Prepress As an advertising intermediary, PrintOnline is the eye of the needle for online advertisements, but with the Polas database it sits between the chair and the bench. advertisers who operate nationwide but have to adapt their advertisements regionally (retailer advertisements) often have a great deal of coordination and design work to do. Not only does all the data have to be correct and coordinated with the relevant local offices - such as the dealers or branches - in terms of timing and content, but the corporate identity of the brand should also be maintained.PrintOnline, the electronic advertising courier, has been offering a remedy for such coordination problems for a year now: the non-profit company of Ringier, Tamedia, NZZ and Publicitas (all of which hold a 25 percent stake) provided a system called Polas at the beginning of 2004, on which a basic advertisement - with the CI of a car brand, for example - can be stored in such a way that authorized dealers or branch managers can access it, insert their individual text including address, select a different image if necessary and then place a booking order for the regional newspaper. The client pays an annual basic fee for storage at Polas, the generation of the data and the access options, as well as a share per advertisement. "On average, the advertiser pays us around 20 francs for an advertisement created in this way," says PrintOnline Managing Director Kurt Obrist.
The idea is impressive. But it hasn't caught on. At least in the automotive industry, where PrintOnline has been looking for pilot customers for Polas since last January. "One or two potential customers may have tested the system - and it worked - but no one took the bait," says Obrist. The automotive industry is absorbed by other problems, which is why existing and often complicated workflows are currently hardly questioned as long as they work. This year, PrintOnline will therefore be approaching other sectors with dealer or branch networks (major distributors, insurance companies, banks, recruitment agencies). "We are obviously ahead of the times with our idea," Obrist concludes.
But apparently the opposite is the case. There are numerous companies in the prepress sector, some of which have been offering similar and even more comprehensive databases for years: In addition to advertisements, packaging, company logos, letterheads and business cards can also be called up there. The workflow runs exactly according to the Polas model: the advertising agency creates a basic file, for example an advertisement, places it in the database of the prepress company and every authorized person has online access. Worldwide. In technical jargon, this is called "remote publishing". Once the template has been created, a booking order can be placed with PrintOnline and the data sent to the newspapers. Providers of such databases include Detail AG in Zurich, Straumann AG in Dielsdorf, NC AG in Urdorf and the media agency m&m Media Group with its HOBV system. As many of these companies are also active in image processing, they are also an important link in the production chain, right after the advertising agency.
No image processing serviceThis is probably the problem with Polas: Because PrintOnline does not offer image processing, this gap has to be filled by an upstream litho company one way or another. If this company also has a
database solution, Polas is no longer needed and PrintOnline is only needed as a data transmitter ... Peter Kettiger, co-owner of the advertising agency Zogg.Kettiger.Gasser, puts it this way: "It seems to me that the PrintOnline people didn't do a proper needs analysis beforehand. Because without image processing, Polas is not integrated into the production process. It offers something that is available more comprehensively elsewhere." Other representatives of media and advertising agencies expressed similar views. All of them also stated that they had never heard of Polas before.
Kettiger has noticed something else: Even when advertising clients change their advertising agency, they often remain loyal to the previous prepress company. The reason for this is the investment in the jointly developed, individual database. "These databases are a kind of reinsurance for the providers," says Kettiger. And he adds: "The longer it goes on, the more a kind of 'closed circuit' develops, which makes it increasingly difficult for outside providers to penetrate."
It is therefore clear that Polas is only of use to litho companies or publishers who also want to offer their smaller customers a database - but then as an outsourced service. With Polas, PrintOnline is therefore likely to hit a brick wall with major customers not only in the automotive industry, but also in other sectors.
More advertisements Although the total volume of advertisements continued to fall in 2004, PrintOnline was able to increase its electronically transmitted volume to 112,000 advertisements (+2.2 percent). This corresponds to around half of all advertisements reported in the VSW statistics. The proportion of small advertisements increased again, from 40 percent in 2003 to 47 percent in 2004.
Due to the increasing proportion of small advertisements, POL was only able to increase its turnover slightly to just under two million francs, which barely covers its operating costs. For this reason, the non-profit company has decided not to reduce its rates for the second time. The rates are still available in two categories: Large publishers pay
an annual connection fee of CHF 15,000 and per advertisement
10 francs. Small advertisements cost
6 francs. Publishers without a connection fee pay 30 francs per
Advertisement, small advertisements cost here
18 francs. In both categories, there is also a data volume
dependent charge: 2 francs per megabyte. (mk)
Kurt Obrist,PrintOnlineThe technology is in place, the work is missing: the Polas database is not finding any customers.
