The dialog agency Fisch.Meier.Direkt got the Pfister streetcar rolling, which is currently traveling through Bern: A carriage of the Bern streetcar company was completely stripped out and refurnished by employees of the Pfister furniture store (see ). The idea for this project came from Fisch.Meier.Direkt, as detailed in a press release. The agency also conceives and designs the catalogs, magazines and newspapers for Pfister. Responsible at Pfister:
Christine Roth (Head of Marketing). Responsible at Fisch.Meier.Direkt/Publicis: Remo Bachmann/Philipp Skrabal (CD), Viviana Chiosi (AD), Thomas Engeli (text), Sven Guggenheim/Monica Meuli (consulting). Media: Matthias Lenke, Bemberg Gedenk Media.

 Spiegel-Verlag has decided not to acquire a stake in the Financial Times Deutschland (FTD) as announced at the beginning of September (see: ). The five-member management of Mitarbeiter KG, Spiegel's main shareholder with a 50.5 percent stake, has rejected Spiegel managing director Mario Frank's acquisition plan, according to Horizont.net. Frank had planned to take over the British Pearson Group's 50 percent share in the Financial Times Deutschland. The remaining 50 percent is held by Gruner + Jahr. Spiegel-Verlag has not commented on the internal "no", nor on the previous purchase plans. It remains to be seen what will happen to the FTD half, which Pearson wants to sell for strategic reasons. Only one thing seems to be ruled out: that G+J will also sell its share. "FTD, whose development we are satisfied with, will continue to be part of our portfolio in the future," says a G+J spokesperson. FTD has been in the red since it was founded in 2000 - this year it is expected to make a loss of around 8 million euros.

 Once again, SRG wants to educate the people: It is committed to Swiss literature and wants to make it accessible to a wide audience. To this end, it is entering into a media partnership with the Solothurn Literature Festival. The partnership will be sealed with the signing of a contract at an official event on October 25, 2007. According to SRG, the aim is to give the Solothurn event greater recognition "by increasing the media presence of Swiss literature". However, the announcement does not yet reveal how this will be achieved - will actors dressed as books populate television? Will printed products rustle on the radio? It will be interesting to see - especially as the SRG's announcement had the somewhat misleading title "Media partnership between SRG and the Solothurn Film Festival". For the time being, moving images seem to be even closer to SRG than books made of dead wood.

 In contrast to Switzerland, free newspapers have not yet been able to establish themselves in Germany. The last German free newspaper failed seven years ago in Cologne due to resistance from established regional publishers. Now, however, German publishers are apparently preparing to compete with a national free daily newspaper, as the German newspaper Handelsblatt reports. There are fears of an offensive by foreign newspaper publishers or investors. "It is no longer a question of if, but only when the next attempt at a free newspaper will be launched in Germany," one publisher told Handelsblatt. The Federal Association of German Newspaper Publishers (BDZV) also expects a new attack. The German media groups already have defense plans in the drawer. DuMont Schauberg has joined forces with other publishers to prepare for the launch of free newspapers. Axel Springer is also prepared: "We can counter with our own free newspaper within a few days," a spokeswoman told Handelsblatt. Axel Springer owns the tabloid Bild. It would probably be most affected by the launch of a free newspaper. "Every day without a free newspaper is a good day" is therefore the motto at the company's Berlin headquarters. Years ago, Springer and DuMont jointly distributed a free newspaper published by the Norwegian Schibsted publishing house in the so-called "Cologne newspaper war".
German publishers are apparently also concerned about developments in Switzerland. Handelsblatt discusses the changes in the newspaper landscape here in detail.

 
Külling Identity and m/& have merged as of October 1, 2007 to form a new agency for branding and corporate communications under the name Schneiter Meier Külling. According to a press release, this step is in response to increasing customer demand for a single partner for both areas. "Branding and corporate communications are growing together. Once new identities have been created, they need to be maintained and developed over the long term. The merger of our companies was therefore an obvious choice," says Andy Schneiter, CD at Külling and at the new agency. The services offered range from strategic consulting and corporate identity to product packaging, annual reports, customer and employee publications. The two teams are moving into joint offices at Rämistrasse 35 in Zurich. The CEO of the new company will be 38-year-old Philip Meier, previously Managing Director of m/&. The management duo of Schneiter and Meier will be strengthened by two further partners, Christine Gasser and Christian Guler. Gasser, who will be a member of the management team in future, can look back on many years of consulting experience and has spent the last 10 years working at Külling for clients such as Georg Fischer, SBB and Migros. Guler was art director at design agencies in Los Angeles, San Francisco, Berlin and Zurich before joining Külling in 2003. Kurt Lips, the previous Managing Director of Külling, will remain with the company and concentrate on the creative management of key mandates. Külling founder Ruedi Külling is stepping back from his strategic tasks.

 More time to submit your cases for the Swiss Effie 08: The deadline has been extended to October 31, 2007, 6 pm. The finalists will be announced on January 16, 2008, and the awards ceremony will take place on April 8 in Zurich. More information can be found at www.effie.ch.

