The globally active and renowned news agency Agence France-Presse (AFP) will also offer its online video news service in German in future. Up to 50 articles per month are already available in English via the agency's portal. According to research by the industry journal Werben & Verkaufen, some of the content will also be available in German from 2007. The product range includes edited news films, interviews and magazine articles as well as unedited raw material. With this step, AFP is responding to the increasing demand for such products. The US news channel CNN is also planning a licensed product for German-language online portals. Until now, Reuters has been the sole provider of online video news in German.

The newspaper landscape in the canton of Graubünden gets a new addition at the beginning of December. Chur-based Casanova Druck und Verlag AG is publishing the free weekly Bündner Anzeiger with a circulation of 70,000 copies. This gives publisher Hanspeter Lebrument's Südostschweiz Mediengruppe a competitor in the newspaper market. Bündner Anzeiger? is the name of the newspaper that Stefan Bühler, owner of Casanova Druck und Verlag AG and former editor-in-chief of the "Bündner Zeitung", is launching at the beginning of December.
The paper, which is financed by advertising, is distributed weekly in 167 municipalities in the northern part of the canton, as Stefan Bühler - owner of Casanova Druck und Verlags AG and former editor-in-chief of the Bündner Zeitung - told SDA on Thursday. With the launch of the Bündner Anzeiger, competition in the free newspaper market is intensifying. The Südostschweiz Media Group, which publishes the Bündner Woche in the northern Grisons, recently took over the Engadiner Wochenzeitung. These two papers will also be published from December with a total circulation of 70,000 and identical advertisements.
The Bündner Woche is therefore entering a market that the Südostschweiz Group largely dominates with newspapers and electronic media. However, the new Anzeiger wants to offer an alternative: with better texts, stories with more flair and a focus on the people segment. Two editors have been permanently employed and Bühler says he can also draw on an editorial pool. He himself will also be taking to the keys.
Print order for Ringier The new newspaper will be printed by Ringier Print in Adligenswil, Lucerne. An advertising agency set up specifically for this purpose on October 1 was commissioned to acquire the advertisements. Bühler worked for many years as a journalist and for ten years as editor-in-chief of the Bündner Zeitung, the predecessor of the daily newspaper Die Südostschweiz. He was a companion of Südostschweiz publisher Hanspeter Lebrument for 25 years before they parted ways at the end of 1996 and became rivals.

The Burda media company has discovered gamers as a target group. According to the daily newspaper Welt, the group has acquired a stake in computer game portals, namely Gamona and IncGames. The stake would be 35 to 40 percent. These are two of the leading games sites on the Internet. Burda expects 10 million players in the future. This is just the beginning, the newspaper continues. Burda has already announced that it will not shy away from major acquisitions. In addition, the group has declared its intention to invest in the Internet. The Group already has more than 20 Internet companies in its investment portfolio, including the online antiquarian bookshop Abebooks and the gift mail order company Valentins. Burda plans to double its turnover in the Internet business over the next two years.

With a new communications assignment for Neue Schule Zürich, the Zurich agency is hoping for top marks. The ISO-certified Neue Schule Zürich has entrusted Matter & Gretener with a series of communication tasks. In a first step, the secondary school A of the state-recognized private school will be advertised with pointed text ads and an information flyer, according to Matter & Gretener.

From 2007, Friedli will take over the post of art director at the Aarau agency Renzen Communication. She is the successor to Gianni Bertossa, who is going into business for himself, and according to Renzen, the qualified graphic designer is currently working as a designer at UEFA Events in Lucerne. She previously worked for Grey, Geneva, and Saatchi & Saatchi Simko, also in Geneva.

On Wednesday, Al Jazeera English went on the air with reports of missiles and suffering children, as well as images from Inside Iraq. The launch took place largely to the exclusion of the Western world public. Strange, actually.  
CNN's Arabic counterpart is considered highly controversial in the West as well as in some Arab states because of its often unsparing images and tendentious language. The accusation of propaganda has been confirmed rather than refuted on the English-language website launched three years ago. According to bloggers, the tone of Al Jazeera English, which has been on the air since this week, is also unusually sharp for Western ears, but quite factual. This should not come as a surprise, as Al Jazeera English had poached several reporters and moderators from competitors such as the BBC and CNN. Someone even writes that it is good to know that neither the usual PR censorship nor political correctness smoothes the information here.
 
