Complaints to the Fair Trading Commission in connection with register entries have increased significantly. In order to address this development, the Commission has set up a working group which has refined the explanations on practice. According to Principle 5.6, any advertising for entries in address books or registers is unfair if the terms and conditions do not clearly indicate which entries are free of charge and which are subject to a fee. In a press release on Wednesday, the Lauter Commission reported that the interpretation of this principle had repeatedly led to discussions in the past. For this reason, a working group has refined and reformulated the practice that is used to assess a complaint.
The working group agreed that the overall impression of the commercial communication in question should be assessed. It must be clearly communicated to the addressee what consequences arise from the assumptions and the offer should be designed with the necessary comprehensibility. As soon as the presentation of the offers is designed to mislead the addressee, this constitutes unfair conduct. A particularly strict standard should be set if an offer is based on a state registration that is subject to a fee.

The Swiss Sailing Association is getting reinforcements. Media professional Rico Brazerol and his company are now supporting the Swiss Sailing Team in media and communication matters. Come Brazerol Productions will take over the communications work so that the Swiss sailors can concentrate fully on the international title fights. Brazerol has been working in the media and communications business for around 25 years. Among other things, he was head of sports at Blick and Sonntagsblick as well as a founding member and editor-in-chief of 20 Minuten.

TV The Geneva cable network plans to broadcast the advertising window of the French TV station M6 at the end of March. The French TV station M6 actually has a market share of around 13% among 15 to 49-year-olds in French-speaking Switzerland. This put it in third place in the second half of 2006, only 5.2 percent behind TSR 2 and 9.3 percent behind market leader TSR 1. However, M6's good performance has so far been of little use to Swiss advertising clients. Although M6 broadcasts an advertising window for French-speaking Switzerland, this can currently only be received in around 37% of all cable households. The reason for this is that the largest cable networks in Geneva and Lausanne refuse to broadcast the M6 advertising window on their networks out of consideration for TSR. They are restricting themselves to broadcasting the original M6 signal - without Swiss advertising: Naxoo, Geneva's cable network with around 170000 connected households, decided to switch on the M6 advertising window at the end of 2006 despite resistance from TSR and the Federal Office of Communications. "We were in Paris last week and negotiated with M6. The contract is in place, it now has to go through all the M6 committees," says Naxoo CEO Antoni Mayer on request. Mayer expects the contract to be signed by mid-March. Naxoo is technically capable of launching M6 immediately, he says. With the launch in Geneva, the M6 advertising window could increase its technical reach to around 60 percent.   
Markus Knöpfli

