After seven years at Werbewoche, four of them as Deputy Editor-in-Chief and Head of Marketing & Communication, Luca Aloisi will be leaving the Media-Daten AG publishing house at the end of August. He will take up a new challenge in the field of corporate communications. Andreas Panzeri, editor of Werbewoche and experienced in the industry, will take over as head of the department and deputy editor-in-chief.

Since the beginning of June 2006, Marilena Seccia has been looking after her client base as Communication Manager at Puls, the full-service marketing and communications agency for health issues in Basel. The marketing specialist is specialized in pharmaceutical communication and convinces "with her versatile language skills and sparkling ideas from concept to realization", as Puls writes in a media release.

Fifa put a lot of effort into its sponsorship activities for the World Cup. But for many sponsors, the World Cup only paid off to a limited extent. On the other hand, many companies were able to profit from the World Cup, even though they did not enter into official sponsorship agreements with Fifa.Last weekend, the Zurich advertising agency McCann Erickson conducted an online survey of 258 people on the subject of the World Cup, including the official World Cup sponsors. The results show that Credit Suisse was "the big winner among sponsors," as the agency reported in a press release. It is interesting that some brands were able to profit from the World Cup as free riders, so to speak. UBS and Cailler, for example, were frequently perceived as sponsors by the respondents because of their name recognition and high advertising presence, even though they were not official World Cup partners.
Findings on the situation in Germany are revealed in a study by the Aachen-based online research institute Dialego, which surveyed around 1,000 Internet users on the official sponsors. The most frequent mentions include Coca-Cola, followed by McDonald's, Telekom and Adidas. Hyundai, for example, was named much less frequently, as Werben & Verkaufen and the client of this study writes. Philips, Yahoo, Continental and Fuji, among others, must critically scrutinize their sponsorship activities according to the findings for the German market.

The private media companies will have their own association, which aims to make the concerns of the independent media more heard in the media scene. "The companies that are dissatisfied with the recently revised RTVA have neglected to build up effective lobbying," Paul Grau, Managing Director of Star TV and founding member, told Werbewoche. The association therefore also has medium to long-term planning in mind. "We want to make our voice heard at association level, as the revision of the RTVA has resulted in the opposite of the expected liberalization." The work of the Swiss Free Media Association is dedicated to the common goal of helping a modern and diverse media landscape in Switzerland to achieve a breakthrough. Talks are currently being held with the media companies. As the founding members Star TV and Radio 105 emphasize, the new association has already met with great interest in the founding phase. With the chosen approach, the two founding members are also taking a more cautious approach than U1 Tv, whose planned referendum against the new RTVA did not materialize (see
www.werbewoche.ch).Kathrin Fischer

Euro RSCG Zurich was the only Swiss agency to make it to the 41 finalists at this year's European Championship for Advertising Efficiency Euro Effie. Only multinational campaigns are admitted to the Euro Effie. The Zurich-based creative company can hope for a place on the podium with a campaign for its client Switzerland Cheese Marketing. The Euro Effie Awards are organized by the European Association of Communication Agencies (EACA) in collaboration with Euronews and with the support of international media and advertisers. This year's jury members include four Swiss nationals: David Allemann from Advico Young & Rubicam, Mathilde Delhoume from Procter & Gamble, Trevor Isherwood from General Motors and Pascal Schaub from Publicis. The winners will be announced at the gala in Brussels on September 27.

Anyone who wants to watch the highlights of this year's Cannes Lions, or perhaps even reminisce a little, can now do so on DVD and video. The "2006 Cannes Lions Winners" DVD with festival highlights, jury details and all the winners of the various categories has just been released. In addition, the "2006 Cannes Lions Film Winners" video is currently available, as Cannes Lions writes in a press release. The DVD and video can be ordered on the festival website (http://www.canneslions.com).

The Swiss branded goods association Promarca has a completely new Internet presence. The website has been adapted to the association's corporate design and supplemented by a CMS platform. The Biel-based advertising agency Orange8 Interactive has redesigned the website, as Promarca writes in a press release. An important component of the new website is a closed extranet area as a central information hub for association members. In addition, a CRM tool has been developed to manage a wide range of data and extranet access administration and to control the sending of current member information.

