The Belgian airline Brussels Airlines has caused a stir among passengers with its logo. A b on an Airbus, consisting of a total of 13 dots, caused fear and terror among superstitious Italian and US customers.  
After the aircraft with the 13-point logo was introduced last year, the airline received countless complaints in which passengers expressed their distrust of the magic number. They did not want to fly on a plane with an unlucky number in its logo, was the tenor. In order to calm the waves and not spoil business, the airline has now simply added a 14th dot, as pressetext.at writes.
 
Apparently, Brussels Airlines was inadequately advised when it came to marketing. Superstition still plays an important role in the marketing of products today. Depending on the culture, certain numbers have to be omitted in any case because they are not accepted or are considered unlucky. Brussels Airlines, for example, can count itself lucky not to offer flights to China, where 14 is considered an unlucky number.

The decision on whether to build new nuclear power plants in Switzerland is not only made by the Federal Council, but above all at the ballot box. The energy industry is aware of this, is investing millions and sent national coach Köbi Kuhn into the image battle over the justifiability of nuclear power. This spot caused heated debates: In a round of Jass with Köbi Kuhn, one player boasted about his solar watch - but it was running incorrectly. To recharge the watch, its owner interrupted the round of Jass and went outside, where it was pouring with rain. The message: idealists and spoilsports rely on renewable energies, realists and idols on nuclear power.

 
Energy Minister Leuenberger was not enthusiastic: "I'm grabbing my head", he said on Thursday's "Tagesgespräch" on Radio DRS. Axpo's broadside against renewable energies was counterproductive. The people will only approve a new nuclear power plant if everything is done for energy efficiency and renewable energies. Axpo took a different view: it merely wanted to "stimulate discussion".
 
Now Axpo has apparently had a change of heart. The energy company has renounced the controversial commercial in which the national team coach makes fun of solar energy. It was not the intention to upset anyone, said Axpo spokesman Rainer Meier in the Sonntags Zeitung.
 
 
 

Fit im Job magazine is starting its second year with a new editor-in-chief. Franziska Meier has taken over from Arnold Lanz, who successfully launched the magazine.  
According to a press release, Lanz was able to establish the magazine on the market within a short space of time. Now his successor Franziska Meier will continue to develop Fit in a targeted manner. Meier is 32 years old and has been working as a journalist, editor and producer in various media for ten years. She will take over responsibility for the editorial content of the magazine from the first issue of this year, which will be published at the end of February.

In future, children's programs will no longer be allowed to advertise food and drinks with a high fat, salt and sugar content. The Federal Council wants to stipulate this in the Radio and Television Ordinance.  
Initially, split-screen advertising and the placement of relevant products in the program will be banned. A ban on advertising following children's programs and programs with a predominantly under 16-year-old audience would go too far for the Federal Council, as proposed by EPP National Councillor Heiner Studer to SDA. There is already a general ban on interstitial advertising in children's programs.

Video editing via the web: Adobe is offering this in collaboration with the community website Photobucket. Photobucket customers can edit their recordings online for free and add music, effects, transitions and titles.  
The new web service was developed as an Adobe Flash application based on Adobe Flex and can be used from any computer on which the Adobe Flash Player is installed. No additional software downloads are necessary. The online video editing suite will initially be available as a public beta to Photobucket's premium customers. It is then expected to be available to all 35 million Photobucket members free of charge from March 2007. In the coming months, Adobe plans to announce further collaborations of this kind with Internet providers and other companies from the media sector. The resulting free offers are to be financed by advertising revenue. Adobe hopes that this strategy will sooner or later entice users of the new web services to upgrade to products such as Adobe Premiere Elements or Adobe Photoshop Elements.

A total of 7,875 works are competing for the Art Directors Club for Germany (ADC) competition nails this year, more than ever before. 1,521 more entries were submitted than last year, an increase of 22.32 percent. Creatives from Switzerland and Austria are also taking part for the first time.  
The creative industry thus confirms the significance of the ADC competition as the most important in the German-speaking world, as can be read on Horizont.at. The positive trend runs through all disciplines and is particularly evident in the areas of design (plus 71.33 percent), spatial staging (plus 39.33 percent) and dialog marketing (plus 37.89 percent). The ADC is responding to the current development of commercial communication by increasingly addressing non-classical disciplines. For example, the "Viral Films" category was added this year and immediately attracted 108 entries. For the first time, creatives from Austria and Switzerland are also taking part in the competition, with almost 400 entries submitted.
 