Cheese Contexta has been managing the Appenzeller budget for 40 years. And for 700 years, this cheese has been considered the spiciest in Switzerland. The secret of the sulz is not revealed. Not even in the campaign now underway for Appenzeller's 700th anniversary. What can be revealed - and this is not cheese - is that without Appenzeller there might never have been a Contexta. Or then it would have been different. In any case, Appenzeller was the agency's first client 40 years ago - and thus a spotty, but otherwise ideally seasoned start-up aid for the Bernese creatives. CD Bene Abegglen was not there when the agency was founded. However, he remembers his first commercial, which he was able to help create in 1978, immediately after joining Contexta. The campaign at the time communicated in the style of peasant painting. In the commercial, an animated dog was incorporated into this traditional art as an effective advertising element. "We laughed a lot," recalls Abegglen. And he is thinking of more than just this one campaign for Appenzeller. It was also amusing later on, he says, how he felt like he was being watched at every corner by these three dairymen on a stroll through Hamburg's Reeperbahn, with whom he had recently designed the posters now hanging here.
Welcome standstillIf you compare Appenzeller posters from the early seventies with today's print campaign, you will see that the world of Appenzeller cheese has not changed much. "And that's a good thing," says Director Christoph Kempter of the variety organization. After all, Appenzeller Käse owes its status as one of the strongest Swiss brands precisely to this brand strategy, which has always been committed to authenticity and continuity. "The central element in the strict Appenzeller brand world is and remains the Appenzeller Sennen with their typical and unmistakable red jackets. Only the focus changes," says Nadine Borter at Contexta, explaining the strategy. In the pioneering days of the campaign, the focus was on origin and nature, followed by the well-known campaign about the secret of herbal salt. The new campaign now focuses on a new aspect: 700 years of tradition.
This approach underpins the brand promise of Appenzeller cheese: Switzerland's tastiest cheese is still produced today with just as much care, love and craftsmanship as it was 700 years ago.
The creative idea behind the broad-based campaign is a leap in time from the past to the present. The campaign is convincing in all disciplines with a uniform implementation. The campaign kicks off with the new image spot, which takes viewers on a journey through the 700-year history of Appenzeller cheese. At the beginning, the spot is entirely in black and white, then we see the typical Technicolor colors of a Heimatfilm, until the film finally ends in the rich colors of today. The film was directed by Michael Steiner, who has specialized in the good old days at least since his feature film "Eugen". Abegglen is proud of the fact that his agency has been working with Michi Steiner long before "Eugen".
Over forty Appenzellers were involved in the elaborate filming. Alpine herdsmen, cheesemakers, the Horn Sepp string orchestra, dancing couples and lots of children. Twenty cows, four pack horses, six goats and two mountain dogs were somewhat more difficult to direct in front of the camera. The film was shot against a magnificent backdrop in a meadow near Gonten and on the Scheidegg in Appenzellerland.
The print implementation fits harmoniously into the overall campaign. Despite the tight corset, Contexta succeeded in discovering new facets within the world of Appenzeller cheese. For example, the leap in time in the print implementation is depicted with a surprising combination of black and white and color photography. The various subjects each show the familiar insignia of the Appenzeller brand, from the descent from the Alps to the care with the mysterious herbal essence.
To ensure that the campaign is also properly understood in Germany and France, Contexta invited the media specialists from these foreign markets to a cheerful tour of the cheese dairy in Appenzell last week. Without an insight into the seasoning, of course.
Andreas Panzeri

Travel The Basel-based advertising agency Favo has launched the new premium brand Globus Reisen with Hotelplan.Promoting a tour operator is a coveted task for an agency. It is even nicer to invent and launch a new brand for a tour operator at the same time. From finding the target audience to the strategy and the name to producing the communication measures, Favo has now launched the new travel company Globus Reisen. The idea was developed on behalf of and in close cooperation with Hotelplan, a client of the Favo agency in Basel for two years.With the takeover of Travelhouse, an association of various specialists from the Swiss travel industry, the Migros subsidiary Hotelplan has become the largest tour operator and vacation retailer in Switzerland. Until now, Kuoni had held this market leadership.
As part of a new analysis of the brand architecture of Hotelplan, whose portfolio also includes M-Travel and Esco in addition to the new Travelhouse, Hotelplan and Favo jointly determined that what is now Switzerland's largest travel company "lacks an offering in the premium market," as Favo Managing Director Alice Stümcke describes the start of this brand development. The idea therefore: just as Migros has the premium brand Sélection alongside M-Budget, the orange giant should be able to offer a similar diversification with its travel subsidiary. Conversely, Kuoni's biggest competitor, the premium brand Helvetic Tours, also offers a lower-priced chain.
 
