Consumer magazine Is there still room for another consumer magazine in German-speaking Switzerland alongside Beobachter, K-Tipp and Saldo? Rüdiger Hahn, owner of Vierwaldstätter Verlag in Kastanienbaum (LU), is convinced that there is. So much so that he plans to launch such a magazine at the end of May with an initial print run of 100,000 copies and without any advertising. Distribution is planned via newsstands, subscriptions and target mailings. He is not revealing the name of the title, which will initially be published monthly, perhaps fortnightly or even weekly depending on reader response, or its positioning.Hahn, who has already had to contend with debt restructuring proceedings and debt collection, has experience with seemingly camic launches. When he unceremoniously launched his cheap TV program guide TVvier in a similar style in 2001, nobody believed it would be a success, but Ringier has since bought it from him.
(mk)

Living New products, a new design and a relaunch package are intended to correct Eternit's image and make the traditional product trendy even abroad The ash-grey Eternit geranium box is as much a part of the Swiss postcard idyll as the Matterhorn and the chalet. The fact that sales have fallen steadily in recent years could therefore not be due to their popularity. Marianne Zweifel, concept designer at the Basel-based advertising agency Una, is convinced that the quality of the planters is equally unimportant. But the image of the Eternit flower box is nowhere near as enduring as the flower box itself. In its 90-year history, it has not only gathered dust. Even today, the brand is still suffering from the late effects of its asbestos past, although the asbestos era has been over for more than ten years at the BA Holding AG Group company, and the flower boxes have even been asbestos-free and frost-proof for twenty years. The Glarus-based manufacturer is also convinced that the material is still one of the best available for plants. It was more due to aesthetic reasons that interest in the pots and balcony boxes plummeted. Since Willy Guhl and other industrial designers created furniture classics from Eternit in the 1950s, the product group has hardly seen any major innovations.
However, after years of going it alone, the self-starter from Niederurnen faced competition - mainly from Asia and Italy. "In nurseries and garden centers, Eternit pots became less and less popular. Terracotta ornamental pots or colorful glazed pots were in demand," says Zweifel.
An astonishing development, because it completely contradicts the current, simple architecture. Eternit's own survey brought the old-fashioned image to light. This gave the company the necessary impetus to act.
Beauty contest of designs From then on, nothing was left to chance. Although the garden pots product group accounts for just five percent of net sales of around 90 million Swiss francs, it is by far the most image-enhancing compared to the façade and roof divisions. "Our efforts in this area have to do on the one hand with the production process, which allows a higher utilization of the workforce. On the other hand, the Eternit brand reaches a broader range of consumers with these products than with the others, which are aimed almost exclusively at architects and construction companies," explains Daniel Hauri, Product Manager Garden and Design at Eternit. Several designers were commissioned to create new planters.
The favorites were tested at dealers until six new shapes and two new colors (anthracite and ruby) were selected for series production. The fact that the most important retailers were involved in the decision was also met with a very positive response.
The first step had thus been taken. Now the new product range and image correction were to be made known to the target group, i.e. 30 to 50-year-old women who treat themselves to something beautiful on the balcony and in the garden.
Daniel Hauri decided to develop the advertising and communication measures with the "target group" women Kate Isler and Marianne Zweifel from Una, Basel. The eye-catching retailer mailing boosted orders from retailers, while a well-designed appearance at the Giardina lifestyle and garden trade fair and an unusual image brochure for end consumers reinforced the pull effect. Una also made a massive change to the visual appearance of Eternit's garden area. The factual and architecturally cool implementations have given way to people and emotions.
The effect did not fail to materialize. The immediate response was so great that Eternit AG's production was well over budget even before the image ads with inserts. The first push in Switzerland seems to have been successful. This bodes well for expansion into neighboring countries, where the growth potential of the garden pots segment (until 2004 only a small proportion of sales) still appears huge.
Cool, modern shapes that evoke emotions: Eternit campaign by Una.
Image correction: Handmade, not industrial goods.
Luca Aloisi

Television Last autumn, the Swiss private broadcaster U1 TV planned to distribute a free program guide by buying the old newspaper boxes of the commuter paper Metropol. A zero number was available for Screen-up 04, then it was quiet. Now the project is returning from obscurity. Peter Kölbel, the gray eminence behind U1, announced the launch in Zurich for September to the Basler Zeitung (BaZ). Permission has been granted by the Zurich public transport company. However, according to BaZ, they knew "absolutely nothing" about it.

