After six years as a copywriter, concept developer and person responsible for TV commercials at the By Heart advertising agency, Thomas Campolongo became self-employed on April 1, 2007. He has set up his office by the lake in an old factory building on Bachstrasse in Zurich Wollishofen. His portfolio includes PKZ, Adidas and Parisienne.

Mach Basic 2007-1 A sobering picture: Compared to the 2006-1 evaluation, 35 titles have lost significant readers, only 4 have gained. Overall, Mach Basic 2007-1 shows almost 1.5 million fewer contacts than Mach Basic 2006-1 due to losses by all title groups. Among the publishers, Edipresse and Axel Springer (i.e. Jean Frey and Handelszeitung together) lost the most. As a result, all other publishers gained market share despite losses. The number of titles with more than one million readers has fallen to six. Of the four publications with gains, three are from German-speaking Switzerland and one from French-speaking Switzerland (see table). Of the titles with significant losses, 26 are published in German, 8 in French and 1 in Italian.  
The financial and business press suffered the biggest drop. It lost over ten percent of its contacts year-on-year. One of the main reasons for this was the significant loss of Bilanz and Bilan. The two monthly magazines doubled their publication frequency at the beginning of 2005 and were methodologically disadvantaged as a result. This is because the LPA method gives titles with a lower publication frequency a starting advantage that cannot be precisely determined, as it asks about usage in the last publication interval. The longer this interval is, the higher the probability that usage has taken place. As the comparison with the 2006-2 evaluation shows, the decline has calmed down, especially for the balance sheet.
 
Has 20 Minuten already reached its zenith? Subscription daily newspapers have also lost contacts. In German-speaking Switzerland, however, only the Tages-Anzeiger's loss of 1.1 percentage points is significant. The gain of 1.1 points by the Mittelland Zeitung, on the other hand, is mainly due to the inclusion of the Basellandschaftliche Zeitung. In French-speaking Switzerland, the losses of Le Matin (-3.1 points) and 24 Heures (-2.4 points) are significant. The reach of 24 Heures is now lower than before the merger with the two La Presse titles. Due to the now completed expansion, 20 Minuten (+3.2 points) has probably made significant gains for the last time. The paper now has the third-highest reach of all individual titles in German-speaking Switzerland with 28%, behind the two cooperative titles Coop-Zeitung (62.9%) and Migros-Magazin (54.8%), making it the daily with the highest reach.
 
The Sunday press, which is accustomed to success, has also been hit. After a significant loss, Le Matin Dimanche now has the lowest reach since 2000 at 40.6 percent. The SonntagsZeitung has also lost readers. Its reach has fallen from 19.7 to 18.8 percent after a significant loss. However, the new, not (yet) reported Sunday edition of Südostschweiz is unlikely to have had an impact. In any case, the reach of the SonntagsZeitung has not changed significantly in the economic areas concerned.
 
In the popular press, the three titles with the highest reach - TV täglich, Beobachter and Schweizer Illustrierte - have all lost significant reach. Weltwoche has also lost readers. Among women's magazines, the rainbow magazine Glückspost and Brigitte suffered the most. The bright spot in this segment is Joy, one of the four press titles whose reach has increased significantly. In addition to a large number of smaller specialty magazines, various customer magazines in particular suffered significant losses. These include Migros-Magazin, Drogistenstern, Touring (German and Italian) and the advice magazine K-Tipp. Conversely, the French-language pharmacy title Pharmacie chez soi is the only winner in French-speaking Switzerland and in the specialty press.
 