So the project team asked itself: What are the entry options into the premium market? Here, Favo developed various scenarios in close cooperation with Marketing Director Thomas Christen of Hotelplan and finally defined what could be realized with such a sub-brand.
One important finding is that in the travel industry we are dealing with a market "in which the brand does not really play a major role," as Stümcke points out. Vacationers know the brands, but they buy according to the destination. To do this, the customer studies various catalogs, picks out his dream landscape, and then gets more information on the Internet.
Thus, the next question arose: Does it make sense to simply introduce a new premium brand? At this stage, the agency came up with the idea: Why don't we take an existing brand that is "travel-savvy" but doesn't yet offer travel?
Soon there were two possibilities on the table: "Geo-Reisen", because there was already a contact with the publishing house Gruner + Jahr. The other idea: Why not "Globus Reisen"? The department store has an excellent reputation in the premium sector and has also been part of the Migros family for a few years. "The longer we thought about it, the more sense it made," says Hinrik Wachsmuth, CD at Favo, summarizing the further development.
Before really getting started, a positioning test was commissioned. And here Globus Reisen "already did better than Kuoni, even though the brand didn't even exist as a tour operator yet," marveled the new vacation managers. For the commissioned Link Institute, the analysis meant a ghost awareness rarely observed so strongly before. "A lot is expected of the brand," Wachsmuth and Stümcke concluded.
After the presentation to Hotelplan's management, convincing colleagues from the department store "was then a relatively easy exercise" - especially when the Premium project team was able to show that they "didn't just want to use the name, but also fully understand and adopt the values of the traditional Globus world."
And how big is the market now? Here, too, an analysis has been carried out via intensive Desk Search and with the Link Institute, and with around 1,000 surveys it has been established that the Globus Reisen concept "has very good chances".
In Switzerland, around 20 billion Swiss francs are spent on vacations every year. Around a third of sales each fall into the "budget," "value for money," and "premium" categories. In the most upscale category, there are at least 600,000 potential customers per year. These spend between 3,000 and 4,000 francs per week and person on vacations. And the special thing about it is that up to now, two-thirds of these potential premium guests have traveled without fixed arrangements. They travel with scheduled flights and book their hotel through individual channels. This is where Globus Reisen wants to offer its advice.
In order to reach this group of premium travelers in a targeted manner, Favo also looked for new communication channels. The most obvious medium for Globus Reisen is a magalog. The vacation catalog in the exclusive design of a lifestyle magazine is intended to whet the appetite for Globus Reisen. In addition under chapters such as "just relax", "gourmet travel", "culture inside", "city & more" or "special experience" tempting indicator photos and also literary or journalistic texts are published. If you want to know more, a link will take you to the relevant details, prices or travel dates on the www.globusreisen.ch website. In the Magalog itself per Destination only one of different variations is explicitly offered for sale with price and details. The rest is booked on the Internet.
The whole Globus Reisen project went through in just one year, from the idea to the delivery of the first magalog. More than 30 people are already working at the headquarters of the newly founded company. It is headed by Urs Freudiger, the former marketing manager of the Globus department store. Globus Reisen is integrated into Hotelplan's logistics system and can also benefit from the same reservation platforms, but appears to the outside world as an independent company.
 
For the communication, the possibilities of customer contacts of the 12 stores of Globus and 18 stores of Herren-Globus are to be included. However, there are no sales booths there. Bookings are made by telephone. But not with anonymous call center agents. As befits a premium customer, interested parties are connected with experts who have already tested these trips themselves.
For the employees at Favo, there are still few opportunities in this regard. In Basel, they are already fully occupied with the production of further catalogs and campaigns.
Andreas Panzeri