Shoe fashion The sales curves undoubtedly prove Mario Moretti Polegato right. The founder of the Geox shoe brand seems to be winning the battle against a world soaked in foot perspiration with his membrane-covered shoes, and his well-ventilated trip to the stock exchange has given him additional confirmation of this. After all, Signor Polegato's prayerfully repeated demand for a fragrant world is worth more than a tenth of his turnover. And what are the creatives' thanks? Ads that portray the product as a hero, or more precisely: as the savior of our planet, which stinks to high heaven. The depiction of the clouds of sweat emerging from the footwear seems questionable. After all, they remind us of pressurized steam ironing systems that conjure up perfect shirts and cut ironing time in half. If this is Hansdampf Polegato's next business idea, the Laura Star manufacturers are guaranteed to get cold feet.
(la)

Column For weeks, St. Peter's Square in Rome acted as the hub of the secular media world. This phenomenon is called "temmatizzazione" south of the Alps and has dangerous consequences.Habemus papam: Now that the new Bishop of Rome has been elected and the old one laid to rest, do you have an opinion on this topic? Yes, absolutely - even at the risk of contributing my mite to what I harshly criticize: the way in which the media here and elsewhere have turned the suffering and death of an 84-year-old into a world and cult event over a period of weeks and set millions of people in motion.1 For example, even before the funeral of John Paul II, an Internet search engine came to the conclusion that the Pope's death had attracted ten times more media attention worldwide than the re-election of the (supposedly) most powerful man on this earth, US President Bush. Another indication: the Wall Street Journal, otherwise notorious for its unexcitement, attributed the dead pontiff the "charisma of a rock star" - an exaggeration that is likely to give Madonna and Mick Jagger sleepless nights. Even the NZZ was worth three (!) color pictures about the change at the top of world Catholicism.
So what has prompted journalists - or perhaps better depersonalized - the media (worldwide or at least in the Western hemisphere) to treat the political, economic and cultural events of the day as a "distant memory"? Why so much attention for something that is actually commonplace, but normally collectively repressed, namely the death of an individual?
Let me start by admitting that the sheer scale of this state of emergency surprised me too. And that it is therefore not easy even for the experienced observer to find plausible explanations for this excessive media staging. Especially as it stands in the greatest conceivable contrast to the usual approach to spiritual topics in our secularized society, in which sects usually arouse more journalistic interest than the major religious communities.
In view of empty churches, many regional newspapers no longer advertise church services as naturally as the
Cinema program. In other words: for many of us, the media themselves have become
We have become a substitute religious community, be it that we sit in front of the TV instead of the church pew, be it that some people confuse the talk show with the confessional and turn their innermost feelings outwards.
Journalistic lemming effects and herd instincts therefore only provide a partial explanation of the phenomenon. At least as important is the staging power of an ancient institution that has been responsible for everything otherworldly and intangible for two thousand years, and thus also for our fears of death and longings for redemption. This is why I strongly disagree with my columnist colleague Sacha Wigdorovits (WW 14/05) this time: marketing categories such as "brand management" and the characterization of the Pope as a "brand manager" do not adequately explain this communication miracle that has been unleashed on us for weeks. This is not to diminish the PR achievements of John Paul II and his church - on the contrary.
What we experienced, however, was not the finest hour of globalizing journalism, but rather an indication of the ongoing "Italianization" of the media. Nowhere else in the Western world do journalists have such a tendency to "tematizzazione", to focus on a single topic of the day, as they do south of the Alps. And nowhere else in the free Western world do they seem to be more dependent on and instrumentalized by their whisperers in politics and society than in Italy.
> Stephan Russ-Mohl is a professor of journalism at the University of Italian-speaking Switzerland in Lugano.