Markus Knöpfli

Marketer Goldbach Media achieved net sales growth of 23 percent to CHF 160 million in 2004, with advertising bookings in the Internet segment more than doubling. It now accounts for just under 10 percent of total sales. Sales in radio advertising rose by 45 percent and in TV advertising by 10 percent. Adscreens also got off to a good start, according to Goldbach Media. In their first year, plasma screens at points of sale contributed 2 percent to the company's turnover.

Award Session Basel AG receives an award for cultural sponsorship from the German-Swiss sponsorship association Faspo, which organizes the AVO Session music festival with the AVO cigar brand as its namesake.

Market research Does a campaign achieve its goals better with this or that implementation? Advertisers put their measures to the test with pretests. They could hardly be more different, brands and institutions such as Chanel N° 5, Kukident Super-Haftcreme, Peugeot 307, Aspirin C and the Lung League. But they do have one thing in common in terms of communications strategy: their product managers had the efficiency of planned advertising measures checked for their potential impact by means of a pre-test. And they do this in the knowledge that the perceptual selection of advertising depends on a vast number of complex factors - consumers' needs, ideals, interests or expectations - and that advertising does not follow any logical principles, but can only be based retrospectively on certain patterns and correlations.Nevertheless, research institutes claim to know the psychological rules of the game of perceptual selection as far as possible. Or, to put it simply: bigger, louder and different from the usual. This can be read, for example, in the company portrait of the Lucerne-based Interdata Institute, which has been measuring advertising impact in seven European countries for over ten years with its "Psychometer" instrument.
Need for pretests recognizedStefan Oglesby, deputy managing director of the Link Institute, recognizes a justified need for pretests in view of an increasingly uniform competitive environment, because "advertising messages are usually about hidden, difficult-to-verbalize and subliminal emotional impact mechanisms."
Given the cutbacks in advertising budgets in recent years, one might assume that advertising managers would have the targeting accuracy and thus the efficiency of their communications instruments tested even more frequently than in better times. In practice, however, this logic did not prevail, nor did the recommendation to control advertising expenditure as anti-cyclically as possible. In line with the latter, spending on quantitative and qualitative pretests has also been cut back, albeit to a lesser extent.
According to the Swiss Marketing and Social Research Association (SMS), market research sales in Switzerland increased in 2003 solely as a result of additional purchases. "We break down sales by survey method and industry, but not by the specific type of market research. However, it can be assumed that the pretest share of stable total industry sales has remained unchanged in recent years," explains SMS Managing Director Pirmin Schallberger. Since the "real surge" in the second half of the 1990s, growth rates have become much more modest. More than half of the institutes even lost sales in 2003.
Few can still speak of a greater willingness to test advertising. "During the Internet euphoria, demand for pretests picked up," Stefan Oglesby looks back. "Since the bubble burst, there has been a return to courant normal," he says. Another reason is that market research offers its greatest added value for clients when it is integrated into the entire strategy process - from conception to implementation and controlling.
Market participants are holding their ownSuch a comprehensive effort has its price, however, and only clients with large campaign budgets in the business-to-consumer sector can afford it. Apparently, the redimensioning of the market is not threatening its existence. Thomas Gehrig, Senior Research Consultant at Scope in Zurich, works, like Ulrike Grabner, psychologist at Interdata/IMAS Qualitativ, at one of those institutes that have been able to prove themselves and position themselves well in the market.
Ulrike Grabner specifies: "Experience in Austria has shown that in economically weak phases such as the current one, tests increase, especially in the concept stage, i.e.: storyboards and animatics." The reasons are obvious: risk minimization and cost savings at the same time. In addition, he says, it is even more important today that the consumer still understands the "idea behind it" and the link to the brand, especially in the case of highly creative implementations. Jos Vloemans, Managing Director of Interdata: "Purely qualitative pretests are only used to elicit the communication clarity of very elaborate films." But the lion's share would be made by tests to check the effectiveness of TV commercials during their life cycles. In other words, at a point in time when the creation has long since been completed or when remedial action has to be taken.
