train station of a major Swiss city. The story centers on the team of doctors and nurses—a sort of family in which intense conflicts and dramas unfold, but where reconciliation and solidarity also come to the fore. According to a press release issued on Friday, the first episode will air in the fall of 2008. «Tag und Nacht» is the follow-up series to «Lüthi und Blanc.» The key members of the original production team are also returning: Katja Früh as creator and head writer, along with writers Claudia Pütz, Petra Volpe, Daniel Howald, Dave Tucker, Martin Hennig, and others. Peter-Christian Fueter from the production company C-Films serves as executive producer, and Niklaus Schlienger from Swiss Television serves as editorial director.
The lead roles are played by numerous well-known actors and actresses: Sabina Schneebeli, Leonardo Nigro, Andreas Matti, Stéphanie Berger, Heidi Maria Glössner, Oliver Reinhard, Suly Röthlisberger, Sarah Bühlmann, Lisa Ivana Brühlmann, and others. Commissioned by Swiss Television, C-Films is shooting the new series at the same film studio in Glattfelden where the hit series «Lüthi und Blanc» was produced between 1999 and 2006. The exterior scenes are being filmed at Zurich Central Station. Production of the 36 episodes of the first season will take half a year, from April to September 2008.
In terms of content, the spotlight is on not only the medical team but also the lives of the people who seek help at the clinic. Their illnesses give rise to compelling, tragic, humorous, and surprising stories, and they constantly present the medical team with new challenges. For their part, the patients are either just passing through or don’t want to discuss a sensitive issue with their family doctor. So viewers can expect plenty of discussion, gossip, and intriguing and moving moments.

 The internet agency Mitlinks designed the website for this year's Swiss Film Awards. In addition to all the information about the event and the various categories, the site also contains trailers for the nominated films. Visitors were also able to rate the films, and for the first time an audience award was presented for the film that received the most attention. Mitlinks created the website for its client Swiss Films, partner and producer of the annual Swiss Film Awards, which took place for the eleventh time on January 23, 2008.

 
The Vaduz and Zurich-based brand & communications agency Tangram has added Ligurian wine producer Bisson Vini to its client base with immediate effect. In particular, the agency will be responsible for brand development and the launch of the new product lines, as detailed in a press release. In addition to communication support and packaging design, a new website will further strengthen the Bisson Vini brand and support international activities. The first works will be on display this spring.

 
The Swiss Advertising Association (SW) is once again promoting the interests of the industry as a whole in 2008 and is launching the new "Advertising for advertising" campaign this year. With the slogan "No advertising. No idea", it places particular emphasis on the ability of advertising to make a company or product known in the first place. The idea is being implemented with a whole range of interesting institutions, primarily museums that hardly anyone knows about. With this campaign, Swiss advertising is also making an idealistic commitment and supporting cultural institutions that have too few resources to advertise themselves. The campaign was implemented by Wirz Werbung.
SW has been organizing campaigns to promote the image of the advertising industry since 1986. The last campaign, which has been running continuously since 2001 and was also implemented by Wirz Werbung, used the slogan "Advertising brings you up to date" to establish a link between advertising and knowledge of new products.
A CD with the subjects of the new campaign can be obtained from Schweizer Werbung SW, either by telephone (0900 211 001) or by e-mail:
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 Four of the largest US newspaper companies are joining forces for their online advertising business. This was announced on Friday by the publishing houses of the New York Times, USA Today, the Los Angeles Times and the San Francisco Chronicle. They are founding a joint venture for this purpose. It is called Quadrant One and is aimed at customers from the premium sector who are interested in nationwide advertising campaigns, the media groups announced. The websites that the media groups are now jointly marketing have a combined monthly audience of 50 million. It is the second venture of its kind in the US in recent years. Several other publishers have already concluded agreements with the Internet group Yahoo.