In August, gross expenditure on advertising rose by 7.5% to CHF 237.6 million. The key market of watches and jewelry even almost doubled its financial advertising expenditure compared to the previous year. According to SDA, the market research company Media Focus concludes that the Swiss advertising market continued to grow in August. Advertising expenditure increased by 7.5 percent to just under CHF 2.4 billion in the first eight months. With a year-on-year increase of 94.6 percent, the key market of watches and jewelry has recorded the strongest monthly growth so far this year. Telecommunications invested 20.3% or CHF 2.9 million less in August than in the same period last year. The savings in the fixed network sector corresponded exactly to the total savings of CHF 2.9 million. By contrast, the food sector increased by 61.3%. The advertising markets of household articles (+53.3%), political campaigns (+44%), charitable campaigns (+42.6%) and energy (+27%) also showed a significant increase in August compared to the same month last year.

The Federal Council has submitted the dispatch on the renewal of the Media Agreement between Switzerland and the EU to Parliament. According to a communiqué from the Federal Office of Culture, participation in Media 2007 is subject to the condition that Switzerland applies a further provision of the EU "Television without Frontiers" Directive from November 2009. As a consequence, advertising windows of foreign broadcasters aimed at a Swiss audience would no longer be subject to Swiss law, but exclusively to the national regulations of the broadcaster's country of origin (e.g. regarding the authorization of alcohol or political advertising). This requires an amendment to the Swiss Radio and Television Act (RTVA) by means of a corresponding parliamentary resolution. The Federal Council will decide on the initiation of a corresponding revision of the RTVA at a later date and after carefully weighing up the interests involved. The status of work in connection with the revision of the Council of Europe Convention will have to be taken into account. According to the communiqué, the Federal Council has requested an annual Swiss contribution of around CHF 10 million to the funding program.
The media agreement is intended to improve the market opportunities and international distribution of Swiss films. It is not the actual production costs that are supported, but the areas before and after production: training of filmmakers (especially in the area of new technologies), project realization (screenplay), dubbing and, above all, distribution.
The last generation of media programs (2001-2006) made it possible to support around 8,000 productions from thirty countries. Half of the European films shown in cinemas today benefit from this Community support.

The Basel West agency has renewed the corporate design of the surveying company Jermann. Jermann also launched a new homepage at the same time as the new look.
The commissioned advertising agency has created an eye-catcher with stones of different textures to mark the individual areas of the company at all appearances. According to the press release, the durability of the stones and the clarity of the photographic style are intended to show the company's connection to the land. Their uniqueness also symbolizes the various strengths of the employees and their identification with their profession.
With around fifty employees, Jermann is one of the market-leading surveying companies in Switzerland and, together with partner companies, offers integrated solutions for surveying, geoinformation and land management. Following a generational change in management, the image of the entire group has also been renewed with Vermessungsbüro Schenk AG and CAD-Datatech AG.
Responsible at Jermann Ingenieure + Geometer AG: Fabian Frei Responsible at Basel West: Consulting: Albin Kirchhofer; Concept, Layout: Thomas Aerni, Text: Stephan Lichtenhahn, Markus Siegenthaler; Photography: Marc Eggimann, Frédéric Giger

Despite the upcoming elections and the good economic situation, the volume of advertising in the Swiss press has developed only modestly. According to the statistics published by Wemf on Thursday, advertisements in the daily press and the regional weekly press increased by only 1.3 percent to CHF 84.7 million. Income from job advertisements climbed by 16.7 percent in the wake of the labor shortage. Commercial advertisements, on the other hand, fell by 4.2 percent. The Sunday press (-6.9 percent) and the financial and business press (-3.3 percent) also suffered losses. In contrast, the volume of advertising in the general press was 11.6% higher than in the same month last year. The volume of advertisements in the special interest press fell by 6.6%, while the trade press received 3.3% fewer advertisements.

The Zofinger Tagblatt (ZT) is making inroads into the canton of Lucerne as a partner of the Mittelland Zeitung. The Luzerner Nachrichten (LN) has been published as the front page since Monday. As ZT operations manager Bruno Lustenberger told SDA on request, the LN is printed in a run of around 1,300 copies. The first pages of the regional edition are devoted to reports from the Lucerne border region and the canton of Lucerne. According to Lustenberger, the seventh edition of the Mittelland Zeitung will also be published as a Sonntag LN. The total circulation of the ZT with the new front page is 15,300 copies. The jacket section is printed by AZ Print in Aarau. The regional bundle for the ZT and the LN will be produced in Zofingen.

The free newspaper .ch, which has been published since Wednesday, is still struggling with distribution problems in some areas. According to Sacha Wigdorovits, 405,000 of the total of 435,000 copies were distributed on the first day. However, the .ch publisher admitted to SDA that distribution was not yet perfect. Occasionally there are delays in printing or colporteurs are absent. Overall, however, the distribution of the newspaper is working much better than expected, said Wigdorovits on Friday. The newspaper stands, now known as "music stands", are causing problems. In Winterthur, the commercial police had several stands removed from the old town. And in Basel, the Allmendgesellschaft also collected a large number of stands from public spaces.
According to Widgorowits, these stands were not placed on public land by .ch. Private individuals who did not like the gray newspaper racks were probably responsible for this. Unwanted newspaper racks would be collected by .ch. However, this cannot be done from one hour to the next, says Widgorowits.
In total, .ch has handed out 20,000 stands to homeowners in the cities of Zurich, Bern, Basel, Lucerne and St. Gallen. If 500 of these are removed, this is a very small percentage and "not decisive for the match", emphasized Wigdorowits.
After a three-month phase, .ch intends to further consolidate the distribution network in urban areas. According to Wigdorowits, a trial with letterbox delivery will also be carried out. The aim is to increase circulation to 500,000 copies within 9 months.