Ueli Custer
 
 
Mach Basic supplement Detailed analyses of the new Mach Basic can be found in the special edition of Media Trend Journal, which is enclosed with this issue of Werbewoche. Additional copies can be obtained from the publisher.
E-mail: [email protected]

Awards At the ADC Festival in Berlin, the Swiss agencies that took part for the first time performed only moderately. Nevertheless, they won five nails. "The Swiss have recognized that a market is opening up in Germany. That's why they are using the opportunity to introduce themselves here. And we welcome this, because it means more competition for us," explains Michael Preiswerk. The spokesman of the ADC Germany board and managing partner of the GPP advertising agency in Stuttgart was born in Switzerland. At the press conference for the awards ceremony, he was patriotic - and therefore slightly disappointed that the Swiss agencies invited for the first time only submitted 111 works for the ADC Germany showcase. The Austrians, who were also new to the competition, narrowly beat "us" with 127 entries. Austria was also a little luckier when it came to winning. Four silver "nails" (as the "cubes" are called in Germany) as well as four bronze and four shortlist places went to the descendants of the Habsburgs. The Helvetians took a total of five nails. Pius Walker and his team won silver and bronze twice each. One of these was a silver nail for Amnesty International. The rest, plus four shortlist awards, went to Fleurop, with Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett taking the fifth nail in the coffin with bronze for Mary Woodbridge. Wirz was enough for a nomination on the shortlist with the photographer's film for Mobiliar, which has already won a Lion in Cannes and several other international awards.
This rating shows how subjective competitions are. This is also illustrated by Walker's Fleurop film for Mother's Day. After the first round of judging, which was still secret, it was in first place in terms of points. After the discussion in the jury, it was only awarded bronze. As "the smallest advertising agency in the world", Walker nevertheless came in 10th place among all advertising agencies in the ranking of this competition. The overwhelming winner is Jung von Matt Germany with 10 silver, 21 bronze and 43 nominations.
A total of 20 expert juries awarded 13 gold, 53 silver and 128 bronze nails to 7875 entries. That is 49 nails more than in the previous year with an increase of 22 percent or 1521 submissions. The ADC Board of Directors considered this to be "quantity plus quality", as the level of work could be classified as very high in the sense of "intelligent communication for responsible consumers".
The competition has established itself as "the largest in the German-speaking world". In the future, everything is set to become even more international, with well-known names from England and France also planned as jury members. All the works submitted were exhibited in a former hangar at Berlin's Tempelhof Airport, where they formed "the largest creative show in the world".
Competition films and other reports about the award can now be viewed on the new Internet TV channel www.idee07.tv. Werbewoche strongly recommends clicking on the viral spot "Evolution" for Dove's campaign for more self-esteem. The film was celebrated with thunderous applause by the 3,000 guests at the awards ceremony, even though - or perhaps because - Ogilvy & Mather brought a certain spirit of advertising to film in a very self-critical way. Also worth seeing was a new campaign in the "Woodbridge" style with "Ron Hammer" from the Heimat agency for the Hornbach DIY chain. Both viral ideas were awarded gold.
Shadow plays" for VW by Grabarz & Partner or "Typofonie" by Jung von Matt for Konzerthaus Dortmund are artistically ingenious.
All award winners will be published in July in the ADC Yearbook, which will bear the meaningful title "Fehler frei".
Andreas Panzeri