But sometimes, as is well known, you are not allowed to decide for yourself what is good for you and what is not. For example, Al Jazeera's negotiations with U.S. cable providers failed almost across the board, so that the station started without a major U.S. provider and is therefore hardly received. In Switzerland, too, Al Jazeera English is only available on Naxooo's French cable service. Although press reports or even official statements on the reasons why this is the case are rare, it is hard to believe in a coincidence. In the fear reflex before Arab contents one places oneself in our culture rather times deaf and tries further the propaganda reproach, surely also, in order not to have to see oneself the eyes of others. It is easy to forget that CNN broadcast pictures of cheering Muslims after the New York attacks and that it later turned out that the recordings were already several years old.
 
Globally, things look better, according to the Arabic broadcaster: The station reaches more than 80 million households via cable or satellite. That's why Al Jazeera doesn't really care when Western media experts express the suspicion that the station serves opinions rather than educates. One can only wish that Al Jazeera's journalists keep a clear head and find the right words.

The marketing agency ICLP, based at Kloten Airport, is expanding its Swiss headquarters with four new employees in the areas of creation and customer consulting. ICLP stands for International Customer Loyalty Programs and the globally active ICLP is an international leader in this loyalty marketing discipline. The agency, which is headquartered in London, has been successfully implementing frequent flyer programs for years and is now looking to expand its services to companies in the retail and consumer goods industries, according to the agency. The recruitment of the additional staff now allows ICLP to position itself as a full-service agency on the market. These four heads will strengthen ICLP with immediate effect:
As Art Director, Martina Gehweiler will be responsible for the creative aspects of the company. This includes conception, design and photography. In recent years, Gehweiler has gained experience in various agencies in Germany, Spain and most recently in Switzerland.
Carolina Bernaschina will support the Client Service department in the area of marketing as Junior Account Manager.
Oli Dervey's main task will be to benchmark customer loyalty programs in various industries worldwide and to advise clients on analysis and trends.
André DuBuisson becomes Business Integration Manager. In this role, he is the link between customer requirements and practical implementation in the IT environment.

On December 1, Valerio Barbesino will take over the management of Reader's Digest Zurich. The Zurich branch is one of the most important subsidiaries of the globally active direct marketing company. 45-year-old Barbesino brings a wealth of experience in direct marketing to his new position: he is the former Head of Marketing of the Italian branch of Reader's Digest and has held various marketing positions in Italy and the UK in recent years, most recently at International Masters Publishers (IMP). Now the business administration graduate is returning to Reader's Digest. 

With CinEval, Cinecom is launching a new and efficient media planning tool for cinema advertising. The tool supports advertising clients in the rough evaluation of national cinema campaigns. The program calculates the contact sum and the costs of the media plan on the basis of the spot length entered, the corresponding Cinecom pool and the desired target group. The results are displayed graphically and in tabular form. CinEval is based on the current values of the Cinema Admission Monitor (CAM), the forecasting and post-control tool for cinema campaigns from Cinecom and WEMF, which takes into account seasonal differences in reach. CineEval is now available for free download at the address below and includes data for the whole of 2007, according to the company.

The Franz Carl Weber children’s toy store in Zurich commissioned Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett to create its Christmas TV commercial. In the commercial, the toys themselves invite children to visit, as they play «Ihr Kinderlein kommet» together. Each toy in the toy community contributes a note to the song: the xylophone, the cash register, the rubber duck, and the locomotive. The TV commercial will air on TeleZüri starting November 16.

The German discounter is causing the branded goods industry in Switzerland to tremble: the chain plans to open stores in around 50 locations in the coming years. This is likely to put prices for branded goods under severe pressure. Whether Lidl will come to Switzerland is out of the question. The only open question is how aggressively the German discounter intends to conquer the Swiss market. The company is known for its legendary PR strategies. On Lidl's first day of sales in Slovakia, for example, customers were generally granted a 90 percent discount. The fact that a fine was levied for selling below cost price further enhanced the effect of the PR campaign.
According to experts, Lidl's market entry in Switzerland will be a burden, especially for branded wholesalers such as Coop or Denner, as Lidl also sells branded products on its shelves. However, these are sold 10 to 20 percent cheaper at the German discounter than even the Prix Garantie line. In an interview with Cash, Coop is tellingly vague: "We are prepared and can react".
The ground-breaking ceremony for Lidl's future headquarters in Weinfelden took place in mid-October. Construction of the goods distribution center will also begin there in the spring. In an initial phase, the discount chain intends to operate primarily in German-speaking Switzerland, with 35 stores in this region alone. Around 300 jobs will be created in Weinfelden alone and around CHF 35 million will be invested.

