Pius Walker has achieved great things this year with his "smallest advertising agency in the world". He has moved up to 1st place in the creative ranking of Werbewoche. In the international ranking, which the Gunn Report calculates from all the world's most important creative awards, Walker Werbung is ranked 39th out of all the world's agencies. This was made possible above all thanks to Walker's ideas for Amnesty International. The campaign with the claim "It's not happening here. But now." is also one of the 10 most awarded "print ads and campaigns in the world 2007" with rank 9. Two gold and one silver lion in Cannes as well as the title "third best media agency in the world" contributed to this. The second campaign for which Walker spends many gala evenings at festivals is Fleurop, including seven shortlist places in the top film category in Cannes. Walker was also a big winner at the ADC, where he won four out of seven gold cubes. Walker can announce Rega as a new budget in 2007. Walker also won Max Havelaar. With the "Newsweek" campaign for Maxiprint, Walker printed the night's headlines on posters early in the morning for a week and wittily proved that "no one prints faster." The Walker agency was founded in 2003. Pius Walker started out in advertising with an apprenticeship as a graphic designer at AY&R. He worked at GGK in Zurich and later at Springer & Jacoby and Jung von Matt in Hamburg, Legas Delaney in London and as CD and Managing Director at Scholz & Friends Berlin.

 The two telecommunications companies Sunrise and Orange have pulled out of a joint mobile TV project with Swisscom. Nevertheless, Swisscom, which holds the corresponding license, is sticking to its plans for a corresponding network. The Federal Communications Commission (ComCom) granted Swisscom the license for the development of mobile TV in accordance with the DVB-H standard at the end of September. Swisscom, Sunrise and Orange tested the new technology in a pilot project at the end of 2006. Subsequently, a cooperation project was launched for the commercial introduction of mobile TV. The two partners withdrew from the joint project at short notice, as Swisscom announced on Wednesday without giving reasons.
"The project is too expensive. We are refraining from the commercial launch of a DVB-H mobile TV service in the coming year, as we currently consider the Swiss market to be too immature for this," said Sunrise spokeswoman Sevgi Gezici when asked by Werbewoche. However, it is quite possible that both Sunrise and Orange will launch such an offer at a later date.
 
Swisscom is nevertheless convinced that mobile television in digital quality meets a growing customer need. The aim is for almost half of the population to be able to watch television on their cell phones by Euro 08.
For this first phase, the planning priority is to cover the Euro 2008 host cities of Bern, Basel, Zurich and Geneva. According to the press release, around 26 antennas at existing locations are required for this. In total, Swisscom is investing tens of millions in the introduction of mobile TV.