Nevertheless, the pretest is met with doubts, especially among advertising creatives. Erich Baumgartner, Managing Director of Lowe, assesses his experience with pretests as "basically positive," although in some cases they have not produced clear results and have caused confusion on the decision-making side. For Catherine Purgly, Strategic Planner at FCB Leutenegger Krüll, the usability of a pretest result depends on the detailed elaboration of the concept. For Pascal Schaub, Head of Strategic Planning at Publicis, pretesting is useful for strategic concept approaches. He considers creative approaches pretesting, on the other hand, to be nonsense. "Laymen cannot and should not play judge and executioner in a clinical-artificial situation." Hanspeter Schweizer, CD at Wirz, is in the same vein, describing his experience with pretests as "rather sobering.
Because, on the one hand, the test subjects have to deal with my ad for an hour instead of just two seconds, as is the case in practice, and on the other hand, because they will see my campaign not just for an hour, but for one or two years," he says, not without irony. Pascal Schaub prefers web-based surveys and the agency's own video tool because they generate spontaneous, authentic responses and true insights. He knows he is in a privileged position because Publicis can draw on its international network. Markus Ruf, co-owner and co-creator of Ruf Lanz, argues with the words of advertising icon Wolf Rogowsky, according to which the test person meets innovative approaches with uncertainty and skepticism and therefore often turns out to be a creation killer.
Rogowsky says in his philippic: "Everything new needs - apart from its quality ... also a certain authority of appearance; but it is precisely this authority that the pretest robs in principle, because it reveals that it is a test appearance that can still be stopped. And it undermines the authority of what is printed, for example, in many cases by exposing the ad as painted cardboard with kinked corners and slowly detaching headlines." So it's hardly surprising that Ruf Lanz didn't have her "Stevie Wonder" TV spot for the Mühlehalde home for the blind subjected to a pretest. Ruf says meaningfully, "I don't think it would have survived a pretest."
One advertiser, who does not wish to be named, criticizes not the market research but the motivation: "Pretests are demanded above all by marketing managers of large companies who want to protect themselves, not least against internal critics. With a pretest in their pocket, they are off the hook and can pass the responsibility on to the test: It's not my taste that matters, but the audience's." Alexander Jaggy, CD at Jung von Matt/Limmat, observes something similar: "What has changed in the recession is the motivation to conduct a test. Pretests are increasingly needed in order to be able to prove in the event of failure that everything has been done in advance to exclude just that."
Although he considers pretests to be useful, the tricky thing about them is that they cannot reveal any learning processes. The typical constellation is typical: The customer loves a creative implementation, but is not sure whether his target group understands it correctly. This happens more often than one might think, says Pascal Schaub, and also corresponds to the irritatingly frequent comment of Mr. and Mrs. Swiss in the market research institute: "I like the idea, but I don't think people understand it ..." In such cases, Publicis goes out on the street and asks not for likes and dislikes, but for understanding. And lo and behold, "Interestingly, this has never resulted in a creation killer," says Schaub.
Psychological skill underestimatedThe market research industry responds to this criticism with understanding and, from its point of view, plausible arguments. At market leader IHA GfK, where pretests have increased despite analysis material from the parent company in Germany, Irmtraud Oelschläger, Head of Media/Communications Research, is aware of the objections on the part of creative agencies. "As long as the advertising conveys relevant content and can anchor the messages, anything goes," she says. Often, however, high-flying creative implementations would leave the message ahead and alienate the viewer. In contrast to German advertising consumers, who place a lot of emphasis on lifeworlds and atmosphere in spots, posters and ads, the Swiss are much more rational, she says, which is why clients place particular emphasis on comprehensibility.
This shows the problem with pretesting when the customer only checks one dimension and ignores the overall picture. Ulrike Grabner at Interdata agrees with the criticism only in part. "There are definitely cases where an innovative implementation 'only' fails because it is not mainstream. An experienced researcher senses that, too. At our company, there are two or three pretests every year, where we recommend our customers to ignore the Mafo results."
Her institute colleague Jos Vloemans presupposes a great deal of professional experience and competence on the part of the market researcher for the correct interpretation of qualitative test results - a frequent weak point in pretests. "Younger project managers in this research area are always exposed to the risk of letting rational aspects outweigh emotional impact," he says. "A pretest that is limited to recording some average values and likes and dislikes among mainstream consumers really doesn't do justice to innovative approaches," Stefan Oglesby of Link also admits.
