Shopping The Noise agency has taken on the task of attracting even more people to Zurich's Sihlcity The flow of tourists cannot be ignored: since Sihlcity opened its doors on March 22, 2007, the new "city within a city" has been attracting thousands of tourists from near and far every day. 80 stores on an area of 41,000 square meters make the new center one of the largest shopping temples in Switzerland. The concept is already working very well for the 13 restaurants. While the tills are ringing satisfactorily here, many retailers are still making long faces, as an analysis by the business magazine Cash wants to show. A total of 46 million francs in co-income must be amortized in Sihlcity. Exact figures from the sales front are not yet available. But the non-food stores in particular are complaining behind closed doors that their expectations have not yet been met. Business is good at weekends. On weekdays, however, the principle of hope still applies. What can be done?
Only little paid advertisingMany advertisers were surprised before the opening that Sihlcity apparently relied entirely on purely journalistic propaganda surrounding the coverage of the opening. Paid advertising was only placed modestly. This is now obviously being changed. Sihlcity has commissioned the advertising agency Noise in Zurich to look for solutions to ensure that the flow of "tourists" does not stop for a long time yet, but on the contrary increases even more.
The campaign has recently been launched in the "neighboring city" of Zurich and the Sihlcity suburbs with posters, advertisements and public transport advertising. With a simple and clear message: take another city trip to the smallest of the big cities.
In this sense, the entire presentation makes use of the classic ingredients of successful city marketing and highlights the attractions of a large city. Because: "Visiting Sihlcity is not a shopping trip, but a city break with all the trimmings," says project manager Patrik Leuenberger at Noise.
For the advertisers, the visitor even has some advantages over metropolises such as London or Paris: Sihlcity is right on the doorstep, travel costs are very low, and you can arrive very spontaneously or just for a short trip.
The messages are packaged in a no-frills layout with witty headlines and a travel tag as a visual hook. City marketing can be that simple.
Andreas Panzeri

Direct Marketing Swiss Post is publishing a practical reference work on 22 national address markets - now including the USA and Russia.Precisely defined target groups and correct addresses are the key to a successful direct marketing campaign. For this reason, Swiss Post International, a division of Swiss Post, is publishing a comprehensive reference work for addresses. The International Address Guide 2007/2008 is intended for all those who want to plan and implement direct marketing campaigns across borders. This clever book is already in its third edition this year. On 270 pages, the user will find detailed information on 22 address markets. A total of 629 providers of private and company addresses are documented. In addition to the contact details, the type and size of the address lists are also recorded (www. swisspost.com/addressguide). Online version includedThe comprehensive lexicon of technical terms in German, English and French is also helpful for planners. The creators have also arrived in the Internet age with the current version. The online guide enables quick and targeted research of address dealers abroad so that the next campaign is successful with the least possible wastage.     
Christian Lüscher