Regional broadcasting licenses 21 applications have been received for the 13 regional television licenses. The race is on. The first phase of the reallocation of television and radio licenses for private broadcasters has been completed. The deadline for applications expired on December 5. The new regulation on fee splitting in the new Radio and Television Act made it necessary to put all the licenses out to tender. The Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) put a total of 41 licences out to tender for FM radio stations. A total of 54 applications were received (see box). A total of 21 applications have been received for the 13 newly defined regional television areas.
In German-speaking Switzerland, half of the television regions are in dispute. While only the applications of existing broadcasters have been received for the regions of Bern, Basel, Biel and south-eastern Switzerland, Bakom has received several competing applications for the four other broadcasting areas. It was foreseeable that there would be a tussle for the Zurich region with the cantons of Schaffhausen and Thurgau and for the eastern Switzerland region since Bakom only defined two areas for the three stations Tele Züri, Tele Top and Tele Ostschweiz.
Scramble for Eastern SwitzerlandGünter Heuberger has applied for his Tele Top both for Zurich-Schaffhausen-Thurgau and for Eastern Switzerland - here under the project title Tele Säntis. "We have extensive experience with program windows and provide a regional public service," he explains. "If the service mandate is largely fulfilled in the same way, preference is given by law to the applicant who enriches the diversity of opinion and offerings the most." This should be of particular benefit to him in the Eastern Switzerland broadcasting region, where he faces Tele Ostschweiz. This is because Tele Ostschweiz is owned by St. Galler Tagblatt AG, which also operates Radio aktuell.
In the large Zurich-Schaffhausen-Thurgau broadcasting area, on the other hand, Heuberger has worse cards: although Tele Top is not affiliated with a large publishing house, it has so far only been active from Frauenfeld in the east of the area, but not in the city of Zurich. Tele Züri, which is also bidding for this territory, has the advantage of being well established in the Zurich metropolitan area. However, its parent company Tamedia, which has a strong presence with Tages-Anzeiger, Thurgauer Zeitung and Radio 24, is less able to contribute to media diversity than Tele Top.
Of course, entrepreneurial independence is only one of many criteria which, according to Bakom, comes into play above all when two applications are equivalent in terms of content. Schaffhauser Fernsehen could now tip the scales because the concession stipulates that the Zurich broadcaster must produce one window program each for the cantons of Schaffhausen and Thurgau. Tele Züri has succeeded in getting Schaffhauser Fernsehen on board. Tamedia announced the collaboration last week.
Tele Tell in the headwindTwo financially strong interested parties are also facing each other in Central Switzerland. In addition to the license application from the previous top dog Tele Tell, LZ Medien Holding AG, publisher of the Neue Luzerner Zeitung, has also submitted a license application. "It is part of our strategy to be present on all channels," says Managing Director Jürg Weber. The company wants to create 52 full-time positions for the planned Tele 1. However, his trump card is likely to be the planned collaboration with Lucerne's universities and the MAZ media training center. This guarantees a professional program, says Weber, who believes he has a good chance of obtaining a license. Although both Tele 1 and Tele Ostschweiz ultimately belong to NZZ's Freie Presse Holding via their respective parent companies, no special cooperation is planned. The majority of the program is to be produced in Lucerne.
Tele Tell, on the other hand, cooperates closely with Tele M1. Both stations belong to the AZ Mediengruppe, which sees itself competing not only in Lucerne, but also in its home region of Aargau. The tiny local television station in Arolfingen has also submitted an application for Tele M1's Aargau-Solothurn broadcasting area.
Decisions will be made in mid-2008In the second phase of awarding new radio and television licences, OFCOM will now hold a public hearing. OFCOM expects to be able to award the first definitive licenses from early summer 2008. "There is no guarantee of continued existence for existing broadcasters," says Matthias Ramsauer, Head of the Radio and Television Division at OFCOM. The evaluation of the documents submitted is what counts when awarding new licenses. Applicants must demonstrate that they can finance the necessary investments and fulfill the obligations associated with the licence. These include quality assurance procedures as well as the training and further education of employees.
The legally stipulated criterion of "diversity of offer and opinion" can only come into play if two applications are equivalent in terms of content. Entrepreneurial independence therefore plays only a minor role in the awarding of the license. Nevertheless, the new license could mean the end for existing broadcasters. However, this would primarily affect radio stations, as there are no FM frequencies without a license. Under the new Radio and Television Act, television broadcasters are also allowed to broadcast without a license, but receive neither money from fee splitting nor privileged access to cable networks.
Adrian Scherrer?
54 applications for 41 radio licensesTotal of 54 applications
were received by OFCOM for the 41 FM radio licenses put out to tender. In addition to the attractive Zurich frequencies, broadcasting areas in Aargau, Basel and Bünderland are also in contention. The three licenses of Radio 24, Energy Zürich and Radio Zürisee are being contested not only by the current owners, but also by 105 maker Giuseppe Scaglione, who wants to launch 105 Züri on FM, and Roger Schawinski, who is currently converting Radio Tropic into a radio station for the over-30s. Schawinski hopes that this will give his Radio 1 a larger catchment area than Tropic previously had. In addition to Schawinski, three other interested parties are also applying for the current Tropic frequency: Scaglione has submitted a very similar project to Schawinski with RMC Züri, RadioJay, which has received a digital radio license, wants to create a news radio station with ZüriLive, and Radio Alpenrosen is planning a folk music program. Behind this application is the folklore magazine of the same name, published in Dübendorf, which is well connected in the folk music scene and has web radio experience.
Roger Schawinski is involved in two other projects: In Aargau, he is applying for the same license as Radio Argovia. And together with Stefan Bühler and Patrick Vogt from Graubünden, he has submitted an application for a new Radio Südost, which is applying for the frequencies of Radio Grischa. In both cases, the argument is that the new projects are independent: In contrast, Argovia belongs to the AZ Media Group, which publishes the Mittelland Zeitung and operates Tele M1 and Tele Tell, and Grischa is part of the Südostschweiz Media Group.
Finally, the Basel frequencies are also controversial. The two concessions are being contested by the current owners Basel 1 and Radio Basilisk as well as a project called RBB - Radio that offers more Basel, which is backed by Christian Heeb, another Swiss radio pioneer. Heeb was a co-founder of Radio 24 together with Schawinski and later founded Radio Basilisk. (rer)

