Bijouterie The watch and jewelry retail chain Bucherer has entrusted its advertising budget to Jung von Matt/ Limmat (JvM), a Zurich-based advertising agency that beat Advico Young & Rubicam and Contexta. According to the company, JvM impressed with an approach that focuses on Bucherer's core competencies. The new image will be developed in detail over the next few months and should be launched in mid-2005.

Journalism Blogging and online reporting undermine the information monopoly of "Big Media".
After the software and music industries, the internet is now democratizing journalism. Anyone reviewing current media coverage will come across more and more examples of the kind of web-based "grassroots journalism" whose program is displayed here. The career of the legendary Dan Rather, for example, recently came to an abrupt end when a few bloggers proved to the CBS anchorman on the Internet that one of his reports on George W. Bush was based on false facts. In the Old World, too, the idea and practice of "grassroots journalism" is enjoying exponentially increasing popularity and - as a result - growing impact. Although Le Monde has recently lost its editor-in-chief, it has also introduced a weblog ranking (www.lemonde.fr/blogs), the top five of which will be able to publish under the brand umbrella of France's flagship newspaper - free of charge, of course. The German-language news service of the online encyclopaedia Wikipedia (de.wikinews.org) is also free and brand new, where anyone can and should play "Reporterlis".
According to the (established!) US magazine Newsweek, this open information forum functions "like a colony of ants, where the collective intelligence of the whole complements and ultimately supplants the individual contributions". Dan Gillmor would probably agree with this description. It is no coincidence that the well-known Californian columnist adds the grassroots democratic motto "If you don't like the news ... go out and make your own news" to his analysis of a phenomenon that he has long helped to shape (weblog.siliconvalley.com).
some of your own".
Gillmor's knowledgeable portrayal of the journalistic open source movement is also not without a certain activist pathos. Thanks to the differentiation of the essayistic manifesto, however, this is hardly a problem. Unsurprisingly, the eyewitness accounts of the 9/11 catastrophe are cited as the official birth of bottom-up news, when the major TV stations and newspapers first relied on and referred to private internet sources. Since then, there has been controversy as to whether the new "civic media" can only supplement the traditional "big (business) media" or replace it completely at some point. The self-confessed newspaper man considers the latter to be "unlikely, to say the least" due to the Internet's structural credibility deficit.
Against media arroganceFar more important than the anecdote-filled chronology of what Gillmor calls "a self-empowerment of the audience", however, are the resulting cultural, economic and political consequences. The most central one for him and his profession is: readers/viewers/listeners always know more than the journalist. Those who accept this premise are immune to arrogance. But it is precisely this arrogance that has made professional media makers ignorant of the true needs and abilities of end customers.
So far, so plausible. But one question remains: If newspapers are generally regarded as the second hand of history, what are weblogs, newsgroups or chatrooms? Presumably they are both a symbol and a symptom of a further acceleration and banalization of journalism. No wonder some weblogs taste like Big Brother-inspired alphabet soup. Just like at the newsstand or on the remote control, the same applies in the virtual space: not everything is quality, but quality is everything.
> We the media. Grassroots journalism by the
people, for the people by Dan Gillmor. O'Reilly Media, Sebastopol 2004. 299 pages, Fr. 39.90.
Oliver Classen

Below the line In December 1994, the company Masani's Art Food & Fashion launched its Cards for free, importing the idea of free postcards as an advertising medium from Spain. Since then, over 50 million cards have been distributed and around 35 million of these have been sent by post. The rest, according to Masani's, decorate fridges, living room walls or card stands.

