With their agency Neutral, Michelle Nicol and Rudolph Schürmann belong to a new generation of advertising agencies that value content. They started four years ago: Neutral. The name, which is associated with noble values in our country, has a pragmatic meaning. "We treat every medium and every idea equally." Neutral not only knows how to play the finer instruments, but also occasionally takes a club out of the cupboard. "We can be pretty loud," says Chief Creative Officer Rudolph Schürmann. Nevertheless, the former glamor engineers - the agency was once called Glamour Engineering - are regarded as the agency with a connection to contemporary art. Neutral often works with protagonists from the art world for campaigns. "They are the latest image makers," says Michelle Nicol. Conventional advertising often copies the visual arts. It is "better to work with the original". For Sunrise Mobile Broadband, for example, Neutral is currently creating a commercial with "Mr. Punk" Malcolm McLaren. The former manager of the Sex Pistols is now a cultural impresario and film producer.
And Bindella terra vite vita has just launched a new website with photographic subjects by Sam Samore. The US artist's visual journey generates emotions for the catering company. The opening image: a large pair of lips. There is also a making-of video with a soundtrack by Step B.
Culture and media - Michelle Nicol was already playing with this connection at university. She published on the subject of fashion in Weltwoche, Self Service and Welt am Sonntag. She regularly reported on fashion shows in Paris for "10 vor 10" on Swiss television. In the process, she has built up an illustrious network. As a result, Neutral can now count Cartier International in Paris among her clients. Likewise Swarovski - Neutral has a consultancy mandate for a new international venture in the field of art, fashion and goods.
For Michelle Nicol, art comes before fashion and trends. It was already clear to her at the beginning of the 90s "that the connection between fashion and art was becoming more and more obvious". And advertising is the third element in this conglomerate. "In the transparent society, imitation and simulation are over. Messages have to be authentic. We want to tell a real story. That differentiates us." If artists are involved, their contribution is not primarily a work of art, but simply good work.
Today, Nicol is Managing Director at Neutral. "Anyone who has realized exhibitions can also manage an agency," says the creative. She gained experience at the first Berlin Biennale in 1998. She also worked as a curator in Bordeaux at the CAPC and at Milano Europa 2000. She designed an exhibition on the subject of beauty for the Museum Ludwig in Cologne. "Allegories of Beauty" was also the subject of her thesis.
And Rudolph Schürmann? After his business baccalaureate in Lucerne, neither law nor St. Gallen interested him. He was more interested in visual communication at the Lucerne School of Arts and Crafts. He then studied fine art in Düsseldorf and "still smelled the spirit of Joseph Beuys". Schürmann decided against a career as an artist because he appreciated the speed of advertising. 
Schürmann, a creative who likes to express himself with images and words, joined the newly founded WHS as a copywriter. This was followed by Impuls, Young & Rubicam, later Saatchi&Saatchi and finally Euro RSCG. His mission here was to "put the agency on a creative course". With Orange, Euro RSCG won the "Campaign of the Year" in 1999. Schürmann is still proud of the fact that he invented the claim "Do You speak Orange?" back then. His various creative awards have earned the ADC member an appointment to the jury in Cannes as well as Eurobest London.
Schürmann became self-employed in 2000. He worked with freelancer Nicol for the first time on a brand development project for Philip Morris. The project did not come to fruition. But they realized: "We can work well together." The joint agency was founded in 2001. Today, Neutral employs seven people. The agency currently lives in a "brutalist concrete building" from the 1960s. However, the agency needs space to grow. Neutral is therefore moving to the Maag site. London or Berlin were also considered as locations, "but Zurich is ultimately in the center of Europe".
In addition to Zurich Financial Services, Windsor and Art Basel, important clients of Neutral include the FDP Switzerland. Founded in 1848, the party is "the oldest brand in Switzerland", says Schürmann. The brand that brought Switzerland from a confederation of states to a federal state. The new campaign now once again takes forward-looking visions as its model with the "constructive Swiss cross" as its emblem.
Neutral has streamlined the umbrella brand and introduced the sub-brand "We Liberals". "This would be ideal as a party brand later on," say the political advertisers.
Neutral is working with Sunrise Live for a rather different audience. Here, spots featuring rap and slam poets have been created for a young audience, which will advertise the Internet on cell phones from mid-June. The pilot project for Internet TV, which Neutral has developed together with Goldbach Media, is similarly progressive. Lifestyle, art and news are combined to create an "intelligent tabloid".
Andreas Panzeri

