Poster Research Publicis proved for APG that outdoor advertising makes the impossible possible: Switzerland elected a new capital city, starting with the unknown and suddenly famous Angie Becker. Then it was time to vote on whether or not Bugsy the rabbit should go into the frying pan. In both phantom campaigns, Publicis wanted to test the impact of posters for its long-standing client Affichage. It is obvious that the mysterious campaign at the beginning of January also led to the suspicion that Publicis had concocted another prank for APG. However, a few tricks were cleverly laid, as Werbewoche was able to reveal in its last issue. We were not wrong, but we did play along with the media in the politically incorrect vote "Switzerland elects a new capital". In 1848, the Federal Assembly elected Bern as the capital of Switzerland. The consequences of this advertising campaign show that even 159 years after the founding of the federal state, this political agenda item still stirs the emotions.
Much-discussed topicThe choice of the new federal capital quickly became a much-discussed topic, reflected in newspaper commentaries, letters to the editor and weblogs. City mayors gave interviews and mothers filled the pages of the "swissmomforum" on the Internet. Free riders emerged, such as the city of Lucerne, which lured voters to its official website with a confusingly similar Internet address. Finally, the federal government in Bern also got involved: Firstly, the Federal Chancellery criticized the use of the Swiss coat of arms, and secondly, it called on all federal employees to boycott the elections...
Publicis was able to prove scientific support for APG: Out-of-home advertising can achieve something and mobile marketing can be used in concrete terms. The poster company now wants to present the choice to its customers in a study. The message: in the right combination, posters, e-boards, SMS and the Internet form a complete marketing tool. The Psychological Institute of the University of Zurich is also working on a study to accompany the project.
Basel and Zurich were neck and neck at the top of the poll for a long time. In the end, Basel won with 42.4 percent, ahead of Zurich with 41.9 percent, followed by Bern with 12.7 percent and Geneva with 2.9 percent. 1,3600 voters took part.
Andreas Panzeri

Ranking The readers of Werbewoche and TV-Star have chosen the campaigns of the year.winnerWith naked facts, Euro RSCG fought and fought its way to victory. The "Campaign of the Year" uses stylish eye-catchers to highlight how important self-protection can be in life. The Federal Office of Public Health, which commissioned the campaign, invests around nine million francs a year in AIDS prevention, around a third of which goes towards the campaign. Compared to the cost of lifelong treatment after infection - an average of CHF 200,000 - this is an effective investment. The team led by Frank Bodin and CD Petra Bottignole are no longer just focusing their educational work on "Stop Aids" as a preventative measure, but have also launched the slogan "Love Life". The strategic reorientation is intended to communicate the benefits of personal prevention instead of a "prevention message". Euro RSCG's previous "Love Life" campaign already won third place in last year's Crossmedia Award.
Second placeA more light-hearted topic won the number 2 cross-media place awarded by a professional jury last year and has now also been confirmed by the public in this rank for the "Campaign of the Year". "Beck & Bondi" from Contexta has become the ubiquitous advertising medium for Swisscom Fixnet and is clearly fun for its target audience.
Third placeFunny things also appealed in third place. To promote its wide range of products, Publicis launched an impressive cross-media survey campaign for Migros with lots of original subjects based around the theme "My favorite product is...".
Andreas Panzeri

