Effective immediately, Wirz Zürich and Sportlink & Cie, based in Lucerne, will be working together in the area of sponsorship. The aim is to create a consulting and service offering in the communications business that is unique in Switzerland and is characterized by consistent customer orientation and high service quality. With this cooperation, the Wirz Group intends to expand its range of services to include the increasingly important communications sector of sponsoring. Sportlink & Cie, a nationally and internationally active consultancy and service company in the field of sponsorship, is to gain access to high-quality communications expertise and capacity for the development and implementation of sponsorship strategies and concepts through this cooperation.

The Geneva-based advertising agency Saatchi & Saatchi Simko launched a competition for the Swiss electricity company Groupe E in which the main prize was a trip to Iceland. For the competition, oversized sockets were placed on Groupe E posters in Fribourg and the surrounding area, which were connected to electrical devices used in public life, such as street lamps, parking garage barriers, ticket machines, etc. To win the trip, advertisements and flyers on buses asked people to name the devices to which the sockets were connected. In this way, Groupe E wanted to remind consumers in an effective and simple way how much we take electricity for granted in everyday life and that electricity is omnipresent in daily life.

The Freicom agency designed and implemented the 2005 annual report of the Rheintal Werdenberg Sarganserland hospital region. This was awarded the "Golden Pen" by the Swiss Association for Internal Communication (Svik). The annual report came third in the European competition. According to the agency's newsletter, the award was given for the implementation of a sensitive topic, the good copywriting, the photographs and the clear composition. EgoKiefer, the window and door company, is now relying on Freicom's ideas and advice for its communications. Work is planned in the areas of marketing/advertising, public relations and events. The first implementations will be on display at Swissbau 2007 in Basel in January. The 75th anniversary celebrations will follow in June 2007.
New forces at FreicomSince November 1, 2006, Raffael Soppelsa has been the new project manager in the event management division. He graduated from the University of Applied Sciences for Economics in St. Gallen, after which he worked for the Säntis suspension railroad in the event sector. Cornel Speich will join Freicom as a marketing communications consultant on January 1, 2007. He is a qualified marketing planner and has many years of experience as a consultant, most recently with the Dachcom agency.

The new NZZ lifestyle magazine Z will be launched in February 2007. The magazine for the cultivated way of life will be included ten times a year in the Saturday edition of the NZZ and the NZZ am Sonntag. Responsibility for advertising sales lies with NZZ Media, which has been supported by Yvonne Müller since December 1, 2006. She has many years of experience in magazine sales - on both the agency and advertising client side. 

Following an agency evaluation, Armasuisse has decided to partner with Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett (SFLB). In addition to strategic tasks such as brand management, the Zurich-based agency will develop an umbrella campaign with accompanying measures. The first results are expected to be visible in the spring of 2007, SFLB announced on Monday. The Federal Department of Defense, Civil Protection, and Sports (VBS) awards the «Approved by Armasuisse» seal of approval through its Armasuisse division. The license is granted only to manufacturers whose products have passed tests conducted in the army’s own laboratories and those of the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Testing and Research (EMPA). The seal of approval recognizes high durability, functionality, and consistent, uncompromising quality in both the materials used and their workmanship.

Schweizer Soldat, the independent monthly magazine for defense and civil protection, is now being sold and advertised by the St.Galler Tagblatt company. The publication is now in its 82nd year and reaches a monthly readership of around 6,000 subscribers, mainly officers and non-commissioned officers of the Swiss Armed Forces. The first issue of 2007 will be published on December 22.

Television broadcasters and mobile operators are competing for the supremacy of television on cell phones. Now a compromise seems to have been reached in Hamburg that both sides can live with. This envisages sharing access to transmission capacities in the mobile DVB-H standard between TV broadcasters and mobile phone providers. However, it is still unclear which side will receive how many program slots. The approval of the Federal Cartel Office is also still pending. As the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reports, the major mobile phone operators hope to be able to launch mobile TV using the DVB-H standard by Christmas 2007. The initial aim is to reach 20 percent of the total population - initially only in urban centers. Later, half of the German population should be able to receive TV on their cell phones via DVB-H.

The media directory "Top 150 Swiss Media" has been published as a joint product of Media Daten Verlag and Edition Renteria. This tool provides marketing experts, media planners, PR managers and journalists with the most important information on the Swiss media industry. It lists all relevant data on the more than 100 most important print titles and the 40 most important electronic media in Switzerland. Media Daten Verlag supplied the advertising and address data for the media, Edition Renteria the names of the editorial contacts. The CD integrated in the book cover provides all the data for sales and media planning. The reference work also contains the relevant market analyses and graphics on the current media landscape from the Media Trend Journal.

Coop CEO Hansueli Loosli is expecting strong growth in online grocery stores in 2006. Sales of CHF 45 million are expected in 2006, which corresponds to growth of 50 percent. Loosli told the Basler Zeitung that he expects to be in the black in 2008. Competitor Le Shop/Migros was in the black for the first time in the first half of 2006, slipped back into the red due to investments in the new warehouse and aims to return to profit in 2008. Sales at Le Shop/Migros amounted to CHF 47.6 million in the first nine months of 2006 - an increase of 39.3 percent.

Internet TV provider Netstream wants to work closely with Orange. The aim is for Netstream to enter the mobile business. The first joint offers are to be launched at the beginning of 2007. The partnership will turn Netstream into a quadruple-play provider, offering Internet, fixed-line telephony, mobile communications and TV in future.

Tamara Mattiussi-Tschuor (37) is the new Publishing Director of the specialist magazine Manuell. After working as Head of Reader Marketing at AZ Medien, the marketing planner and publishing specialist spent several years as Business Manager Switzerland for Reader's Digest. She is also a lecturer at the Media Institute of the Swiss Press. 
The trade journal Manuell has a circulation of 5,500 copies and is published by the Textile Work and Crafts Association. The magazine will celebrate its 90th anniversary in 2008.
 

storage space - that's 20 times more than before. The advertising agency Malstube presents the increase in storage space as a reverse diet. The slogan "Unbeatable: the new Hostpoint diet" is emblazoned over a hamburger bursting with onions and cheese. Other subjects, all of which were placed in full-page ads in the trade press, show kebabs, banana splits, pizza, French fries and Black Forest cake, making it clear that Hostpoint's storage space slimming diet is now over for good.