Around four weeks before the start of the festival, the 20 competition juries and their chairmen have also been determined. The jury chairman is communication designer Professor Thomas Rempen. The award ceremony will take place on the evening of March 24 at the ADC Berlin Festival 2007 from March 23 to 26, where all the entries will be on display.

Ringier is undergoing a castling under the motto "closer to the reader". While Thomas Passen moves from Magazines as Head of Publishing to the new Verlags Zeitungen (formerly Blick Verlag), the former Head of Blick Verlag, Dietrich Berg (previously Head of Blick Verlag), takes over the management of the reader market at Magazines. Beniamino Esposito will be promoted from Head of Advertising to Head of the Magazine Advertising Market.  
These changes, in line with the new direction, follow the reshuffles in the editorial offices that became known at the beginning of this week. The new SonntagsBlick editor-in-chief Marc Walder removed his deputy Susanne Mühlemann and appointed the Federal Parliament correspondent Christian Dorer and SI head of economics Peter Röthlisberger as deputy editors-in-chief. He also brought Kurt Felix from SI to SonntagsBlick as a freelance writer.

The media union Comedia held a rally at Ringier Print on Tuesday, attended by around 50 people, to protest against the outsourcing of jobs. Comedia accused the management of refusing to engage in dialog.  
Comedia Regional Secretary Peter Rymann told SDA that the protest was directed against poorer working conditions. Ringier Print wants to outsource 49 employees of the forwarding company to Imbach Logistik. According to Comedia, they would no longer be subject to the collective labor agreement (CLA) for the graphic arts industry. The employees would have to expect longer working hours, vacation cuts and lower wages. According to the union, those affected would receive a new employment contract, which they would have to sign within a month under threat of dismissal.

The Swiss translation market has been shaken up by InvaCon Translations, recently established in St.Gallen. With its 24-hour service, it guarantees availability even outside normal business hours.  
InvaCon has access to a worldwide network of several hundred specialist translators and covers almost every possible language and subject combination. The great advantage of the network is that the agency can react very quickly and is able to translate large volumes of text within a very short time. The jobs are assigned to specialist translators who have specialized in the relevant subject area. Thanks to the high level of quality and the unique price-performance ratio, InvaCon translates for numerous well-known companies such as Lufthansa, Helvetic Airways and Philips Electronic.

Absolute Development relaunched the online client magazine Emagazine for Credit Suisse. The magazine provides weekly background reports, videos and interviews on business, finance, culture and sport. With over 75,000 monthly readers, the online magazine is one of the company's most visited websites. However, the growing number of visitors has not yet been reflected on the rest of Credit Suisse's websites, as the content was largely isolated on a single platform. This inadequate networking was the main reason for the relaunch. The new In Focus website, which replaces Emagazine, is fully integrated into the Credit Suisse structure. Absolute Development has been developing and operating the online client magazine for Credit Suisse since 2002. Founded in 1996, the Zurich-based company realizes and operates web-based business and communication solutions. In addition to Credit Suisse, its clients include Phonak, Swatch and other companies.

The University of Bern received the "Best Paper Award" in the "Branding and Marketing Communications Track" category at the winter conference of the American Marketing Association (AMA) in San Diego on the topic of Creating Value through Marketing Experiences and Interactive Partnerships. Professor Dr. Harley Krohmer, together with his research assistants Lucia Malär and Bettina Nyffenegger, received the prestigious award for their research project. The AMA is a worldwide scientific association in the field of marketing.  
Krohmer holds the Chair of Marketing and is Director of the Institute for Marketing and Corporate Management at the University of Bern. He and his colleagues received the award for a study on brand personality. The study examines the effects on success of matching the brand personality with the personality of the consumer.

With Schweizer Journalistin, the editorial team of Schweizer Journalist is also launching a mentoring program for female journalists. MAZ head Sylvia Egli von Matt, Bieler Tagblatt editor-in-chief Catherine Duttweiler and author Esther Girsberger are offering to coach young female journalists and help them plan their careers.  
The future is female. And yet: "You don't have to promote women in journalism," says Annabelle Editor-in-Chief Lisa Feldmann in Schweizer Journalistin, which will be published for the first time in the next few days and will be published regularly in future as the first issue of the year of Schweizer Journalist. Schweizer Journalistin also presents women who have already achieved success in the media business. Julia Akeret (Andelfinger Zeitung) and Kathrin Spross (Anzeiger der Stadt Kloten) will demonstrate how publishing houses in women's hands are developing.