The Zurich PR agency L&W Marcom has won the communications mandate of the internet company Google in a pitch. The mandate includes public relations and events. L&W Marcom's first task will be to provide information about the launch of Google Maps for Switzerland, as reported by Netzwoche. Google Switzerland boss Andreas Schönenberger wants to develop the business in Switzerland. His focus is on business customers: He wants to convey to companies how Google can support them in their Internet presence, Schönenberger told Netzwoche. "If you look at what proportion of advertising money flows into online media, especially in comparison to the UK, for example, then there is certainly still a lot of explaining to do." Schönenberger considers the business potential in Switzerland to be very large, with multinational companies in particular to be won as customers.

 A large-scale "class reunion" among advertising colleagues is in the offing: On Friday, November 2, the employees of the legendary advertising agency Gisler & Gisler will meet for an Italian buffet at the Löwen restaurant in Meilen. The organizers expect 150 to 200 participants. Doris Gisler, the "Grand Old Lady" of Swiss advertising and former owner of the Gisler & Gisler agency, is also expected to attend. As Walter Merz, co-initiator of the meeting, announced, well over half of the 300 alumni have already been contacted. Those who have not yet received an invitation and would like to attend should please contact [email protected]. Gisler & Gisler, at that time the largest agency in Switzerland, created such famous campaigns in the sixties and seventies as "Chästeilet" or Fondue (F.i.g.u.g.e.g.l.) for the Swiss Cheese Union, then among many others also the campaigns for Valser, Ovomaltine, Feldschlösschen, Thomi & Franck, Butter, Hero, Union Bank of Switzerland SBG, Modissa or Mitsubishi. After the merger with BBDO, Gisler & Gisler was part of the large-scale merger Aebi,Suter,Gisler,Studer,BBDO (ASGS/BBDO) at the end of the 1980s.

 
Well-being With a broad-based advertising campaign, Exxtra is building Actilife as a new program brand for Migros. 
With Actilife, Migros is now offering all health-conscious customers a comprehensive program to promote their own well-being. This includes not only numerous new products, but also services and regular information on the topics of healthy eating, exercise and relaxation. To kick things off, Migros is launching the free magazine Actilife and the website www.actilife.ch. The market launch of the more than 150 products and services will be supported by an extensive advertising campaign. The range is to be expanded to 250 products by the end of 2009.Actilife, the Migros brand for healthy added value, is thus being expanded into a program brand. Exxtra Kommunikation, in close cooperation with Paroli PR and Assai Interactive, is staging the wide range of products, which is based on the three pillars of nutrition, exercise and relaxation, with a TV spot, product ads, a website, a magazine and other measures in the stores. The new TV spot dramatizes the benefits of the full range of the Actilife range with a worst-case scenario and then a happy turnaround thanks to Actilife.
Andreas Panzeri