Experience has shown him that whenever creatives and market research work together, the results are always significantly above average. This works best when market research maps out the terrain and leaves the design to the advertisers, who are then tested for their effectiveness. "Unfortunately, the knowledge about the various adequate methods regarding pretesting is very diffuse among many advertising agencies and clients," says Thomas Gehrig of Scope.
Often, moreover, the cognition dimensions such as likeability,
general communication performance, image transfer, general brand impact and the like are not defined precisely enough before pretesting, which can lead to erroneous conclusions. Technological progress through increasingly sophisticated measurement methods is also unlikely to change anything about the prejudices, especially since such apparative measurements are met with reservations in the Mafo industry itself or will not explore non-verbalizable impact mechanisms for at least five to ten years, according to Stefan Oglesby's expectation.
Jos Vloemans is skeptical: "Customers are not looking for medical or neuroscientific statements and findings, but for information that allows conclusions to be drawn about the consumer's economic actions." Ulrike Grabner adds: "Because people react differently when they are connected to devices than they do in normal life, such measurement methods are unlikely to become established.
> See also interview on page 14The best spots of 2003 and 2004
The Interdata Research Institute, in cooperation with IMAS International Linz, has been checking around 400 to 500 spots a year since 1992 as part of the Psychometer. Of these, an analysis has now been made of the best spots of the two years 2003 and 2004
were created. The twenty best spots were each evaluated in terms of attention (impact), liking, opinion improvement and purchase incentive character.
The result: Of the spots studied, none made it into the top 20 in all four dimensions. Only one made it to the top in three of the four dimensions. Eleven achieved a top position in two dimensions and 55 in one. This shows how difficult it is to advertise really effectively. Read which spots reached the top league and, above all, why in our next issue. (la)
"Peter Felser, author of the dissertation "Intensity of Advertising Research by Large Advertisers" and co-owner of the creative agency SFLB, on increasing customer demands and polarization in testing.
WW Most companies are cutting back on their advertising investments during the crisis, and probably on advertising research as well. How much do advertising strategists and PMs rely on their gut feeling today?
Peter Felser There are big differences between industries, companies and even hierarchy levels in one and the same company. While PMs and brand managers tend to rely less on their gut feeling today, I notice the opposite tendency among top managers and entrepreneurs.
Since purchase-relevant differentiation is increasingly rarely created by objective product advantages, but by emotional brand worlds, the demands on advertising research have increased. How do you assess the adaptation of the relatively highly standardized advertising research to this situation?
A handful of dedicated institutes offer highly sensitive methods that are appropriate for today's environment. However, the methodology is far less problematic than the interpretation of the results. The main problem with testing lies in the misinterpretation of the results. If 20 percent of the test subjects feel excluded from an advertisement, is this good or bad? Very different conclusions can be drawn from the same test results. Many clients are afraid to run polarizing advertising, even though it has a very high impact potential.
According to your 1991 study, not even a quarter of all large advertisers had their advertising measures tested. How would you assess the ratio today, when the temptation may be there to cut back on testing for cost reasons?
The proportion has hardly changed on the whole. However, I see
greater polarization. Some companies test everything - regardless of whether they are safe or unsafe. Others don't even think of testing anything.
Where does this development come from?
The intensity of application of advertising tests has a lot to do with the industry and the corporate culture. In companies with many hierarchical levels, more testing is done. International corporations often belong to this category.
Contrary to what you predicted at the time, the volume of advertising in Switzerland has fallen drastically. Do you think that spending on advertising research has been cut to the same extent, or has the opposite occurred because every advertising franc has had to become more efficient?
At the time, the study referred to the biggest advertisers. And they have indeed increased massively. The advertising investments of the 25 largest advertisers, for example, rose from around 500 million Swiss francs in 1993 to over one billion in 2003. Advertising investments have thus doubled in ten years! This fact is often not recognized in the discussion about the importance of commercial advertising. The importance of advertising has increased massively among the big players. However, I assume that advertising research has not grown in the same proportion.
In recent years, technological measurement methods have become increasingly sophisticated. However, are these instrument-based measurements actually being used or are they slow sellers?