According to a study by Advico Young & Rubicam, the 20 most popular brands in Switzerland include traditional Swiss names such as Sugus, Rivella, Thomy and Zweifel. What stands out is that not a single one of these brands has the word "Swiss" in its name. The conclusion: "Swissness" is in demand, but should not be overemphasized. This seems to have been noticed at Schweizer Illustrierte (SI) as well. Since Monday, the weekly magazine has been appearing in a revised look. Even the logo has been touched up. The word "Schweizer" in particular is now less weighty and thus more restrained. The letters, previously one-sixth larger than the word "Illustrierte," are now the same height. The logo was previously "very masculine," says Urs Heller, SI publishing director and interim editor-in-chief. In general, the new layout, which was revised by Uli Beling and Nina Thoenen in Zurich, appears "more generous, more orderly, more elegant and more feminine," says Heller. The latter because 60 percent of SI's readership is now female. A year ago, female readers made up 57 percent. Since then, SI has lost a significant 6.3 percent of its reach - especially among men. However, this loss was not the reason for the redesign, says Heller, which is necessary every three to five years anyway. He takes the loss of readership "in stride," because SI is not registering a loss in subscriptions, but in retail sales - "and that's where all titles are having problems at the moment," says Heller. No changes have been made to the magazine concept, and SI still wants to be "closer to the stars.
Nevertheless, there is a lot going on conceptually. The SI family has grown in the last twelve months, with two line extensions added to the long-established gourmet magazine Al dente. In April 2006, SI Style was launched, a magazine published ten times a year for fashion-conscious young women. And in April of this year, Goal, a magazine for Euro 08, was published for the first time. The SI website was also redesigned so that vodcasts on current SI topics can now be downloaded from it.
But back to the line extensions: SI Style, which was supplied free of charge to SI subscribers for a year, has 355,000 readers according to a special Wemf evaluation (for comparison: Tamedia's Annabelle has 333,000 readers). "SI Style became the biggest Swiss women's magazine within a year," concludes Heller with pride. Not only that. SI Style was also enormously successful in the advertising market, nota bene without cannibalizing SI. "SI Style was a precision landing in every respect, putting us well over budget," says Heller. Now the magazine is to be slowly detached from its parent publication. SI readers who want to continue to receive SI Style will now have to pay 35 francs for an annual subscription; for that of SI, they will pay 208 francs. Heller is "incredibly pleased" with the first trend: four out of ten SI subscribers want to continue to receive SI Style.
The magazine Goal, on the other hand, will only be published four times this year, then monthly from 2008 - until the European Championship. For the time being, the final whistle for the European Championship will also signal the end of Goal - but depending on its success, that could still change. "At the public viewings during the World Cup in Germany, the proportion of women was around 40 percent," says Heller. That's why he's confident that enthusiasm for the Euro will also increase here in Germany from month to month. Goal should make a contribution to this - and profit from it.
Even at Al dente, the oldest SI supplement, changes are on the agenda: "We are considering whether to increase the current quarterly publication frequency," says Heller. He knows that there is demand from the advertising market and the readership. Because Al dente is only published every three months, it is not included in Mach Basic. That would also be a reason for a cadence change. Another is that the TV show "Al dente" on SF1 (in cooperation with Betty Bossi) is broadcast fortnightly, so it would also make sense for the magazine to appear more frequently. Especially since Al dente Print prints the recipes from the cooking show.
Markus Knöpfli

TV The Lausanne cable network is now also broadcasting the advertising window of the French channel M6.Five years after the launch of the Swiss advertising window on the French channel M6, it is now also reaching the Olympic capital Lausanne. The reason: the city's cable network CityTV, with around 75,000 connected households, has also been broadcasting the M6 signal intended for French-speaking Switzerland since June 6. The Geneva cable network Naxoo had already taken the same step in March. As a result, the M6 advertising window can now be received in both large conurbations in French-speaking Switzerland - an increase of 245,000 households. Nevertheless, it is unclear how many of the total of 7,39700 households in French-speaking Switzerland can now be reached technically by the M6 advertising window. Goldbach subsidiary IP Multimedia, which markets the advertising window, is assuming 60 percent, but cannot say where there are still "holes". Bernhard Cron, M6's lawyer, on the other hand, believes that "the whole of French-speaking Switzerland" is now covered. No reliable figures were available from Swisscable, the association of cable networks, or from the Federal Office of Communications. In Fribourg, parts of Vaud and the Bernese Jura, the advertising window has been broadcast for years in some cases. The cable networks in Lausanne and Geneva, on the other hand, only broadcast the original M6 signal - without Swiss advertising - out of consideration for the SRG. At the beginning of the year, however, the SRG's appeal against the advertising window was rejected at second instance, breaking the ice. However, the lawsuit has since been referred to the Federal Supreme Court.    
Markus Knöpfli

Youth organizations Two image spots celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Swiss Scout Movement. Directed by a 17-year-old, a 30-strong crew shot the two twelve-second cinema spots to give the anniversary of the Scout Movement a public face. The scouts from the municipality of Maur developed the concepts themselves and then filmed the commercials in Zurich's Balgrist school building and in a private house in Forch. The 17-year-old director Mark Bosshard, known in the scouts as Seismo, and a team of 14 to 20-year-olds are responsible for the film. A professional filmmaker and scout father supported the crew. The commercials can be seen in all major cinemas in Switzerland in June and are primarily aimed at an adult audience. They draw attention to the fact that the young people in the Scouts achieve great things - using all their strength. With sentences like "After every Whitsun camp it's the same, and that's been the case for 100 years. Sorry dear teachers, nature is hard", they apologize with a wink to teachers and parents for the consequences of the exhaustion that afflicts scouts after their outdoor activities.
Carole Scheidegger

 Metadesign, the Zurich agency for branding and corporate identity, has designed the cross-media presence for Bossi. In April 2007, Betty Bossi Verlag launched Bossi, a new product. This is aimed primarily at connoisseurs with little time but a great desire to cook and eat and is intended to provide answers to culinary questions in an inspiring form.  
The magazine, which is published six times a year, presents a mixture of easy-to-cook recipes and articles about food, drink and hospitality. It also offers
a range of tools designed to make loading, shopping and cooking easier and to give people with limited time access to the world of indulgence.  
Metadesign develops strategies and corporate design systems for the appearance of brands and companies in all media, including for ABB, Audi, Bluewin, Bucher, Migros Bank and Mövenpick. The agency employs around 250 people in Zurich, Berlin and San Francisco.