A big turnout in the Stüvina of the Mövenpick Caveau. Reader's Digest with publishing director Roland Wahrenberger and the two consultants Ruedi Geisselhardt and Karl Hintermüller invited customers to a pre-Christmas gourmet evening, naturally with an extensive tasting of wines tailored to the food, this year with a focus on wines from the Staatskellerei Zürich - anyone turning up their nose in disdain is wrong. Even the most seasoned connoisseurs were amazed at the quality that Zurich winegrowers are now bringing to the bottle. As the wines were served blind, you never knew what was in the glass. When the heavier guns were brought out for the main course, quite a few "wine connoisseurs" mistakenly guessed Burgundy and Bordeaux - although the provenance would have been right on the doorstep.there was a special honor for Ursula Hess from Reader's Digest, who was celebrating 40 years of service. This prompted Roli Wahrenberger to pay tribute to the fact that he had only just seen the light of day when Ms. Hess took up her post.
Incidentally, the ambience provided an extremely pleasant counterpoint. After the previous Christmas invitations had taken place in the bare and frosty walls of the Mövenpick wine cellar in Zollikon, this year the warm mountain hut atmosphere of the Arvenstübli awaited just a short distance from Bahnhofstrasse. This made some of the guests really look forward to their upcoming skiing or snowboarding vacation.
Publisuisse also rolled out the red carpet in the Maag Music Hall last Sunday. The SRG marketer invited media people and their companions to the launch of the second season of "MusicStar". And as befits the stars, the guests were greeted in style at the main railway station with Cüpli before being chauffeured to the Maag area in the well-heated Lincoln stretch limousines.
David Elsasser from Publisuisse and Daniela Depping from Kiss-the-Frog-Events organized the Sunday evening event perfectly for the second time. Before the big show, a buffet with delicacies of all kinds awaited in the VIP lounge. This included a reunion with the finalists from the first season, who visibly enjoyed the reception far away from any stage fright.
Leos Gerteis from the NJP recording studio was also on site. Together with partner Roland Frei, Gerteis produced several playback tracks for the show. The party ripper "I love Rock 'n' Roll" could be heard on the opening evening. And lo and behold, the Valais whirlwind Salome Clausen made it straight through to the final, probably also thanks to the rousing arrangement from the Küsnacht sound forge.
The Brand Media Monitor association held the final event for this year's final shortlist with a sophisticated breakfast presentation in the Zunftsaal of the Widder Hotel. In front of a full house, Monitor founding members Bruno Oetterli of Radiotele, Peter Döbeli of Konnex, Markus Britschgi of Blue Eyes Marketing and
Oliver Bernheim from Ringier Magazines on the purpose of the Brand Media Monitor (for the sake of completeness: 20 Minuten is also a member of the first hour).
Initial reactions from the audience showed lively interest in the cross-platform market research tool, which is linked to a new psychographic typology. Fred Dietiker, Head of Media at Swiss Milk Producers, said that the open source concept of the Brand Media Monitor could put other studies and panels under pressure. And Aegis CEO Andy Lehmann inquired coram publico, albeit with a critical undertone, about the costs at which the study could be used in his agency network.
Beat Fritsch is already waiting patiently for his Christmas guests - because with this shortlist, our author also wishes the readers of Werbewoche happy holidays and a happy new year. But before that happens, there are still a few last events to attend in the communications industry before the vacation break.
The publisher Reader's Digest hosted a gourmet evening with wine fireworks, Publisuisse invited its guests to the premiere show of the second season of "MusicStar" in the Maag Music Hall, and the Brand Media Monitor association presented a new market research tool at a lavish breakfast in the beautiful Hotel Widder in Zurich's old town.

Online The French-speaking Swiss job platform JobUp.ch has entered into a strategic partnership with the publishing house Edipresse.Edipresse is acquiring a minority stake in JobUp.ch, which in return will become the publisher's privileged partner for online jobs. JobUp.ch advertisements will soon also be available on the websites of Tribune de Genève, 24 Heures, Le Matin and Bilan as well as on the Edicom.ch portal.

Print annual reports have maintained their image-building value even in the age of new media.
The annual report has a life of its own among printed matter. It is neither a catalog, nor a brochure, nor an instruction manual. And there is a legal requirement for the publication of financial figures. The information it contains is often stretched out, usually enriched with fantastic, large-format images and printed in the very best quality. Fine papers, matt or gloss varnishes and many other types of finishing are, if not the rule - because they don't exist in this sector - then at least not uncommon.
There are also no rules when it comes to the layout. Most companies prefer to combine the informative image section with the substantial financial section in one annual report. Other companies, however, issue several publications at the same time. For example, UBS published an annual report for 2003, a financial report for 2003 and a handbook for 2003/2004, supplemented by the financial reporting for the third quarter of 2004 - an impressive total of 522 pages.
Other companies show their practical side: for example, the enclosed eight-page postcard format of the 2002/2003 annual report of Axpo Holding AG.
Often boring and impersonal
The way the recipient is addressed could be improved in many business reports. They range from boring and impersonal enclosed delivery bills with a crooked label to handwritten cover letters with a "Greetings from Zurich Airport". Unfortunately, many companies miss out on the opportunity to add a personal touch to their expensive and elaborate annual report.
Of course, the big banks, for example, send out more annual reports than a locally based company and can hardly add handwritten notes. However, in times of mail merge functions, at least one letter with a personal address should be included.
Good things come to those who wait
What is astonishing about the procurement of examples for this article is that a relatively long time elapses between the time of the (online) order and the report being available. This ranged from two to six days, and some of the reports ordered have still not arrived - perhaps this is the random result of a small selection overall.
But in today's fast-moving share business, this is not a good sign. Moreover, this behavior supports the PDF download and damages the printed product. An unnecessary omission, as the image factor of the printed report is significantly higher than a PDF document that may be printed out.
The quality of the work requested was not really surprising - annual reports are traditionally among the more sophisticated printed materials. They are characterized by high-quality paper, good texts, clearly structured figures and a visual language that lightens up the sometimes dry information.
Jürgen Franck