Regula Fecker has set up her own one-woman agency and wants to continue developing strategies for the big players, too.an old slate board from a school instead of a flat screen hangs in the meeting room. A dumbwaiter crammed with books shows that the room on the second floor once served as the "Säli" for a pub on Zurich's Langstrasse. At first glance, Regula Fecker's newly founded agency gives no indication that the newly self-employed strategist is a trendsetter in the field of cross-media. The furnishings also bear little resemblance to the fact that Fecker has already worked in the advertising mecca of New York and trendy Berlin. A sofa like something from a second-hand store and a table that looks more like a shared kitchen than strategy documents for big fish. But: "Customers really like coming here," says the young representative of a new generation of advertisers, noting that the office entrance right next to the sex store is actually positioned right in the middle of our society's milieu.Regula Fecker went into advertising straight after secondary school. She first worked as a consultant at a very small agency in Zurich. Then, at the age of 20, she switched to what was then Honegger von Matt. Fecker wanted to stay here for a total of seven years and thus "experienced the whole important part of this agency's history". After three years, she was able to switch to Planning, which was just being rebuilt. "I love racking my brains, tackling a communication problem from scratch and thinking about things that no one has thought before me," she says of this challenge.
She also likes to get to the bottom of things. That's why she wanted to further her education and flew to America for three months to the Miami Ad School run by Crispin Porter Bogusky. "The intensive course broadened my thinking," she enthuses. A well-known planner is flown in every weekend. A vacation home is available in Miami for the stars of the industry. Some of the lessons take place on the beach. "You get to meet the gurus in person like never before." Nevertheless, they work hard. Weekly projects with different focuses in the areas of brand management, market research, target group research and media strategy. Within the three months, the students also had to develop their own project together with creative professionals. Fecker's group developed a pitch for FedEx.
The final presentation was won by the Swiss girl. She was also the best of the year with her concept. Her idea was based on the fact that 80 percent of all customers track their parcels via the Internet. Why is that? "The fascination that customers feel when they can trigger the take-off of an airplane with the click of a mouse." This is how Fecker formulated the strategy: "FedEx enables even small fish to play God." SMEs naturally find this relevant because they are otherwise always the underdogs.
The idea landed her a job in New York. A lecturer called her - barely back in Switzerland: "Do you want a job in New York?" So she flew back across the pond and worked for TBWA\Chiat\Day for a year and a half as a planner in David Hackworthy's team. "Alongside Dominique von Matt, I learned the most from him."
In 2004, her mentor Hackworthy moved to London and founded The Red Brick Road there. The time had come for Fecker to return to Europe. She accepted an offer from TBWA Berlin. There she was allowed to take over the management of Planning. "During this time, we were able to win the account for Siemens worldwide," she says proudly. Nevertheless, she didn't want to stay in Berlin for longer than eight months because of her relationship in Zurich. That was possible with New York. It was simply far away. Berlin beckoned with a quick visit every weekend. But there wasn't enough time. In the end, Regula Fecker was welcomed back with open arms not only by her boyfriend, advertising photographer Jonathan Heyer, but also by her old employer Jung von Matt Limmat. After two years as a planner, she set up her own business, "Regula Fecker, Strategische Planung".
How can you motivate someone to do something? Regula Fecker always wanted to "do something that creates a connection between thought and action. That triggers something." With the experience she has gained in her previous work, Fecker felt it was "the right time to become self-employed". She finds it an advantage that, as an independent strategist, she can also guarantee media neutrality. Focusing on an idea and not asking right from the start: Is there a TV commercial or posters? There are more and more new media or at least differently fragmented media.
Her clients are advertising and media agencies, but also advertising clients. Some of them want research: How can I provide my agency with better foundations? Fecker sees herself as an interface between clients and agencies. She also wants to work internationally and has already received an order from London from her former boss.
Fecker can count on a good network of contacts. She is a member of the BSW training committee. She has also made many contacts as a course instructor at Sawi. There she set up the intensive Crossmedia Kompressor course.
In her area of expertise, she says that more and more customers are now intervening in content. They want to help shape broadcast formats, for example. A migration from the classic advertising section to content can be observed. This is sometimes cleverly done, as with 20 Minuten. In other projects, it still seems "sometimes awkward". YouTube or MySpace are being watched with suspicious eyes by the entire advertising scene and copied - but still not really understood. "You can tell when advertisers want to jump on a bandwagon." The same applies to podcasts. "I see a lot of opportunities there. But only the most obvious things are implemented."
Regula Fecker is also involved in various areas of communication in her private life. She helped build up the Eleven snowboard label for friends and made the brand number 2 in Switzerland and number 8 in Europe in seven years. In the NPO sector, she works for "Tischlein deck dich", where expired food is distributed to people in need. She is also involved in promoting the ETH spin-off MyClimate, where people like her pay a fixed percentage of every flight ticket as compensation for CO2 emissions. And to relax, Fecker does "yoga - like everyone else in this world". 
 
Andreas Panzeri

Far back, behind the mountains of words, far from the countries of vowels and consonants, live the blind texts. They live in seclusion in Buchstabhausen on the coast of the Semantik, a large linguistic ocean. A small stream called Duden flows through their village and supplies them with the necessary Regelialien. It's a paradisiacal land where fried sentences fly into your mouth. Not even the almighty punctuation rules the blind texts - an almost unorthographic life.

The Vaud-based technology company Kudelski has completed the acquisition of OpenTV announced in October. Kudelski now has a controlling stake in the Californian provider of licensing technologies for digital television, as the news agency SDA reported on Wednesday. Kudelski paid owner Liberty Media 132.12 million dollars for a 26.7 percent stake in the capital and 74.7 percent of the voting rights in OpenTV. According to earlier information, the acquisition will have a positive impact on Kudelski's profits from 2008.