Vitamine Bischofszell Nahrungsmittel is launching an unusual advertising campaign for specially flavored fruit juices called Cosmo. These are now available at Migros in three exotic flavors: Mexico, Marocco and India. The fruit juices will be distributed by rickshaw drivers who will pick up customers in front of large Migros stores over the next few weeks and take them to their desired destination with a rickshaw decorated in the Cosmo colors. The promotion was developed and implemented by Face in Frauenfeld.

The new Swisscom Napster campaign from Publicis is colorful and mobile. The golden age of mobile operators is over. Telephone calls alone no longer generate dream sales. Prices are eroding. Customers want more and more for less and less money. The companies are trying to retain customers with convergence strategies. Suddenly a cell phone is also a television. Suddenly a cell phone is also a jukebox. Swisscom wants to cash in on music and is entering into a partnership with the music exchange Napster. Every consumer can access songs regardless of time and place. Customers have access to more than 3 million pieces of music via cell phone. Hobby DJs can search for a hit on the go, listen to it first, then download it and play it immediately.
Publicis advertisers are now also making the jukebox cell phone a topic. The centerpiece of the current Swisscom campaign is a TV spot by director Uwe Falde, who has already shot clips for bands such as Depeche Mode, Franz Ferdinand and Rammstein. The agency uses the play button to communicate the new music feeling. In the commercial, the button is the trigger for music, which becomes visible on the streets with lots of color. The illustrations brought to life are the independent key visual of the campaign and are integrated into advertisements, posters and other advertising materials. The graphics were drawn by Timo Böse. The spot is accompanied musically by the Berlin electronica producer Dishwasher Junior.
Despite the creative campaign, the partnership between the music exchange Napster and Swisscom has met with little enthusiasm. The download practice of the new service is criticized in forums and weblogs. Although consumers can avoid the detour via a computer and access a huge range of music, the price of a download is relatively high. A single song costs 2.50 francs. By comparison, the price on iTunes is 1.50 francs. The rights management is also questionable. Buyers can only play their songs on cell phones and PCs with a Windows operating system. Playback on the popular MP3 player iPod is only possible with special computer skills. In addition, the claim "Live music with Napster Mobile and 3 million songs" currently only applies to 600,000 of the 4.5 million cell phone customers in the country. The rest do not have a compatible device for Swisscom's latest service.
Uncertain future It remains to be seen how the business with digital music on cell phones will develop. Like Orange and Sunrise, which have been active in this market since 2005, Swisscom has high hopes for the Napster strategy. Whether it will succeed in launching a music revolution, as the headphone cat Napster did years ago, is questionable. According to the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper, sales are tiny. In 2006, digital music worth 7 million francs was sold, which is 3.6 percent of the total market. If downloads remain so expensive in the future and usage rights are subject to restrictions, the three local mobile operators will probably have to wait a long time for the big money.
Christian Lüscher

Claims The best advertising texts are those that are so internalized by the vernacular that they are quoted at every right and wrong opportunity. The wrong opportunity seems to us to be this lettering above the entrance to Panta Rhei. The statement according to the original idea of Publicis is more than exhausted here, because "also" a restaurant is a bit of an exaggeration for the latest thing from the Lake Zurich Navigation Company. It should read: "I'm just a restaurant" - because, as we all know, this ship is not suitable for proper swimming.

 The Swiss telecommunications company Sunrise has also recently launched a web log. The Sunrise media team wants to offer "in-depth information, open dialog and a high level of transparency". This includes "official statements on current topics, reactions to published articles, announcements of events, downloads and media surveys". However, since Sunrise announced the mass redundancies - the elimination of 140 full-time positions - there has been a great deal of silence on the new company blog, as reported by the Zurich Press Association. The reason: the press spokespersons are also among those fired. The Sunrise media release on the job cuts states that the company is suffering from "the high price pressure in the telecommunications industry." The largely saturated market is extremely competitive, it continues. Cost pressure will therefore continue to rise, forcing companies to increase efficiency. This will probably also include the dismissal of press spokespersons.

