On November 20, the Edi Swiss Film Award for commercial, industrial and corporate films will be presented at a grand gala. If you want to take part, you have to hurry: Entries can only be submitted until August 31, in the three categories "Commercials", "Corporate" and "Clips & Trailers". The film award is organized by the industry association Swissfilm Association. Gold, silver and bronze Edis as well as special prizes are awarded for the three best productions. The works must have been made within the last twelve months and have been realized by a Swiss production company or by Swiss directors. A jury approved by the Federal Department of Home Affairs (FDHA) evaluates the films within the individual categories according to various criteria.

 The Neue Lgk agency from Bern and Zurich won the pitch against several agencies and was awarded the budget for the Aarberg and Frauenfeld sugar factories. The advertising campaign aims to make the Swiss more aware that the best sugar comes from Switzerland, according to a statement from the agency. The campaign will be launched in spring 2008.

Zurich-based advertising agency Fast Track has developed a print campaign for the "Supermodel" program on 3+. The campaign follows on from cinema, TV and radio commercials. In it, personalities such as Queen Elizabeth II and German Chancellor Angela Merkel call on viewers to apply to 3+ to become Swiss supermodels with the ironic slogan "Make something of yourself, quit your apprenticeship!".
Dominik Kaiser, founder and CEO of 3+, comments on the ads as follows: "The print ad for the latest 3+ in-house production Supermodel is of course to be understood ironically. Many young people today assume that you can take part in a TV show without doing much, then become a star straight away and therefore don't need any training. Of course, things are different in real life, and that's exactly what they want to show in the show. The road to success is long and hard and a solid education is very important and an essential foundation and prerequisite for this, Kaiser continued.
The ads can be seen in Schweizer Illustrierte, 20 Minuten and the cinema magazine Close-up as well as on internet banners. They complement commercials with the claim "Enough inner values? - Then apply to be a supermodel on 3+".

Responsible at Fast Track: Florian Beck (CD), Thomas Berger, Corinne Bresch, Matthias Günter (graphics), Suzanna Kovacevic (art buying), Daniel Gerber, Alexandra Kellenberger (consulting).

Advico Young & Rubicam, in collaboration with the young Swiss designer Thilo Brunner from fuenteYfuente, has developed the concept for a Sunrise store in Geneva, which was recently opened. According to the press release issued on Tuesday, the task was to implement an innovative retail idea that would give mobile entertainment a prominent place as an important future market in the telecom industry. According to the press release, a series of store concepts were therefore developed that deliberately break with the previous conventions of the telecom industry, allowing customers not only to try out and buy products, but also to entertain themselves with video games, surf the Internet or download ringtones, music and short films directly to their cell phones via Bluetooth. As the entire store is on castors, it can be moved quickly and easily for special occasions or simply to rearrange the store. The store is furnished with specially designed furniture. As a reference to an icon of consumer electronics, the cell phones are presented under original Technics record player covers.

 This year's Screen-up & Congress will take place on October 17 at the Arena Filmcity in Zurich's new Sihlcity shopping center. Online registration for the TV industry event is now open: interested parties can secure their places at Screen-up.ch. As every year, the TV broadcasters' presentations are free of charge. The congress part, organized by the Interessengemeinschaft elektronische Medien (IGEM), is subject to a fee. Discounted prices are available for members of the industry associations IGEM, BSW, SWA and IAA. In the congress section, experts from Switzerland and abroad will speak and discuss their visions for the Swiss TV market and current trends in the international electronic media world. Following this year's event, there will once again be an after-show party after a break of several years. It will take place in the Rohstofflager and is also open to external guests for CHF 30. You can also register for the party online.

 The Ikea furniture store is celebrating the opening of its branch in St. Gallen-Winkeln from September 26 to 30, 2007. It will be the seventh furniture store in Switzerland. In order to bring Ikea closer to the people of Eastern Switzerland, the Swedish company commissioned the newly founded Zurich agency Rod with the campaign for the opening. The campaign will run in Eastern Switzerland from the beginning of September.