 
Column On speech exhibitionists, communication sociopaths and the happiness of inaccessibility. 
You can't not communicate" - Paul Watzlawick's clever aphorism may take on a new meaning. The original quote from the psychoanalyst and master of subtle wordplay dates back to the good old days, when there was no internet, no cell phones and no Blackberries. In the new world of networked computers and mobile receivers that can be taken anywhere - even on a Matterhorn tour or in a beach chair - there are supposedly more and more people who can no longer communicate because they simply don't know the off button on their technical device. People like you and me, who seriously believe that professionalism is also demonstrated by the fact that you are available around the clock. And then there are also more and more "communication sociopaths" and "speech inhibitionists" who unrestrainedly harass us with their exorbitant communication needs because they no longer know the difference between private and public space - for example, including everyone in a train compartment or restaurant in their telephone conversations at full volume.
In her recently published book, Miriam Meckel traces such people who are caught in the "communication trap". It is entitled "The Happiness of Unreachability" and the communications researcher knows what she is talking about. Before accepting a call to the University of St. Gallen, she was the head of communications for a German prime minister as state secretary and also made a career as a TV journalist and presenter. She knows from her own experience about information overload and the problems that can arise when we want or need to be available around the clock and everywhere in the world thanks to modern communication technologies - and describes them with remarkable self-critical openness.
Even more exciting, however, are the scientific findings that she presents: Worldwide, 171 billion emails are now sent every day. Over 70 percent of these are spam emails. According to social and perceptual psychologists, however, we can only "really perceive and process" two percent of the information we receive - the rest is unused information waste.
British researchers recently calculated that managers waste a total of 3.5 years of their lives on irrelevant emails. If some of us have to receive or send between 250 and 350 emails a day, then it's easy to estimate how much stress a day offline causes: "The next day, there are between 500 and 700 emails to read, delete and reply to."
Above all, Meckel warns us not to overestimate our "multitasking" talents. You can't communicate "on the side", unless it's pointless banter. The fact that we believe we are world champions and can tackle many things at the same time does not mean that this is true. She cites a study carried out at King's College in England: In a large-scale experiment involving a total of 1000 people, the extent to which we can solve certain tasks and receive emails at the same time was tested. A control group was given marijuana instead of emails. The surprising result: the stoners achieved significantly better results than the e-mailers.
When Meckel began to ponder how we could escape the communication trap, she came to two conclusions: firstly, those who are technically connected are not necessarily socially connected - on the contrary, we have to "occasionally drop out of the stream of information" and "take a break at the edge of the data highway". Secondly, those who are always reachable are actually there for nothing and no one.
The happiness of being out of reach would be so easy to have. One press of a button is usually enough. Why do we find it so difficult to press the off button on our Blackberry, cell phone or laptop? Why do we lack the courage to retreat? Of course, nobody needs to check their emails all the time, but somehow those who communicate on the move still feel the need to keep checking them. "Pavlov sends his regards," says Meckel. And if Watzlawick were still alive, he would probably also be nodding his head in agreement. Because the St. Gallen researcher has just added an exciting chapter to his "Guide to Unhappiness".
 
Stephan Russ-Mohl heads the European Journalism Observatory at the University of Lugano
 
 
 
Miriam Meckel, The Happiness of Unreachability. Ways out of the communication trap. Murmann Verlag, Hamburg 2007.

 
Gastronomy TBWA launches a culinary Swiss week for McDonald's. 
Italian cuisine can be characterized by many instantly recognizable clichés. The same goes for Japanese cuisine. But what is actually genuinely Swiss? That was the question asked by the creatives around CD Armin Korf at Zurich-based TBWA. Their ideas can now be found in a campaign for a "Schwiizer Wuche" at McDonald's. The cozy chalet wood is unmistakable in the ads and posters. This rustic element is mixed rather playfully with Americana, which is of course still important at McDonald's. This interesting ethnological mix is even more striking in the films for this "Schwiizer Wuche" than in the print. Rösti crosses instead of French friesThe spots begin stylistically like big movie trailers for American films. The language is English with German subtitles - "This is the land where the mountains rise majestically against the sky and where the meadows bloom together. This is the land..." - until about halfway through the movie, the tone switches to a Swiss dialect "...where the Swiss dairymen fight for a good cheese. This week is Schwiizer Wuche at McDonald's. With delicious processed cheese...".
In the participating restaurants, special "Röstikreuze" are baked instead of chips for this "Schwiizer Wuche". Individual McDonald's branches are also styled as chalets with lots of wood. In addition, each branch manager can use their own imagination when decorating and add decorative elements that are also "typically Swiss" for them, as consultant Marcus Aeberhard explains at TBWA.
Andreas Panzeri