The campaign of the year was also honored on Wednesday at the Kaufleuten in Zurich. Readers of Werbewoche and TV-Star magazine voted for the Federal Office of Public Health's "Stop Aids" campaign with just under 30 percent of the vote. The advertisement was created by the Zurich-based agency Euro RSCG. Second place went to the "Beck & Bondi" campaign by the Bern-based advertising agency Contexta (13%), with the Migros "Favorite Products" campaign by Publicis in third place with 12% of the vote. Read more in the current Werbewoche No. 2 or at
"Stop Aids" by Euro RSCG becomes campaign of the year
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From 2007, nine issues of the Swiss film magazine Filmbulletin will be published annually. The interim issues, which were previously published four times a year, will be replaced by full issues, according to a press release issued on Tuesday. The magazine will now offer more illustrated features, more film criticism and more film culture. The January issue of Filmbulletin is dedicated to current Swiss film, in keeping with the Solothurn Film Festival. Filmbulletin is now in its 49th year and is published annually with around 450 pages. According to its own website, it is dedicated to the critical, historical and theoretical study of film.

René Worni on the uprising against Publicitas.Publicitas is everywhere. There's hardly a town where the PubliGroup subsidiary doesn't have an advertising agency. Publicitas supplies all print media with advertisements, even those with which it does not have a contract. Its unchallenged position in the Swiss print landscape has already led to reservations under competition law. "If we don't attract the attention of the Competition Commission, then we're not doing our job properly," PubliGroup CEO Hans-Peter Rohner occasionally says. The prospect does not really make people feel comfortable.
Now the print business, the Group's core business, is in turmoil. More and more publishers are turning away from the giant, who for years did not want to expose themselves with open criticism. After all, they are all dependent on Publicitas services. Since Tamedia began rewarding media agencies that took over Publicitas two years ago in the course of the merger between PubliGroupe and NZZ, an avalanche has been rolling. The list of publishers offering similar compensation and discounts is getting longer and longer. This seems to be more than just a battle for market share. Contractually bound so-called director's titles are also going over the books. They take the advertising business into their own hands at the first opportunity that presents itself.
The reasons are usually complex. What is new is that the criticism of Publicitas is being followed by action. For example, Basler Zeitung manages its key accounts through its own company and handles the advertising business in Liestal itself in the battle against Basellandschaftliche Zeitung. Publicitas is not considered capable of serving two competitors in the market equally fairly.
Open criticism has also been voiced by the new Pressverbund Nordostschweiz, which wants to cut itself off completely and take advertising sales into its own hands. It has been repeatedly stated that Publicitas does not care whether it sells a single newspaper or an alliance of six newspapers and has refused to accept customized solutions. Here and there, pent-up love-hate feelings against a group that is expressly committed to preserving press diversity, but perhaps does not always take this very seriously.
René Worni, Editor

"Meat? We either love it or we hate it. There's nothing in between. Except maybe that we don't care. Or that we hate it just a little. Or that we love it just a little. But that's where the range of human feelings for meat products ends. Apart from the people who don't exactly love meat, but think it's okay. Or who don't like it, but wouldn't necessarily say they hate it either." This is the welcome text for an Internet TV format with content that takes some getting used to: Fleischerei.tv. But the project has nothing to do with smut, as you might think. No; on this building block of the World Wide Web, on this weblog, odes to meat and sausage can be found. The butchers see sausage as a good friend. And have packed their love and thoughts into a series of greasy clips.

The 31st Advertiser of the Year has been chosen and was crowned at Zurich's Kaufleuten on Wednesday. This time, the readers of Werbewoche chose Peter Felser (45), co-owner of the advertising agency Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett, who received the Egon from presenter Melanie Winiger. After Martin Spillmann (Advertiser of the Year 2004), this is the second time that a creative from the young Zurich advertising agency has been named Advertiser of the Year. "I am very pleased with this choice. It shows that the creative performance and entrepreneurial development of the Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett agency is recognized by advertising clients and advertising colleagues. However, the rise to the top 3 of creative agencies and the simultaneous fulminant growth of the agency is only possible with a strong team," says Peter Felser in an interview with Werbewoche and at the same time thanks his partners and employees. Their work includes the underwear ad for Migros and the Mount Everest campaign (Mary Woodbridge) for Mammut. Felser defines good advertising as advertising that touches people, that inspires them and that they want to see again. Advertiser of the Year 2006: 1st place for Peter Felser
2nd place for Pius Walker
3rd place for Alexanger Jaggy

