On Wednesday, the Federal Council withdrew a law desired by Uefa against marketing free riders at Euro 08 after a negative consultation process. One day later, Migros provided information about the M08 fan championship, which will be broadcast on TV from 2007 and promises many activities.  
Although it is not an official sponsor of the European Football Championship 08 in Switzerland and Austria, Migros still wants to benefit from the advertising impact of this major event. This is ambush marketing, as the jargon goes. Uefa demanded a law that would prohibit this type of benefit. Migros spokesperson Urs Peter Naef describes it as a coincidence that Migros is reporting on the Fan Championship one day after the Federal Council's negative decision on advertising free-riders. He does not expect any legal problems with Uefa.
 
Fireworks of action What it's all about: From mid-2007, Migros is organizing the M08 fan championship, which will be broadcast on television. With this initiative, Migros wants to turn its customers into stars and spark enthusiasm for Euro 08. Everyone in Switzerland is invited to take part in the games. Migros is still keeping quiet about the content of the games - but it is not football, as the major distributor announced in a communiqué on Thursday. Nevertheless, a footballer will be coaching the fans: former Swiss national goalkeeper Jürg Stiel has been engaged to spur the fans on to peak performance. Migros will buy advertising time for the TV broadcasts in all three parts of the country. The games will be "a firework display of activities and events". The focus will be on fun and games. Special fan offers are also planned in the stores. A campaign for football fans and anyone who wants to become one, writes the SDA.

For years, the market seemed clinically dead. In the Sunday business, the competition seemed to have laid down their arms in the face of the supremacy of the Springer papers Bild am Sonntag and Welt am Sonntag. Now everything is changing. Only the Frankfurter Allgemeine ventured onto the market in 2001 with a Sunday edition, which will close this year in the profit zone for the first time. Despite the online boom, publishers are returning to their core business, writes the Financial Times Deutschland (FTD). Although the figures are sobering - industry leader Bild am Sonntag lost almost 30,000 copies in terms of paid circulation compared to the previous year - the FTD predicts a boom in Sunday newspapers. "This will be a new hotspot for quality journalism," adds trend researcher Eike Wenzel.  
In Hamburg, the Morgenpost am Sonntag and the Sonntags of Axel Springer are having a hot fall battle. Springer had no plans for a Sunday edition of its evening paper, but when the Morgenpost announced a seventh edition at a price of 90 cents, the major publisher reacted promptly and launched a Sunday product on the market a week before the competition - for 50 cents. The Morgenpost then lowered the price to 70 cents and exceeded sales expectations twice over. In addition, Schleswig-Holstein am Sonntag started with a completely sold-out circulation.
A whole series of Sunday papers are now about to be launched: from 2007, the Rheinpfalz will also be published on Sundays and the Berliner Zeitung is also poring over concepts. The launch of the Sunday edition of Süddeutsche Zeitung in late summer 2007 is also eagerly awaited. Not everyone shares the euphoria: leisure researcher Michael Opaschowski sees the danger of cannibalization: "The regional print advertising market is limited. Investments that are put into the Sunday paper are missing the quality offensive that the weekday edition urgently needs."    

The "Quer" team from Swiss Television (SF) received the 1st Swiss Aids Federation Journalism Prize in Zurich on Thursday. The award went to the dossier "Aids in old age". With this prize, Aids-Hilfe aims to raise the profile of HIV/Aids in the media.  
The editorial team addressed several taboo topics with the dossier, according to the jury's reasons for awarding the prize to the popular Friday evening program. In addition to HIV/Aids in old age, sexuality and infidelity in old age were also addressed. The sensitive dossier was also excellently researched.
 
The prize is endowed with CHF 5,000, as Thomas Lyssy, spokesman for the Swiss Aids Federation, explained on Thursday. 11 entries were received from radio, television and print media in German- and French-speaking Switzerland. The journalism prize will also be awarded next year, as reported by the SDA.

The industry prize for the best PR image, sponsored by News Aktuell, went to SOS Children's Villages worldwide. The aid organization won with the motif "6 Villages for 2006. "The children congenially embody the meaning of the global language of football: joy, team spirit, competition and the love of the game," says Ingrid Famula, describing the image campaign she submitted in the sports sponsorship category. The images not only made an impact in the Obs competition, but were also effective in fundraising. Enough donations were received worldwide to ensure the construction and maintenance of the six SOS Children's Villages.
Obs is short for the original image service of the DPA subsidiary News Aktuell. The award recognizes the growing importance of visual press relations. A jury of six experts compiled a shortlist of 18 images from over 500 submissions. News Aktuell then called for a public vote and industry professionals from all over Germany chose the best images.  

The Basel agency Basel West has created a new corporate design for the LIF Foundation.  
LIF stands for Leaders' Integrity Foundation. The foundation aims to support managers in promoting and maintaining their personal integrity. It offers a network for people who want to raise awareness of their responsibility. Basel West has now developed a corporate design and a concept for measures. The current consulting and course offers are advertised in mailings, on the Internet and in the electronic newsletter LIFlet.