Television After around ten years, Basler Zeitung Medien is ending the satirical show "Café Bâle" on SF 2, but is expanding its football talk program in view of Euro 08. "Café Bâle" celebrated its premiere on Sunday, October 1, 1995. Since then, the satirical program from Basler Zeitung Medien (BZM) has been broadcast every 14 days on SF 2 as part of the publisher's television program Presse-TV (PTV). But the Basel humor on the SRG channel will soon be over. "We are discontinuing Café Bâle from the summer break," says BZM CEO Beat Meyer. The reason: ratings have fallen continuously since 2003, with the program's market share dropping from 8 to 4.7 percent (see WW 10/07) - despite a relaunch last year. As recently as November, the Allschwil-based production company Allcomm Productions was still spouting optimism. "The renovation of the comedy show Café Bâle is beginning to take effect, the show is now reaching younger viewers as well as the regular audience and the ratings are higher than before," said co-owner Klaus Vieli in a press release at the time. Now he has to announce the definitive end to the actors. However, their contracts were due to expire in the summer anyway.
Allcomm itself gets off lightly. This is because BZM is expanding its football talk show, which has been produced almost monthly by Vieli's team since 2004. In future, the discussion program with footballers, coaches, sponsors, club officials and sports journalists will be broadcast every two weeks, replacing "Café Bâle" and alternating with Ringier's "Motorshow tcs". "PTV is thus creating a sports channel on Sunday evenings," says PTV Managing Director Hansjürg Deutsch. At the same time, it is hoped that this will attract more viewers to the football talk show, as this program also recorded a third fewer viewers in 2006 than in the previous year.
There will be further changes to PTV's Standpunkte program: The PTV Board of Directors decided to standardize the Saturday and Sunday evening program in terms of decor and appearance, but at the same time to make it more diverse. In addition to SonntagsBlick and NZZ, Basler Zeitung and Axel Springer Schweiz will also be involved in the editorial work from late summer. In addition, NZZ editor-in-chief Markus Spillmann and another journalist will replace the current hosts Hugo Bütler and Erich Gysling on the NZZ's Standpunkte.
But these are only the superficial PTV changes. The publishers' contract with SRG expires at the end of 2008 - and with it the license. That is why PTV is thinking about the future. "We are convinced that we want to continue with PTV. We still see cooperation with SRG as the only way for us publishers to be able to make TV on a national level," says PTV Chairman of the Board of Directors Wolfgang Frei. However, no official negotiations have yet taken place.
Frei also makes it clear that PTV will not be a supplicant. "SF 2 was conceived as a cooperation model from the outset, we are not a contractor here," he says. For this reason, the further procedure will soon be discussed with the Federal Office of Communications and then negotiated with SRG, not primarily with SF Director Ingrid Deltenre. The latter has recently made it clear on several occasions that she considers PTV to be a drag on SF 2.   
30 percent GermanAt their Annual General Meeting on March 19, PTV shareholders elected Ralph Büchi, CEO of Axel Springer Switzerland, to the PTV Board of Directors - in place of the previous Jean Frey CEO Filippo Leutenegger. Following the takeover of Jean Frey AG by Axel Springer, the Swiss branch of the German publishing house now holds 10 percent of PTV shares. As the German publishing group DTCP holds a further 20 percent of PTV, almost a third of the publishing television company is now in German hands. Ringier and NZZ each own 30 percent, Basler Zeitung Medien 10 percent.
 
 
Markus Knöpfli

 The battle for the best places - or rather the most expensive playing field - in Monopoly Switzerland is entering the final round. Until Saturday, March 31, the Swiss population can still take part and fight for their own canton's place in Monopoly. It looks like the canton of Thurgau is the most unpopular canton in Switzerland, or perhaps simply the canton with the fewest Monopoly enthusiasts or even Internet users who are willing to vote for their own canton. So far, Uri has won the race and if things continue like this, Paradeplatz will be displaced by the canton of Uri as the most expensive playing field. Clever marketing managers are probably taking advantage of the election by putting pro-Uri flyers in residents' letterboxes so that the canton is not only in the headlines every Easter due to the traffic jam at the Gotthard. 

 Erwin Kessler wins a dispute with the bilingual newspaper Le Lac from Murten. The Münchwilen district court ordered the newspaper to make a correction. The court confirmed to the SDA news agency that it had upheld the animal rights activist's complaint against Le Lac. The president of the Association Against Animal Factories sued because of statements in an article in the newspaper. In this article, the writer claimed that the Zurich High Court had sentenced Kessler to five months in prison and that he had been at the forefront of the fight against the establishment of the Amgen company in the Murten region. However, the judgment of the Zurich High Court against Kessler never became legally binding, as the Zurich Court of Cassation overturned it due to procedural flaws. The Münchwilen District Court also came to the conclusion in the Amgen case that Kessler had never publicly commented on the controversial establishment of the company in the agricultural zone.