Cab The "Tixi Fahrdienst für Menschen mit einer Behinderung" (Tixi transport service for people with disabilities) association provides a significant proportion of the transport services for the disabled in the canton of Zurich. In 2006, Tixi drove 54,792 disabled people. Without financial support from the Canton of Zurich, Tixi will no longer be able to maintain its operations in the long term. This would mean the demise of an institution that has been serving disabled people since 1983. For this reason, the "SOS für Tixi" association launched a cantonal popular initiative at the beginning of December and is fighting for financial support. Incidentally, the canton does not have to spend more money because of this. The money would simply be redirected and distributed differently. Ruf Lanz supports Tixi with a surprising campaign and uses famous examples to show how poor the world would be without fighters. Martin Luther King would only have dreamed of comforts such as a small house with a swimming pool and garden. And Bob Marley would have sung: "Don't get up, don't stand up: Don't stand up for your rights." A total of four motifs therefore show that it is worth fighting for a good cause.

Marketer
On December 1, the Lausanne-based advertising agency Mediapresse took over the marketing of the three Swiss free cinema magazines Close-up, Film demnächst and Avant Première. Mediapresse now has a concentrated reach of around 570,000 cinema-goers. The three magazines are distributed free of charge in cinemas with 400,000 copies per month - Close-up in those of the Kitag cinema chain, the others in the other theaters. In addition, Close-up is sent to holders of the CS-Cinecard, Avant Première to customers of the online DVD distributor dvdfly.ch.Mediapresse offers the three magazines individually and in two combinations: the entire German-speaking part of Switzerland (Film demnächst and Close-up) with a 10 percent discount and the all-Swiss cinema pool (three-pack) with a 15 percent discount. A 1/1 page four-color costs CHF 30,572 gross in the cinema pool.
Such a pool had long been obsolete, but because the magazines were marketed by different agencies, it never materialized. Close-up belongs to Teleclub and was previously handled by PubliGroupe subsidiary Cinecom. The other two titles belong to the Geneva-based Quorum Group and were marketed by its Promoguide agency. It is unclear why Teleclub handed over Close-up to Mediapresse. No explanation was available from Teleclub.
The change from Promoguide to Mediapresse, on the other hand, is understandable: out of the Quorum Group - into an independent agency. But this is not a real cut, since Mediapresse owner Olivier Bloch holds several functions at the Quorum Group. And Quorum boss Roland Ray is chairman of the board at Mediapresse.    
Markus Knöpfli

Cinema With the purchase of the Egger cinemas in and around Lucerne, the Kitag cinema group has now not only established itself in five major agglomerations in German-speaking Switzerland, it has also become by far the largest cinema operator in Switzerland. It now has 18,000 seats in 88 theaters in Zurich, Basel, Berne, Lucerne and St. Gallen, while the number two cinema operator is Pathé Suisse, which currently has 13,500 seats in over 40 theaters - in Zurich, Basel, Geneva and Lausanne. Next year, Pathé will also be able to open the Bern West Side multiplex with 10 screens.
In 2006, Pathé briefly became the Swiss cinema market leader after acquiring the Europlex Group in French-speaking Switzerland. At the end of last year, however, Kitag took the lead again by acquiring the cinemas of the St. Gallen "cinema king" Franz Anton Brüni. (mk)

Food Denner also has a premium brand on offer for the Christmas season. 
Consumers are in high spirits in December. Especially when it comes to upscale Christmas treats. Denner has therefore launched a private label line in the premium segment for gourmets. The discounter now offers selected delicacies at attractive prices. Gourmets can find "Brie filled with truffle butter", "Handmade Fettuccine Artigianali" and "Pata Negra" for little money. The range comprises 23 products for everyday enjoyment, 14 from the food sector and the rest from the fresh food sector. The premium brand was developed by Rod Kommunikation and graphic designer Brigitte Rüegg. In a first step, the creatives designed 25 products for the new premium line. To promote the luxury brand, the ViznerBorel agency is once again positioning the retailer as the Robin Hood of consumers. A discount etiquette campaign based on the motto "Life is too short for expensive delicacies" is intended to sensitize shoppers to the new products. The advice campaign includes rules such as "Enjoy like a prince and pay like a beggar" or "You can recognize first-class food by its taste, not its price". The national advertising campaign includes adverts, carrier ads with the discount etiquette as an insert and POS communication.
Premium products are in vogue in Switzerland and are driving sales: Migros and Coop have been successfully selling their own brands such as Sélection (Migros) and Fine Food (Coop) for some time. At Coop, sales figures for Fine Food have almost doubled to CHF 80 million this year compared to 2006. Migros is keeping a low profile when it comes to concrete figures. However, sales have increased significantly.
And what about the direct discount competitor Aldi? It has not yet launched a luxury brand. Instead of following suit with a luxury line, the German retailer is rigorously expanding its product range. The range - we are talking about everyday goods - has been expanded from 700 to over 800 items.
Christian Lüscher