Online advertising On www.telebasel.ch, the broadcast archive is accessible free of charge as it is financed by advertising. Alcohol, tobacco and political advertisements are also permitted. Previously, anyone accessing a program in the online archive at www.telebasel.ch had to twiddle their thumbs for around five to eight seconds until the huge amounts of data for streaming were loaded. Now resourceful online marketers at TeleBasel have shortened the waiting time: visitors are entertained with commercials lasting a maximum of eight seconds, and although the PC still needs the same amount of time as before to download programs lasting several minutes, a short clip is on the screen within a second. "Every program that goes into the archive is now preceded by a clip. This now contains self-promotion for TeleBasel, but in future we want to show third-party advertising," says Joel Jira from the Multimedia Marketing department at TeleBasel. The regional broadcaster wants to include the so-called preload as a new form of online advertising in its offering in order to cover the costs of the free archive one day with the revenue.
And this is what the offer looks like: The customer determines a channel category according to their target group that they want to clip - for example, news, the short interview Telebar or the youth program Mash. TeleBasel then adds the customer's clip to every new program of the selected type.
In addition, however, every archive program in the same category is provided with the clip. As the online archive goes back at least a year, this can be quite attractive. After all, the TeleBasel archive records around 34,000 downloads per month.
Jira has already set the rates. The minimum booking period is one month, which costs CHF 500 for the Telebar broadcast on weekdays, for example, CHF 1500 for the entire news program 7 vor 7 and CHF 1000 for individual reports. Another prerequisite is that the customer already has a TV commercial or at least a billboard. TeleBasel shortens these to the desired broadcast length of a maximum of 8 seconds and converts them to the required technical standard.
Apart from the target group selection, the new form of advertising has further advantages for the customer: the clip is placed exclusively per category and cannot be skipped by archive visitors. The customer can also provide up to four different clips, which are then played according to a random generator. And finally, TeleBasel is able to show the number of viewers for each individual clip. Theoretically possible, but not offered by TeleBasel, are interstitial advertising or the restriction of placement to certain times, conceivable for example for erotic advertising that should only appear at night. And even tobacco, alcohol or political advertising would be possible, even legally, as Jira has already clarified with the Federal Office of Communications.
So far, TeleBasel has not actively sold the new offer, but Jira has already launched a trial balloon with four customers. With success: two have already booked a clip.
34000 downloads per month: TeleBasel's popular broadcast archive.
Markus Knöpfli

Budgets The spirits manufacturer Campari Switzerland has entrusted Advico Young & Rubicam with the campaign development for its brand portfolio, which includes Cynar, Fernet-Branca, Grand Marnier, Skyy Vodka and Jose Cuervo. AY&R should continue to build up these brands in the long term "and not destroy traditional brand value with ill-considered actionitis", as Campari marketing manager Peter Schmid says.

Media For the Olten Tagblatt, the Zurich-based advertising agency has chosen the railroad junction town on the River Aare as the hub of the world. "In the past, it was golden, Olte", Endo Anaconda from Stiller Has once sang. But the days of searching for and underestimating oneself will soon be a thing of the past. At least if the Werbeanstalt agency has its way. Because it is based in Zurich, where self-esteem is available to give away. And the team led by consultant Reto Dürrenberger and creative Sarah Hiltebrand has cut off a large chunk of it for publishing director Markus Joerin and his Oltner Tagblatt (OT). The aim is to get circulation, which has been declining in contrast to the stable readership figures for years, back on the path to growth. The city of fog and conferences, which is perceived by most as the middle of the middle, is therefore facing an original image campaign over the next few weeks.glocalization the Olten way
Goals such as subscriber acquisition and image building were the main focus for Joerin. "As with other local and regional titles, penetration of younger segments is under pressure due to ageing," he says. But nothing can be achieved in the reader market with average advertising. As the campaign was intended to highlight the USP of a genuine regional newspaper, which rarely creates real hype, the agency triggered the media waves of attention and politicization itself without further ado. The hoped-for side effect of the advertising concept: the campaign, which creates identification, generates goodwill and self-confidence among the population and arouses curiosity about what is happening in the neighborhood. As a broad target group is being addressed, the approach should be emotional or ironic in order to generate a smile.
Thanks to the authenticity of the motifs and the spontaneous help of the OT editorial team, the campaign has mastered the fine line between humor and suckiness. Here, the fast mechanism of the scent of the big, wide world achieved such a momentum of its own that the pool for future, peppery implementations is now large, says Dürrenberger.
However, the agency itself gave the go-ahead at the end of April: In a cloak-and-dagger operation, a huge banner was put up on the Olten government building with the inscription "Our White House". In the days that followed, posters and advertisements solved the mystery and revealed the campaign's sender.
"The whole world at home", the new campaign claim, is the program, explains Dürrenberger. This has nothing to do with a blinkered approach, but with the strengths of the Olten Tagblatt: mandatory national and international content and, as a bonus, a strong regional section that reports on local news. This brings the near and distant world home - into the mailboxes of OT readers.
In short: everything the world has to offer can also be found in Olten in the same or a similar way. Because the world is always where it is reported on - on a large and small scale.
Local pride is presented with a wink in five motifs for the time being. Olten's "White House" - the town hall - and not Washington becomes the epitome of politics, while FC Wangen b. Olten is put in the spotlight as if it were the Real Madrid footballers. Even Donald Trump and the world beer Budweiser find their local counterparts in Gäupark founder Georg Hein and Karbacher respectively.
The steep pass is presented: The regionally anchored OT measures itself against the New York Times. In six radio spots, the campaign continues to spin on the distorted self-perception. A mailing and
a "reader get reader" campaign flank the image campaign.
"Our Glatt Center "Following the expansion with an additional shopping area, Gäupark in Egerkingen near Olten is one of the largest shopping centers in the Swiss Plateau with 52 stores under one roof. And thanks to its central location on the A1, it is quick and easy to reach. The Bern-based agency Contexta shows just how quickly with a surprisingly reduced motif: a driver has obviously overestimated the distance to Gäupark and braked a moment too late. In the campaign for the Olten Tagblatt newspaper from the Zurich agency Werbeanstalt, its founder Georg Hein poses as a Trump lookalike. (la)
Small but strong: The Oltener Tagblatt gives its readership a lot of self-esteem.
Why wander into the distance? For Contexta, Gäupark is within bumper-to-bumper reach.
Luca Aloisi