 On September 1, Urs Ramsauer will move to the advertising sales department of NZZ Folio. Ramsauer already worked for NZZ before his last job at Ringier. At NZZ Folio, he replaces Stefan H. Böni, who is the new advertising manager at the free newspaper .ch.

 In a recently published study on the quality of communication services provided by media offices, Swiss journalists gave corporate media offices a rating of "good to very good". This surprisingly clear result emerged from a survey conducted by the Institute of Applied Media Studies (IAM) at Zurich University of Applied Sciences Winterthur together with Farner PR. The journalists particularly emphasized the high level of professionalism of the corporate media offices, as Farner announced on Tuesday.The media professionals were more critical of the media offices of administrations and non-governmental organizations (NGOs). Their communications work is rated worse than that of companies, particularly by journalists in German-speaking Switzerland. Overall, more than 90 percent of those surveyed described the media offices as "very important" or "important" for their journalistic work. Only one person of the 451 business and political journalists surveyed from all language regions of Switzerland said that media offices were not important at all in their day-to-day work.
Despite the importance of media outlets, most journalists believe that the inclusion of media outlets makes their work fairer and more complete, but not more informative or original. "Media outlets provide solid basic information, nothing more," says Vinzenz Wyss, Head of the Institute for Applied Media Studies. Media releases from companies and organizations are judged negatively by those surveyed above all when, in the opinion of the journalists, the topic is uninteresting and promotional or the release contains too few facts.
Overall, journalists appreciate those information formats in which they can play an active role, such as interviews or personal discussions. Formats that are more strongly influenced by media outlets are less popular: Specialist articles, press trips or company blogs. In this sense, media professionals generally want more contact with senior functionaries in an organization - French-speaking Swiss and Ticino more with communication specialists, German-speaking Swiss more with board presidents, company bosses and technical experts.
The electronic version of the final report of the study "The media work of companies and organizations from the perspective of Swiss journalists" can be ordered from: [email protected].

Nick Lüthi will become the new editor-in-chief of the media magazine Klartext on November 1. He has been elected to this position by the magazine's board of trustees and replaces Hans Stutz. The 33-year-old earned his first money as a journalist ten years ago at the left-wing newspapers Vorwärts and Berner Tagwacht. He later worked as an online editor at Bluewin, then still known as The Blue Window. He then moved to the former Radio Förderband. After its transformation into Radio BE1, Lüthi resigned and from then on worked as a freelance journalist for Klartext, Werbewoche, Bund, Berner Zeitung, Aargauer Zeitung and WoZ, among others.
Lüthi is looking forward to his imminent return to working as an employee. He wants to continue Klartext as an important voice in terms of media policy, as he told Werbewoche. Another important project is the expansion of the online presence: "The Klartext brand should be permanently present, not just with the six issues per year," says Lüthi. Exactly how this will be handled has not yet been decided. Weekly commentaries or a blog are conceivable. Former blogger Lüthi would also like to make readers more aware of the media magazine's online archive: "It can be interesting for journalists to read what Mr. Kall said ten years ago. Another innovation Lüthi has in mind for the online area is that advertising should be possible on the Klartext website - but the decision on this will not be made until the new editor-in-chief has taken office. However, he is convinced that the website should offer advertising opportunities: "If we expand online in the editorial area, then marketing should also be strengthened".
In addition to background information, Lüthi also wants to provide practical aspects, such as tips on how to avoid a writing backlog. He wants to offer readers immediate added value that can be useful to them in their everyday work as journalists. Klartext also wants to keep an eye on its colleagues: "We can imagine researching articles and checking whether the person quoted really said what the text says," explained Lüthi.
The editorial team, which consists of four part-time employees in addition to the editor-in-chief, is also considering a new layout. The last relaunch was six years ago. Lüthi also has the task of positioning his magazine alongside the competition from Schweizer Journalist magazine. Adequate measures will be taken to achieve this, Lüthi continued. He wants to make Klartext better known as a must-read for all journalists in Switzerland.