Philipp Petersson is the new Head of Commercials at Condor and wants to accompany Swiss film production into a new era "without hard cuts".
The new Head of Commercials at Condor came to film as one of these "almost classic career changers". Philipp Petersson previously studied political science, modern history and Spanish in Cologne, "with the intention of going into journalism". Chance would have it otherwise, and today he is glad about it. "I have a job that is fun, stressful and makes me absolutely happy." At the age of 25, the student received a call from a "dear friend" asking if he would like to help out as an assistant on a production at the then legendary Munich Filmhaus. Of course, he accepted with thanks and worked his way up in a fairly short time "learning by doing". Assistant production manager, production assistant and, after just one year, responsibility for small projects. That was 1995: "Filming has taken up my whole life."
Just two years later, Petersson was headhunted from Munich to an entertainment company in Florida for a project in the entertainment sector. Traveling by Learjet between New York, Los Angeles and Texas, he was allowed to market "The Three Tenors" in the USA. During this intermezzo with Pavarotti and Co, Petersson did not want to miss out on his relationship with film. He remained active as a freelance producer in Florida. "That's the interesting thing about freelancing. With different jobs, you can take the good experiences with you and sort out the negatives."
On his return to Germany, he continued to work as a freelance producer in Berlin and Düsseldorf, for example for Manfred Vogelsänger's established advertising film production company.
Petersson has always done commercials and never dreamed of feature films. "Cinema is my secret love and I also have a large DVD collection. But at the end of the day, I'm really into advertising." That has something to do with the adrenaline rushes, he says. "You work much longer on feature film projects, the tension curve is constant. The advertising film suits me better. Here the tension takes a steep upward curve, reaches a peak during filming and drops again when you're sitting happily in the telecine at the end."
But then came a phase where the spot junkie had to cut back a little. Two years after his return from the USA, a daughter was born and Petersson wanted to take more care of his young family. The ideal opportunity presented itself in southern Spain. Here, Petersson produced commercials for service productions, primarily for English and German clients. Film crews like to go to southern Spain because they not only find warm light and safe weather there, but also spectacular serpentines for car commercials, for example.
Despite plenty of sunshine, Petersson missed the glamor of the advertising world by the sea. "Being involved in a pitch and working on a commercial with creative people from planning to mixing" - this challenge lured Petersson back to Hamburg, Düsseldorf and Cologne for three years before the still freelance producer received an offer from Condor.
Zurich was looking for a production manager for an elaborate VW film. He was to spend six months filming all over the world with 360-degree camera rigs. When the spectacular film for six screens measuring five to eight meters was finished for the Autostadt in Wolfsburg, both Condor and Petersson were very impressed with the collaboration. There was therefore not much left to think about when the freelancer was offered a permanent job. Since the beginning of this year, Philipp Petersson has been the new Head of Commercials. He is currently completing his round of interviews with Swiss advertising agencies.
"We don't want to do the hard cut, that would be wrong for a company as steeped in tradition as Condor." He also gets to know the world of Swiss advertising in detail through the patron, Martin Fueter.
Petersson was only reluctant to accept this challenge because he would have to give up all the parallel worlds he had previously lived in - still in Spain and constantly changing centers in Germany - by moving to Zurich and taking on permanent responsibility. On the other hand, being able to have a say as a member of management at levels other than just production planning also has its appeal. "I already feel a strong connection with Condor in terms of content, personnel and emotion."
Petersson sees "interesting, creative opportunities in the Swiss market" because jobs here often depend more on a great idea and less on the size of the budget. In other words: A little more courage, a little less money. But the world of commercials is changing anyway. "We are still shooting with 35 millimeter cameras - the premier class. But we are also testing the possibilities of HD cams." The development of viral possibilities is observed with an open lens at Studio Bellerive. "More is happening on the Internet than on television, so it has to click and we are thinking: how can we bring the medium of film to the Internet?" Zattoo TV, a Swiss invention, is already demonstrating what will become even more sophisticated in the next two years.
What Petersson also likes about his work in Zurich is how creativity is handled "more freely here than in Germany, for example", where a lot of pressure is often passed on from the client to the agency to the director when large budgets are involved. "In Switzerland, boards are often seen as a more sensible basis for creative design." For him, an important prerequisite here is close collaboration with the "real capital of Condor - the directors" as early as possible.
In all these steps, producer Petersson sees himself most likely in the role of coach or translator between director, agency and client. This diplomatic aspect is a very important factor in film. He believes that being able to take ideas, translate them into figures, turn them into action and execute them with maximum production value is what makes the profession of producer so appealing.
Andreas Panzeri

The Zurich agency Futurecom has conceived and designed the online presence of the new Coop Pro Montagna label. The new label stands for quality products from the Swiss mountain regions; with every purchase, a contribution flows back to the farmers and processors via the Coop sponsorship for mountain regions. The online presence focuses on authenticity, which is why the design reflects the originality of the mountain world. A mountain panorama with changing subjects ensures dynamism and modernity, as Futurecom writes in a press release. A streamlined appearance is intended to inform visitors about the Pro Montagna label in an atmospheric way.