It took five years, but now it's done: The shares in Agor have been transferred to the current managing directors Markus Günter, Oliver Hug and Eduard Ulli. Founder Klaus Lüthi has stepped down from the Board of Directors. The company headquarters will remain at Rötelstrasse 37 in Zurich.  
Since its foundation in 1971, Agor has specialized in communication tasks for companies in the export industry, the construction industry and the service sector. Its long-standing clients include Erdgas Zürich, the Swiss Association of Master Builders and the accident insurance company of the city of Zurich. The agency employs ten people and offers a full range of communication services.
 
The change of ownership brings the buyout process, which was initiated in 2001 as a succession plan for Klaus Lüthi, to an end as planned. To mark the start of the new era, Agor has redesigned its website and company portal. The motto is now "Listen, understand, make visible".

In order to simplify media planning, Ringier's Blick publishing house has introduced various standardizations to the advertising rates for the titles Blick, Sonntagsblick and Heute in 2007. The most important change concerns color advertisements. As the Blick publishing house announced on Thursday, the surcharges for color advertisements will be abolished, as all three products are now printed in four colors throughout. From now on, color will be included as a service. Blick-Verlag is thus reducing the 4-color price by at least five percent.
From 2007, 1/1 page in Blick will cost CHF 24,539, in Sonntagsblick CHF 25,468 and in Heute (national) CHF 10,800.
Only in the Blick section marketplace advertisements are now offered in black and white. The rates and further media information are available for download on the Rigier service homepage www.go4media.ch

A lot is happening on the international news market. Al-Jazeera has just launched a full English program to compete with CNN. Now, on December 6, France24, the first European news channel with a 24-hour program, will go on air worldwide. According to Grégoire Deniau, Head of Information at France24, the French channel wants to "look at current affairs with more distance and present different points of view" between the Arab and Anglo-Saxon positions. This is a gap after the radicalization of the programs as a result of the New York terrorist attacks.
Although the channel is called France24, it will not take a decidedly French stance, but will show the confrontation of different positions. France24 is the brainchild of Jacques Chirac, but will not be influenced by any party or lobby, as channel president Alain de Pouzillac assures us. Compared to CNN's budget, which costs one billion francs a year for its program, the newcomer's budget is modest: 130 million francs.
Nevertheless, French diplomacy is providing generous support for the launch. This is also the case in Bern, where the French embassy hosted an aperitif to mark the launch of the channel on December 6. This was reported by the Basler Zeitung on Thursday.

The direct marketing specialist Fisch-Meier created the mailing for the opening of the 5th Bookbinders branch in Bern on November 11. The invitation mailing ensured a full house. A special voucher was created to emphasize Bookbinders' motto "Hold on to your life". Once redeemed, this could be placed on the specially created wall of fame and thus became part of a snapshot of the opening party.

Weltwoche editor-in-chief and majority shareholder Roger Köppel is said to have paid just 1.2 million francs for his 60 percent majority stake, reports the WOZ in its current issue. The owner, Jean Frey AG, is transferring Weltwoche to the newly founded Weltwoche Verlags AG for a fixed price of 2 million, in which it will retain a 40 percent stake. 1.2 million is a bargain, writes WOZ. Five years ago, Tito Tettamanti and other investors paid over 70 million for the entire Jean Frey AG, including an estimated 25 million for Weltwoche. Lawyer Martin Wagner, representative of Jean Frey and Weltwoche Verlags AG, did not confirm the sums mentioned. However, he emphasized to the WOZ that the publishing rights to Weltwoche are not or not yet in Köppel's possession. These are still worth an estimated five to ten million francs. For the time being, Jean Frey AG and Roger Köppel also controlled each other. Wagner and Köppel could only sign jointly for Weltwoche Verlags AG.

From university to the office: In autumn 2006, Sabine Gassmann completed her studies in journalism and organizational communication at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur. She has now joined the Swiss MPM team.  
Gassmann can look back on internships in various companies, during which she was able to get to know everyday life in the communications industry. She also worked as an intern at MPM Switzerland, where she was responsible for the back office and various activities at events, incentives and promotions.

Highly loss-making Russian space programs open up special advertising opportunities: For good money, ISS board engineers chased a ball into space for a Canadian golf outfitter.  
Mikhail Tyurin has probably never had an out-of-orbit mission like this before: last Wednesday, he launched a special golf ball weighing only about three grams into space. The action is part of an advertising campaign by golf equipment manufacturer Element 21, which purchased the longest tee shot ever for an unknown sum.
 
A failure would be devastating: If the ball landed in the highly sensitive solar sail of the ISS instead of in the vastness of space, it would cause serious problems with the energy supply of the space station. Likewise, the space golfer had to hit the ball against the flight direction of Discovery, which was to be launched on December 7, because NASA already feared the worst: golf ball crashes space shuttle.
 
With this advertising campaign, the golf equipment manufacturer not only wants to sell golf balls, but also to remind people of the first golf game on the moon 35 years ago. At that time, the U.S. astronaut Shepard swung the club - for fun, because at that time space programs still received their funding from the government. Either way, it was spectacular: The ball flew miles and miles and miles, as did Tjurin's. But even the most expensive advertising campaign is fleeting: in three days, the ball will burn up. We can only hope that a Martian won't hit it back, and that a catastrophe will occur.