The Sulzer, Sutter advertising agency has reshuffled its management team. Francis Sulzer has decided to step down from operational management. However, he remains co-owner and member of the Board of Directors. He will also be available to the agency as a creative consultant. According to the agency, Francis Sulzer is thus fulfilling his wish to have more time for his own projects.
Michael Kathe, who has held this position since May of this year, remains Creative Director. Since October 1, 2007, Roland Sutter, Manuela Gualeni, Michael Kathe and Sven Oeschger have formed the management of Sulzer, Sutter.
Picture from left to right:
Sven Oeschger, Manuela Gualeni, Roland Sutter, Michael Kathe

 The media agency Mitlinks carried out a study of the existing web offerings of the publishing house W. Gassmann, which publishes the Bieler Tagblatt and the Journal du Jura. In addition to the web presences of its print products, the publishing house also offers exclusively web-based services with Chat.ch and Bijou.ch. Mitlinks analyzed the existing offering and developed a strategy concept. The aim was to develop a multimedia experience for non-newspaper readers and to increase the transfer rate between online and print publications. In doing so, it took into account the significant changes in the way users interact with web offerings in recent years and incorporated ideas of "citizen journalism". The aim is to offer users the opportunity to publish journalistic content themselves. According to the agency, this generates an immense pool of specific expertise and keeps the option of integrating local stories open.
Responsibility W. Gassmann AG:
Daniel Siegfried (Advertising Manager). Responsibility Co-left: Urs Suter (Analysis & Concept).

 The network operator Cablecom is outsourcing its customer service and installation work to eight regional and national partner companies. As a result, 49 employees are changing employers. The service technicians, site managers and draughtsmen will continue to be employed under the same conditions and with a 12-month job guarantee. The modalities of the transfer have been agreed with Cablecom's employee representatives and the communications union, as detailed in a statement from the network operator. Responsibility for customers and service will remain with Cablecom. It is taking this step because it wants to concentrate on the order and quality management of its network expansion and maintenance.

 Harald Schmidt is apparently already planning the end of his television career - around two weeks before the start of his late-night show with co-presenter Oliver Pocher, which kicks off on October 25. He wants to do "Schmidt & Pocher" together with the 29-year-old for "one or two years", "then he can go on air alone, every day, just like I used to, while I myself only do the vacation stand-in", Schmidt told the Stuttgarter Zeitung newspaper on Monday. "That would be my ideal." After that, he wants to devote more time to the theater. But before old master Schmidt leaves the TV stage, he is still breeding his offspring: he has been watching Pocher for a long time, said the 50-year-old: "Highly talented and the only one who could start a late-night career." He does not see himself as a mentor to the youngster, but thanks to the joint show on ARD, the 29-year-old will be playing "in a completely different league" in future. Schmidt will present a one-hour show with Pocher once a week. He will be able to look forward to the start calmly - if the plans for the exit have already been worked out, the beginning will certainly be easier.

 A week ago on Sunday, SVP party president Ueli Maurer announced in Sonntagsblick that the SVP would launch a daily newspaper if Christoph Blocher was not re-elected as Federal Councillor and the party went into opposition. The plans for this are already in the drawer, according to Maurer. In the current "TeleBlocher" program, Christoph Blocher now explained that this was "a hoax". He denied the plans for an SVP newspaper. Such a project had been considered in the 1990s. However, according to his statement in the program, Blocher does not believe that there is a need for such a publication and that the project would be too expensive. "No, that's not a hoax," SVP spokesman Roman S. Jäggi told Werbewoche. A newspaper would definitely be launched if the party were to switch to the opposition role. This would be the case if one of the two federal councillors were not re-elected. However, the newspaper is only one of many measures that would be taken as an opposition party. Jäggi explained Blocher's denial of the plans as follows: "It may be that he knew nothing about it. Our federal councillors are largely relieved of party work. After all, they have other tasks."
Jäggi does not yet want to give any further details about the planned publication. That will be decided in the days following the Federal Council election. Who the paper's financial backers might be will not be disclosed anyway: "The newspaper would probably be largely financed by donations, and we do not disclose donors". Whether individual party exponents could finance the newspaper is also not communicated. However, in the event of an opposition role, massive investments would be made in public information. "The problem would be that all media would report in the same way, namely from the perspective of the government," says Jäggi. His party would then no longer have a voice and would therefore have to take action itself. However, the Sonntagsblick reported that a large publishing house would join as a partner
Jäggi did not provide any information on the amount of investment required. Sonntagsblick speculated that the costs would be between 150 and 200 million francs. Blocher said on "TeleBlocher" that the sum would be around CHF 120 million. "There are various levels at which we could start. But we are also looking at much cheaper models," the SVP spokesman commented on this figure.

 This week, 40 television stations around the globe, including the Swiss broadcasters TSR and TSI, are airing films on the topic of democracy. The programs can also be viewed on the MySpace.com website and are intended to spark a global debate. «Why Democracy?» is the largest multimedia initiative to date, according to a press release issued Monday by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). The broadcasters can choose from ten documentaries and twenty short films.
TV stations with a potential audience of 300 million people are participating. «Why Democracy?» is organized by the nongovernmental organization Steps International.