In Switzerland, apparative methods have not been able to establish themselves. The more sophisticated methods should not hide the fact that the results of these methods leave a very large scope for interpretation. I now know the activation potential of a display, but I do not know whether it releases positive or negative energy. This requires additional clarifications with additional costs.
Food, luxury food and tobacco multinationals have also discovered customizing for themselves, because the target groups are becoming atomized. Under these conditions, and even more so in small, trilingual Switzerland, how can the expense of pretests pay off?
The fragmentation of society makes appropriate testing procedures more expensive. Efficient advertising research therefore starts early in the campaign development process: In understanding the target audience and developing the strategic platform. Often, in-depth analysis to identify and understand the values and attitudes of individual segments is more efficient than testing layouts on random people.
Has the influence of pretest results on strategy and campaign decisions increased or decreased compared to the 1990s?
If anything, the influence has increased. The explosiveness, however, has not. This has to do with the fact that creative campaigns can survive a test today.
At the time, you noticed that little advertising research was taking place in the consulting-intensive service industry. Has there been a rethink here due to the branding culture, globalization and market concentration as well as the critical consumer?
The service industry has indeed changed enormously. For decades, it lagged miles behind the classic consumer goods industry in terms of marketing and brand understanding. Today, service companies are much more intensively concerned with their positioning and their brand promise. In some cases, they have surpassed the classic branded companies in their philosophy.
Although you concluded in your study that advertising research does not restrict creativity, you still seem to be alone in this statement today. As CEO of the creative agency SFLB, how do you assess the skepticism on the part of creatives?
Inappropriate advertising research can, of course, narrow or even kill creativity. Professional advertising research, on the other hand, should help identify new "insights" and thus develop fresher strategies. It is a good basis for creatives to create extraordinary campaigns. Many of our campaigns are put through their paces by market research institutes. And even after a serious pretest, they still win ADC gold - such as the Feldschlösschen TV spots. But the creatives should remain skeptical. I remain so, too.
Interview: Luca Aloisi
"Effective advertising research starts early in the campaign development process."
Luca Aloisi

Theodor Gut, publisher of Zürichsee Zeitung and Chairman of the Board of Zürichsee Medien AG (ZSM), on the reasons for bringing NZZ on board.
WW The Gut family has let NZZ into Zürichsee Presse AG and at the same time increased its own shareholding (see box). Why this hedging measure? Theodor Gut Hedging was absolutely not part of our considerations. The new ratio of 60:20:20 was intended to demonstrate internally and externally that we want to remain independent. The previous ratio of 55:45 arose historically and was always a bit tight for us. Now we had the chance to change this and underline our claim to leadership.
You regretted that you were pressured by PubliGroupe to break away from your neutral stance. But would you have been forced to do so sooner or later anyway?
Looking at how NZZ and Tamedia are positioning themselves in Zurich, this cannot be ruled out. The publishing houses of Landbote, Oberländer and Unterländer are also facing the same question. Two have now made up their minds, the Oberländer is also clearly leaning towards the NZZ, and the Landbote is very open.
You had three options for the Zürichsee Zeitung: Either you continue with PubliGroupe as before. Or you could bring NZZ on board, as has now happened. Thirdly, you had to accept Tamedia
but only at holding level. The latter would also have been possible with NZZ.
That is correct.
Unlike the Neue Luzerner Zeitung, for example, you did not want to participate at holding level - regardless of the partner. Why did you refuse?
After intensive discussions, our family decided that ZSM should remain a family-owned company. This decision was unanimous. We therefore had little interest in letting anyone in at the holding level. On the contrary, we will be buying back a few percent from holding company shareholders from our circle of friends this month, so that the family's stake will rise to 90 or 95 percent. If we allow someone to participate at holding level in the future, then only if this brings us considerable synergies - and this was not the case for either NZZ or Tamedia.
But how will you benefit from the NZZ joining your newspaper? (thinks for a moment) There are actually no concrete, short-term benefits. In the medium term, however, it is to be hoped that the NZZ-related titles will be able to exploit synergies better than before.
So you have no promises of a financial injection if the Tages-Anzeiger launches a split edition on the left bank of Lake Zurich.
We knew that our decision in favor of NZZ would not prevent the Tagi split. That's why we naturally tried to protect ourselves.
I don't want to say with what kind of protection.