The Swiss photography prize, The Selection Vfg, invites you to an online exhibition of works
of contemporary Swiss photography. All submitted works can now be viewed at The-selection.ch. The works and images in the categories Advertising, Editorial Photography, Fine Arts and Free are intended to inspire and stimulate discussion of contemporary Swiss photography. The works are posted anonymously on the Internet and are only marked with the project number and category, which is the same procedure as for the judging. Interested persons can contact the photographer of a favorite work for a fee of CHF 10.
This year, The Selection Vfg opened its Preview Day to the general public for the first time. During the four hours, over 300 visitors flocked to the EWZ Selnau hall in Zurich. The award ceremony and exhibition of the 18 best works will take place in May this year.
 

Birthdays should be celebrated, but the person being celebrated does not always enjoy it. For Harald Schmidt, the planned ARD birthday show for his 50th birthday is even hell, as he revealed in an interview with the Sächsische Zeitung. For him, it will not be a show, but a wild compilation of his 18 years of television history. A tribute to him, without him being involved. Unfortunately, he can't defend himself against some editor snipping around in his past - the best-paid entertainer on German television alongside Günter Jauch and Thomas Gottschalk simply finds the whole thing dreadful. According to his answers, he doesn't care one way or the other what is covered on television. Basically, the best-known German TV comedian simply watches what's on and, depending on what's on, he's either interested or not. "I'm a big zapper and like to watch local TV with a focus on things like "Unrestricted level crossing" and "Petting zoo"."

Magazine After Notebook, Rainer Kuhn launches Stylebook in April. Both magazines are user-generated, and readers think that's cool.
"User-generated" is a buzzword that can be found on the Internet when it comes to platforms such as MySpace, Wikipedia or YouTube. The principle is simple. People produce images, texts, audio files or films that they offer to other users free of charge with the help of a website. The figures speak for themselves and often make traditional media look pale. For example, more than 65,000 videos are published on YouTube every day. Thousands of new blogs are opened worldwide every day. The statistics for the German-language online encyclopaedia Wikipedia are also impressive: Around a thousand new articles are added to the archive every day. And the trend is rising. Inspired by the creative power of the masses, Rainer Kuhn, former editor of Kult magazine, launched Notebook two years ago. A print magazine that follows the trend on the Internet and is produced by the readers themselves. And it works like this: Users can upload their thoughts, opinions, pictures or notes to the Notebook website. If the content is "cool", as Rainer Kuhn himself says, it will be printed.
There are no other requirements for the texts or images. They can be intelligent, but also banal. A text sample shows that the quality level of the contributions often does not reach immeasurable heights: "Today is Friday, the so-called best day in the life of an agglomeration. But Monday is actually much nicer. You can look forward to the weekend for longer." Such or similar texts characterize the magazine. And Rainer Kuhn thinks that's okay and important. He sees his concept as a "content democracy", which is appealing because it gives you a picture of what people are currently thinking about.

