Wemf has decided to re-examine its regulations for circulation certifications in response to requests from the Swiss Press Association and individual publishers. The currently valid regulations were drawn up in 2004 and supplemented in April 2006 with the external audit by trustee companies. The following changes are planned, according to a statement from the Swiss Press Association: The free circulation will be specified in the recording and in the publication. The following subcategories are to be added: Household distribution, hand distribution, self-service, target mailing. Addressed mailing to a target group will be renamed "target mailing". Shipping to multiple, changing target groups will now be called "alternating target shipping", but it will not be recorded. In addition, there is no longer a distinction between the Wemf/SW certification and the confirmation mail. All confirmations will now be called "Wemf/SW confirmation" and will be entered in the VSW database as well as in the Wemf bulletin.
The triage regarding the certification process is to be newly regulated via the VSW press typology: 1000s (daily, weekly, Sunday press) and 2000s (public, financial, business press) are audited by external audit firms (E&Y, PWC). The titles can choose the audit companies available for selection. In the last project phase of the revision of the regulations, additional criteria are being evaluated which should also allow small publishers with 1000/2000 titles to be audited by Wemf. In addition, 3000 titles (special press) and 4000 titles (trade press) will be audited by Wemf. These titles will also be free to decide whether they still want to be audited by the auditing companies. The pricing model and calculation of the business case are still being finalized.

 The Schaffhausen and Zurich delivery organizations Schazo and Zuvo are merging their early delivery services in around 50 municipalities in the cantons of Schaffhausen, Thurgau and Zurich. Zuvo, a joint subsidiary of NZZ and Tamedia, is taking over 50 percent of the shares in Schazo from the owner Meier & Cie, which publishes the Schaffhauser Nachrichten. In return, Schazo will deliver the Tages-Anzeiger and the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in the Schaffhausen region from January 1, 2008. In addition, it is expanding its weekend services with the delivery of NZZ am Sonntag, Sonntagsblick and Sonntagszeitung. As a result of the cooperation, around 5.5 jobs in the Schaffhausen region will be cut in the carrier network.
By working together, the two organizations aim to further expand their early delivery services and reach in north-eastern Switzerland, as detailed in a press release. Zuvo had already taken over the delivery of the Winterthurer Landbote in the Winterthur region and the Thurgauer Zeitung in Thurgau in 2005. In 2006, Zuvo also integrated the early delivery of the Prisma company in the St. Gallen area. In total, Zuvo serves around 930,000 households in north-eastern Switzerland following the cooperation now agreed in Schaffhausen.

APG launched a teaser campaign on November 7 to promote the national launch of the new F24 large format. The resolution, which went on display on Wednesday, playfully demonstrates the advantages of the new spaces to advertising customers. The Zurich agency Publicis is responsible for the teaser poster campaign. According to a statement from APG, the procurement and conversion work for the first new format in 20 years is progressing according to plan. In a first step, around 800 spaces are planned by the end of this year. The final expansion of the F24 in two or three years' time envisages a total of 2,000 spaces. Due to its dimensions, the new format is suitable for area-wide, homogeneous use, APG continues. As of December 31 of this year, the out-of-home advertiser will remove all of its previous twelve-square-meter spaces from its range.
Responsible at Publicis:
Markus Gut (CD), Ralph Halder (AD), Nik Hodel (graphics), Roy Spring (text), Suzana Kovacevic (art buying), Christian Siegrist/Claudia Camenisch/Judith Schulte (consulting), Marcel Kohler/Andreas Caruso (production).

 
Magazine The Snowactive magazine has undergone a complete editorial and design relaunch. 
The editorial content has been clearly structured and presented in an exciting and lively way for the readership using new design elements with lots of images and less text.Snowactive is the only snow sports magazine of its kind in Switzerland and is published seven times a year from November to May with a circulation of 62,000 copies in German and 23,000 copies in French. It reports on trends, facts and news in national and international skiing and snow sports.
The magazine reaches all Swiss-Ski members and is also available at newsstands and as a subscription. The corporate publishing agency Brandl & Schärer is responsible for the relaunch in close collaboration with the editorial team and publisher.
www.brandl.ch

Editions The Publishers Association is making the certification process a little more transparent and at the same time enhancing the status of Wemf: publishers who have their print editions certified in accordance with the Wemf edition regulations will in future be able to label them as "Wemf/SW-certified" (where SW stands for Swiss Advertising Federation) - regardless of whether they have been checked by external trustee companies or by Wemf itself. In addition, all certified editions will in future be published in the Wemf Bulletin and entered in the VSW database. This has been decided by the Swiss Press Association. Previously, there was unequal treatment. According to the 2004 regulations, the daily, weekly and Sunday press as well as the general, financial and business press had to have their editions checked by external companies at greater expense, but their titles were also entered in the Wemf bulletin and in the VSW database. Although the specialty and trade press and other titles were able to have their circulation audited by Wemf, they only appeared on an internal list for the attention of Swiss Post (so-called "Confirmation Post").this unequal treatment has come to an end since 2008. The Swiss Press Association has amended the regulations accordingly. However, the different authentication procedures by external companies or by Wemf remain in place. However, specialty and trade press may now also choose the more expensive option. And one more point has been changed: The free circulation of a title is now shown according to the categories of household distribution, hand distribution, self-service and targeted distribution (the latter instead of the previous addressed distribution). This is particularly beneficial to the trade and specialty press.    
Markus Knöpfli