At the annual congress of the Swiss Press Association, President Micheline Calmy-Rey regrets that political reporting is increasingly giving way to lifestyle journalism. She calls on Swiss publishers not to neglect politics.
Before the annual congress of the Swiss Press Association, Micheline Calmy-Rey addressed the media in the election campaign, according to an SDA report. With the revolution in information technology, the media dimension of politics has changed. Today, a political statement is better presented as a headline than as a dry report. Calmy-Rey said she had no problem with this as long as the issue remained the focus.
The hunt for primeurs and confidential documents often obscures the view, said the President. But what counts is not the event, but the process. Political work is not limited to showmanship. For the Foreign Minister, the media play an important role in the functioning of the institutions. However, it must not be allowed "that the media reality, the play and shadow play of appearances, events and stagings, undermine or even replace the decision-making power of our institutions".
Calmy-Rey calls on publishers to stick to political reporting. "Let opinions be expressed in your editorial offices - as many and as diverse as possible. Avoid the slick mainstream that rounds off everything edgy... We need this competition of opinions. "

Swiss publishers and media associations are talking to each other again. Successful negotiations in the area of professional ethics have led to the resumption of talks on social issues. In their communiqué, the associations of media professionals, Impressum and Comedia, welcome the publishers' willingness to assume social responsibility. Inspired by successful negotiations in the area of professional ethics, both sides have also resumed discussions on social issues. The journalists' associations and publishers had found common interests and concrete results in the area of ethics through a solution-oriented culture of discussion. The associations now trust that the talks in the area of social partnership will also be based on the mutual will to solve concrete social problems in the industry together.

Anyone leafing through the free newspaper 20 Minuten or its weekend edition, Weekend, wonders with irritation whether someone has been vandalizing it with a felt-tip pen. However, this is not a case of newspaper vandalism, but an advertisement by Ruf Lanz for SuvaRisk. It uses the newspaper environment for accident prevention. Everyone who works for a Suva-insured company for more than eight hours a week is automatically insured against occupational and non-occupational accidents. And in the event of an accident, they are paid the medical costs and daily allowances. However, Suva cannot compensate for the temporary loss of quality of life. It is therefore not worth taking unnecessary risks.

This is now dramatized by an astonishing advertising campaign by Ruf Lanz, which is aimed at a younger, particularly risk-averse audience. In all regional language editions of 20 Minuten and Week, numerous events are crossed out in the going-out calendar. Because after an accident, so the explanation goes, you can often forget about going out for a long time.
Responsible at Suva:
Urs Schaad (responsible for communication). Responsible at Ruf Lanz: Danielle Lanz, Markus Ruf (Creative Direction), Thomas Schöb (Text), Marcel Schläfle (Art Direction), Armin Arnold (Graphics), Michèle Leibacher (Consulting).

 
Internet giant Google remained an important topic at the Publishers' Congress on Friday. In his presentation, Google Switzerland CEO Andreas Schönenberger explained that his company wanted to make information available worldwide, anytime and anywhere. He called on publishers to "set windmills against the wind instead of building walls" in stormy times. Publisher Association President Hanspeter Lebrument also took up the topic in his speech and concluded by saying that Google would have nothing to put on the Internet if all the newspapers and media did not exist. However, an audience member from the plenary session pointed out that the search engine company had made publishers an offer and that they should stop ignoring Google's power.In the panel discussion on Friday morning with Martin Kall (Tamedia), Norbert Neininger (Meier + Cie. Schaffhausen), Christian Müller (Vogt-Schild Medien), Ralph Büchi (Handelszeitung and Jean Frey), Hans-Peter Rohner (Publigroupe) and Filippo Leutenegger (moderator), free newspapers were an important topic of discussion. Most publishers declared this form of journalistic service to be legitimate, even if Christian Müller from Vogt-Schild Medien opposed this thesis, although he was rebuffed by his colleagues. However, the publishers agreed that all media are needed and all have their justification. In his speech, Lebrument could not resist pointing out that various electronic media companies, such as TV stations, had disappeared from the market. Press publishers, on the other hand, had managed to steer their subscription newspapers safely through all the storms and establish themselves as publishers of electronic media.

 Tamedia CEO Martin Kall and Espace Media Group CEO Albert Polo Stäheli are stepping down from the presidency of the Publishers Association. This was announced on Thursday at the 2007 Publishers' Congress in Lucerne. The reason for this is that Tamedia and Espace Media now form a publishing house. It is therefore no longer justified for both to have a seat. Chairman of the Board of Directors Pietro Supino was unanimously elected to represent Tamedia. The Zurich-based media company will therefore once again be represented by the publisher in the Publishers Association. A further change at the top of the association results from the fact that AZ Medien publisher Peter Wanner will relinquish the chairmanship of the "External Relations" department. Association President Hanspeter Lebrument intends to take over this position and declare the department a presidential matter.

 For publishers, the clear separation between editorial content and advertising space is an important means of maintaining the credibility of the media and thus also the success of their products with the public. The publishers reaffirmed this at this year's general meeting in Bern. Members were called upon to sign the Code of Conduct on this separation requirement for their respective media products, which is supported by the advertising and media industry. This paper should not simply disappear into a drawer, explained Josefa Haas, Head of the Media Institute. She said that individual titles could, so to speak, write the Code of Conduct on their flag. It therefore has the potential to become a seal of quality for journalism.