The new RTVG has brought decisive changes to the Swiss TV market, particularly with regard to the authorization of interruptive advertising. Instead of the previous hinge islands, almost only interruptor islands are now offered directly in the program, according to a quarterly publication from Goldbach Media. For advertising customers, there would be significantly more advertising islands to choose from, which would be broadcast directly in the programs. Since the revised law came into force, all German or French advertising islands have been overlaid one-to-one with a Swiss island during Swiss advertising windows. The so-called inspill, the advertising pressure from abroad, is eliminated. Television has therefore gained significantly in effectiveness with the new advertising law, it continues.
According to Goldbach Media, the new interruption islands have a more homogeneous audience structure and offer a stronger bond between the program and the advertising. They strengthen the "audience flow", are followed with higher attention and thus form a better basis for all advertising impact parameters such as awareness, recall and impact.

 The tussle for Bundesliga rights has started again in Germany. As in the last rights round, pay-TV broadcaster Premiere is once again demanding that the "Sportschau" on ARD be broadcast later in the evening. Premiere CEO Georg Kofler wants to make the Bundesliga matches on his channel more exclusive. ARD, on the other hand, wants to fight for "Sportschau", which provides a summary of Bundesliga matches, to continue to be shown on Saturdays at 6.30 pm. "Sportschau" boss Steffen Simon told the Westfälische Rundschau newspaper that the format would possibly be overturned if the date had to be moved: "If the free-to-air football is only broadcast at 10 p.m., it will take place somewhere, but not on ARD".
Of course, everyone should be allowed to watch football on free TV. But for a whole series of couples in crisis, at least one potential source of conflict would disappear if the program no longer existed. After all, nobody would have to get upset about the well-known phrase: "Not now, darling; I'm watching 'Sportschau'".

Saatchi & Saatchi Simko has reinvented the testimonial campaign for Orange. The campaign focuses on the telecommunications group's business customers. According to a statement from the agency, Orange sees its customers primarily as partners, but also as dynamic companies. Each subject reflects the relationship between Orange and each of its partners. While the visual shows a key product of the customer, the headline opens up the perspective for the characteristics of the respective business area. The fact that the partner's brand is in the foreground and the company's own logo only serves as a sender characterizes Orange's attitude of partnership, it continues. The telecommunications company wants to prove that success factors such as "shared entrepreneurship" or "business creativity" are neither empty words in its business relationships nor in its advertising.

 The online marketer Adlink Switzerland is adopting a new name and a new look: the company, which is wholly owned by the Goldbach Media Group in Switzerland, is merging its existing display, search and permission marketing divisions under the Adlink Internet Media brand. The new corporate design is based on the design of Adlink Media and Adlink Group. The group includes Adlink Media, Affilinet, Net:Dialogs, Composite and Sedo. The Hamburg-based creative agency Smz is responsible for the Europe-wide CD implementation. In addition to the new company logo, the Swiss Media Tool, a database of online advertising media offered by Adlink, has been visually refreshed. According to a press release, Adlink Media wants to position itself even more clearly as a marketer of online media and online campaigns with its new image.
The new logo:
 
 

 The marketer Publisuisse and the Biel-based event company Perron8 have agreed to collaborate on the marketing of screen advertising for the UBS Arena during the 2008 European Football Championship. Small stadiums will be set up in 17 Swiss cities during EURO 08, giving football fans the opportunity to watch the matches on big screens. Background reports, summaries, analyses and interviews will also be shown. Publisuisse will market the screen advertising. Bookings can be made at national, regional or local level, as detailed in a press release. Detailed offers and tariffs are to be launched at the end of August.

 The feature film project "The Circle", initiated by the two advertising executives Ivan Madeo and Urs Frey, received an award at the Locarno International Film Festival on Tuesday: The story of the rise and fall of the internationally active Zurich gay organization of the same name in the 1960s was rated as one of the most promising feature film projects by the Swiss Society of Authors (SSA) and awarded CHF 25,000 as part of a screenplay grant.
Ivan Madeo is a copywriter and concept developer at the Young&Rubicam agencies Wunderman and Futurecom. Two years ago, together with Urs Frey, owner of the Biel-based advertising film production company Twin Productions, he founded Contrast Film, which is based in Zurich and Bern and develops and produces feature film projects. The Cultural Fund of the Swiss Society of Authors (SSA) awards three particularly promising feature film projects each year with a contribution of CHF 25,000 each.

 According to a study by the Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM), the price of broadband Internet connections in Switzerland has fallen by 39% in the last five years, while transmission rates have increased sixfold. These are the findings of the study "Costs of telecommunications services (fixed and mobile): Comparison and development", which compared various providers between 2001 and 2006. Bakom expects further movements in the broadband market in the future, particularly as a result of the liberalization of the last mile. While competition in 2001 and 2002 mainly put pressure on prices, it had an impact on both prices and transmission rates in the following two years. Since 2005, providers have been competing mainly on the basis of transmission rates. In principle, it was almost always the cable network operators, above all Cablecom, that triggered the fall in prices and the increase in speeds. The study sees the reason for this in the fact that cable network operators theoretically have a larger bandwidth and can therefore increase speeds more easily.
The study compared the services of Swisscom and Cablecom for the period 2001 to 2005. It was found that the prices of the two competitors do not differ greatly: Cablecom's products are at most 8 percent cheaper than those of Swisscom. For the 2006 period, the comparison was extended to four other providers: Sunrise, Tele2, Improware and Quickline. The cheapest offer from Tele2 is 20 percent cheaper than the most expensive from Improware, although the latter has three times the transmission speed.