Werbewoche, November 8, 2007: So Andy Hostettler and his TBWA agency are now leaving the bsw. Is it because it’s disruptive? Or because he wants to save money? One can speculate. The fact is that the bsw, of course, doesn’t just focus on rules (which can actually be quite helpful from time to time in a well-functioning market and simplify discussions for both agencies and clients), but is also heavily involved in continuing education, for example (ADC/BSW Creative School, intensive seminars on strategic planning and cross-media, workshops on negotiation techniques, contract drafting, a model course on basic business education, etc.).
bsw leading swiss agencies advocates for the interests and concerns of agencies in all industry committees, as well as with the media and clients. Being a bsw member is therefore not just a matter of convention, but also an act of solidarity with industry colleagues in an increasingly competitive market.
bsw leading swiss agencies ensures transparency and fairness in the market. To this end, it has established, for example, the bsw Code of Ethics and the Pitch Guide. In these documents, members commit to fair and transparent conduct toward one another and during competitive presentations.
And here is the ranking (for the first time in five years). It allows clients to see just how large their current or future agency partners really are and what resources they have at their disposal. TBWA, however, is missing from this list. The agency declined to participate in the ranking and, following its publication, has now declared itself a top-5 agency without providing any evidence. While this is unconventional, it’s also unfair. For the bsw, TBWA is clearly not a top-5 agency—at least not until the agency provides transparency and submits the relevant figures to the association.
In the spirit of solidarity and transparency, TBWA is cordially invited to reconsider its decision to leave the bsw and to once again join forces with the other agencies in actively working toward the development of the industry.
Walter Merz, Managing Director of bsw leading swiss agencies

Continuing education Almost 1,700 participants took part in Swiss Post's first online Corporate Publishing course. Almost 1700 participants have taken part in Swiss Post's first online course in corporate publishing. Andrea Hirschi, Product Manager for Swiss Post's online courses, sees this figure as a great success. Especially as the participants not only learned their knowledge in several lessons, but also proved it in an online final exam. The course was co-developed by Swiss members of the FCP. With the completion of the CP course, Hirschi received the news that the entire Swiss Post course series had been awarded the Comenius EduMedia Seal 2007 in the business and commercial education category. Every year, the Berlin-based "Gesellschaft für Pädagogik und Information" honors particularly successful didactic multimedia products with this award. In the case of Swiss Post, the jurors praised the practical relevance and comprehensibility of the courses.
The corporate publishing course is not the only one to receive the award: Swiss Post organizes a total of nine free online courses. The topics include e-mail marketing, writing advertising letters, events and trade fairs, address management and telemarketing.
Corporate Publishing Forum

The management of LZ Medien Holding in Lucerne will be expanded at the beginning of the year: Thomas Bornhauser, Editor-in-Chief of the Neue Luzerner Zeitung and its regional editions, will join the top operational body. Bornhauser, 52, was Editor-in-Chief of the Luzerner Zeitung from 1993 to 1995 and has headed the largest daily newspaper in Central Switzerland since its merger with the LNN. By integrating the editor-in-chief into the company management, he wants to give greater weight to journalism within the media company, CEO and board delegate Erwin Bachmann is quoted as saying in a press release. Bachmann will continue to chair the Executive Board.
At the commercial print shop Multicolor Print in Baar, Daniel Ettlinger will replace the previous Managing Director Anton Schaller, who is retiring at the end of February 2008 (see
). He will also succeed Schaller on the Executive Board. As before, Jürg Weber, Managing Director of Neue Luzerner Zeitung, and Jörg Schnyder, CFO and Managing Director of LZ Management, are members of the Executive Board; Jörg Schnyder will remain Deputy CEO.
In addition, the LZ Group's inner management team has been strengthened: Joachim Freiberg, Managing Director of Radio Pilatus, and Heinz Meyer, Head of Internal Sales and Deputy Managing Director of Multicolor Print, have joined the management team.
Caption:
The new management of LZ Medien Holding (from left): Jürg Weber, Thomas Bornhauser, Erwin Bachmann, Daniel Ettlinger, Jörg Schnyder