Dölf Früh, Chairman of the Board of the new Media Swiss Group, is becoming a top player in the Swiss online market.A few weeks ago, Dölf Früh caused a stir in the Swiss media world when his Media Swiss AG, operator of www.gate24.ch, took over the e-business provider Xmedia with its successful Scout24 online platforms.Dölf Früh? The entrepreneur has so far worked in the background. However, the success story of why he will in future be running Switzerland's biggest competence center for online marketplaces and cross-media services could provide the material for a "textbook for entrepreneurs".
From its headquarters in Teufen, Appenzell, the Media Swiss Group today operates with 350 employees. The success story began just over 20 years ago with telephone stickers. In addition to important telephone numbers, these also featured advertisements from local businesses. Dölf Früh developed his business by producing village plans and geographical maps for local authorities. Traditional map publishers were too expensive for many communities. In this situation, some localities approached Früh with the request if he could realize map production at more favorable prices.
In 1986, Dölf Früh printed the first "rudimentary maps" and financed them with local advertising. "Unfortunately, the big cartographers didn't want to cooperate." So the self-made man started producing the maps himself on the basis of data from Swisstop. Since then, he publishes a new edition about every three years. "Today, we have a standard that is absolutely top of the line. We are the market leader and have covered the whole of Switzerland."
The entrepreneur Dölf Früh grew up as a farmer's son, did an apprenticeship as a craftsman, continued his education as a businessman, and then took the second educational path to earn his Matura. Even then, he financed this education by working in the field. "My basic business insight was that I realized early on that we operate in predatory markets everywhere. Whoever is stronger in marketing and has the stronger sales wins," says Früh, summarizing his recipe for success. In the spirit of strong sales, the tall Appenzeller already gathered a number of salespeople around him in his early days. According to Früh, he "slipped into the media industry rather by chance" at that time, but has consistently followed this path, built up know-how and trained people. Today, the new Media Swiss Group employs more than 100 sales staff at Media Swiss and, since the merger, an additional 50 sales staff from the Scout Group. Without doubt one of the most remarkable sales divisions in the Swiss media landscape. Dölf Früh was still on the road himself as a front man in the sales force until 1997. "The exciting thing was that I was able to go through all the stages myself, from a one-man operation to an entrepreneur with 350 employees."
What drove him? In view of the continuously growing business successes, Früh could soon have afforded a more peaceful life. Früh explains why he has not reduced his commitment despite his successes to this day: "The man on the street says, 'When I have a million, or maybe five, I'll go to the Bahamas. But you probably only have thoughts like that until you're financially satiated. Then other things come to the fore. The fascination of the work. The fun of developing. A company is like a river. When it stops flowing, it starts to stink." What flows must also grow. "That's when you're stuck in a fascinating task, you just want to keep moving forward."
For Dölf Früh and his ventures, this flow also meant constant adaptation to different media. "We try to link the old economy with the new. Doing one thing and resolutely tackling the other. This maxim of action helps us move forward again and again."
Media Swiss entered the still young medium of the Internet back in 1998. At first, Früh only carefully observed the developments. "Instead, we found a business model that yielded profits right from the start." Media Swiss also held out at the beginning of the new millennium when the Internet bubble burst in 2001. "Today, it's the case that the Internet is growing strongly and print remains reasonably stable." For Dölf Früh, this is a comfortable situation, since he is present in the interesting media genres with the cards and his Internet portals.
With all these activities, a third pillar inevitably had to be added if Media Swiss was to manage its finances properly. Since most of the approximately 100,000 customers come from the SME sector, many entrepreneurs here work with WIR money. His company has to "accept high seven-digit sums of WIR" per year. In order to be able to bring this WIR money back into circulation, Früh has built up his involvement in the real estate sector. "We constantly build on about ten construction sites and realize well-kept superstructures, which we then rent out and sell."
With Gate24 and now also with the various portals of Scout24, the Media Swiss Group, which was newly formed in 2007, has market-leading portals on offer. What have Dölf Früh and his new business partner Daniel Grossen done better than the competitors? Früh sees the basis for success "in the fact that we are shaped by the classic publishing environment. Many Internet marketplaces came into being because publishers knew that they would also have to go the Internet route. But a publisher with his classic publishing house has two souls in his chest: every franc that flows into the Internet breaks three francs out of the print business. "So you cannibalize yourself. But until you're ready to cannibalize yourself, it takes years in a publishing house for the decision to mature." With online-only portals, there is a different mindset and a different business plan. "We have free rein." Dölf Früh sees a major advantage for the future in the Scout24 umbrella brand. Competitors offer their services through several brands, "which requires a lot more marketing power and technology."
Today, various competencies are concentrated under the umbrella of the Media Swiss Group. In addition to 150 people in sales, the company has numerous specialists in technology and in the field of information technology, who are already providing support for interesting customers abroad.
A company with the new name Media Swiss Group since February sounds ambitious. "Yes, it's true, we have defined the strategic path to becoming a major group of companies," says Früh. Since German Telecom is also on board via a stake in Scout, the entrepreneur in Teufen can also imagine increased expansion abroad in the future.
The future of online marketplaces is undisputed for the managers of the Media Swiss Group. Media Swiss wants to "consolidate and expand" its leading position. Früh and Grossen want to occupy another field just as strongly in the near future. Their portals currently have "around six million visits per month. That's around 2.9 billion page impressions per year." And on sites that are used so intensively, advertising can be placed. "Here, we've marketed virtually nothing yet. That's about the same as if newspapers printed blank pages alongside their journalistic articles," Früh says.
And he reckons that there is still huge potential for his company to exploit here if the slowly awakening online advertising market of just under two percent in Switzerland eventually approaches the European average of ten percent.
Andreas Panzeri