Television SF director Deltenre is planning the digital future. She is relying more on experts and technical possibilities, and the audience must follow.That most soccer fans will have to make do with black bars on their home screens during the World Cup is well known. This is because the majority of viewers do not yet have appropriate televisions that take into account the cinema format (16:9). It is also known that the news will soon be available on cell phones. But just last week, SF Director Ingrid Deltenre made it clear to the public how these developments fit into SF's overall digital strategy for the future. In doing so, Deltenre named three alleged trends she is working from. She refers to these as "spectacle in living rooms," "mobile TV" and "drag-and-drop: everything on demand." In concrete terms, this means that cinema can make its way into the home - at least in terms of picture and sound quality - coupled with a huge pool of documentaries and TV films from the SF archive, which will be opened up to TV consumers for "TV on demand. And those who want to watch TV on the go will in future be able to call up corresponding services on their cell phones or other portable reception devices. "Any programming strategy, any corporate strategy that doesn't take this digital development into account would fail," Deltenre said. "SF must help shape the digital future."
Orientation to expertsComparing the SF strategy with the multi-part study "TV - Medium of the Future," which the SF marketer Publisuisse is currently conducting, it is striking that Deltenre is primarily oriented to experts and their ideas rather than to audience needs. According to the study, TV consumers are hardly interested in mobile TV - because of the picture size, the quality, the additional costs and the lack of atmosphere on the move. TV experts, on the other hand, consider location- and time-independent TV to be the pioneering development of the future of TV.
With the cinema experience at home, Deltenre also has different priorities than most TV consumers surveyed for the study - and also than most experts. If, on the other hand, SF opens up its archives for time-independent on-demand offerings, it will meet the needs of its audience exactly. However, there is still the question of what such offers will cost. Because the study clearly showed that TV consumers do not want to pay more than what they already spend on TV, radio, Internet and telephone: around CHF 100 per month.
One thing is clear: Deltenre's thoughts are not based on the Publisuisse study. The latter is too recent for that. Deltenre cited other sources in her remarks: For example, SF is monitoring demand on its repeats channel SF info, on its own weblogs, on teletext, as well as the download rates of broadcasts on its own websites. "Our broadcasts on the Internet are being accessed more and more frequently. There is a doubling of video-on-demand usage every year," said the SF director.
When it comes to mobile TV, however, Deltenre's argumentation becomes vague. "The audience increasingly wants supplementary, exclusive mobile TV content: short and mobile-friendly," she claims. SF knows from numerous tests that news is particularly important for mobile TV users. But the SF director knows little about the potential. "It's still difficult to estimate how our journalistic offerings will be used via mobile," she says. "We're only in the development and experimentation phase here."
Better quality in any caseWhether people want better sound and picture quality, Deltenre doesn't even ask, she just assumes. If you want time-independent TV, you need digital TV. And that implies better sound and picture quality. Deltenre will help those fee payers who do not consider this necessary: By delivering more black bars to their homes.   
Markus Knöpfli

Food For the opening of the barbecue season, Publicis came up with a humorous launch campaign for Migros' strategic bargain-hunting platform. Instead of the classic hunting trophies, the daily barbecue offers - from chicken to barbecue tongs - were neatly presented on a beautiful wooden disc. The campaign is holistic: not only in advertisements, but also at the checkout with flyer sampling, on carrier bags, with tasting counters and much more.