Hornbach DIY superstores and garden centers are launching an extensive campaign in Switzerland to tap into the World Cup euphoria and spur people on under the motto "It's in you. Let it out!" to encourage people to do DIY. The campaign kicks off with TV commercials that will be broadcast nationally on SF 1 and SF zwei and on TSR 1 and 2. Online, print, outdoor and POS will also be used as additional channels, while radio spots will only be heard in French-speaking Switzerland. The motto will be interpreted differently in each medium: From lyrical odes to DIY enthusiasts on the radio to superhero interpretations in print and posters. Hornbach employees will also be given a T-shirt with the slogan "You can do anything. I give everything." according to a press release. The aim is to encourage customers to demand everything from their employees. The advertising agency Heimat in Berlin is responsible for the campaign.

After ten years, the World Press Photo exhibition will be back in Switzerland next year. This has been made possible by Keystone. World Press Photo was founded in 1955 in the Netherlands, takes place annually and is one of the most prestigious photo competitions in the world. The main aim of World Press Photo is to support the work of professional press photographers, according to the competition's website. Prizes are awarded for pictures from the fields of politics, sport, people and art. A selection of the winning images from 2005 is available for free download at
www.photopress.ch/image/aktuell. The award-winning pictures are presented as part of a traveling exhibition in 40 countries. Next year, the award-winning images from 2006 will also be shown in Switzerland for three weeks. For Keystone, World Press Photo is "also the beginning of a series of events on the subject of images", as Keystone writes in a press release.

Gross advertising expenditure in Germany increased by 5.6 percent in the first half of 2006 compared to the previous year. This is shown by the latest statistics from Nielsen Media Research, as reported by the Hamburg-based advertising research institute in a press release. This means that gross advertising investments in the first six months of this year increased by more than 513 million euros to a total of 9.7 billion euros. As expected, the second quarter saw stronger growth. The World Cup boosted the advertising business. The share of World Cup-related advertising within traditional media was 5.7 percent in the first half of the year. However, the volume of advertising fell by three percent during the World Cup month in particular. Ludger Wibbelt, Managing Director of Nielsen Media Research, sees rosy times ahead for the advertising industry in Germany: "We expect this positive trend to continue in the second half of the year," said Wibbelt in a press release.
The forecast of the Central Association of the German Advertising Industry (ZAW) is more cautious with regard to the VAT increase from 2007, as Pressetext writes.

The draft revision of the Federal Act against Unfair Competition (UWG) is also not well received in Baselland. Here too, the government rejects the creation of a special offense of ambush marketing as too narrow and monopolistic. Ambush marketing is not generally unfair, but only if the public is deceived, the government announced on Tuesday. However, the existing law would already provide sufficient protection against deception. The amendment demanded by European football association Uefa is therefore superfluous.
The government also suspects that the primary aim of the change in the law is to give Uefa a quasi-monopoly position in the run-up to the 2008 European Championship so that it can generate more advertising money, according to a statement from the SDA news agency. However, such excessive and privileged protection of the position of a major private organizer is contrary to Swiss competition law.
The consultation period runs until mid-August. Before the canton of Baselland, the governments of Thurgau (see www.werbewoche.ch) and Solothurn ( see www.werbewoche.ch) have already spoken out against the revision. The umbrella organization Schweizer Werbung also expressed negative views on the planned revision (see www.werbewoche.ch).

The Swiss mobile phone company is using an unusual marketing initiative to find a model for its new international advertising campaign: the woman is to bid for the job on eBay. The winner of the auction can look forward to the label "United Mobile face" and a full-day photo shoot in which the motif for the advertising campaign starting in late summer will be snapped: The model makes a phone call on a green sofa in front of changing backgrounds. This motif will be used internationally for classic advertisements, outdoor advertising and online marketing.
Interested women between the ages of 18 and 35 can take part in the auction between July 13 and 23 on Ebay.de under the keyword "Chance of your life". They must write "Yes, I want to take the chance of my life" in the text field and qualify for the auction with a full body portrait and a copy of their identity card. The proceeds from the auction will go to the international aid organization World Vision.