Award Advertising Week subscribers can vote for the winner of the "Super Advertiser" casting on January 16, 2008 at the Kaufleuten in Zurich. Six deserving creatives are up for selection. 
Peter Brönnimann
 
Markus Good
 
Valentina Herrmann
 
Pedro Simko
 
Pius Walker
 
Andreas Widmer

The Altenrhein agency at the airport has created a new customer magazine called Vitamin P for the health insurance company Provita. According to a press release issued by the agency, the aim is to inform, retain and entertain its customers. The lifestyle magazine is not only intended to provide information on dry insurance matters, but also to report on topics relating to lifestyle, wellness and health. Vitamin P is published twice a year with a circulation of 36,200 copies.
Responsible at Provita Health Insurance:
Enrico Giovanoli (Delegate of the Board of Directors), Herbert Strasser (Marketing). Responsible at the agency at the airport: René Eugster (CD), Dominique Rutishauser (AD), Désirée Schmid (Editorial & Text), Miriam Egli (Consulting), Daniel Ammann (Photography).

Markus Gut has been with Publicis since 1994 and has shaped the success of the long-standing number 1 in the management team since 1999, the last seven years as Managing Director Creation and Chief Creative Officer. From January 2008, Markus Gut will be responsible for the Y&R Group Switzerland with the same title. He entered the world of advertising after studying and training as a graphic designer at the School of Design in Zurich. Today, the top advertiser is a member of the Board of Directors of AY&R, a member of the Board of ADC Switzerland and a jury member of the ADC of Europe, Crossmedia Award, Swiss Poster Award, NY Festivals, Moebius Awards and others. Gut is a lecturer at Sawi, the ADC/BSW creative school and the HSG St. Gallen. He is a member of the Design Network Switzerland. All these activities and over 350 national and international creative awards have already earned him a nomination for Advertiser of the Year in 2003, 2004, 2005 and 2006. Markus Gut is also known as a lover of all things Anglo-Saxon and a passionate single malt expert. He is a member of various Scotch single malt societies, shareholder of a whisky distillery and organizer of legendary tastings. He is also actively involved in the family-owned winery "Al Mulinetto" in Gordola TI. In addition, Gut is co-initiator and co-owner of "La Boite", Jean Nouvel's only restaurant on Lake Greifensee in Uster.

 Swisscom will appeal against the Communications Commission's decision on broadband Internet. ComCom wants to force the telecommunications group to open up broadband internet to competitors at cost-oriented prices. The appeal will be submitted to the Federal Administrative Court, said Swisscom CEO Carsten Schloter in an interview in Wednesday's edition of the French-speaking Swiss newspaper Le Temps. An earlier decision by the Competition Appeals Commission had confirmed that Swisscom was not dominant in the market, Schloter explained. Following the announcement of the ruling, a spokesperson for the company had already expressed the view that competition was at play and that Swisscom had therefore not made an offer to competitors for access to the high-speed data network (see
).