 
US publishers Newspapers in America accept circulation cuts if they can save costs. Year after year, the American Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) publishes new alarming statistics that point to a continuous decline in circulation among daily newspapers. Year after year, the press also jumps on the bandwagon and quotes experts predicting the imminent death of the entire industry. But in the boardrooms of many major US newspapers, such as the Los Angeles Times, the Chicago Tribune or the San Francisco Chronicle, a new conviction has taken hold: Stop chasing after every single subscriber and deliberately cause circulation losses where it will ultimately save costs.
"This is a sensible survival strategy for newspapers," says Colby Atwood, President of the newspaper consulting firm Borrell Associates. "They don't want to increase circulation quantitatively so much as qualitatively." Circulation is often reduced where distribution is geographically difficult in the vast Americas. Publishers prefer to focus more on the demographics of their circulation areas and try to communicate to advertisers that their readership might be particularly desirable to certain marketers, which in turn means they can charge higher rates for ads - even though circulation is somewhat smaller.
Publishers are thus returning to a source of income that has always been most important to them: advertising customers. On average, 80 percent of a newspaper's revenue in the US comes from advertising and only 20 percent from subscriptions. "Publishers are aiming for higher penetration in those areas that are particularly important to them," says Atwood, explaining the trend towards qualitative downsizing.
Newspapers such as the Dallas Morning News, which belongs to the Belo Group, have been limiting their distribution to a radius of 200 miles for about a year. Belo, which pursues a similar strategy with its other three newspapers, saves around eight million dollars a year in this way. The US newspapers sold around 10 percent fewer newspapers than in 2000 and therefore suffered an annual circulation loss of 1.3 percent. Compared to the magazine industry, however, this is a "slow development" says Jason Klein, President of the marketing association National Newspaper Network (NNNLP). This is because the magazine industry's circulation has fallen by 27 percent over the past 25 years, compared to just 11 percent for newspapers.
Retaining disloyal readers is extremely expensiveThis new practice also results in considerable savings for publishers in terms of marketing. In the past, generous discounts were given to newly acquired subscribers, but today it is better to get rid of them because the associated costs are not worth the effort. Once coveted distribution targets such as hotels, hospitals or schools, where newspapers were often distributed free of charge, are no longer considered attractive for publishers because the newspapers are often not read at all.
According to the Newspaper Association of America (NAA), it now costs 68 dollars to acquire a new subscriber, twice as much as five years ago. However, these new readers are generally difficult to retain and quickly drop out after the discount period expires. The Los Angeles Times in particular is seen as a pioneer in the industry, with hardly any promotions or self-promotion, preferring to rely on a loyal reader base.
"Circulation is now only an important measurement tool for those companies that add advertising to newspapers. Or for journalists who learned at school that circulation is all that matters," says Bill Murray from the Newspaper Association of America (NAA). He points out that publishers are increasingly measuring readership rather than circulation. Because the quality readers of newspapers, who actually read the products and belong to a certain demographic, are becoming increasingly important, 500 newspapers have already started to provide not only circulation figures but also demographic data to the ABC. Since the beginning of November, this data has also been available to advertisers under the title Audience-Fax.
David Cole, editor-in-chief of the industry publication NewsInc, points out that for a long time a whole series of newspapers maintained a so-called "vanity circulation", i.e. a piece of circulation that was only intended for representation purposes.
"Newspapers like the Baltimore Sun, for example, only distributed their paper in Anapolis, the capital of the US state of Maryland, to give local lawmakers the impression that they had a presence in the state capital, even though no one there subscribed to the paper," explains Cole. "An expensive practice that advertisers couldn't care less about."
Gerti Schön, New York

 
Four Questions for Norbert Küpper, Founder of the Award and Newspaper Designer. 
WW: The European Newspaper Award will be held for the ninth time in 2009. Why do you go to such great lengths to organize this competition every year? Norbert Küpper:
I believe that the print newspaper still has room for growth. Examples from Scandinavia, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and Spain can also be applied in German-speaking countries, thereby leading to the further development of the newspaper as a medium. In the categories of “Concept” and “Innovation,” we are also trying to give greater consideration to content-related ideas. After all, the concept of today’s newspapers originated as early as the late nineteenth century. It would certainly be possible to break new ground—or at least to gather the best ideas from many newspapers—and thereby further develop our own newspapers. Where does Switzerland stand in a European comparison? Newspaper publishing is deeply rooted in the cultural traditions of European countries. That is why European newspapers differ more from one another than, for example, American ones do. I would describe the newspapers in Sweden and Norway as leaders when it comes to the use of images. Swiss newspapers stand out from the competition due to their visual clarity. The typography is very sophisticated, and the page layouts are perfect. However, compared to the rest of Europe, they lack a bold use of images. Incidentally, this also applies to Germany and Austria.
What are the reasons behind these different approaches to using images? In German-speaking countries, it’s traditional for editors to layout their own pages. You become a journalist if you’re interested in language and can write well. So it’s understandable that priority is given to the text. As a result, the images tend to be smaller.
Which newspapers have you been consulting for lately? In March 2007, I redesigned the advertising section of the WAZ newspaper group and developed an advertising campaign for the group’s various advertising markets. At the end of 2006, I redesigned the trade journal Automotive News Europe, and in September of this year, I redesigned the Mindener Tageblatt.