Office supplies retailer The Zurich advertising agency Inhalt & Form has won Office World as a new client, beating two competitors. The first step will be to redesign the main advertising materials for the specialist office supplies chain from spring 2005: Catalog, newspaper supplement and regular customer flyer. Office World is part of the Globus Group.

Hotel industry The St. Gallen advertising agency Kraftwerk has won the Hotel Walhalla as a new client; the hotel in the center of St. Gallen belongs to the Best Western Group. Kraftwerk realizes various advertising measures.

Distribution organization The delivery companies for unaddressed advertising have regrouped. Since the mid-1990s, a good dozen private distribution companies for unaddressed advertising have been operating as Swiss Mail - the private postal service. In competition with Swiss Post, but also with its subsidiaries Direct Mail Company (DMC) and Epsilon, they serve around 85 percent of all households throughout Switzerland. However, Swiss Mail (SM) is in a state of upheaval - and with it the entire direct mail market. The website www.swiss-mail.ch illustrates this: It has been inactive for two years.It would now be wrong to conclude that the SM partners are also inactive. They are merely in the process of being resurrected in a new guise - namely under the label Swiss Direct Mail (SDM). SDM is more than just a name change,
It is a seal of quality for distribution organizations. "Standard delivery quality" is the subtitle.
What is new is that not only the SM partners sail under this label, but also their competitors DMC and Epsilon. This loose but contractually regulated cooperation between the 16 distribution companies has existed since 2002. There is no SDM office, only a cooperation committee that monitors the label and common interests. As a result, Swiss Mail disappeared from the scene, with each individual distribution company acting on its own and also offering nationwide distribution under its own name. The SDM homepage, which will be launched in January, will also not contain any rates, but primarily links to the individual companies.
The background to this cooperation: when Swiss Post acquired a stake in DMC in the mid-1990s and thus entered into the distribution of unaddressed advertising, there were areas in which letterboxes were targeted by both Swiss Post and its subsidiaries DMC (Swiss Post share: 50 percent) or Epsilon (66 percent) as well as by the SM partners.
However, because the direct marketing market (CHF 2.3 billion per year) is too narrow for three players, cooperation talks were initiated on all sides. In agreement with the Competition Commission (ComCo), cooperation was agreed within the framework of the SDM, but this required territorial agreements. In a process lasting a good two years, German-speaking Switzerland was therefore divided up in such a way that DMC, which operates on a regional basis, no longer came into conflict with the local SM partners - and vice versa.
Orders were splitThe same thing happened in French-speaking Switzerland between SM and Epsilon. The consequences: fewer households per company and split orders. Distriba, for example, a subsidiary of Basler Zeitung Medien (BZM), used to distribute the entire circulation of the BZM free paper Baslerstab, but now only serves Basel and a handful of surrounding communities. The rest of WG 31 and thus also the Baslerstab contract is entirely in the hands of DMC.
Despite territorial agreements among the SDM partners, the term "territorial cartel" is rejected out of hand. "We remain competitors at local and even national level," says Markus F. Hof, CEO of DMC. Each company offers according to
own tariffs, and these are
The cooperation continues to be very different, at least for the services upstream of distribution (delivery, depot). And René Bill, Director of AWZ Bern and President of the SDM Cooperation Committee, emphasizes that the Competition Commission has not raised any objections to this cooperation either.
Territorial agreements, but no cartel: The delivery companies for unaddressed advertising have agreed on selective cooperation.
SDM replaces Swiss Mail and also integrates DMC and Epsilon.
The sticking point AZOOnce the painful territorial adjustments are over and the competition between the SDM partners is somewhat smoothed out, the
A new stress test for the 16 companies: They were invited by the Alternative Delivery Organization (AZO) project to submit an offer.
AZO, a project by Valora and various major publishers (see WW 26/04), is to take some of the magazines (an initial order volume of 150 million francs) out of Swiss Post's hands.
and sell them more cheaply from 2008 at the latest. A decision will be made on December 21 as to whether AZO will definitely be launched.
The AZO request poses a major test for the SDM partners. Firstly, AZO is keeping open the option of moving into the distribution of unaddressed advertising at a later date. This makes the project a potential SDM competitor. Secondly, AZO is targeting Swiss Post - something that DMC and Epsilon are facing.
problems. What's more, the SDM rows are by no means closed: One SDM partner, the Valora subsidiary Distriforce, has already dropped out and submitted its own offer to AZO.
No wonder: the overall AZO project manager is Wolfgang Schickli - and he is also the Managing Director of Distriforce. It is therefore not surprising that the SDM partners have mixed feelings about the matter. In any case, they have not yet been able to make a statement to AZO, let alone make an offer. (mk)
Markus Knöpfli

