The Gate Communication was founded at the beginning of April and sees itself as a modern and personally managed consultancy for communication, consulting and coaching. The agency now also has an online presence.
The agency of Barbla C. Schaerer (38), former Managing Director of Trimedia and member of the Executive Board of Farner PR, has got off to a good start and is already handling four mandates, according to a press release. The Gate Communications supports national and international companies, organizations, institutions and individuals. The services offered correspond to those of a full-service PR agency and include corporate communications, media relations, crisis communications, strategy consulting, marketing communications, coaching, reputation management and public affairs. Agency owner Barbla C. Schaerer works with a team of independent employees and a network of other specialists, according to the press release.

The young communications agency Match Communications has been awarded the contract for a national promotional campaign by marketing partners Orange and Sony Ericsson. The agency won the pitch against three competitors, according to a press release. The campaign focuses on a music contest for young Swiss bands with the aim of finding the best support act for a Christina Aguilera concert. Orange and Sony Ericsson want to gain market share in the downloadable music sector. They have entered into an exclusive cooperation with Christina Aguilera to increase awareness of their joint offering. The first works by Match Communications for the national campaign will be shown in August.

The beverage giant Coca Cola has been represented in Switzerland for 70 years: In 1936, car importer Max Stoos concluded a concession with the headquarters in Atlanta and founded Boissons Désaltérantes in Lausanne. To mark this anniversary, Coca Cola is adapting the new global campaign "Welcome to the Coke side of life" especially for Switzerland. The aim of this campaign is to convey a new positive attitude to life to consumers, announced Flavio Calligaris-Maibach, Head of Marketing, in a press release. The Group is celebrating its 120th anniversary worldwide this year. The company owns 400 brands, around 30 of which are in Switzerland, including Fanta, Sprite, Nestea, Powerade, Nescafé Xpress, Minute Maid and Valser. In 2005, the Swiss drank 43 liters of Coca Cola per capita.

The dispute between the head of Radio 105, Giuseppe Scaglione, and the SRG research service is entering the next round. Scaglione expressed strong doubts and concerns about radio research using Radiocontrol (see article in Werbewoche No. 26/06). Manuel Dähler, Head of the SRG Research Service, responded with a statement to Werbewoche. Now
Scaglione followed up in a statement: Publica Data had blocked the data for Radio 105 with immediate effect and the research service had also accused him of manipulation. Scaglione himself had caused a sudden increase in listening figures in weeks 11 and 12 of this year. He had obtained a dial gauge via a Radiocontrol panelist and had it listen to Radio 105 for hours. Scaglione
now writes in a communiqué to the media on Monday that he announced this step to Publica Data. It was "an announced test and not an attempted manipulation". He could have used three clocks at the same time, but deliberately only used one. In his statement to Werbewoche, Dähler said that there was no reason to consider the data invalid or manipulated. For special interest channels, the research service recommends using quarterly and semester figures. If the figures are evaluated over a quarter, even a listener with unusual behavior - like Scaglione during his test - is one among thousands. In his statement on Monday, the 105 boss also criticized the fact that the research service had no control over whether a panlist actually wore his Radiocontrol watch or passed it on to another person. The question now arises as to "whether radio stations have been booked (or not booked) in recent years on the basis of incorrect listener numbers, causing financial damage to the stations and advertising customers concerned".
Scaglione calls on the industry to "thoroughly scrutinize" the radio control figures and, if necessary, to use other listener figures such as those from Wemf. Radio 105 uses the data from Wemf's MA Strategy for its station marketing. Dähler replied to Werbewoche on this point that the MA Strategy does not show reach, but the narrower user group (ENK). Some of the different figures from Radiocontrol were due to methodological differences: The Wemf carries out surveys, the Research Service measurements. In contrast to measurements, the image of a station or awareness due to advertising campaigns can also play a role in surveys, Dähler continued.

The largest animal magazine in Switzerland, Tierwelt, can now also be obtained as an e-paper in its original layout under the name "myTierwelt". Subscribers can obtain the e-paper online or download it as a PDF, as Tierwelt writes in a press release. "myTierwelt" was realized by ZT online AG in collaboration with the Ringier subsidiary Previon AG. With this new function, however, Tierwelt is going one step further: Tierwelt subscribers can compile their own Tierwelt issue according to their interests and download it as a PDF document.
Tierwelt is published by Tierwelt-Verlag, has 364,000 readers and is published weekly with an average of 175 pages and a circulation of 73,871 copies.