 
Advertisements In 2008, large advertisers are being pampered by publishers, while small advertisers are being fleeced. 
In Germany, the majority of advertising rates for 2008 were already fixed at the beginning of September, whereas in Switzerland no tangible advertising trend can yet be identified. By the Publimedia Forum on September 26, the industry meeting at which the first trends are announced, not even half of the titles had reported their rates. Publishers with large-circulation titles in particular are dragging their feet. Only two were exemplary: the NZZ Group and Südostschweiz. While Südostschweiz and St. Galler Tagblatt are maintaining their current rates in 2008, this only applies to a limited extent to NZZ, NZZ am Sonntag and Neue Luzerner Zeitung. Although they are keeping the price for a 1/1 page in four colors at the current level, they are raising the millimeter rate by two to seven centimes. Small advertisers are therefore footing the bill. The Landbote, L'Express and the Thurgauer Zeitung are adopting the same approach, with the Quotidien Jurassien and the Zürcher Landzeitung applying the same philosophy in a slightly different way: they are retaining their millimeter price but reducing the page rate: the Quotidien by a full 11 percent, the Züriland-Zeitung by 1.5 percent (only for normal circulation). There also appears to be a quiet price round for magazines. Large-circulation titles such as Migros-Magazin, Touring and Gesundheit Sprechstunde are keeping their rates unchanged, with only K-Tipp and Gesundheitstipp reducing their prices by 2 percent.
And what is happening with the new rate system? According to Rainer Sauser, Marketing Director at Publicitas, a number of titles are again venturing to make the switch this year. With the exception of the three Ticino newspapers, all of the major daily newspapers have now adopted at least some elements such as color millimeter prices and fixed formats, and around 75 percent of the medium-sized newspapers have done so. The smaller titles, on the other hand, still need some time. Sauser reckons it will be two to three years before the majority of them are ready. (mk)

 Weltwoche author Walter De Gregorio is joining Blick on January 1, 2008. He will join Rolf Cavalli as deputy to the new editor-in-chief Bernhard Weissberg. De Gregorio will be responsible for interviews and reports and will also support the new head of sports André Grieder in his role, according to a Ringier press release. The 42-year-old De Gregorio wrote as a freelancer for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. He was then a founding member of Facts, a reporter for the Sonntags-Zeitung and Italy correspondent for Die Zeit and Weltwoche, among others, where he was also a member of the editorial board.
Over the next few months, the 130-strong Blick team will also be joined by author Gion Mathias Cavelty, who previously also worked for Weltwoche, as well as business editors Marcel Speiser, who is moving to the tabloid from Tages-Anzeiger, and Daniel Meier, who most recently wrote for the discontinued Facts magazine.

 With the 40-year-old Briton Christopher Blackwell, Publigroupe's new Group Management is now complete. Blackwell will take over the management of the Information & Communication Technology department as of January 1, 2008. His predecessor Jean-Paul Nicoulin will remain a member of the Group Management until June 30, 2008 and will step down at the end of 2008 for reasons of age. This appointment completes Publigroupe's renewed Group Management. It has been adapted to the strategic realignment of the company, as detailed in a press release. Under the leadership of CEO Hans-Peter Rohner, the Group Executive Board will be composed as follows from January 1, 2008: Robert Schmidli for Media Sales, Jean-Pascal Michel for Search & Find, Monica Woo for Custom Publishing and Thomas Kaiser for Digital & Marketing Services.
The members of the Group Management are also those responsible for central services: Brigitte Schleipen (Human Resources), Andreas Schmidt (Finance & Controlling), Christopher Blackwell (Information & Communication Technology), Jean-Denis Briod (Corporate Staff/General Secretariat) and Jean-Paul Nicoulin (Information & Communication Technology until June 30, 2008).
As already announced, Christian Gartmann will take over responsibility for Media Partners Relation & Marketing on the Media Sales Executive Board and will therefore leave the Group Executive Board at the end of 2007.
The new head of the Information & Communication Technology department is responsible for the development of Publigroupe's IT strategy and its implementation in the service of the operating units. According to the press release, Blackwell is well equipped for this task. He completed his business studies at the University of St. Gallen and also studied IT at the University of Neuchâtel. He then took on project and management roles in various IT/business consulting companies. Most recently, he was responsible for the consulting division of Agile Software Corporation for the Europe, Middle East and Africa region.

