The local search engine beat SBB and SRG in the final. Former Comcom President Fulvio Cacca received the ICT prize of honor. After the Netzwoche readers' votes were counted, Local.ch was still almost four percentage points behind SBB's mobile ticketing and only just one percentage point ahead of MX3.ch in second place. However, with the active help of the audience at the award night, the Publigroupe subsidiary finally came out on top: In a photo finish, it overtook the SRG music platform with a total of 18.6 percent of the votes. MX3.ch (18.0%) and SBB Mobile Ticketing (17.9%) followed in second and third place. Eurospider, Liip, LTV Yellow Pages, Namics and Zeix were also delighted to be the search platform's executive partners. In addition to the Master, the Local.ch team also took home the trophy for winning the Technology Quality category. The SRG music platform MX3.ch from Electronlibre in Lausanne won two categories - Online Marketing and Public Affairs. SBB also won in two categories, namely Mobile Ticketing (Technology Innovation; run by SBB Informatik) and Gleis 7 (Online & Mobile Campaigns; run by Maxomedia). The projects Jura.com (Usability; designed by Unic) and Artmodul.ch (Business Efficiency; designed by Phil + Co.) can also call themselves Best of Swiss Web this year. However, the Creation expert jury did not want to choose a winner. Creation jury president Christian Erni defended the quality standards of his committee: all projects lacked one or two points to be completely convincing. The ICT Lifetime Award was presented by the Best of Swiss Web Association for the first time this year. The honorary award is intended for people who have made a special contribution to the promotion of the Swiss ICT sector. In the year of the liberalization of the telecommunications market, former Comcom President Fulvio Caccia was selected as the first recipient of the award.

 Leonardo DiCaprio criticizes Bush's environmental policy, filmmaker Michael Moore scourges the American healthcare system as immoral and barbaric in his new film Sicko. The 60th International Film Festival proves that anti-Americanism is not only appropriate, but also a good advertising strategy. Once again, Moore shakes a cornerstone of US society. His documentary "Sicko" deals with the glaring shortcomings of the US healthcare system. According to Moore, many Americans do not have health insurance and medical care is only provided for commercial reasons, which is "immoral". The film depicts the usual polemic individual stories, such as the bankruptcy of a married couple who were unable to pay their medical bills after suffering a heart attack and cancer. At the end of his film, Moore attempts to reach the Guantánamo prison camp in Cuba by ship. On board: a group of 9/11 patients. They were to be treated there because the medical care for the terror suspects in Guantánamo was better than that of the rescue workers in the USA. Now the US Treasury Department is investigating for violating the Cuba embargo. Moore is facing a fine or prison sentence. The out-of-competition film received much applause after the press screening. Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio is riding the green wave: "George W. Bush has done very little to protect the environment," said DiCaprio at the Cannes Film Festival on Saturday. There he presented his new film "The 11th Hour". The documentary analyzes the state of the environment and the expected consequences of its destruction. The work was co-produced by DiCaprio, who also took on the role of narrator.

 The Central Switzerland Public Relations Society ZSPR has introduced an annual rotation principle for the presidency. André Gassmann was elected as the first annual president at the general meeting. He replaces Annette Hirz after two years in office, but she will continue to work on the board. Iris Isenschmid and Alexandra Karpf are new members of the ZSPR's governing body. The new President André Gassmann is Head of Marketing/Communications at "Wer liefert was?". Barbara Salm, communications consultant at Suva, was appointed as this year's Vice President and will become President next year in accordance with the new regulations. Iris Isenschmid and Alexandra Karpf were also elected as new members of the ZSPR Board. Iris Isenschmid is Head of Communications at EWL Energie Wasser Luzern, Alexandra Karpf is Head of Marketing and Communications at the HSA Lucerne School of Social Work. The ZSPR has around 130 members and organizes PR events eight times a year. The next event on the subject of "10 years of Mobility CarSharing" will take place on June 5, 2007, as announced by the association.

 On Friday evening, there was an incident lasting around two hours at the regional broadcaster TeleBielingue involving 13 Kurdish activists who forced their way into the editorial offices. The police ended the action without violence. According to a report by SDA, the activists forced their way into the editorial offices at 5.30 p.m. and demanded that a message be broadcast on the evening news, as editor Samuel Déjardin said on Saturday in response to a report by TSR radio in French-speaking Switzerland. The editors rejected the demands and finally alerted the police. The activists left at around 7.30 pm. No one was arrested. It remained unclear on Saturday whether the broadcaster would press charges.