Brands no longer just act as sponsors, but as part of the scene and thus infiltrate the subculture. They play with false facts, tricks and deceptions. This development is linked to the "no-logo generation" of today's 20 and 35-year-olds, who avoid branded products and are critical of advertising. "This generation can talk about commercials like music. They are professionals who find conventional advertising ridiculous. They want to be entertained," Frank Bodin, head of the advertising agency Euro RSCG, is quoted as saying in the Sonntagszeitung.
There are numerous examples of camouflage advertising: Nike, for example, held demonstrations in Australia back in 2001 against the technical superiority of the then new "Nike Air Zoom" - the demonstrators were actors. According to David Eicher from the Munich agency Webguerillas, the growth rates of alternative forms of advertising are "enormously high", as the Sonntagszeitung continues.
In Switzerland, however, people are generally still cautious in this respect. Nevertheless, one of the best camouflage campaigns comes from Switzerland, namely from mountain sports outfitter Mammut: the "Mary Woodbridge" campaign by Spillmann/Felser/Leo Burnett won the Goldbach Medien Group's Crossmedia Award, as reported by Werbewoche.

The London International Awards Advertising and Design (LIA Awards) are once again extending their submission deadline for the current competition, as Horizont.at writes. The "Final Deadline" is set for Friday, July 21, 2006. The awards will be presented in the categories Line/Collateral, Integrated Media, Interactive, Poster/Outdoor, Print, Radio, Television/Cinema, Out of Home and Corporate Videos/Films. All works published between July 1, 2005 and June 30, 2006 can take part in the competition. The award gala will take place on November 6, 2006 in London. Further information on the competition can be found on the LIA Awards website.

Axel Springer Verlag wants to expand its activities on the Internet: All news items are to be published on the WWW as soon as they come in - including exclusive stories. Detailed reports are to be read in the newspaper the following day. This is announced by Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner in the upcoming issue of the news magazine Focus, as Pressetext.ch reports. A new newsroom for the newspapers Welt and Berliner Morgenpost is to be completed at the end of the year. From then on, the "online first" rule will apply. Everything else "misses the customer", says Döpfner. However, Springer does not want to compete with Google: "In comparison, we are a newsstand company," Döpfner continues.

The Vaud radio station Rouge FM has been granted a license by the federal government to extend its broadcasting area to Geneva. Rouge FM wants to be heard throughout French-speaking Switzerland in the long term. With the expansion into the neighboring canton, the first step has been taken, as "24 heures" writes. This should enable Rouge FM to reach half a million listeners, as Stephan Deglon, Head of Marketing at Rouge FM, told "24 heures".

The Zurich pharmacy on Kreuzplatz has set itself the goal of providing comprehensive advice on sun protection. To illustrate the importance of sun protection, it commissioned the Zurich agency Matter & Gretener to develop a unique motif: A vacationer lies on the beach in the midday heat - but not on his bath towel, but underneath it. The unmistakable headline reads: "Too much sun can kill". The aim is to make it clear that the harmful UV rays cause pigmentation marks to form on the skin, which can lead to fatal skin cancer, according to a press release. The motif, created by South African photographer Harry De Zitter, can be seen in the windows of the pharmacy on Kreuzplatz, in advertisements and cinema slides as well as online until further notice.

The Lucerne-based dairy group Emmi is placing media planning and media buying in its key European markets in the hands of OMD with immediate effect. The agency prevailed against the competition in a pitch. According to a press release, the decisive factor for Emmi was not only the understanding of the various individual markets and the quality of the planning, but also the positive cooperation in Switzerland. OMD has been supporting Emmi in Switzerland since 2003.

Communications professionals have until July 25 to submit their work for the AD Spot Award 2006. The competition honors achievements in non-profit and low-budget communication and is divided into two categories. In the "Non-Profit" category, achievements in the field of social communication are judged. Each year, the organization of the award focuses on a different country, this time China was chosen. In the "Low Budget" category, commercial films produced with a minimal budget compete against each other.