The Federal Council is granting the Swissinfo/SRI information service bridging funding of CHF 5 million for 2006. From 2007, the financing of this SRG service will be regulated in the new Radio and Television Act (RTVA). According to the DETEC communiqué, the bridging contribution proved necessary in order to secure the financing of Swissinfo until the new RTVA comes into force in 2007. According to the new law, SRG's entire international offering will in future be defined within the framework of a performance mandate. The Confederation will have to bear at least half of the corresponding costs. The amount awarded to Swissinfo corresponds to the remainder of the cumulative surplus of radio and television reception fees collected by the former Telecom PTT.

Ringier announced the new Managing Director for the Cash platform on Wednesday: Dr. Christoph Bauer (35) is the new person responsible for the media network of Cash, Cash daily, Cash TV and Cash-Online. He manages all of the platform's commercial activities, markets the media network and is constantly developing it further. In addition to Dirk Schütz, who has editorial responsibility, he reports directly to Thomas Trüb, Head of Group Business Media. Bauer studied business administration in the USA and later worked as Managing Director of Bertelsmann-Springer B2B trade journals. From 2001, he was responsible for marketing at the Neue Zürcher Zeitung as Head of Marketing and since April 2006 as Head of Advertising Market. Last year, he wrote a dissertation on the topic of "The daily newspaper business model in the Internet context".

Research According to the Publisuisse study series, the future of TV does not coincide with consumer wishes. TV consumers do not want mobile TV. A TV program that is more flexible in terms of time and the possibility of putting it together according to their own taste would better meet the needs of TV consumers. This is the result of a survey of a total of 35 people aged between 16 and 72, which Publisuisse commissioned as part of its "TV - Medium of the Future" series of studies.There is disagreementThe survey of TV consumers is the second part of a five-part series of studies. In the first part, around 40 experts were questioned in writing (see WW 20/06). Based on the technical possibilities, this resulted in eleven trends regarding future TV use and needs. The most important development chosen by the experts was the "de-anchoring" trend. According to this trend, consumers want to use TV in future regardless of time and place.
However, what experts identify as a key future trend is of little interest to consumers. When confronted with the experts' ranking list, the majority of consumers responded to "de-anchoring" with a "hopefully not". In the consumers' assessment, this trend also landed near the bottom of the ranking list. The reason: a clear majority appreciates being spared television in certain places. Only a few respondents can imagine situations in which they would use mobile TV: On the move or to be able to receive weather, sports and other news.
The main preference of TV users is clear: they want to be able to decide as freely as possible what they want to watch, when and where. However, complete freedom is not desired: a certain "menu" with predefined selection alternatives is definitely in demand. For example, the wish was expressed to be able to select programs from a kind of "weekly menu" and call up the corresponding contributions at any time. The idea of compiling television programmes according to areas of interest was also mentioned. The experts ranked such needs - known as "singleization" - as the second most important trend.
In second place, two trends were important to TV consumers, which the experts rated as insignificant: "Interestification" and "Simplicity". Interestfication is the logical consequence of the first trend chosen: consumers want to focus more on the content that interests them (such as their favorite series). Who offers the content is irrelevant. Simplicity is technically oriented: Easy-to-use devices that make programming content easier are in demand. The argument for this: Devices are short-lived, so people want to find their way around quickly.
Testing the futureIt is well known that consumers tend to be cautious or negative about things that do not yet exist or are still in their infancy. It is not surprising that their assessment of trends differs from that of the experts. Interestingly, the 35 respondents did not simply have to speculate: They were able to test what the future offers them to some extent today: PVR (personal video recorder), television on the computer (IPTV), high-definition digital TV (HDTV), mobile TV and television with (limited) interaction options (Betty TV).
What's more, the participants use modern technology: Of the 24 women and 11 men, all have a PC with an Internet connection, 85 percent have a DVD player, and all but one person owns a cell phone. The survey was conducted by means of discussion in six discussion groups, two of which were made up of people who were interested in technology, two groups were made up of less "tech-savvy" people and two groups were mixed.     
Low willingness to payWould you be willing to,
pay something for better or new content? This was one of the questions asked in the discussion groups. Most answered in the negative. "I don't even use what's available today," they said. It was criticized that various fees for media use (cable connection, radio and TV fees, extra satellite fee for SF1 and SF2, fee for Internet connection, telephone) already add up to a large budget item. The willingness to pay is therefore exhausted. A flat rate for all media is desired. Telephone, Internet, cable connection and pay TV or pay-per-view services should cost a maximum of CHF 100 per month. The eleven trend theses (in the order of the experts)
De-anchoring:
TV consumption is possible anywhere and at any time.singleization:
Everyone wants to decide for themselves what to consume and when.Multiplicity:
The variety of special-interest programs and offering models (free and pay TV, TV on demand...) is increasing.Insperience:
TV becomes a home event.Simplicity:
The desire for simple end devices and clear offerings.Polarization:
In future, there will be high-quality content on the one hand and "content for everyone" on the other.Interestification:
It's the content that counts, not so much the image of the provider:
In view of the flood of programs, people tend to focus on a few channels.lifestyling:
The choice of end devices is determined by design, aesthetics and also technical sophistication.Interactionism:
Interactive offers are increasingly in demand.freeriding:
People do not want to pay for everyday TV consumption in the future either.Markus Knöpfli