 The two advertising and consulting agencies CR Kommunikation and CR Basel have jointly been awarded the contract for the Federal Office for Professional Education and Technology's (OPET) campaign to promote vocational education and training in Switzerland. They were able to prevail in a pitch against well-known agencies, as detailed in a press release. OPET has also gained a major new client in the field of public services, and has now commissioned the agencies with a multi-year national campaign on the subject of "Vocational education and training in Switzerland". From 2007 to 2009, the campaign will contribute to the promotion of Swiss vocational education and training at various levels. Each year the focus will be on a specific area of vocational education and training, in 2007 on basic vocational training, the press release continues. The campaign is conceived as the successor to "Chance06", which ran for one year.
The aim of the multi-year campaign is to strengthen the positioning and profile of the Swiss vocational education and training system; the system of interlinking school and practice, which is unique in international comparison, has come under pressure in recent years, particularly as a result of the Bologna reform.

 The Swiss advertising market developed positively in the first half of 2007: advertising expenditure rose by CHF 147.9 million compared to the same period last year, which corresponds to an increase of 8.2 percent. The strongest medium within the electronic media is television, which can look back on six consistently positive months, according to a quarterly report from Goldbach Media. According to Media Focus, TV increased advertising pressure by a total of CHF 67.4 million or 16.3% in the first half of the year. The two marketers IP Multimedia (+33%) and Cinecom (+44.7%) benefited from this growth. The SRG channels grew less strongly at 5.7%. According to Goldbach Media, this is due to the development of the second program chains in the respective language regions: SF2 lost 13.3% in German-speaking Switzerland, TSI2 28.4% in Italian-speaking Switzerland and TSR2 as much as 32.9% in French-speaking Switzerland.
Cinema advertising, on the other hand, was the clear loser in the first half of the year: its advertising pressure fell by 15.3 percent or CHF 3.5 million. Online advertising is also slightly behind the previous year's volume, falling just under 0.5 percent short of the June 2006 figure, according to the quarterly report. According to Media Focus, advertising pressure in teletext advertising continues to fall massively compared to 2006, reaching a volume of CHF 5.5 million in the period from January to June. This represents a decrease of 6.0 percent or CHF 0.4 million. Radio, on the other hand, recorded a significant increase of 7.3% or CHF 4.6 million compared to the previous year.

The Zurich advertising agency Sulzer, Sutter has proclaimed a unique nation of smokers for the Parisienne cigarette brand. For the Swiss National Day on August 1, Parisienne discounted the "Jaune Soft" variety by one franc and is selling it for 5 francs in a specially produced limited edition pack while stocks last. Sulzer, Sutter is advertising the discount in advertisements and at kiosks. The Jass card figures familiar from the current Parisienne campaign raise their hands to swear an oath - not to the three stands, however, but to the cheap cigarettes.

 From August 21, a new free weekly newspaper called D'Region will be published in the Emmental. The paper will be sent by post to all households in the area between Lützelflüh, Burgdorf and Fraubrunnen on Tuesdays. The weekly newspaper aims to report on sporting, cultural, political, religious and economic life in the region. The online edition is published at the same time as the printed newspaper. The editorial director is Martin Rüfenacht. According to SDA, Haller und Jenzer Holding is behind the project. It has founded a separate company called Medienzentrum for the new weekly newspaper, which is legally and personally independent of Haller und Jenzer Holding. However, the latter is taking on the prepress and printing work.
Haller und Jenzer Holding had produced the Burgdorfer Tagblatt for many years, most recently in a joint operating company with the former Berner Tagblatt Medien, now Espace Media Groupe. The operating company was dissolved at the end of 2004 for economic reasons.

 The CEO of Publicis, Kaspar Loeb, will be leaving the company in mid-September 2007 after almost four years of service. According to a press release, his departure is due to differences of opinion regarding the future strategic direction of the agency. Fredy Collioud, Chairman of the Board of Directors, who stepped down from the position of CEO at the end of 2003, will once again assume responsibility as CEO and Delegate of the Board of Directors with immediate effect. He will have overall responsibility for customer advisory services until further notice. "We are not looking for a new CEO, I will take on this responsibility for the longer term," said Collioud at the request of Werbewoche. There had been differences of opinion with Loeb. "If the Board of Directors and the CEO don't agree, you can't be successful in the long term," said the Chairman of the Board of Directors of Switzerland's largest agency. "We are a large agency group with over 200 jobs. We can't just sit back and rest on our laurels. We are always under pressure." Loeb's departure will take place in a planned and orderly manner. He will hand over his duties by the middle of next month.
Kaspar Loeb played a decisive role in the integration of the individual communication disciplines under one roof, according to the press release. Collioud committed the Publicis Group to this integration five years ago. "The strategy has paid off," said Collioud. Further plans for the agency will be announced once the management team has been reorganized.
Under Loeb's leadership, new clients such as Zurich Financial Services, Axpo, PostMail, Cash Group, Jet Aviation and Endress & Hauser have been acquired. Publicis' expertise in providing global support to Swiss companies operating worldwide has been further expanded, according to the press release.