 
Carole Scheidegger 

 The latest in the series "Outrage over caricatures of leading religious figures": Last week, Malaysia's government was annoyed by a caricature of Jesus (see ). Now Iran has officially complained to the Swedish government about the media's depiction of the Prophet Mohammed as a dog. The disputed image by cartoonist Lars Vilk shows Mohammed as a giant dog monument in the middle of a traffic circle. The regional newspaper Nerikes Allehanda used it to illustrate an editorial on freedom of expression. Two planned exhibitions with drawings by Vilks had previously been canceled, citing "security risks". The Swedish Foreign Ministry did not wish to comment on the Iranian protest.
After all, it is possible that Switzerland will once again be one of the losers of the whole story: last year, when Muhammad cartoons published in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten sparked protests from Muslims around the world, Swiss flags were burned in some places because they looked so similar to the Danish ones. Perhaps the wrath of cartoon haters will soon be directed at Switzerland again. Switzerland and Sweden are constantly being confused - albeit more by residents of Iran's arch-enemy, the USA.

In August, the Basel clothing boutique Naked advertised this year's fashion show not only with a provocative flyer, but also with sandwich posters. The special feature of the campaign, which was designed by the Basel-based Oswald Siegfried advertising agency (OSW): The two models wearing the posters are naked. According to the press release, this is intended to draw attention to the name of the boutique in a meaningful way.
Client: Vanessa del Moral, Boutique Naked. Advertising agency: Oswald Siegfried Werbeagentur (OSW). Art director: Michael Oswald. Consultant: Nadine Siegfried. Text: René Fisch. Models: Promokant promotions GmbH.

 Swiss Post adjusts the rates for the transportation of newspapers. From 2008, press subsidies will be restricted to local and regional press and non-profit membership press in accordance with a parliamentary resolution (see ). Swiss Post intends to retain its established rate structure for the titles that are still eligible for subsidies. However, the rates will increase by 4.4 percent. According to Swiss Post, this corresponds to the inflation that has occurred since 2004.
Hanspeter Lebrument, President of the Swiss Press Association, criticized the announced cost-of-living adjustment to the SDA as unjustified. He demanded that Swiss Post adhere to the statements made by Federal Councillor Leuenberger. Leuenberger had confirmed to parliament that there should be no price increases for the press entitled to subsidies, Lebrument told the SDA news agency.
Swiss Post will increase some of the prices for titles that are no longer eligible for subsidies. In order to accommodate the publishers of these titles, it is accepting a deficit and will bear a significant part of the loss of subsidies itself, according to a press release. Swiss Post has developed a cost and competition-based pricing model for the titles that are no longer eligible for subsidies. According to Swiss Post, it is largely based on a model discussed with the publishing industry and fulfills the legal requirement that all subscribed newspapers and magazines must be transported according to the same principles at distance-independent prices. Swiss Post will submit these prices to the price watchdog.
The effects of the new pricing policy on the large and medium-sized titles that have been excluded from the federal contributions are still difficult to assess at the moment, publisher president Lebrument told SDA. The Swiss Press Association lacked precise insight into Swiss Post's accounts. In addition, negotiations between the largest clients and Swiss Post are still pending.
Up to now, publishers have generally benefited from federal subsidies totaling CHF 80 million for the transportation of their press products. The contributions were passed on to them in the form of reduced postal rates. On June 22, 2007, Parliament decided to limit the subsidies to CHF 30 million per year. The membership press will receive CHF 10 million and the local and regional press CHF 20 million. These funds will now only benefit the local and regional press with a maximum circulation of 40,000 copies and the non-profit membership press with a maximum circulation of 300,000 copies.