 After last year's loss of 56.3 million, the internationally active Swiss retail group Valora has increased its net profit to 65.8 million. At 2.9 percent or CHF 82.0 million, the operating profit margin is within the forecast range. The return on invested capital more than doubled from around 4 percent to 10.6 percent. The Board of Directors will propose to the Annual General Meeting that a dividend of CHF 9 per share be distributed. In line with its revised strategy, Valora is clearly focusing on growth in its retail business. The Valora Trade division's Own Brands unit (production operations) is to be sold, the company announced on Wednesday. In a declining market environment, the Valora Press & Books division was able to maintain net revenues at the previous year's level of CHF 560.2 million. The companies in Austria and Luxembourg also increased their sales slightly thanks to the successful sale of additional products. The Swiss business, which with its high proportion of daily newspapers is most exposed to the market downturn, lost around 3 percent in sales. Thanks to good cost management, the division's operating profit margin increased to a pleasing 5 percent.
In press wholesaling, growth is linked to the concentration and expansion of distribution activities in new markets on the one hand and the development of new forms of distribution on the other. The increasing distribution of media content via digital channels calls for new business models which also open up profitable development opportunities for Valora. For this reason, the division is to be rebranded as Valora Media.
Finally, Valora is revising its previous outlook for this year slightly downwards. The company now anticipates an operating profit margin of around 3 percent for 2007 - and not 4 percent as announced last August.

Reader research Wemf Director Marco Bernasconi has been in office for less than 30 days - and already he has to intervene to clarify matters: On March 27, the French-speaking Swiss commuter newspapers 20 minutes and Matin bleu communicated readership figures "that are not always based on Wemf figures". This is surprising, as both titles are not yet included in Mach Basic 2007-1 published on the same day (see also page 21), although Wemf had carried out an extra study in French-speaking Switzerland from April to December 2006, which the two publishers were also allowed to publish on March 27. Apparently erroneous. The figures now published by Wemf itself are 309,000 readers for Matin bleu, which was launched on October 31, 2005, and 241,000 readers for 20 minutes, which was launched on March 8, 2006. 

Design She seems to be the darling of the virtual Figaros. After the car rental company Sixt once advertised with Angela Merkel and an extreme hairstyle - back then with her hair standing up in the headwind on a convertible ride - the chancellor, who has since been crowned the "most powerful woman in the world", has become a little more elegant. The computer-generated hairstyle from the KNSK agency caught the eye on a cover page for Dummy magazine. It illustrates a story on the subject of advertising and selling. The montage not only caught the eye at the newsstand, but also at the ADC competition in Germany. There, up-and-comer Merkel won again last weekend. This time gold in the magazine title category.