SF info television is to be allowed to broadcast advertising in future. The private broadcasters want to prevent this. After the new Radio and Television Act came into force on April 1, SRG SSR will receive a new license. The Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) submitted the draft for consultation at the beginning of May. One innovation in particular is striking: all SRG SSR television channels will now be treated equally with regard to advertising. Tacitly, the draft license thus also allows the SF info repeat channel the same amount of advertising that Swiss Television (SF) was previously only allowed to broadcast on its two main channels. SF is already in the starting blocks: "Publisuisse is working with SF to prepare the commercial offerings," says SRG spokesperson Daniel Steiner on request. The channel began trial operation via the cable networks in the greater Zurich area in May 1999. At the beginning of 2001, the channel received a definitive license that allowed it to broadcast on cable networks throughout Switzerland and also via satellite - but only after a tough struggle because the private local broadcasters had resisted advertising. After all, the local TV stations almost all operate according to the same pattern as SF info: they also repeat the information programs every hour. SF info was therefore only approved six years ago as a completely advertising-free program. Even sponsorship, for example for "Meteo", was not possible until now.
Private individuals fear expansionWhile the ban on advertising on SF info is now to be dropped. But the channel will remain what it is. According to the new concession, more than the hourly repetition of information programs and the occasional broadcast of major events - such as the World Economic Forum or debates from the Federal Parliament - is not possible. However, the channel could still be attractive for commercials. It is the only SRG service to be broadcast unencrypted via satellite. And because SF info almost exclusively broadcasts self-produced repeats, the SF channel generates hardly any costs. Even low advertising revenues are therefore likely to be of interest.
The fact that the ban on advertising on SF info is to be dropped has met with harsh criticism from SRG SSR's competitors. The consultation period for the draft of the new SRG license has just expired. In their statements, Sat1 Schweiz and ProSieben as well as 3+, StarTV and the Swiss Press Association demand that the ban on advertising on SF info should remain in place. Sat1 also fears that SF info could be upgraded with attractive sports broadcasts because the term "events of national importance" in the concession allows this in principle.
Together with the HDTV trial channel HD suisse, which will begin operation in December of this year, SRG SSR could double its commercial offering in German-speaking Switzerland in one fell swoop, according to the comments. Accordingly, the private broadcasters are also calling for a ban on advertising for HD suisse. 3+ and the Swiss Press Association even want to cancel HD suisse altogether. SRG spokesperson Daniel Steiner vehemently opposes this: "If you look at the market shares in 2006, the following picture emerges: SF1 23.7 percent, SF2 9.7 percent and SF info 1.1 percent. This means that SRG SSR's commercial offering in German-speaking Switzerland will increase by 3.3 percent with SF info. The test channel HD suisse will not account for a noticeable increase in the volume of offerings due to its very limited reception."    
The new concession requires SRG SSR for the first time to comply with quality standards that explicitly distinguish it from commercial broadcasters. In the draft of the license, these are described as credibility, a sense of responsibility, relevance and journalistic professionalism. The federal government has never imposed such requirements on SRG before.
In the consultation, the journalists' associations welcomed the new quality article in the draft concession. SRG SSR is also positive, but takes issue with the wording that "market share" should not be the primary deciding factor when measuring success. Such a "performance-independent approach" is dangerous because it could call into question the acceptance of fees, writes SRG.
SRG is also critical of the fact that its online offerings are explicitly restricted to information that is directly related to the programs. This was already a hotly debated point during the legislative process. This is because Bakom has complied with the wishes of the press, which did not want its online offerings to be in competition. In fact, the Swiss Press Association has now gone one better in its statement: It proposes defining an upper limit on how much the SRG may spend on online offerings.
Adrian Scherrer

 British Sky Broadcasting, the largest provider of satellite television in the UK and Ireland, wants to let viewers decide which advertisements they see. Similar to television "on demand", the company wants to let viewers decide when they see which commercial, as Medianet.at writes. Sky recently introduced interactive smart advertising: The idea behind it is that advertising should be a service and not an interruption. At the beginning of a program, a short commercial of around 30 seconds runs with an invitation to see more about the product shown or the creation of the commercial at the end of the program. Viewers can press a button to request the longer commercial or visit the manufacturer's homepage, view dealer lists or order product samples. The long-form advertisement lasts three to four minutes on average.
For advertisers, however, this results in additional creative work: instead of one commercial, they have to develop several in order to meet the requirements of interstitial advertising as well as short and long commercials. According to Medianet.at, advertising customers such as Carlsberg, Sony and Honda are already using this form of advertising. Sky plans to test how viewers respond to the "on demand" long form of advertising over the next few weeks.