Financially of some kind. Because we are now taking various risks. We are the ones who have to bear the consequences of the deal between PubliGroupe and NZZ, first and foremost. In other words: the sack is being beaten, not the donkey. It is therefore obvious that we are trying to protect ourselves somehow. We are not disclosing how we are doing this.
You will probably be managing ZSM for another ten years. What is the situation in the family in terms of succession planning?
We have 13 people in the fourth generation of our family who are now attending secondary school or studying. The course is set
have not yet been made. But of course we hope that one of these people or one of their partners will be interested in media. Incidentally, this large selection of potential candidates in the family played an important role in the decision to remain a family company.
What role did Managing Director Erland Herkenrath, who also works at Zürcher Unterländer in the same function, play? Did he have an integrating effect?
He behaved in an extremely correct and exemplary manner and did not take part in the negotiations. His dual role certainly influenced our decision, but all other reasons were overriding.
What weight did the political orientation of Tagi and NZZ carry? First and foremost, we made sure that we could continue to run the company financially as a family company. If we had had several viable options, politics would certainly have played a role.
The new formula is 60:20:20Zurichsee Medien AG (ZSM), 85 percent of which is owned by the Gut family and 15 percent by friends, announced shortly before Christmas that it was increasing its majority stake in its subsidiary Zürichsee Presse AG (ZSP) from 55 to 60 percent. It is doing this by buying back five percent from PubliGroupe, which previously held 45 percent of ZSP. This brings ZSM, which previously held a mere 46 percent of ZSP over two stages, to 51 percent.
Because ZSM is also waiving its pre-emptive right to ZSP shares, which goes beyond the five percent, PubliGroupe can now transfer a further 20 percent of ZSP to the NZZ Group. With these transactions, which are to be completed by the end of January at the latest, 60 percent of the capital and votes of ZSP will be held by ZSM, 20 percent by the NZZ subsidiary Freie Presse Holding and 20 percent by PubliGroupe. (mk)
Interview: Markus Knöpfli

Industry The high-tech group Comet A, based in Flamatt FR, has commissioned the Zurich design agency Ivony to clarify and position its brand, winning a pitch. The background to the mandate is the takeover of an American company in the X-ray sector and a partial reorientation. Initial results have already been achieved in workshops with the management. Ivony will begin with the concept and implementation of corporate branding and design in the first quarter of 2005.

Examining the PR scene /Last year, the Swiss Public Relations Association (SPRG) celebrated its 50th anniversary.On our own behalfLast year, the Swiss Public Relations Association (SPRG) celebrated its 50th anniversary. What began half a century ago with a few pioneers in public relations is now a multifaceted organization. 1500 members are represented by the SPRG. Anyone involved in PR finds it difficult to maintain an overview.
The first online PR guide from Edition Renteria now offers a solution. The unique yet free service can be accessed via www.werbewoche.ch. The simple web tool uses pull-down menus to enter the agency size, communication and industry expertise, location, language and global connections (network). At the touch of a button, the ideal providers are displayed in list form.

Food/Car "Exaggerate to be better understood", said the Publicis advertisers and created a corresponding poster motif for Maggi Quick Lunch: the trail of a skier who appears to have eaten while driving through the hut is intended to dramatize the customer benefit of convenience in a striking way. Matter & Partner also went all out to publicize the winter driving training course organized by Chrysler Jeep: the new Chrysler 300C Touring AWD "waves" itself through the powder snow. Less is not always more - this applies equally to advertising and snow. At the moment, it only shines on posters and advertisements.

Television Swiss television DRS has launched its own sports platform on the internet. A four-person team is responsible for the content of www.sport.sfdrs.ch seven days a week. The website offers a video archive with reports from the programs "Sport aktuell" and "Sportpanorama", current news, tables and match telegrams, background information, betting games and competitions.

Cultural marketing Zurich's Theater Rigiblick opens its doors with a new management. FCBLK contributed a CD and poster design.
What was billed as a brush-up renovation soon turned into a full-blown conversion: the century-old building, which has been home to Zurich's Rigiblick Theater for almost 20 years, is now handicapped accessible and technically upgraded, and for the first time has a bar and a foyer worthy of the name. It is not only the ambience that has been given a polish. After the long renovation, a new artistic director and some new crew members are also welcoming their guests to the Zurich cultural venue.