Column Not all brands tolerate football fever equally well.Berlin, July 9, 2006: Hordes of Dutch fans celebrate the World Cup title. Flemish battle cries, fluttering flags, roaring crowds. A Dutchman lifts his jersey, revealing two rubber breasts. A car drives past, someone sticks his bare buttocks out of the back window. The Berlin Victory Gate is drowning in the Orange Sea. A city in a state of emergency. Then a chart: Don't let it get that far! A second chart: hollandstoppen.de.Thank God. It was all just a horror vision of the computer game provider EA Sports. A refreshing TV spot in an otherwise rather dull advertising environment. Irony seems to be on the list of banned substances around the World Cup anyway.
Dozens of football campaigns have sprung up on the pitch in recent months. The campaigns are so numerous that the German trade newspaper Horizont recently converted its Galeria section, where creative highlights from around the world are usually presented, into Balleria. A platform specifically for World Cup campaigns.
This is precisely where the curse and blessing of themed advertising is revealed. Blessing, because as a creative you normally find a green field. Everything is possible, many things are affordable. A curse because you can't really come up with much that's new. Worse still: there is no relevance between the sporting event and the product.
At a time when product benefits are melting away and differentiation through emotional added value is becoming increasingly diffuse, a clear theme such as the World Cup is hard to beat. No wonder everyone is trying to bring their product closer to football. Even those who shouldn't actually be doing so. When sponsors Adidas, Coca-Cola and Master Card spend 40 million euros each to call themselves the "Official Partner of the 2006 FIFA World Cup", they are less than pleased when their competitors Nike, Pepsi or American Express steal the show.
However, it is not only direct competitors who are surfing on the crest of the popularity wave. Let's remember: Media Markt launched its campaign for the World Cup last year with the slogan "Best Media Markt of all time - we'll win the title". The term "Soccer World Cup 2006" was not used in any advertisement or commercial. Media Markt is one of the companies that is making consistent use of the World Cup without investing sponsorship money.
However, the mass of World Cup campaigns also clearly shows that certain brands are immune to football fever. When products that have spent decades honing their confidence-building positioning and deliberately ignoring humor in their communication suddenly advertise with cheering people painted in national colors, it looks like a Tourette's attack in brand management.
The bright spots among the commercials are the usual suspects such as Adidas or Nike. Brands that have their emotional home close to the subject. They no longer need to explain themselves. It is enough to trigger the right feeling.
All the football hysteria in Germany is just a foretaste of what is in store for Swiss advertising agencies with Euro 2008. We will see marketing managers somehow trying to make the connection between insurance and football, cough drops and football or suppositories and football. Perhaps they will come to the conclusion that in an advertising block full of football ads, you stand out most if you advertise without football. In any case, it would be differentiating.

Alexander Jaggy is Managing Director Creation and partner at Jung von Matt/Limmat.

