Even though reporter space in the comparatively small stadiums is severely limited, SRG is confident that it will be able to broadcast all matches of the European Football Championship on the radio. This is reported in the latest edition of Radio Magazin. According to SRG media spokesman Daniel Steiner, four places for radio reporters from all parts of the country were allocated as requested in the first round of allocations for the Swiss matches. Further rounds will now follow. As a result of the negotiations with Uefa, SRG's Sport Business Unit has also stated that it has "justified hopes" of being able to cover all radio requirements in the further allocation rounds. "Never before has SRG committed so much infrastructure to a major sporting event at this early stage."

The two advertising agencies Cosmic Bern and Zurich have announced a whole series of news under the motto "Big Bang": They are expanding into French-speaking Switzerland with a partner agency, have a new shareholder, a new consulting manager and new clients.
Cosmic has been active in Zurich for over 20 years and in Bern for almost ten years. Now they also want to conquer French-speaking Switzerland. A partner agency, Cosmic Romandie, has been founded for this purpose. It will operate from Bern for the time being. "We would like to open a branch in French-speaking Switzerland in six months or a year at the latest," Marcel Durst, Managing Partner of Cosmic Bern, told Werbewoche. The partner agency will be managed by Suzanne Scherer as co-owner. The client advisor and federally certified marketing manager will start together with an assistant on March 1, 2008. Cosmic Romandie will initially purchase the creative work from the partner agencies in Zurich and Bern. "We are expanding into French-speaking Switzerland because we are convinced that there is good potential for nationally active clients there. In addition, the competitive environment is not overly large," commented Durst on the decision.
Another change concerns the ownership structure: Creative Director Thom Pfister, who has been with Cosmic Bern for almost five years, is joining the branch in the capital. In addition to his duties in Bern, Pfister has also been in charge of several mandates for the Zurich sister company since last year.
New on board is Simon Schatzmann. He will head the consulting team in Bern from March 1, 2008. The 34-year-old from Berne is Head of Marketing Communications and has over ten years of agency experience. He has worked for Contexta since 1997 - including for Swiss Lotto, Der Bund and Bank-now.
Finally, the two agencies can also look forward to new clients: the Zentrum Paul Klee recently commissioned Cosmic Bern to design a new visual world for the center's ten activity areas. The Bern agency also won the pitch for a promotional project for the Bern S-Bahn. Cosmic Zurich came out on top in two competing presentations: Firstly, the agency was chosen for the overall presentation of the Swiss agriculture and food industry at the International Green Week Berlin, which was designed and realized on behalf of AMS Agro-Marketing Suisse. Secondly, together with architecture partners, it won first prize in the international competition "Designing the face of Kloten Airport". Since the end of 2007, Cosmic Zurich and Bern have also been working on the realization of numerous product brochures for Roche Diagnostics, which are used worldwide.
The two agencies were also delighted to receive an award in terms of consulting quality: the advertising clients surveyed annually by the Media Research Group ranked them first in the category "Consulting quality of agencies with five to ten clients from the top 500 client list".

Picture from left to right: Simon Schatzmann, Head of Consulting Cosmic Bern; Suzanne Scherer, Managing Director Cosmic Romandie; Gabriela Fust Madonna, Managing Partner Cosmic Bern; Marcel Durst, Managing Partner Cosmic Bern; Chris Häfeli, Chairman of the Board Cosmic Zurich; Thom Pfister, Managing Partner Cosmic Bern

 Shortly after the Internet company Yahoo rejected a takeover bid from Microsoft, it is in a shopping mood itself: it wants to take over the community portal Myspace. This was reported by the Wall Street Journal on Thursday, citing informed circles. In return, the group is offering Rupert Murdoch's Myspace owner News Corp. a stake of 20 percent or more in Yahoo. The Internet portal is thus reiterating its signals to Microsoft that it wants to prevent a hostile takeover attempt. Neither Yahoo nor Myspace were willing to comment when asked by Pressetext and left the "rumors" uncommented. The deal would also provide for Yahoo's value to be increased by a financial injection from News Corp. and a private investor. The Microsoft offer for the portal was considered too low by the supervisory board and shareholders. As a result, News Corp. board member Rupert Murdoch refrained from submitting a counter offer to the Microsoft bid. Meanwhile, speculation about a possible Yahoo investment by Google is dwindling, although Google had announced its open support against the Microsoft offer. Microsoft had offered a purchase price of 44.6 billion dollars for Yahoo.

