A company in the United States wants to make information about billions of people accessible on the Internet with a new people search engine. According to SDA, the free and ad-financed service will be available from August. As can be read on the still provisional website Spock.com itself, the new search engine has already indexed 100 million people, with millions more names being added every day. Spock.com actively searches social networks such as Myspace, Facebook and Xing to find data about people on the Internet. On the other hand, users can also add information to the website - about themselves or others. In this way, Spock.com creates profiles of people that can be called up using a search engine. Just as Google displays a website as a search result, Spock.com wants to present "results about people", the co-founder of the company, Jay Bhatti, told the AFP news agency.
A filter will help to sift out incorrect information and at the same time a rating from Spock.com users will help to brand authors of false information, Bhatti told AFP. In addition, people found on the site could request the deletion of their profile or ask Spock.com to investigate where the information about them came from. In this way, Spock.com wants to address the concerns of data protectionists who complain about the data collection mania of many websites.

 SF zwei has drawn up the series schedule for autumn 2007; the program includes three new series and three existing series with new seasons. New are the crime comedy "The Closer" with the prickly police chief Brenda Johnson, the comedy "My Name Is Earl" about the notorious rascal Earl Hickey and "Heroes", a thriller series about various ordinary people who suddenly develop superpowers and save the world. Three more series are coming up with new seasons: "Six Feet Under", a black comedy about the Fisher family of morticians (seasons IV and V), "Dr. House", a hospital series about a cynical creep and doctor (season III), and "Lost", a mystery series about the fate of crashed airline passengers on a Caribbean island (season III). "My Name Is Earl" and "Heroes" can be seen for free for the first time in German-speaking countries. "Six Feet Under" kicks off the fall series season on August 13.

 Ana Maria Haldimann has been Head of Media at the 3+ television station since the beginning of August. According to a press release, she can look back on over 10 years of media experience with various lifestyle and tabloid titles. Her professional experience includes Schweizer Illustrierte and Annabelle. At 3+, Haldimann is the contact person for all media inquiries. At the same time, the station announced that its market share had remained stable in the summer. The best day of the week in July was Thursday, with an average market share of 4.4 percent among 15 to 49-year-olds during primetime from 8 to 10.30 pm. The best program of the month was "CSI - Tatort Las Vegas" with a peak market share of 7.5 percent. The weakest day was Monday, with a market share of 1.7 percent among 15- to 49-year-olds during primetime.

 As part of the 60th Locarno Film Festival, Director General Armin Walpen announced details of SRG's anniversary commitment on Monday. As previously reported by Sonntagsblick, SRG is distributing 500,000 Swiss francs to mark the tenth anniversary of the "Pacte de l'audiovisuel" federal program. Walpen is now providing more details: The money is to be used to publicize ten feature films and ten documentaries that will premiere in September 2007 or later. A documentary film can receive a maximum of CHF 20,000, a feature film CHF 30,000. "SRG is thus supporting innovative and original promotional ideas that the producers would not be able to realize without this contribution," says Armin Walpen, explaining the purpose of the commitment. 30 films that were made thanks to SRG's support are now also available on the Internet. For a fee - between one and six francs, depending on the length of the film - the films can now be downloaded from the SRG website for a period of 48 hours. At the end of the test phase at the end of January 2008, the Pacte partners will take stock and discuss the next steps for the "Videos on demand" project.

 Zurich-based publisher Tamedia plans to transform the website of the discontinued news magazine Facts into a community portal. The forum and individual service elements of the site continue to meet with interest among users. Now it is to become a discussion network. The initiative for this comes from the two Tamedia people Chris Lüscher and Cyrill Treptow, as was learned from well-informed sources. Lüscher is managing director of the dating site Partnerwinner.ch, Treptow sales manager of Tages-Anzeiger.ch. The two have in mind to turn Facts.ch into a social network with a focus on news, as Lüscher confirmed to Werbewoche. A first version is to go online at the end of August. The idea of turning Facts.ch into a discussion platform practically came about at the coffee table, he said. "It's also an experimental field for us - we have to be much more open to the Internet," Lüscher said. The fact that the Internet address of the discontinued Facts magazine is being used should not amount to a rising from the dead: "I would rather call it a reinvention," Lüscher said. The intention is to use the high profile of the Facts brand to experiment in the online sector. The budget for the new platform is rather small, so the initiators Treptow and Lüscher want to rely on the well-known Facts brand. People who are interested in the project can register at
into an information list. On the platform, users will be able to link to and comment on news from various media. "The discussions should revolve around the topics of politics, business, society and sports - the classic news topics," explained Lüscher. Tamedia does not provide editorial content, but users can link to any medium or blog. The platform is managed by a moderator, but the aim is to give users as much freedom as possible.
"What's special about our platform is that the consumption of news is linked to a network," says Lüscher. Users can track who reads which entry or leaves a comment. "This gives us an opportunity to reflect on which news is really being used - perhaps it turns out that some articles that were given a big build-up in the media are not even perceived as important here."
Advertising will be possible on the new platform. The goal is for the platform to be self-financing in the medium term: "However, we don't want to be too aggressive about advertising at the beginning. First of all, we have to see how the platform develops," explained the Partnerwinner boss. In addition to target-group-optimized advertising, unconventional options are conceivable, and the company wants to experiment with large formats: "A large area, perhaps the size of half a screen, is more beneficial to customers and to us than many small ones," Lüscher emphasized. Large formats are a good way to do classic branding on the web, too.
With the discussion network under Facts.ch, Tamedia can thus gain further Internet experience. But the portal has nothing to do with a possible relaunch of Tages-Anzeiger Online, Tamedia spokesman Christoph Zimmer emphasized when asked: "These are different projects. According to rumors, Tamedia is planning to turn Tagi.ch into a national news network and hire about 30 new people for this purpose. However, an official confirmation from Werdstrasse is pending.
 