Retail To promote the wide range of
To promote the Migros product line, its agency, Publicis, is launching a
A large-scale, cross-media survey campaign featuring creative
Community-building elements. The revenue curves of Swiss
Large-scale retailers are performing well, but growth is extremely flat.
Despite cost-cutting measures and restructuring efforts worth millions. The
Relentless, open competition is no longer limited to
on the price war. From the consumer's perspective and compared to
In recent years, the race for cost, quality, and
Innovation leadership seemed almost bizarre. A prime example was the
«joint» surprise move—the announcement of the introduction of the
in-house credit cards.

Loyalty Isn't Just About Price
How to Integrate Cashless Payment Methods Cost-Effectively
With loyalty cards, all marketing and brand communication campaigns always aim to
is strengthening customer loyalty. This, in turn, has been making use of
For months now, there has been only one lever left: price. The way out of the
The Migros Cooperative Federation believes this is a vicious cycle in the
to have found the product line campaign—which starts next week—,
in which the average consumer associates the brand with credibility and likability
breathes life into.

In two waves and amid «massive media pressure,» she will, in addition to the
Shifting the focus away from the umbrella brand identity and the strategic product campaigns
from the price to Migros's wide and diverse product range
...but in a way that, as was to be expected, was quite unconventional, and
Approach: using a large-scale, self-referential, and cross-media
Public Survey on People's Favorite Migros Product.

The starting point is the product lineup, which comprises 70,000 items—many of which
Exclusively at Migros. Some of them would last a lifetime
"To accompany this," explains Senior Brand Director Marion Marxer, describing the advertising concept,
and have therefore become an indispensable part of many people's daily lives.
This phenomenon is most clearly observed among emigrants,
who can continue to have certain Migros products shipped to them. The
Emotional attachment forms the anchor and fulcrum of the
«People's Contest,» with which the orange giant is secretly
wants to identify and publicize favorite products in a way that boosts sales, and
Several prizes will be raffled off, such as «a year of free shopping.».

Caught up in the excitement of getting involved
Since individual relationship issues are generally very personal and
have entertaining backstories, the classic part of the
Campaign featuring a testimonial. The latter consists of six
Authentic-looking TV commercials from all three language regions that
be used nationally in their original version, as well as from these
Derived classified ads. In these, consumers explain their
years of personal connections to their favorite products, with very
their own—and sometimes astonishing—stories.

The Goal of CD Jean Etienne Aebi: Special Relationships
To achieve this effect, his team used a complex filming technique,
in which each film features two amateur actors and one professional actor
were called in. On set, where they worked on the script together with the
The director «worked out» the scene in front of the running camera, they were told, it
It was just a second audition. The result—relaxed
chatting protagonists and a cast that at times comes across as amateurish
Camera – it shouldn't just stand out during the commercial break, but with the
URL links attract as many curious visitors as possible to the microsite, which
serves as the central communication platform for the participatory campaign.

Statistics and Statements
On the microsite, you can do more than just participate by submitting your own entry
will be. Here, consumers can learn firsthand, but also from
everything worth knowing—and everything not worth knowing—about the
Favorite products; may include unpublished images and data
browse or meet fellow players at a unique singles event with
learn about similar product preferences. Statistics are continuously being compiled
published the results of the survey: Which is the
A favorite product of blondes, 90-year-olds, stay-at-home dads, and
Managers or Swiss citizens living abroad?

The collected data is also analyzed from an editorial perspective and included in
Published in Migros Magazine. We can look forward to
for example, the different shopping habits of Basel residents
and be from Zurich or belong to various denominations.

The most interesting results of the survey will be presented in the second
A wave of campaigns for new TV commercials and print ads began in September.
In addition, each Migros store will feature the top favorite product from its
Present the region.

The survey does not exclude the more than 70,000
Migros employees. Already two weeks before the big
Before the public launch, they were already able to use the below-the-line tools
pre-test. Marxer sees the high turnout as a good sign
to ensure that the campaign, which was conceived and coordinated by Publicis, also
is likely to make a big splash on a large scale. For additional reports
And in any case, the accompanying external
PR.   

