The division of Switzerland into 13 regional coverage areas for private TV stations with a fee component has met with criticism in Eastern Switzerland and Upper Valais, as SDA announced today. The Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC) is planning a service area for eastern Switzerland consisting of the cantons of Thurgau, St. Gallen and both Appenzells, as well as the Zurich districts of Andelfingen, Winterthur, Pfäffikon and Hinwil. The 25 members of the National Council and Council of States from Eastern Switzerland believe that the planned supply area from Andelfingen to Sargans lacks homogeneity. They are calling for a supply area for the cantons of Thurgau, St. Gallen and the two Appenzells. The four Zurich districts of Andelfingen, Winterthur, Pfäffikon and Hinwil should form a separate supply area together with the cantons of Thurgau and Schaffhausen. The canton of Thurgau as an overlapping area is to belong to the two TV coverage areas of Eastern Switzerland and Zurich. For its part, the cantonal government of Schaffhausen wants a separate Schaffhausen coverage area. The federal government's proposal, which assigns Schaffhausen to the Zurich coverage area, would weaken the Schaffhausen region. There is also resentment in Upper Valais. The media in Upper Valais are against DETEC's plans. They want their own German-language Upper Valais regional television station with its own license. The people of the Upper Valais must be greeted in their native language 24 hours a day on television," writes the Tele Oberwallis interest group.

In the last few weeks, TBWA Zurich has gained new members from Basel and Bern: Fery Ates from Basel and Marcus Aeberhard from Bern have joined the McDonalds team in the TBWA Zurich consultancy.  
As Account Executive, Fery Ates is dedicated to the area of LRM (Local Restaurant Marketing), while Marcus Aeberhard supports the national McDonald's campaigns team as Junior Account Director.

Frank Boller will become Head of Consumer Marketing and Sales on March 1, 2007. His successor as Head of Business Markets will be Marco Quinter. Erik Adams, the previous Vice President Marketing & Sales, will leave cablecom in March.  
Frank Boller joined Cablecom as Vice President Sales in August 2005 and has headed the Business Solutions and Partner Networks departments since December 2005. Marco Quinter, previously Head of Sales in the Business Customer department, will take over as Head of the Business Solutions department on March 1. Erik Adams, Vice President Consumer Marketing and Sales since 2005, is leaving the company to take up a new position in the cable network industry in Germany, as Cablecom announced on Friday.
 
Before joining Cablecom, Frank Boller was COO Wireline & Internet at Sunrise, where he was responsible for the fixed network division and the reorganization of the business customer division. Other positions in his career include CEO of Obtree, CEO of mobile provider diAX (until the merger with Sunrise) and Country Manager at HP Switzerland.

Whether it's graffiti or a blonde joke: unconventional advertising ideas are booming. Whether Puma, Mercedes or E-Plus - they all use guerrilla tactics or viral marketing. These advertising methods are still a trend, but experts agree that this is where the future lies.  
Global and cost-effective viral marketing is booming along with the Internet and social networking portals. YouTube is the perfect platform for advertising spots to spread. Mercedes is currently advertising its E-Class with a blonde joke on YouTube. The commercial has been viewed over 11,000 times within two weeks. E-Plus went one step further: last November, graffiti spray campaigns were organized at strategic locations for the market launch of its mobile music offer. The E-Plus graffiti campaign belongs in the guerrilla marketing category due to its local impact.
 
However, not everyone is yet confident in the use of new types of advertising, and so sometimes things backfire. Sony, for example, was exposed with its fake fan blog from December 2006 for the Playstation Portable and really put its foot in its mouth. Outraged consumers are ridiculing Sony in numerous forums. It is also doubtful whether the Johnny Walker whisky brand has had the desired effect on the grouse game. Sprayers and real bloggers in particular are likely to be happy about this - they will be granted a reprieve until their forms of expression are mercilessly sucked dry by the advertising industry.

Advertising expenditure in the Swiss daily press rose slightly in December. The Publicitas index climbed by 0.4 points compared to the previous month to 93.8 points. Compared to the previous year, the index rose by 1 percent in 2006. According to the advertising marketer, the increase was due to a positive development in commercial advertisements. Banks and automobile importers in particular invested heavily. Meanwhile, the dynamic of job advertisements continues. The index of job advertisements rose in December from 156.4 points in the previous month to 158.0. According to the SDA, the increase over the year is 17 percent. By contrast, the index of real estate advertisements showed rather modest growth of 0.3 points and stood at 96.7 points at the end of last year.

Bernhard Bircher-Suits, currently Editor-in-Chief of Online PC Zeitung, will take over as Head of Corporate Publishing at Swisscontent Corp. on April 1, succeeding Tobias Billeter, who will join the communications team of the new Clariden Leu bank.  
The 33-year-old businessman and journalist will also join Swisscontent's four-person management team as Head of Corporate Publishing. Before joining Online PC Zeitung, Bircher-Suits was a research assistant at Swisspeace in Berne. He has also worked as a business and IT journalist for the daily newspaper Der Bund.