Schmuck KSB/SJ designed the "Ladies & Gentlemen" image campaign for Bucherer as well as a product campaign for the "Lacrima" jewelry line. 
Fashion comes and goes, but style and classic elegance remain. This is why this theme is also the focus of the new image campaign of industry leader Bucherer. The agency Krieg Schlupp Bürge/ Springer & Jacoby has formulated the following core message: "Only style and sophistication underline the elegant appearances of ladies and gentlemen." For the time being, six new subjects have been created, portraying people with strong character and style. They accentuate their refined taste with treasures from Bucherer. For them, luxury is an attitude, which is why they are not subject to any short-term trends.
This attitude is underlined by CD Uwe Schlupp and lyricist Judith Stoletzky with headlines that sometimes take a pointed and concise stance, sometimes are dry and undercooled and testify to the greatest understatement. For example, with a subtle sideways glance at the media scene: "Nowadays, every woman thinks she has style. But which one still has style?" Or: "A woman's mind should always be a touch more brilliant than her jewelry." And finally, on a socially detached note: "Unfortunately, the gentleman is an endangered species."
KSB/SJ has enlisted the services of star photographer Mary McCartney for this campaign. Her portrait palmares are adorned with illustrious names such as Kate Moss, Lou Reed and Jude Law. And it was also Mary McCartney who was exclusively behind the camera at Madonna and Guy Ritchie's wedding. "She has now demonstrated her talent for capturing strong personalities during several days of shooting in London for Bucherer," reports Head of Consulting Christoph Bürge proudly.
The image campaign will have an international presence from NovemberAt the same time, KSB/SJ has launched a new product campaign for Bucherer. The new diamond jewelry line "Lacrima" is presented. "Unique jewelry deserves glamorous advertising" was the agency's concept here. This is why the new jewelry line is to be launched with a TV commercial that is as "extravagant as it is sensual and sophisticated". The starring role is played by a glamorous diva of the highest caliber. Her radiant elegance gives her an appearance that is so incomparable that it triggers boundless envy even in her mirror images, as the commercial shows thanks to film tricks. The commercial is accompanied by two erotic and passionate poster and print subjects. Here too, KSB/SJ wanted to work with well-known names. The Lacrima model, Anna Tokarska, has already made a splash on many catwalks around the world. She has walked for fashion designers Vivienne Westwood and Valentino.
Her new film for Bucherer was directed by Harry Patramanis. He is internationally renowned for his films in the world of luxury. Finally, the photographer was the sought-after Swede Asa Tallgard, who has already worked for big names such as French Vogue, Elle and Plaza International.
The commercial for "Lacrima" as well as the posters and prints can also be seen throughout Switzerland from November.
Andreas Panzeri

 
Uhren McCann Erickson wins an award for the best watch advertising with its client Jaermann & Stübe. 
McCann Erickson's campaign for the Jaermann & Stübi golf watch wins the "Prix Suisse de la campagne horlogère 2007". The creative prize was launched on the initiative of Ringier Romandie, supported by Art Directors Club Switzerland, Keystone, BSW and L'Unil. The new award honors creativity, precision and innovation in advertising by Swiss watch manufacturers. The three advertisements submitted by McCann Erickson received the award for the best texts from the jury. The award for the best campaign went to Patek Phillipe, while the award for the best photos went to Bedat & Co.
McCann Erickson is the first agency to work for Jaermann & Stübin. CD Peter Rettinghausen is responsible for the campaign. The award-winning texts were written by Chantal Panozzo.
Jaermann & Stübi golf watches are made by highly qualified watchmakers in the 19th century tradition, but with the aid of state-of-the-art technology and tools. The models are manufactured in small series and by hand in the watchmaking valleys of the Jura. The watches are sold in Switzerland and by selected resellers in France, Germany and the USA.
Company owners Pascal Stübi and Urs Jaermann met at a seminar on communication strategy. Stübi's experience in watchmaking and Jaermann's dream led to a shared passion for a golf watch in the luxury segment. The two came up with the market niche because Urs Jaermann is "the first to openly admit that he is not a gifted golfer". If he were, he would hardly have developed the Jaermann & Stübi golf watch. As an average player, Jaermann often found counting his strokes to the detriment of his concentration during the game. The rather tedious task of counting strokes and calculating scores, coupled with his love of valuable watches, was the catalyst for the idea of the Jaermann & Stübi golf watch. Ten years later, it became a reality.    
Andreas Panzeri