 Thousands of books soon online: The collection of the University of Lausanne is like a journey through the great works of Swiss and French-language literature. Soon, great works will be accessible to everyone worldwide, as the library of the University of Lausanne is the first French-language library to join the Google Book Search project. "Book lovers and literary researchers from Australia to the Antilles and from Mali to Vietnam will be able to discover and explore these books online," enthuses the Lausanne institution. Google and the University of Lausanne are working together to digitize the university's many thousands of royalty-free works so that anyone interested can view, search, read and even download the complete texts from the library's historical and special collections at any time. Library Director Hubert A. Villard says: "We are opening our library to the world in the truest sense of the word. The educational opportunities are phenomenal and we are excited about our work with Google on this project". The University of Lausanne joins Oxford University, Complutense Madrid, the Bavarian State Library and the Library of Barcelona as the fifth European library to join the project.

 Napster was a big hit as an illegal file-sharing platform, but business has not really taken off with a commercial subscription model. For the past financial year, the former terror of the music industry reported a loss of 36.8 million dollars. The loss was therefore significantly lower than the previous year's figure of 54.9 million dollars. Turnover increased by 17 percent to 111.1 million dollars. The number of customers rose by 37 percent to 830,000. As an illegal file-sharing platform among Internet users, Napster is said to have had over 60 million users at the beginning of the decade. The music industry, which blames file-sharing networks for the decline of its business, forced the closure of Napster in court. A subscription service is now offered under the well-known brand. Customers can listen to unlimited music from the Napster catalog as long as they pay a fixed fee.

 Amazon.com wants to offer millions of music titles for sale on the Internet without copy protection by the end of the year. On Wednesday, Amazon presented the British music group EMI with artists such as Coldplay and Norah Jones as a major partner. However, songs from over 12,000 other music labels will also be offered, said Amazon boss Jeff Bezos according to SDA. Without the so-called copyright management (DRM), music in MP3 format can be copied as often as desired and played on devices from different manufacturers. The market entry of online retailer Amazon could give the trend towards selling music without copy protection a major boost. EMI had already announced that it would sell music without copy protection via Apple's leading Internet store iTunes Store, among others. However, the other major music companies insist on blocking the copying of songs purchased on the Internet. However, the further accelerated decline in CD sales in recent months is forcing the music industry to think about new business models.

 With Michel Comte, Specter now represents one of the most internationally renowned Swiss photographers: over 700 subjects from Comte's 25-year career are now available online. Most of them were taken for publications such as Vogue, Vanity Fair, GQ, Interview, Allure, Stern, etc. His images can be found at Ringier-specter.ch in the RBD image archive using the search term Michel Comte.  
Michel Comte has taken portraits of hundreds of stars since 1980, including Sharon Stone, Robbie Williams, Sophia Loren, Geraldine Chaplin and Charlotte Rampling, as well as sports stars such as Mike Tyson, Muhammad Ali, Anna Kournikova and Serena Williams. Michel Comte is the only photographer in the world who has repeatedly photographed Michael Schumacher in private and who has also taken exceptional pictures of Roger Federer off the pitch. Michel Comte has published numerous books and exhibited his work in major museums.
 
Specter is a creative service center for visual content and resources. Ringier Documentation Image (RDB) is one of the largest image archives in Switzerland with a collection of over 10 million photos and manages photographs from the First World War to the present day.

Soft drinks Reinhold has invented a new font for Rivella and now wants to launch a major campaign. Every child knows it and adults love to drink it too: Rivella, one of the 20 power brands in Switzerland. After many years of success, Reinhold has now launched a new image and a nationwide campaign for the "Swiss national drink". A doctor's widow from Zug once inherited a recipe for a whey drink from her husband. She wanted to offer this prescription formula to a young man for sale in America in 1950. In the land of unlimited possibilities, however, it was not formulas but products that were in demand. So Rivella has remained Swiss. Robert Barth, the brother of the American traveler, began testing the recipe, opened the first production facility in Stäfa and moved the rapidly growing company to Rothrist in 1954.
Since then, Rivella has been on a steady upward trajectory. "Keep it up to date, make it younger," is how Reinhold Weber describes the mission to continue giving the popular brand the necessary boost.
Old claim remainsThe last campaign advertised with celebrities and the claim "What color is your thirst?". Even with the change of agency after Reinhold won the pitch, he now wants to spin the claim further. Otherwise, however, everything has changed quite a bit. Reinhold has also designed new lettering for the new bottle. Reinhold's new key visual for the advertising is the raised index finger. The symbol that everyone in the pub uses to order drinks will be "leased" by Rivella in future.
"A brand this big can't have a quiet campaign," Reinhold is convinced. That's why the company invested in two visibly elaborate films with Manifesto Films. These were realized by Reto Salimbeni in Vancouver. Canada was also chosen as the location for the photos because it has a Chinatown with 300,000 Chinese people. And these were to visualize Rivella's previously neglected reference to the exotic Far Eastern green tea in the commercial. Incidentally, Rivella green now has 50 percent less sugar. But this is only mentioned in the small print.
Andreas Panzeri