Hartmut Ostrowski will be at the helm of Europe's largest media group from 2008. On Friday, the Supervisory Board unanimously appointed the head of Arvato, the Group's second-largest division, as the successor to Gunter Thielen, who will head the Supervisory Board from next year.  
As SDA reported on Friday, the 48-year-old Ostrowski has successfully managed Bertelsmann's print and services subsidiary, Arvato, since 2002. With 47,000 employees and a turnover of around 5 billion euros, Arvato is one of the most important divisions of Europe's largest media group. A good omen, it seems: previous Bertelsmann CEOs such as Mark Wössner, Thomas Middelhoff and Gunter Thielen also started their managerial careers in this division.

The prize for transparency, awarded for the third time in 2007, goes to the Goldbach Media Group. The company impressed the jury of four experts in particular with its financial reporting and the appealing design of its annual report and informative website for investors.  
The jury spoke of a quantum leap in the design of the annual report and communication on the Internet. "With this communication concept, Goldbach has achieved the SWX standard." The jury assessed a total of 400 annual reports from over 400 companies. 45 of these made it onto the shortlist, and their reports and websites were analyzed in more detail. The jury paid particular attention to financial reporting, shareholdings and corporate governance.

The Swiss Photography Award, The Selection vfg, invites you to a showcase of contemporary Swiss photography. Over 450 submitted works and around 3000 images in the categories of Advertising, Editorial Photography, Fine Arts and Free encourage inspiration and an examination of photography. Preview Day is on February 1, 2007. The Selection vfg is the selection of the best works of Swiss professional photography of a calendar year. It is the platform where clients, producers, intermediaries and consumers of photographic images meet. On the evening before the competition is judged, the Preview Day presents all submitted works to the interested public and image users from advertising agencies, art buying, photo agencies and picture editors. Two thirds of the works have already been published. One third of the works are entered in the Free category and are primarily looking for new visual languages. After the Preview Day, The Selection vfg will present all the works on The-selection.ch. Interested parties can also find out the contact addresses of photographers online. Every year, the Preview Day and the Internet platform provide more than 600 contacts to over 100 professionals from the image industry.

The TV consumer magazine Kassensturz did not violate the program regulations with its programme "Useless conventional medicine: health insurance companies pay millions for nothing". The Federal Supreme Court has upheld the appeal by Swiss Television (SF).  
On June 7, 2005, Kassensturz broadcast an article on the effectiveness of conventional medical services. The background to this was the Federal Council's decision to no longer cover complementary medicine services under basic insurance. The program criticized this and argued that several conventional medical services should also be reviewed.
 
The Secretary General of Interpharma, the association of research-based pharmaceutical companies, filed a complaint with the
Independent Complaints Authority for Radio and Television (UBI): The pharmaceutical industry had not been able to comment. Only an excerpt from an old interview with him was shown, which Kassensturz had already broadcast in a different context. The UBI upheld the complaint in 2005 and found a violation of the program regulations. The audience had not been able to form its own opinion. The broadcast of an almost 16-month-old statement violated the journalistic duty of care. Right at second instanceSF took the case to the Federal Court. The court has now ruled in favor of SF. According to the ruling, the points of view of the parties involved on the topic are clear. The pharmaceutical industry had a sufficient say. In this respect, the audience was able to form its own opinion. The reuse of the old interview was not unobjectionable. However, the audience was neither misled about its topicality nor manipulated in its opinion formation. There was no compelling need for Interpharma to make a new statement on the same issue.

"What's this?", many Migros customers will have asked themselves in amazement when a visibly dirty cup was pressed into their hands by spotlessly clean hostesses in front of the supermarket checkout shortly before Christmas. But they didn't know that it was an advertising idea from Publicis for Migros' Manella washing-up liquid. 
Those who actually tried to rinse the dirt off the drinking vessel at home were in for another surprise. As soon as the cup came into contact with warm water or a hot liquid, the dirt literally disappeared as if by magic. Instead, the astonished dishwasher flashed the bright green packshot of the well-known Migros washing-up liquid Manella.

The magazine publisher Gruner + Jahr (G + J) may not take over the German edition of the US magazine classic National Geographic in its entirety. This was decided by the German Federal Court of Justice (BGH) for antitrust reasons. G + J currently publishes the magazine together with the Spanish publisher RBA Publicaciones Internacionales, but also wanted to take over the latter's 50 percent share. The BGH prohibited this because the Hamburg-based publisher would thereby expand its dominant market position. In 2003, Gruner + Jahr (Geo, P.M) had a market share of 75 percent in the reader market for popular knowledge magazines. With Geo and National Geographic alone, G + J already has a market share of almost 50 percent.