 Ueli Haldimann, editor-in-chief of Swiss Television (SF), apologizes for the SF interview with Christoph Mörgeli at the Buchenwald concentration camp. The two broadcasts have been blocked in the SF archive and removed from the Internet. In the "Mörgele affair", the Zurich SVP National Councillor was interviewed by SF's Germany correspondent on February 6 against the backdrop of the former concentration camp. The Buchenwald Memorial Foundation then accused television and Mörgeli of instrumentalizing Buchenwald.
Five days after this accusation, Haldimann commented on these accusations in his blog. He emphasized that neither SF nor the correspondent had intended to question the dignity of the place and the Nazi victims. If this did happen, he apologized for it.
Apparently, the issue also had consequences within the company: "Internal discussions have since taken place, and even colleagues who initially lacked the necessary sensitivity on this issue now see that this was wrong," writes Haldimann. The discussion should have been held outside the premises against a neutral background. He also addresses the question of whether SF "fell into a cleverly set trap" and whether Mörgeli had staged the interview. Haldimann writes that he has no reason to doubt Mörgeli's account.
Volkhard Knigge, the director of the Buchenwald Foundation, considered the apology in Haldimann's blog to be honorable and at least a good start. "But a blog is a somewhat remote point," he told the Mittelland Zeitung. But Haldimann apparently wants to leave it at that. According to the newspaper, there are no plans for an apology on "Tagesschau" or "10 vor 10".

Because it is too provocative for commuters, a 500-year-old painting is causing a stir in London. To be more precise: a poster of the painting. It shows the nude Venus by the German painter Lucas Cranach the Elder, painted around 1530. The London Underground refuses to show the poster. The transport company responsible fears that it could disturb passengers. The corpus delicti comes from the renowned British Royal Academy Museum, which will be showing the original painting in a special exhibition from March 8. However, the museum's reputation is of no use in the fight against the stubbornness of the "Tube": The poster violates the rules on "depicting men, women or children in a sexual manner", the tube operators announced. The museum should reconsider its advertising.
John Whittingdale, chairman of the parliamentary culture committee, considers this decision to be "utterly moronic", as he said on Wednesday evening. "There is no way that this classic painting could be a nuisance," he said. Even if this resistance to nonsensical advertising bans is laudable: I'm sure some people are secretly pleased that the transport company's decision has allowed the good old cliché of the prudish Brit to slip out of the moth box once again.
Image: Royalacademy.org.uk

Benetton's 2008 global communication campaign focuses on working Africa. The message of the campaign developed by Fabrica is therefore also called "Africa Works". It supports the Birmia credit cooperative in Senegal, which was founded by the Senegalese singer Youss n'Dour, according to a Benetton press release. From February 2008, the campaign will use posters and the press to show pictures by photographer James Mollison of working Senegalese who have been able to build up an independent existence thanks to purpose-oriented financing. Alessandro Benetton, Executive Vice President of Benetton Group, confirms in the press release that he is committed to the project: "We have decided to support and promote this important project because, more than traditional aid programs, it is a concrete measure to encourage the development of local small businesses through effective financing via micro-credits. It is a project that focuses on entrepreneurial skills, hard work, optimism and interest in the future and therefore aims to effectively support a new Africa."
With the new campaign, Benetton is taking up some of the basic ideas that have always been present in the company's communication, according to the press release. By supporting and promoting a fund that finances work in Senegal, the importance of working with institutions that are specifically committed to solidarity is emphasized.

 The Chur University of Applied Sciences is now offering the opportunity to complete a degree with the title "Master of Advanced Studies (MAS) in Writing and Corporate Publishing". This is the first opportunity in the German-speaking world to obtain an internationally recognized Master's degree in Corporate Publishing (CP), according to a press release issued on Thursday. As a co-initiator, the Forum Corporate Publishing FCP has assumed the role of a conceptual sponsor and is represented on the academic advisory board of the program, which aims to introduce graduates to qualified tasks and management functions in CP agencies and publishing houses as well as in the areas of corporate communications and marketing, the press release explains further. The Master's program is aimed at graduates of universities and universities of applied sciences from all disciplines. The courses are offered in collaboration with the Swiss Text Academy and the SPRI.