Carole Scheidegger
 

The German channel ProSieben will have a new look from August 13. However, the redesign is gentle: The shape and color of the logo as well as the claim "We love to entertain you" remain unchanged, as Kress.de reports. In contrast, the self-promotional clips have undergone a visual change: the program promotion areas are now separated vertically. On the left is the written information about the program slot and title, on the right the corresponding image. Previously, ProSieben divided the screen horizontally. The new division is intended to attract the viewer's attention. According to ProSieben Marketing Director Malte Hildebrandt, the most important requirement for the redesign was to "convey the innovative power of the brand". The Creative Solutions department of ProSiebenSat.1 Produktion is responsible for the implementation.

The Sonntagszeitung has a new Head of Advertising Market since August 1. As announced by Tamedia, the previous deputy Adriano Valeri is taking over the job from Diego Quintarelli, who has been in charge of the Sonntagszeitung publishing house since the beginning of the month (see ). The 41-year-old Valeri became area sales manager for the Schweizer Familie in 1998 and moved to the Tages-Anzeiger in the same function in 2003. In August 2006, he joined the Sonntagszeitung publishing house as Deputy Head of Advertising Market.

 With a three-stage communication strategy entitled "Feel the Beat", the Zurich-based Wirz subsidiary Assai is promoting the latest product from DaimlerChrysler. The Dodge Nitro is being presented in collaboration with the successful Basel music producer DJ Antoine, who has composed a song especially for this purpose. The presentation at the Geneva Motor Show will be followed by a club tour through the seven largest Swiss cities, as well as the actual launch campaign including online advertising. Netvertising is responsible for the online presence, Mediaedge:cia for the media planning.

An event initiated by the International Network of Street Newspapers (INSP) focuses on the unifying effect of football. The Homeless Street Soccer World Cup 2007, which took place in Copenhagen from July 28 to August 5, 2007, pitted homeless people from all over the world against each other. The aim of this event is to give people in social difficulties back the self-esteem they have lost on the streets. The partner in Switzerland is the street magazine Surprise. Publicis developed an advertising campaign on its behalf. The slogan "Do it now" - based on the famous Nike slogan "Just do it" - is intended to illustrate the overcoming of all social and linguistic barriers. The campaign, developed by the Zurich advertising agency Publicis on behalf of the street magazine Surprise, conveys that football means the same to marginalized people as it does to professionals: passion, commitment and team spirit. On the posters, the players of the Swiss homeless national team were photographed in the style of football stars such as Ronaldinho, Cantona and Henry. The sponsors of the Swiss Homeless National Team are Nike as official supplier and Hyundai. The campaign is supported by Setaprint, Reproscan and APG.

 
Developments on the road to personalized advertising are progressing. "In future, advertising will be tailored to the individual consumer," David W. Kenny, Chairman of the American advertising agency Dignitas, told the New York Times. According to his vision, a global network is to be set up that creates thousands of different versions of an advertisement and delivers them precisely to the respective target group. The production of the advertising could be outsourced to low-wage countries so that the greater variety could be financed. He is thinking in particular of China, where his agency recently opened a branch. However, as the media agency Pressetext.ch reports, experts currently doubt that the technology is advanced enough to make this diversity possible. Advertising clips are already being individualized in a simple form. The jeans manufacturer Levi's recently caused a stir with two different versions of a TV commercial: While the male protagonist of the commercial first attracts the attention of a young woman, she is unceremoniously replaced by a blonde beauty in the alternative ending. The second version is intended to appeal to homosexual consumers and runs on Logo, a channel that is also tailored to this target group.

Mikhail Gorbachev, the last head of state of the Soviet Union, is modeling for Louis Vuitton. The French lifestyle group commissioned star photographer Annie Leibovitz to photograph the 76-year-old with a Vuitton suitcase in front of a section of the Berlin Wall. It's quite a symbolic location for the former head of state and party: Gorbachev was instrumental in bringing down the Wall in 1989. "Gorbachev liked the idea of being remembered as the biggest player in the fall of the Wall," a Louis Vuitton press spokesman told Werben & Verkaufen.
Whether this is historically true - a few other players were also involved in the fall of the Berlin Wall - remains to be seen. In any case, it is understandable that Gorbachev would rather be remembered for his great deeds than have an eggplant ragout named after him, as happened to the current Russian president Vladimir Putin (see
).
Nevertheless, one may ask: What message exactly is Gorbachev sending here? Perhaps he wants to teach his partly mouse-poor countrymen a lesson in decent capitalism: The goal of our lives is no longer to sing the Internationale flawlessly, but to one day have a luxury suitcase under our arm.

 Ringier TV, the television division of the Zurich-based publishing house, is setting up a fiction department under the label "Ringier Film". Together with partners, the new department aims to develop and produce "financially interesting and audience-appealing film projects". This was announced by Marc Görtz, Member of the Executive Board of Ringier Publishing Switzerland and Head of Electronic Media, on Monday in Locarno on the occasion of the 60th Film Festival. According to the communiqué, the first feature film project has already been tackled. Ringier Film has entered into a co-production with the film production company Lichtspiele in Küsnacht (ZH): The film "Champions" by Riccardo Signorell is to be a romantic relationship comedy set in the world of ice hockey. The film will be produced at the beginning of next year and will be released in cinemas in fall 2008.