Nothing is sacred to them, the advertisers, and you are not safe from them in any situation. We've already worked our butts off with advertising, craning our necks to decipher advertising messages flown into the sky. In future, advertising will have to be peeled off breakfast eggs. At least in the United States. From September, the television station CBS will be distributing 35 million eggs with lasered slogans. For example, there will be an egg with the slogan "Crack the Case on CBS" for the crime hit "CSI", which is also well known here, and one with the slogan "Hard-boiled Drama" for "Shark". George Schweitzer, president of the CBS marketing group, hopes that the campaign will create cheerful breakfast moments throughout the country and adds: "You can't escape this message". This is probably why CBS has secured the exclusive rights for this new form of advertising. 

Now it's time to get serious for future pop stars: starting today, Monday, music talents can register for auditions with SF DRS. From September 29, a total of ten auditions will be held in five Swiss cities. It is expected that thousands will once again register for auditions and auditions. From these, 10 finalists will be selected to take on the legacy of Baschi and Co. in Zurich's Maag Music Hall from January 7. Those who don't have any luck with Musicstar can still hope for the new Swiss private channel TV 3+, which will be offering similar casting formats from September. 

After the Volvo Incsription new customer mailing had already reached the shortlist (see OgilvyOne shortlisted for the DMA Echo Award 2006), the Zurich-based company has now won one of the most coveted awards in direct marketing. The mailing has already been very successful at Cannes Lions Direct, the Swiss Dialog Marketing Award and the ddp German Dialog Marketing Award. The DMA Echo Award is now another major success - this time in America.
The jury had to evaluate over 1000 submissions in 12 categories. Only 24 percent of the submissions made it through the first two rounds of judging, with the third round taking place at the end of July. The awards ceremony will take place on October 17 at the DMA Conference in San Francisco.

In future, internet giant Google and operator of the Google News portal wants to pay for agency material and has therefore concluded a contract with the Associated Press AP news agency. The contract forms the basis for a new Google service that is currently being planned, Pressetext reports. No details of the agreement have been communicated and it is not known whether there will be further partnerships with other agencies in the future. The news agency Reuters quotes Google spokeswoman Sonya Borlav as saying that the new agreement is a license agreement that will enable Google to process original AP texts and images in new forms than the existing Google News portal currently does.
In the past, Google has been in dispute with some press agencies because Google News presents content from over 4,500 sources worldwide without paying for it. However, as Google News never shows the complete report and always links to the author's page, copyright law is not infringed. The contract with AP will not change this.

Since Monday, August 7, Springer has been conducting an extended market test for the daily sports newspaper Sport-B.Z.. The concept was already tested during the 2006 Football World Cup and is now available for 50 cents from Monday to Friday in Berlin, Brandenburg and Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania - just in time for the start of the Bundesliga.
Sport-B.Z. provides readers with 24 to 32 pages of information on soccer, with a focus on the Bundesliga and Champions League. The newspaper also reports on daily events in other sports such as basketball, ice hockey, handball, cycling, boxing, Formula 1, tennis, football and athletics. In the test phase during the World Cup, 90 percent of readers rated Sport-B.Z. as good or very good, according to a press release.

To date, the magazine Kicker has only been published twice a week in Germany, as well as the Springer product Sport-Bild on Wednesdays, as the news agency SDA writes. In the football nations of Italy, Spain and France, however, daily sports newspapers are very popular.

Two Swiss agencies have made it to the final of the international Cresta Awards: Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett (SFLB) has been nominated with the ads for National Versicherung and the lido announcements for PET recycling. In the Interactive Media category, Euro RSCG is in the final with the Stop AIDS site www.lovelife.ch. The winners will be announced on October 30 in New York.

As a study by the ProSiebenSat.1 marketing company SevenOne Media shows, people are increasingly pressing the remote control in bed. The TV is on for a full 77 minutes a day in German bedrooms; in 2003 it was just 59 minutes. Although the most popular TV room is still the living room with 213 minutes per day, experts expect the bedroom to continue to catch up, according to the press release. Incidentally, the trend is particularly pronounced among singles: they spend 168 minutes a day watching TV from bed - in contrast to families with children (62 minutes). 

Blogs are currently the subject of numerous studies, newspaper articles and commentaries. Now two students from the Lucerne School of Business HSW have created the portal www.corporate-blog.ch on the subject of corporate blogs. As part of their project work, Nicolas Blanchard and Adrian Iten have identified 38 Swiss corporate blogs (as of April 2006). Most of them are from the IT, PR or advertising sectors. The students note that Switzerland is a latecomer when it comes to corporate blogs. Countries such as France, the USA and Germany have a higher number. In addition to a theoretical treatment of the topic, the website also contains an overview of existing studies, an annotated bibliography, a link database and a guide for companies. According to Blanchard and Iten, weblogs are an opportunity for small companies in particular.