Luca Aloisi

The Neumarkt shopping center in Brugg has opted for the DeFacto advertising agency. The creative team from Stadtbachhof in Aarau won the pitch for the cross-media campaign. The campaign will be launched next year and will surprise Neumarkt customers with its own ambassador, according to a press release.

Internet research Because the
Internet research Net-Metrix could not be financed,
Wemf, SRG and the Net-Metrix-User-Commission have developed the model
revised and a new offer sent. Accepts the
industry the (financing) model until June 30, it will receive the following from 2007
Data from Net-Audit and an additional onsite survey
(Net-Profile).
The case is different with the Internet panel (net tracking): This is
part of the overall model, but not of the aforementioned offer.
The SRG is responsible, and its Directorate General has the
Launch contract awarded. "The contract with the
market research institute TNS Infratest in Bielefeld was to be carried out in the
be signed in the next few days," says Markus Jufer at the
SRG Research Service. Funding has also been secured: there are
meanwhile received commitments from the online marketers Web2com and Adlink, from
"three large companies" and from SRG, he says. With initial data
he expects in the fall. (mk)

Backwaren Jung von Matt/Limmat continues to rely on the iconic presence of the company boss for Hug. Hardly
Once you had put the spoon into the soup, you had to put it back again.
deliver. The landlord stood next to the table, wiping his hands on the
white apron and then kindly wished him a happy birthday with a handshake.
Bon appétit. "The boss cooks here" was also written outside the pub.
to read on a slate.

The fake Uncle Ben from Reis or, more recently, the mischievous uncle
Herbert von Malbuner have continued this tradition of personal guarantor
for quality in advertising as well. Since May 12
In 2004, Werner Hug also belonged to this association. In his debut film on
Swiss advertising television, Hug was hidden in a broom box. The
Spot showed a young couple enjoying an evening of television. The young man
prepares to look for something to snack on in the kitchen. He opens
a kitchen cupboard, and to his astonishment Werner Hug climbs out.
Hug sits down on the couch with the two of them. "Hug is simply part of it",
says the announcer. That was the starting signal for one of the
most unusual testimonial campaigns in Switzerland.

Werner Hug irritated
Now the cult series is being continued. As in the previous commercial
again the company boss Werner Hug in a completely surprising
situation on the spot. In the movie "Bivouac", we find ourselves in freezing temperatures.
cold in a high mountain camp at 7980 meters above sea level.
The alpinist community sits motionless with steaming cups and
Silent in the cramped tent. A blizzard is raging outside. Suddenly it rises
the group leader, tears open the tent, fights his way through the storm and
drags in a heavy rucksack from outside. As he carries it with
opens with a zip, Werner Hug is revealed. Accurate as always
dressed in his white work coat, with a few snowflakes
on the head. This sight conjures up a sparkle in the eyes and a
A smile on the lips of the exhausted warriors. The fade-in follows
"Hug is simply part of it."

Director Michael Fueter from Condor Films has created this film on a
lovingly built set at Studio Bellerive. The spot
is used during the football World Cup on SF2. Subsequently, he will
can also be seen in the Swiss windows of German private broadcasters.

Of course, it's debatable whether a young couple living alone at home
or alpinists in the cold loneliness of the mountains, the
long for the presence of Werner Hug. He stands, almost embarrassed
because it was always there. Unlike the landlord back then in the
Landbeiz. Hug does not thank his customers. He just irritates them.
And that naturally makes him stand out - right up to the cult, as the agency
hoped for.

Andreas Panzeri

Training Under the motto "Visual design bridges language barriers", 30 graphic design apprentices from Zurich will take part in a working week in Lviv/Ukraine in June. Together with local students, they will use pictures, photos and graphics to communicate about everyday working life. The creative cultural exchange on the subject of "Typography in the City" is being made possible by the SDC and sponsor Ikea as part of cooperation with Eastern Europe. A return visit by the Ukrainians to Zurich is also planned.