Fruit association Unikat has invented new, refreshing episodes for the apple juice films. In its third year of collaboration with the Swiss Fruit Association, Unikat is once again focusing on refreshing apple juice episodes. Inspired by the football euphoria in Switzerland, a new commercial was produced. It shows once again that "something fabulous" can always happen when you drink apple juice - a small miracle, a funny surprise. In the TV commercial "Balloon", which is currently being widely used, you can see a junior goalkeeper who, thanks to a sip of apple juice, kicks the soccer ball directly into a hot air balloon basket floating high up in the sky. To the astonishment of the balloonists and the young footballers down on the pitch, Unikat took the theme of football and goalies even further: Together with Teil.ch, an online game was developed, which already has a good number of fans at www.apfelsaft.ch. The aim of the game is to hit as many hot air balloons as possible with soccer balls. The football theme was also taken further with PR activities and media cooperations as part of Unikat's integrated communication presence with cR Kommunikation. Here, a multifaceted cooperation with 20 Minuten is underway in which, among others, the well-known goalie Fabio Coltorti appears as an apple juice ambassador.
Andreas Panzeri

Printing MAN Roland presented two variants of its Roland 700 series in time for the forthcoming IPO After some difficult years, printing press manufacturer MAN Roland achieved a turnaround in 2005 and closed the 2006 financial year successfully. In the highly competitive sheetfed sector, the Group was even able to increase sales by eleven percent, although sales had also declined in previous years. Since then, the investment company Allianz Capital Partners (ACP) has been responsible for the company's fortunes. Following the spin-off from the industrial group MAN AG, majority shareholder ACP has big plans for the former printing press division and now wants to float MAN Roland on the stock market.
Success factors for printAt a technology forum in the spring, the company presented its new strategy and emerging trends alongside new "next generation" presses to around 600 printing experts from Europe, overseas and the Far East. According to Markus Rall, MAN Roland Druckmaschinen AG's Executive Board member responsible for sheetfed presses, the acquisition is a worthwhile investment for ACP. "Because," Rall explained at the Technology Forum with conviction, "print has a future and is a market with growing potential."
The success of print is no accident. MAN Roland makes a whole lot of factors count here: The company relies on smart design, consistent brand management, consistent color, target group-oriented editorial quality, haptic uniqueness, flexibility and topicality, attractive page formats and papers, exciting finishes and effects, cross-marketing and cross-selling and - last but not least - innovative production technologies. According to Rall, this package of measures can create added value for readers and advertising customers.
MAN Roland has obviously also asked around among print buyers. They have clear expectations, such as faster implementation from the idea to the print product, expect a differentiated quality offering and, as was to be expected, are looking for price flexibility.
Value Added Printing as the answerIn addition to digital printing and increasing price competition, MAN Roland also identifies strategic realignments among print shops as trends: According to the company, companies are diversifying and increasingly transforming themselves into media service providers. Of course, this is not without consequences for printing press manufacturers. They are focusing on technical approaches such as networking and automation, but are also becoming increasingly involved as providers of system solutions and are focusing more and more on consulting expertise.
MAN Roland wants to help its customers meet these requirements. Under the umbrella term Value Added Printing, the printing press manufacturer is focusing on efficiency (through new press concepts) and value (through new business models). As far as efficiency is concerned, the world's second-largest press manufacturer has presented two new presses based on its Roland 700 Next Generation press platform, the Roland 700 DirectDrive and Roland 700 HiPrint, which the company sees as the answer to the propagated Value Added Printing approach for the sheetfed printing segment.
Highlights of the two New Generation models are the enlarged print format (740 ¥ 1050 or 780 ¥ 1050), an increased printing speed of 17,000 sheets per hour (straight printing) and 13,000 sheets per hour in straight and repeat printing respectively, as well as the new option of deactivating individual printing units in long press configurations. With the DirectDrive version, the Group is tackling makeready times, which are becoming increasingly important in times of decreasing print runs, while MAN Roland will be offering all-rounders among print shops a very versatile press in the future with the HiPrint.
If the Group's concepts, including the rounding off of the 700 series, are accepted by the market, then the IPO could also further boost the recovery of MAN Roland's sheetfed printing division.
 