Added to this is the fact that his project depicts the real world and not the one suggested by the media and companies with their brands. The fact that the content in his magazine is reminiscent of "narcissistic information junk", according to one critic, is something Kuhn comments on calmly: "You can also question the banality of any journalistic product. I'm not interested in whether it needs a notebook or not. I'm only interested in whether people enjoy it. And they do."
For Rainer Kuhn, the power of "user-generated" is undisputed. And because he sees the "collective game", as he likes to call it, as the only true print innovation in recent years, Kuhn is launching Stylebook in April. Again, a magazine based on blog culture that is 100% created by the target group via a website. Unlike Notebook, Kuhn's latest project is only published twice a year. In April with "spring/summer" and in October with "fall/winter". The ex-advertiser wants to offer the style community a platform where photographers, stylists and designers can create fashion. This is because the "editorial dictatorship" is even more pronounced in the fashion industry than elsewhere. Kuhn: "For me, it's fun to observe what professionals and amateurs understand by fashion. Because there is a huge divergence between the catwalk and the street."
According to Sandro Proietto from the Mediabox agency, which markets trend magazines such as 7sky, soDa and Notebook, customers such as Nokia and media agencies are eagerly awaiting the launch of the new magazine. Kuhn's ideas are innovative and Notebook, as a young magazine, has the potential to overshadow other independent magazines in just a few years. "The symbiosis between online and print is unique. Customers are looking for products like this," says Proietto.
Nokia is said to be interested in a collaboration so that Nokia users can text along with the diaries on their cell phones.
Experts on the scene agree that Notebook and Stylebook will not be the only interactive blog magazines. Industry insiders know of projects in the concept phase that are in no way inferior to Kuhn's magazines in terms of creativity and reading pleasure.
"Notebook is guaranteed to find imitators," predicts Proietto. Kuhn knows this too: "The idea can be applied to so many topics. I've been thinking about a Politbook for some time."
Sandro Proietto, who incidentally also co-founded the cult magazine, also points out the difficulties of user-generated magazines. They have to grow out of their niche. And large publishing houses are too inflexible for such ideas due to their hierarchies. The case of Musenalp-Express is a classic illustration of this. Although the owner has changed several times, none of the big publishers have managed to do anything clever with the magazine.
 
 Two pioneersNotebook and Stylebook are the first target group blogs in diary format and probably the only interactive print magazines in the world. Users can communicate with the readership via the website and, more recently, via cell phone. Both magazines are distributed free of charge in trendy boutiques. Every contributor also automatically becomes a subscriber, which, according to Rainer Kuhn, should guarantee a constantly growing community. Notebook is published with a print run of 30,000 copies, Stylebook with 50,000.
Christian Lüscher

The Geneva-based private bank Morval & Cie has commissioned the French-speaking Swiss communications agency Theoreme to develop a communications campaign. The bank wants to use targeted measures to increase its visibility and level of awareness and strengthen its image in the Geneva and Ticino regions. To date, the bank has made little use of traditional channels. Theoreme is to crystallize the specific values of the company with an innovative and clear concept, according to a press release. The first measures should be visible in spring 2007. The private bank Morval & Cie is part of Morval Vonwiller Holding. It has been in existence since 1974 and today concentrates on the private banking and fund management sectors.

Geography The SonntagsBlick has a large headline on the front page: "Immigration record! Germans flee to Switzerland." According to SonntagsBlick, 2000 Germans settled in Switzerland every month last year. What is the cause of this mass migration? Are the Germans fleeing their homeland because the Russians are coming? Perhaps. Perhaps it is also the regular articles in German newspapers that uncritically portray our Alpine country as a paradise on earth. If you follow the articles in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, you should leave Germany immediately and head for the promised land of Switzerland. Stern also likes to write about us. The article "One-night stand in the snow" caught our eye, although the title is misleading. It's only about one-night stays in igloos. In addition to the text, which could not have been better written by Switzerland Tourism, there is the graphic, which is thought-provoking with regard to the immigration debate. It is commendable when Stern produces its own illustrations. The result leaves question marks. There is this bulge in Ticino. Or the federal city, which is located a little too north-west in the Jura region and should shed new light on the Jura issue. And while Lake Constance, which is close to Germany, is allowed on the map to some extent, Lake Geneva, which is larger in terms of area, is not even shown. How has Switzerland earned so much love? Christian Lüscher