TV Production Roger Sidler, Managing Director and Board Delegate of TV Productioncenter Zürich AG (TPC), is taking early retirement at the end of April. 59-year-old Sidler explains that he has agreed with SRG to place TPC in younger hands as the strategy of the SRG subsidiary is to be reviewed and possibly modified following the planned election of a new Board of Directors. The current deputy August Reinhard will take over the management of the TPC on an interim basis.

Online stores In quick succession, the crossover agency Angelink has won three new affiliate marketing (AM) mandates, helping clients to build virtual sales networks: at Heineken Switzerland for the home dispenser Beertender, at Distrelec for the Disdata online store for computer technology and at Geschenkidee.ch for the online gift store of the same name. The programs are distributed via the platform of the European AM specialist Zanox. Angelink has been a certified Swiss partner of Zanox since the end of last year and supports the programs from the creation of advertising material to the actual affiliate management.

Commuter papers 20 Minuten St. Gallen to be launched this summer. Regardless of whether SBB allows 20 Minuten to set up newspaper boxes at the 70 or so stops in Eastern Switzerland, the commuter newspaper will launch in St. Gallen this summer with 45,000 copies, "more likely in the first half of the summer", as Managing Director Rolf Bollmann explains. In other words: before the summer vacation. The reason for the haste: the Tamedia Board of Directors wants to see 20 Minuten St. Gallen listed in the Mach Basic 2006, and it should already have St. Gallen soil under its feet for the new budget year. Daniel Ehrat, publishing director of the free weekly Anzeiger St. Gallen at Tagblatt Medien, is "not surprised" by the imminent launch. It remains to be seen whether he will also apply for box locations: Ehrat is waiting for an answer from SBB. He had asked them whether a weekly newspaper could also apply (WW 13/05). The invitation to tender requires five publications per week. "I still insist on an answer," says Ehrat. Is he otherwise considering legal action against SBB? "In any case, we are still hoping for an answer," Ehrat simply repeats. (mk)

Market Research Emmi, the Thai Tourism Board and Suva placed the most popular ads in the Swiss media in the first quarter of this year.Best of NorthwestAffinity of ads among supporters in "Yuppieland"
Gold (131) Giorgio Armani Black code
Gold (131) Radio Switzerland V10K - the hardest
Bronze (129) Keramik Laufen AG Wellness, but completely private (Wingeier, Jacques & Picker)
In cooperation with the market research institute Demoscope, Publimedia presents the readers of Werbewoche with an excerpt of the results from the Advertising Index (AX-Print) five times a year. This index (see below) is a module of the Market Radar and measures the popularity of advertisements. In the boxes on the left and right are ads that achieved the greatest acceptance in the relevant psychographic target group. The three subjects that performed best across the entire sample, i.e., all four target groups combined, are shown under the heading "Top Three." (ww)