Column It's spooky that hardly anyone from the hyperactive and talkative communications industry opposes the nonsense of advertising bans.The sentence comes from the civics textbook. "If you don't politicize, you will be politicized." The sentence is as exciting as sleepy feet - and it's spot on. Right now, we can once again see how the health lobby, fed with taxpayers' money and donations, is taking over the public debate thanks to the indifference of the other side. In the canton of Solothurn, a new health law is being put to the vote, which not only provides for smoke-free pubs, but also a ban on tobacco advertising. According to the Basler Zeitung newspaper of November 11, it will probably be the toughest anti-tobacco law in the whole of Switzerland. In the cantonal parliament, it only received a narrow majority of 45 votes to 42. The familiar picture: FDP, SVP and business associations against, SP, Greens and health organizations for - and among the supporters also the inherently insidious CVP with its pfäffische double face, which we already know from media politics.
Once again, the old arguments are trotted out and the impression is reinforced: the Taliban of healthy living are inspired by a holy zeal to declare their version of the truth universally binding. "You have to take the product out of sight and restrict its availability. Tobacco products belong under the counter," demands a functionary named Verena El Fehri from the Tobacco Prevention Working Group. Piero Schäfer, the unwavering campaigner against advertising bans, counters this with the simple fact that although a tobacco advertising ban has been in force in Italy since 1962, there has been no reduction in smoking or changes in consumption habits.
The outcome of the religious war in Solothurn is predictable. On September 24, the canton of Baselland decided in favor of advertising restrictions with a 71% majority. It is spooky that apart from the brave Piero and a few paid association officials, no one from the otherwise so hyperactive and talkative communications industry is fighting with all their might and eloquence against the inhumane nonsense of advertising bans.
What we have been predicting for years for the mentally and politically inert industry is now promptly happening: Advertising bans are to be used to "combat" all kinds of damage to civilization: Alcoholism, sugar consumption, fast cars. All this is being seriously considered and drafted - not only, but also in the couloirs of the EU bureaucracy in Brussels. The bureaucrats lull themselves and us into the false sense of security that an evil has been combated by banning the advertising of said evil. It's like the superstitious fighting ghosts: Just don't talk about it and they'll go away. Eyes closed and through - even at the cost of freedom. After all, advertising for legally available products is part of freedom of expression and as such is actually non-negotiable in a free society. The alternative, taken to its logical conclusion, would be state-imposed truth, proclaimed and controlled by the Ministry of Truth, as outlined by George Orwell.
Does the majority of the Swiss advertising and communications industry actually have the political awareness of amoebas? Sure, it doesn't affect the powerful in this league. Newspaper and magazine publishers, for example, only participate in tobacco and alcohol advertising with a few lousy percentages (at least as long as they don't count Denner's wine advertisements). 72 percent of the relevant budgets go to billposters and 14 percent to cinema advertising. The tobacco industry itself hardly puts up any noticeable fight for its advertising freedom. As a typical oligopoly, it can only be happy with advertising restrictions for cost reasons; after all, they know best from experience what tobacco advertising really does: not so much an increase in the number of smokers, but certainly a shift in market share.
Tobacco today, alcohol tomorrow - and the day after tomorrow? Anyone who occasionally listens to the world-improving visions of the bureaucrats in Brussels should set alarm bells ringing. But nothing is happening, with the exception of the aforementioned brave officials, who are being let down by the base of well-paid consultants and suppliers. Do they no longer believe their own arguments? Or do they no longer trust themselves to stand up with the power of conviction and better arguments against the devious prohibitionist mentality of the Jacobin watchdogs? Or is it the inertia of the full, who don't think they are affected just because they are not managing a cigarette or liquor budget?
Karl Lüönd is a freelance publicist.