Such promising changes could not remain without consequences for communication. The actor and director from the Neumarkt Theater ensemble, Daniel Rohr, who took over the management of the
Rigiblick, remembered FCB Leutenegger Krüll and what he saw as their outstanding work for the Neumarkt. Despite a virtually non-existent advertising budget, the Walliseller agency agreed to catapult Rigiblick onto the media stage with an advertising concept and thus make it known to a wider audience. "As a first step, we developed a corporate design and a poster for the reopening festival from January 13 to 16," says CD Mike Krüll.
The logo, consisting of various fonts, is intended to represent a theatrical display of the confusion behind the scenes as well as the interplay between the various guest performance groups and art forms. Under the new directorship, the traditional dance, music and literature events will continue alongside the theater productions.
For the first time, the theater will publish a season brochure and, under the label Rigiblick Special, advertise individual productions such as the Solotage with posters and cards for free.
In addition to domestic and foreign ensembles, new sponsors were relatively quickly won over by the planned highlights in the program and the self-confident appearance. Thanks to the market-oriented relaunch, Theater Rigiblick should soon be playing in a higher league.
Self-confident: The Rigiblick Theater's performance attracts audiences and sponsors.
Luca Aloisi

Free magazines The Blickpunkt KMU magazine was launched at the beginning of March. It is aimed at SME managers and decision-makers five times a year and covers topics from management, law, PR, IT and communication, infrastructure and finance. News from the SME scene is also included in the program. The initial print run is 1,11500 copies, which are distributed by target mailing. It is published by the Basel-based publishing house Demolli & Partner, which also handles advertising sales itself.

Column Emotionalization in and through advertising is reaching its limits, not least because of Aldi & Co. What is needed today is a new objectivity - is advertising taking on a life of its own? At a time when people are holding on to their money because they are worried about their jobs and pensions, the commercial emotionalizers are coming to the fore. A classic statement from their repertoire is: "I used to trade in illusions, now I sell dreams." Such slogans are not just nonsensical, but very dangerous for many advertising companies. According to the media theory of my St. Gallen colleague Beat Schmid, there are two levels of implementation in branding: The first concerns the performance and quality of a brand, the second its anchoring in the minds (or hearts) of buyers. There can be no doubt that the second stage is much more important today than it was two decades ago. Some providers sell above all a lifestyle. This applies to car rental companies, fast food chains, jeans, sports shoes, but also to sales giants such as Media Markt or Saturn.
For certain products, the formula "the main thing is attention" is absolutely right. However, communication becomes a meta-market. In this market, the commercial has to sell itself. However, the opinion of many advertisers that products advertised in a lifestyle way are interchangeable only applies to a narrow sector. Especially for companies targeting people with a small budget, the theories of some creatives about brand identity and its emotional values are often simply trendy drivel. The assumption that only advertising can differentiate in oversaturated markets is also increasingly proving to be wrong.
The Allensbach Institute for Public Opinion Research recently reported that only a third of consumers now believe that buying branded goods is worthwhile. And a whopping 53% of Germans now believe that a brand name alone does not justify a higher price. The situation is not much different in Switzerland. Aldi and the other discounters therefore know exactly what they are doing when they proclaim in their brochures: "You will never see television advertising for this product. It doesn't need it, because its quality speaks for itself." Another slogan of the Aldi management is: "Why trust advertising promises that unprovenly award the best quality to well-known brands?"
In the communications metamarket, there are always two parties that want to be known: The products and the companies that manufacture them, and the advertisers, the agencies. The emotionalizers are increasingly detaching themselves from the interests of their customers. The result is l'art-pour-l'art campaigns that collect creative prizes. But does brilliant emotional advertising sell better? The managing director of the General Association of Communications Agencies in Germany says: "Benetton was a trailblazer for provocation in advertising, but also an example of how easily it can fail." For years, half of Europe talked about the bloody babies and HIV sufferers who advertised sweaters; meanwhile, Benetton retailers complained about falling sales.
Conclusion: Not all products are interchangeable and the idea that product performance can generally be replaced by beautiful emotions is the industry-standard exaggeration of a trend that does exist and should not be generalized. At a time of low growth, rising unemployment and major disasters, more and more people are asking themselves what is necessary and what is superfluous. For many products, advertising must therefore also say something about the substance and not just produce beautiful appearances.
> Peter Glotz is Professor of Communication and Media Management at the University of St. Gallen.