René Worni on tabloid optionsWhen it comes to the future of Switzerland's first and only tabloid, there is a great deal of perplexity. The decline in circulation has slowed down, as Ringier executives are more relaxed than ever. But the turnaround has not been achieved. Publisher Michael Ringier does not see this as a Blick-specific phenomenon, looking at the similar afflictions of the Bild newspaper in Germany. None other than Claus Larass, former editor-in-chief of Bild (formerly known as deputy CEO and head of the newspaper and thus Axel Springer's representative for Switzerland, so to speak), is working on the new Blick concepts. However, even these were not able to knock the socks off the reviewing project committee.
Former editor-in-chief and hardliner Peter Uebersax realizes that the makers missed the opportunity to turn Blick into a free title when the commuter press emerged. Publisher Ringier also admitted in good time that it had been caught on the wrong foot by the free press. But a free Blick goes against the grain for him too. He has repeatedly argued that journalistic content should, if you please, cost something. His conviction is intact, as the publisher wants Blick to remain a paid-for newspaper. Readers, especially in the rural areas of German-speaking Switzerland, treat themselves to this.
There, the view fits - or so the cliché would have it - into the ambience of pubs and inns, at regulars' tables with wrought-iron ashtrays, where only insiders take a seat of their own accord and spend the evening - or so the editors hope (not a cliché?) - gesticulating about the Germans in Switzerland. And in the city? Here, too, there are pubs and taverns where eye contact (also with Germans) is conceivable.
But the majority prefer to turn to 20 Minuten and Heute and the quality papers. City dwellers hardly ever gather around the journalistic regulars' table anymore. In this respect, it remains a mystery why Ringier's free paper for the younger generation is now called Heute and why it hasn't long since been used as Blick am Abend or Ausgeh-Blick or Freizeit-Blick to rejuvenate the flagship paper.
René Worni, Editor

Food Polyconsult in Bern is serving up a new campaign for Proviande featuring Swiss meat. "Swiss meat - everything else is a side dish." Proviande's advertising has been based on this recipe since 2005. After various below-the-line projects, Polyconsult was able to bring this budget to Berne following a pitch in 2004. The agency's first campaign involved a TV campaign, advertisements and posters in butchers' shops. The films and print subjects showed plates where the meat was omitted and only the side dish was shown for the disappointed protagonists. It worked. After nine months, the claim was already recognized by 54 percent of the population. The meat industry can report market growth of 1.3 percent for 2006 - and this in a saturated food market. Beef consumption increased for the third year in a row, by 5.6 percent in 2006. Overall, per capita consumption increased by 0.6 percent to 51.3 kilos per person per year. Thanks to good demand, domestic production of animals for slaughter increased by 2.7 percent.
The campaign has now been running for two years. Polyconsult is therefore convinced that the population knows the mechanism of this advertising and that the campaign can be developed further. The message remains the same. However, the implementation now shows the meat instead of the side dishes. The message is communicated: Swiss meat promises enjoyment and health. It is an essential part of a balanced diet.
"In the past, meat was often replaced by plant-based foods, but according to the latest scientific findings, it is once again the focus of a healthy and balanced diet," says Regula Kennel, Head of Communications at Proviande. The industry organization and Polyconsult took this rethink as an opportunity to turn the tables. Now meat substitutes and side vegetables are being targeted - with meat photos that make your mouth water. The "side dishes" are slightly provocative headlines. These ironic texts are intended to attract attention when viewed.
Julien Vonier took "wonderful photos", as CD Jürg Tscharner is pleased to report. Polyconsult chose a different approach and "deliberately didn't want a food photographer", but someone who is very good with light and can not only photograph perfect food, but above all create an atmosphere. "We wanted these pictures to stand out from the recipe book," says consultant Erich Schlumpf.
From June, the print subjects will also be accompanied by a TV commercial, which is currently being filmed by Rosas 'n' Co.    
Andreas Panzeri