Private TV Since the beginning of December, Baselbieter's local TV station Nordwest 5 has officially been called NW 1, and at the same time the station has launched an information program called "8vor", which is broadcast every hour in the evening. According to the Basler Zeitung, new programs will be added continuously over the coming weeks.

Admittedly, it was mainly the female members of the Werbewoche editorial team who were attracted - or rather undressed - by this ad, but I doubt it was the car brand, especially as Jaguar is a classic male status symbol in most cases. Nevertheless, the Jaguar brand and women seem to have one thing in common: They are born to perform (as the copy reveals). You can find out even more about Adam's wishful thinking by reading the small print: Long lines, curves in all the right places, perfectly proportioned, light ... aluminum body ... Rubber doll my ass. It has to be made of steel today. Otherwise it will lose the desire ... to drive. In any case, I'm already looking forward to the next subject of the sinful campaign.
(ck)

Christoph Meier, Finance Communications & Investor Relations Manager at Swiss, on annual reports.WW: What importance do you attach to the printed annual report? Christoph Meier: We regard the annual report as an important information tool for the financial market and the financial community in the broadest sense, i.e. our shareholders, potential investors, analysts and other stakeholders and private interested parties. We are currently conducting an evaluation of the medium and form of the annual report.
Today, image and financial information can also be made available electronically via the Internet. Is there still a need for printed annual reports?
The question is discussed internally. It is linked to the fundamental question of the function of the annual report and the importance a company attaches to image reporting.
What is more important when publishing an annual report: conveying an image or the correct presentation of figures?
We consider value reporting to be the core function of the annual report, although this naturally goes far beyond the presentation of financial figures.
In how many and which languages do you publish annual reports and how is the circulation distributed?
The 2003 Annual Report was published in German, English, French and Italian. The circulation was as follows: German: 5000, English: 2500, French: 2000, Italian: 1500.
What other means of communication do you use to inform your customers specifically about the company?
Swiss publishes an attractive in-flight magazine with a wide range of information about the company. Every quarter, our owners receive an electronic letter to shareholders, which is also sent by post with the half-yearly and annual financial statements. Last but not least, the Internet homepage is also an important communication channel for us. Visitors can find a wealth of information about the company there.
How important is a good position for your annual report in a ranking of the best annual reports, such as the balance sheet ranking?
Such a ranking does not play a direct role in determining the budget for the annual report. Nonetheless, a good ranking, such as our sixth place overall last year, is of course a pleasure.
What expectations do you have of the design and print or production quality of your annual report?
As part of a consistent cost-benefit analysis, we pursue a professional yet minimalist approach to both design and production.
What criteria do you use to select the companies involved in production?
We always award the contract on a competitive basis, but taking into account existing relationships and experience.
How important is it how the annual report is received by the customer, i.e. how it is packaged and what first impression the customer gets?
We attach great importance to the content of the annual report. In this sense, the physical packaging is of secondary importance to us - substance over form.
Which accompanying documents are used to address the purchaser of the annual report?
We do not enclose any accompanying documents.
Interview: Jürgen Franck