 
Winter sports Advico Young & Rubicam flies 1000 rescue helicopters for the BfU. 
The lack of awareness seems surprising, although it is widespread. As part of the research for their creative work, CDs Urs Schrepfer and Christian Bobs conducted a survey at AY&R: How many skiing accidents are there in Switzerland every day? Estimates ranged between 20 and 100, but the correct answer from the Swiss Council for Accident Prevention (BfU) must have startled us: On average, 1000 snow sports accidents happen every day in winter. All respondents were totally perplexed when this figure was presented. And it is precisely this reaction that the creatives at AY&R have now taken as the basis for a new commercial.
 
The sun is shining, snow sports enthusiasts are enjoying themselves against an impressive mountain backdrop, but a muffled noise makes them look up. The shadow of a helicopter moves over the snow and people. More and more shadows appear and suddenly the sky is full of machines. 1000 Rega helicopters thunder over the snow sports enthusiasts. The message "1000 accidents a day. Protect yourself with a helmet.".
The spot could be seen for the first time last weekend at the Freestyle.ch mega-event on Zurich's Landiwiese - together with real helicopters: four machines appeared in the sky in front of around 15,000 spectators, hovering over the lake for several minutes before they flew on over the heads of the amazed crowd and the new spot with another 1,000 animated helicopters amazed the audience on a huge screen.
The campaign and commercial are complemented by posters, advertisements, activities on the slopes and the website www.schuetzdich.ch. The website was designed and realized in collaboration with Futurecom. With the campaign, the BfU aims to increase the proportion of helmet-wearing snow sports enthusiasts by around ten percent over the next three winter seasons up to March 2010.
Andreas Panzeri

 The film "Die Herbstzeitlosen" by Bettina Oberli will represent Switzerland in the competition for the 2008 Oscars. The Federal Office of Culture (Bak) has submitted the feature film to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Los Angeles in the category "Best Foreign Language Film" on the recommendation of its group of experts. "Die Herbstzeitlosen", a story about sprightly senior citizens who open a lingerie store, has met with success in Europe: in Switzerland, around 600,000 admissions have been recorded to date, while in Germany and Austria over 250,000 viewers have seen the comedy to date. According to a press release, Bak selected the film as an Oscar contender due to the universality of its subject matter and the high quality of the screenplay, directing and casting. The fact that the film is also backed by the American Disney group with distributor Buenavista International (Switzerland) was also a decisive factor.
In the "Best Documentary" category, the Bak will support the candidacy of "Shake The Devil Off" by Peter Entell. The film about the closure of a parish in New Orleans six months after the devastating Hurricane Katrina, which celebrated its world premiere at the Locarno International Film Festival in August, will be submitted directly to the Academy by the production company Show and Tell Films.
The nominees in all categories will be announced on January 22, 2008. The 2008 Oscars will take place on February 24 in Los Angeles.

 Swiss television is suspending its summer series next year. The reason for this is the European Championships and the Summer Olympics in Beijing. "Schweiz aktuell", as part of which the summer programs were always broadcast, will report intensively on both sporting events. As a result, there is not enough capacity for an in-house production, reports the TV magazine TV. However, another major summer project entitled "Das Reduit" is planned for 2009. According to the TV star, it will be a series about the outbreak of the Second World War. The occasion is the 70th anniversary of the mobilization for war in 1939. SF wants to deal with this topic using contemporary documents and eyewitnesses.

 Posters can be submitted to the APG for the Swiss Poster Award until November 30. All posters that have been publicly displayed in Switzerland in the past year are eligible. Posters that have been commissioned, designed or printed abroad are also expressly permitted. The APG is organizing the Swiss Poster Award for the fourth time this year. The main focus is on the design quality of the posters.