Read more in the current Werbewoche No. 2 or under Peter Felser - Advertiser of the Year 2007
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Column Their bloated management structure makes the German public broadcasters almost immobile. Taken in isolation and viewed from Switzerland, it may be a trifle, a footnote at best in the history of public broadcasting: Germany's most prominent TV presenter, Günther Jauch, will not be hosting the most important German political talk show after all, the successor to "Christiansen" on Sunday evenings. However, if you look at the embarrassment in the Jauch case in the context of all the other scandals, affairs and bad decisions that have recently made ARD the talk of the town, a different picture emerges. The question arises as to whether the form of public service broadcasting that our big neighbor to the north can afford is becoming an obsolete model, with several surreptitious advertising and corruption scandals to be listed. The most serious one surrounding the soap "Marienhof" lasted for ten years before an investigative reporter discovered the machinations. ARD also secured exclusive coverage of the doped cyclist Jan Ullrich with a questionable sponsorship contract and misappropriated license fee money for this purpose. Also embarrassing is the hassle surrounding the Stasi involvement of sports reporter Hagen Bossdorf and the invitation and re-invitation of the Russian former world chess champion and regime critic Kasparov to the Christiansen program - to name just a few other cases. The fact that it has been possible to charge broadcasting fees for internet-enabled PCs is also evidence of a brazen self-service mentality.
ARD presents itself without functioning supervisory bodies, it is oversized and therefore exorbitantly expensive. Its many-voiced and bloated management structure makes it almost incapable of movement; there are too many autistic, self-absorbed hierarchs who are unable to listen to either their stations or the audience. Incidentally, the problem is not even the party affiliations of the public-law office holders, most of whom are elected using the zipper system (one on the left, the next on the right). As Kurt Biedenkopf astutely analysed years ago, they tend to cartelize across party lines, i.e. to support each other and thus immunize themselves against any kind of control.
On top of this, the public service is being distorted beyond recognition and is therefore actually superfluous: The
Public broadcasters compete far too much with private broadcasters during prime time instead of focusing on programs that meaningfully complement what the market already produces in terms of soaps, crime dramas, infotainment, expensive sports broadcasts and entertainment shows as well as cheap talk shows.
However, these observations cannot be transferred one-to-one to Switzerland: The per capita fee is even higher than in Germany. However, the income of SRG idée suisse is still modest compared to ARD and ZDF - there are only eight million instead of eighty million inhabitants who can potentially be tapped into as fee payers. Nevertheless, there must be enough money to offer acceptable TV programs in three different languages. As the wide-ranging discourse on the new mission statement has shown, the TV powers that be are more open and willing to talk, and at the same time they are more grounded. Under pressure from foreign competitors, the "Swissness" of the programs is over-accentuated to the point of occasionally being petty.
Nevertheless, we should note how our neighbors' public broadcasters are faltering. This also applies to the Italian RAI and the Austrian ORF. Of course, the new ARD chairman Raff and his Stuttgart director colleague Peter Voss are right: you can do without Jauch. Jauch also scores points, however, when he denounces the "lunatics", "profile neurotics" and "busybodies" in the ARD management levels in the Spiegel interview. It would also be possible without the ballast of gigantic broadcasting bureaucracies. Small is beautiful: Perhaps many things would run more smoothly with leaner broadcasters - i.e. with half as many broadcasting directors, TV directors and other public dignitaries, who all too often only block each other.
Stephan Russ-Mohl heads the European Journalism Observatory at the University of Lugano.

Electricity company Publicis presents the national team coach as a popular figure for Axpo.Köbi Kuhn also generates excitement off the pitch. The coach of our national team and newly crowned "Swiss of the Year" plays the leading role in five commercials for Axpo. Together with the well-known Swiss director Michael Steiner ("Grounding", "Mein Name ist Eugen"), the agency Publicis has created funny and quirky short stories in which everything revolves around electricity and Köbi National. The brief came from the energy company Axpo, who wanted to communicate the topic of electricity in a new, refreshing and likeable way.Axpo has long been involved in the football Super League as the eponymous sponsor. This is where the connection to Köbi Kuhn originated. The national coach was therefore a fixed player in Axpo's briefing. The agency Publicis, led by CD Philipp Skrabal, subsequently had to - or was allowed to - design its campaign around the popular figurehead. The result is five stories that are intended to arouse the curiosity of the general public for all issues relating to energy and, in particular, to evoke a positive and trusting attitude towards Axpo. Motto: Everyone needs electricity, but only a few people think about where it comes from.
Things get heated at the regulars' table when Köbi Kuhn meets his amiable contemporaries. There are heated discussions, passionate games of cards, and even an aquarium is broken while playing football in the pub. There's something different going on in Köbi Kuhn's neighborhood pub in every film. But in the end, it's always about energy and how we want to deal with it in the future. The stories were invented by Michael Sauter, Nina-Britt Rauer and Simon Staub and produced by Condor Films.
The commercials have been shown in cinemas since Christmas. At the same time, the website energiedialog.ch, realized by Futurecom interactive, has gone live, where the topics of the commercials are recorded and discussed further with the general public. From the end of February 2007, the energy stories from the regulars' table will also be shown on TV. So you can smile and ask yourself: How energetic will Axpo be in the future? After all, it is well known that billions of francs will have to be invested in new energies in the coming years to secure our needs.
Andreas Panzeri