Apparently, Swisscom is planning to launch the new television service via Internet Protocol (IP) on December 21 - i.e. quite near the end of the officially announced launch date of the second half of 2006. As reported by a blogger on Symlink, a Bluewin TV300 customer was told when returning the device to the Swisscom store that he could keep the device and thus also receive BluewinTV via ADSL from December.
The same blogger came across an apparently provisional store offer on the Swisscom website that announced BluewinTV. This site has since been removed. However, Blogg.ch was able to take a screenshot of it and publish it. The news was also published today in Monday's online edition.

BluewinTV will cost CHF 25 per month, with 100 channels available. The set-up fee and welcome kit add up to CHF 250. However, Swisscom spokesperson Christian Neuhaus did not want to confirm this information to Netzwoche. The site is a placeholder and the information is provisional. In fact, the page that has been removed is also labeled "placeholder".

The July values of the Swiss Adex show a drop of 14 points, while the average click price of CHF 1.57 per click has changed only slightly compared to the previous month (June: CHF 1.59 per click). According to Angelink Yourposition, it is noticeable that Swiss companies hardly coordinate their Google advertising with the vacation season. The summer slump is mainly due to foreign advertising, which generated less relevant advertising pressure.
Only two sectors intensified their advertising placements in July: the wellness/fitness sector and the clothing sector. Booking volumes and click prices for consumer electronics fell particularly sharply after the World Cup.

The monthly Swiss Adex published by Angelink yourposition measures how search engine marketing with Google AdWords is developing in Switzerland. All prices are based on the click prices that Google offers potential advertising customers online.

The Eurobest creative competition for radio, TV/cinema, print, outdoor and interactive advertising is adding two new categories to its program this year. In the "Direct" category, the jury honors creative and innovative work in the field of direct marketing. The "Integrated" category honors campaigns that combine a media mix of at least three different types. The jury, which is chaired by the competition president, is made up of ten members from the other categories. According to Terry Savage, Executive Chaiman of Eurobest, the two new categories will help to establish the creative strength of the competition. Information on the conditions of participation and the categories will be available from mid-August at
http://www.eurobest.com. The submission period starts on September 7. At the beginning of December, the jury in London will evaluate the submitted works. The shortlist places will be determined on December 5, the winners will be announced on December 7.

The Basler Zeitung (baz) is reacting to the cooperation between the Mitteland Zeitung (MZ) and the Basellandschaftliche Zeitung (BLZ): As of August 18, 2006, the regional section of the daily newspaper will now appear with two frets instead of one - after the regional magazine disappeared from the regional section of the "Basler Zeitung" at the beginning of the year. Five to eight editorial pages are planned for the expanded regional reporting, according to a press release. With this change, the baz will appear in its normal edition as a 5-bundle newspaper with a daily culture magazine. At the same time, regional reporting will also be intensified in the business and sports sections - the "wirtschaft.region" and "sport.region" pages will now appear daily. At the beginning of May, baz was disappointed by the merger of BLZ and MZ. It had hoped for a regional cooperation, but the Basellandschaftliche Zeitung was not interested. Now the baz is going its own way and, as before, is devoting itself to the most important topics of interest to the entire region in the first "region" bundle. These are complemented by articles on Basel-Stadt, the southern Baden region and Alsace. The new second regional section "region.land" reflects current events and topics in the Basel region. It also includes news from the neighboring districts of the cantons of Solothurn and Aargau. Each region also has its own page: the lower Baselbiet (districts of Arlesheim and Pratteln), the upper Baselbiet (districts of Liestal, Sissach, Waldenburg), the Laufental and Schwarzbubenland as well as the Fricktal.
As part of the expansion, the team was strengthened with ten additional positions - a total of 30 people now work in the baz regional editorial office. It is the newspaper's largest department and is now divided into three parts. Work is carried out at two locations: in the city of Basel and in Liestal.
Parallel to the expansion, baz will distribute a large print run every Friday in parts of the Basel region. The initial print run will be around 90,000 copies, which together with the subscribed circulation corresponds to over 190,000 copies. However, free readers will not be able to enjoy the full benefits: the cultural magazine will be reserved for subscribers.
Advertisers will only pay around half the usual advertising rate in the regional edition of the new Friday edition, which will also be distributed free of charge. There are also various combination options. In terms of self-promotion, the baz is placing poster advertising and drawing attention to itself in means of transportation and with radio spots.