 Greenpeace Switzerland is jumping on the social networking bandwagon and focusing on values. It is launching Lovepeace.ch, a value-oriented dating and community platform. This gives Greenpeace members and anyone else interested in the environment the opportunity to exchange, organize and find each other online, as the environmental protection organization announced on Thursday. The site offers users many different options; for example, the "Better living" section contains tips on how to protect the environment in everyday life. Political campaigns as well as private excursions can be organized under the heading "Make a difference". You can also look for a partner on Lovepeace.ch.
According to the press release, Greenpeace Switzerland sees the website as an opportunity to raise and network concerns and interests more broadly in the public sphere. Users should be given a tool to actively campaign for the protection of their environment. In addition, the platform should make it possible to experience that a sustainable lifestyle has nothing to do with being hostile to pleasure - on the contrary: those who incorporate environmental concerns into their actions discover a new quality of life.

 
Not being able to hear or see - for deafblind people this is a daily reality. The Festland agency is continuing a poster campaign for the Swiss Central Association for the Blind (SZB) to draw attention to the concerns and needs of deafblind people and to call for support. As in the previous campaign, which was realized in 2006, Emil Steinberger acts as a testimonial. Fiona Hefti and Christian Gross can now be seen on the subjects. According to the SZB press release, the three celebrities have tried to imagine themselves in the world of a deaf-blind person on the posters, thus expressing their solidarity with these people. The posters can be seen in major cities in German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland from February 13, 2008.
 

The pay-TV channel Premiere, which is deep in the red, is being hit hard by "black viewers". They were able to crack the broadcaster's encryption technology, which originated from Kudelski. Premiere is now considering terminating its partnership with the Vaud-based technology company. A decision will be made in the next four weeks, the broadcaster announced in Munich on Thursday. Premiere is seriously considering a switch to NDS. Kudelski's US competitor belongs to Premiere's new shareholder Rupert Murdoch. The media mogul recently acquired a stake of just under 15 percent in Premiere.
In this context, Kudelski referred last week to a contract running until 2012. Premiere CEO Michael Börnicke replied that the contract with Kudelski could be terminated prematurely in certain cases.
Due to the hacker attacks, Prime's Christmas business suffered (see
). The Group has been struggling with difficulties for some time and remained deep in the red last year with a loss of 51.6 million. The cracked technologies also have consequences for Kudelski: The shares came under pressure.

Femina, the weekly magazine for French-speaking Switzerland, has been given a new look and a facelift. The magazine for the female population of French-speaking Switzerland is moving even closer to its readers and aims to strengthen its bond with them. Interaction with the editorial team will also be strengthened, according to a press release. Readers' opinions are increasingly in demand. The first issue with a new look appeared on Sunday, February 10.
Femina is published by Edipresse. Wemf reported a paid circulation of 209,012 copies for 2007.

 The click as the primary measure of the efficiency of brand building campaigns is dead. This is the conclusion of a joint study by the media agency Starcom, the behavioral targeting network Tacoda and the web researcher Comscore. The study, called "Natural Born Clickers", concludes that a very small number of users are responsible for the majority of clicks in the USA: half of all recorded clicks on image advertising units come from a small group of "atypical" users. These just six percent of all users spend a total of four times more time online than the average. During this time, according to the study, these permanent clickers, who are between 25 and 44 years old and tend to come from low-income households, click on everything that comes their way. Because these "heavy clickers" are not representative of the general public, the use of the click rate as a trading currency in Internet advertising is not suitable. In addition, Starcom's data showed no correlation between the branding effect of image ads and the number of clicks, as reported by Netzwoche.
However, the authors of the study do not want to do away with the click rate altogether. The click can still serve as a relevant measure for direct response advertising campaigns, according to Erin Hunter from Comscore. However, the study makes it clear that the click-through rate is the wrong measure for the efficiency of a campaign for brand building.