 
 
Two segments, two machine concepts 
With the Roland 700 Next Generation press series, MAN Roland is pursuing two approaches as part of an overall strategy that the company calls Added Value Printing: On the one hand, the Group is focusing on efficiency through new press concepts and, on the other, on product value through new business models. With the Roland 700 DirectDrive and the Roland 700 HiPrint, MAN Roland offers the corresponding products. The company is thus addressing a group of customers who carry out many job changes and print runs in the lower thousand range.
The Roland DirectDrive with directly driven plate cylinder was developed for the customer group that primarily requires fast makeready processes. The reduction in makeready time with the Roland 700 DirectDrive is essentially based on the decoupling of processes. In concrete terms, the plate cylinder can be provided with new printing plates in parallel, while the printer can simultaneously wash the inking and dampening units and start the ink feed.
The vast majority of customers are primarily looking for a reliable all-round machine that covers a wide range of products. Due to their job structure, they focus less on maximum automation and more on configuration diversity. MAN Roland has built the Roland 700 HiPrint for this segment. The possible configurations range from the four- and five-color versions to long presses with or without perfecting to the top-of-the-range Roland 700 HiPrint Ultima, which can be individually configured with inking and coating units and intermediate dryers to meet the user's specific requirements. The outstanding feature of the Roland 700 HiPrint is its wide range of inline finishing options. In addition to various coating processes (single and double coating, UV technology, spot and effect coating), this also includes cold foil transfer with the InlineFoiler Prindor as well as embossing and die-cutting.
 
Jürgen Franck
 

  The Zurich advertising agencies Ruf Lanz, Walker, Euro RSCG, JvM, Publicis and Lowe/DraftFCB have also made it to the final of the prestigious New York Festivals competition. Ruf Lanz's "George W. Bush" radio ad for Sport Factory Outlet was shortlisted three times in the categories Retail Stores, Best Humorous Spot and Campaign. The print motif "Prince Charles" for Airport Outlet also has a chance of winning a medal in the Retail Stores category. And finally, the Suva campaign by Ruf Lanz is well in the running: with the subject "Without warming up" in the Personal Development & Safety category. The campaigns of the Walker advertising agency are also pleased once again with the good results from the Big Apple. After winning two silver and three bronze medals at the Oneshow Awards last week, the smallest advertising agency has now been shortlisted a total of eight times for its latest work at the New York Festivals. The Fleurop spot "Wedding Day" is represented four times in the final round. In the Retail Stores, Best Copywriting and Cinema Commercials categories. Anna Massay was also nominated for her role as a widow in the Best Performance category. Two shortlist places also go to the latest Fleurop TV commercial series "Hunt for words". Both the series and the TV spot "Zelt" scored well in the Retail category. In the Business to Business category, the audio manifesto "Small" was shortlisted. This homage to the size of the Walker advertising agency, written by Tim Delaney, was also honored in the Best Copywriting category.
The Zurich branch of Euro RSCG is represented seven times in the final of the New York Festival. With four nominations, the biggest hopeful is the work "Love Life, Stop Aids" for the Federal Office of Public Health, which was voted "Campaign of the Year" by the Swiss public. The "Browser" online campaign for 20 Minuten, the "Shark" ad for Zueri-Sub's underwater cameras and the campaign for the Zurich Chamber Orchestra also have a chance of winning bronze, silver or gold.
Jung von Matt/Limmat is competing in the NYF International Advertising Awards with six entries. The Zurich agency qualified for the final with the following entries: "Wave" for Beach Mountain in the "Apparel" and "Retail Stores" categories, "Playground" for Health Promotion Switzerland in the "Health & Hygiene" category, "Chameleon" for Panasonic in the "Home Entertainment" category, "Love curves?" for Mini in the "Automobiles" category and "Agonize!" for the U28 competition of the ADC/BSW creative school in the "Best Illustration" category.
A total of 12 works by Publicis Zurich have made it onto the shortlist. After its great success at the One Show, where the agency was even honored with a Gold Pencil, it is now moving on to the NY Festivals final with work for clients such as UBS, Chocolat Frey, ZVV, Schauspielhaus and Blaues Kreuz. The nominations were made in a total of 11 categories: "Best Art Direction", "Transportation/Travel/Tourism", "Business to Business Products", "Financial Services", "Retail Stores", "Health & Hygiene", "Apparel", "Auto Products and Service", "Guerrilla Advertising", "Civic/Social Education" and "Confections/Snacks".
Lowe/DraftFCB is also still in the running for an award at the NY Festivals as a finalist in the Innovative Media, Public Services category.
Every year, the New York Festivals jury outstanding advertising from all over the world. In the next round, it is decided which works will be awarded a Bronze, Silver or even Gold World Medal in New York.