Sandra Luzia Schafroth
wants to promote the creative economy as the new Managing Director of cR Kommunikation in Basel. She can look to the future. "LifeClipper2" is the name of the project that Sandra Luzia Schafroth is overseeing as a lecturer and communications consultant. With research funding of 1.2 million Swiss francs, a program in the field of "augmented reality" is being developed on the Novartis campus. With a pair of glasses in front of your eyes and a computer in your rucksack, you can "superimpose future buildings onto today's world", as Schafroth explains.
The visualization of such future worlds is arousing great interest among architects, among others. The program is also set to be used in tourism. Shanghai has registered interest for Expo 2010 in order to be able to show virtually how building plans can change an entire district.
For Sandra Luzia Schafroth, this development at the Institute of Design and Art Research at the FHNW Academy of Art and Design is an ideal example of how Basel can be an interface between business, politics, culture and the media. She calls the sector in which Basel still has some catching up to do compared to Zurich the "creative economy". In recent years, she herself has been involved in baking this cake from the somewhat more modern "Basler Daigg" on a freelance basis with various mandates. In 2006, for example, she helped organize Design Miami, which emerged from Basler Art, and ultimately came into contact with cR Kommunikation because this agency was responsible for PR.
cR Kommunikation emerged from the advertising agency cr basel in 2000 through a management buyout. Both agencies are still based in the same office in Basel and work together when necessary. cR Kommunikation now has a new office in Bern, which is managed by Stefan Batzli and specializes in political communication. The Zurich branch is managed by Thomas Löhrer. In total, the closely knit cR Kommunikation network employs around 30 people. In Basel, Sandra Luzia Schafroth is the new managing director of what is now the smallest branch with three employees. This is to be expanded in the future. Looking through the tool of her "augmented reality", Schafroth can see a medium-sized agency in the next few years. And which "broadest possible portfolio" does she want to manage with such a crew?
To best explain the future offering of Basler cR Kommunikation, it is worthwhile for the new Managing Director to take a look at her past.
Sandra Luzia Schafroth studied media and communication science in Basel, with a minor in law - "you can always use that". However, art already played an important role during her studies. Her father was a photographer, as was her boyfriend at the time. As a result, Sandra Luzia Schafroth was able to earn her living not only by teaching, but also increasingly as a stylist. She got to know the world of advertising agencies. In the course of her career, she was "supported and motivated by great, experienced women" on various occasions.
Sandra Luzia Schafroth was allowed to design sets. She was sent to New York as a location scout for a commercial. Because the relaunch of the product was ultimately postponed, the production assistant suddenly found herself "unemployed" in the Big Apple. This gave her a few weeks to fall in love with the city for the first time. She was lured back with a new offer for a Tissot mandate. When the agency was able to win the international budget for this brand, this "transitional job" in consulting ultimately turned into three years at !Now, a creative store with 12 people in Basel at the time. Schafroth shot several advertising films as executive producer and also traveled "around the world".
In 1999, she moved to the Favo advertising agency, where she became a senior consultant. She worked for credit cards and on freelance mandates for Migros' newly launched Globus travel worlds. In 2006, she was editor of the first edition of the unusual and beautiful magalog.
After freelancing in advertising, Schafroth responded to an advertisement for a part-time position as managing director of the Viper International Festival for Film, Video and New Media. She also completed a postgraduate course and a master's degree in cultural management.
Because her new boyfriend and current architect partner "absolutely wanted to build skyscrapers in New York", she followed him back to the city of her early professional dreams "with little resistance". Her partner was able to work for the company that is now rebuilding the World Trade Center. Sandra initially commuted because she still wanted to complete the Viper, and then also found her start in the new world at a PR agency that looked after Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach in the USA, among others.
In addition to her work at Fitz&Co, she was also able to work for I-Beam, an institute run by John Johnson (Johnson & Johnson). This institute conducted research in the field of new media, organized exhibitions and promoted artists. "That's how I slipped more and more into the New York network," says Schafroth, explaining how she finally became deputy cultural attaché at the Swiss Consulate General in New York in 2002.
One of the highlights for her during this time was, of course, Swiss Peaks. In collaboration with Presence Switzerland, she was able to organize over a hundred events in New York with Swiss companies and artists in 2002. She was later also involved in the follow-up project Swiss Roots, where Americans with Swiss roots were sought out. However, because her partner felt his roots in Switzerland again, or at least saw more opportunities to open his own architecture firm here, Schafroth spent another period commuting, until she finally left New York for the last time - for the time being - three years ago. "It needed a hard ending, like a great love affair." Ironically, her boyfriend is now allowed to build two houses in New York with his Basel office. "But now he has to commute," Schafroth laughs, fending off further speculation.
She has since gained a firm foothold not only as a communications consultant, but also as a lecturer at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland. Schafroth and her students have been working on design, new media and process design at the Hyperwerk Institute of the School of Art and Design, which was newly integrated there in 2006. A year's work with a multimedia installation has already represented Switzerland at the World Summit of Information Society in Tunis. The currently developed "augmented reality" is likely to cause even more of a sensation.
Schafroth can now also live out her love of art at cR Kommunikation with a film production belonging to the network. In addition to commercials, the company Lichtspiele will soon be producing a feature film with director and ice hockey pro Riccardo Signorell.
Schafroth is also involved in politics, media and culture outside of cR Kommunikation: she is a specialist for media and culture at the Basel Women's Council (gender equality issues) and organizes the "Regionale", an annual art exhibition with 14 institutions in three countries (D, F and CH). She is also active on the board of the Förderverein Institut für Medienwissenschaft to raise funds for practical media courses at the University of Basel.
Schafroth proves in a rather original way that there is still some free time left in such a multi-faceted life. She is also behind the insider tips for the latest "Wallpaper Guide" about Basel.
Andreas Panzeri