Media In a competitive presentation, Wirz Werbung won the advertising budget of the Metropool, and the new advertising combination of the Tages-Anzeiger, Basler Zeitung and Berner Zeitung will be launched on January 1, 2005. The first works by Wirz will be seen before Christmas. After Mobiliar and Kuoni, Metropool is the Zurich agency's third new client within two months.

Agencies CEO and co-owner Gilbert Fisch leaves Fisch Meier Direkt in spring 2005, while majority owner Publicis becomes the sole owner of the dialog agency, and the former managing director of Lowe Direct, Christian Hansen, becomes the new CEO at the beginning of April.

Local radio The Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) has expressed its displeasure to the French media supervisory authority CSA about the strategy of the stations NRJ Léman and Radio Nostalgie Léman, which have a broadcasting license from the CSA for the Annemasse and Pays de Gex region in France, but mainly address a Swiss audience. The CSA has shown understanding for the concerns and promised to investigate further, according to a press release.

You have to know how to help yourself. Especially when you get to an age where you are no longer completely sane and have to give up your driver's license, for example, but fortunately human reproduction ensures that new license holders are constantly coming onto the market. Some of them even have such a sporty car that you marry them for it. Dodge drivers are particularly recommended, especially as this car brand is known for its powerful horns. So he not only gets through his days without a driver's license, but also without Viagra. After all, who wants to die of heart failure when the Viper is waiting in the garage to be revved up? Long story short: better a potent car than a blonde in bed. Or to put it another way: age is no protection against folly. (more about Chandra Kurt and SexSells on her new website www.chandrakurt.com)
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Agencies In spring, the Zurich PR agency Piar announced its move to Wengistrasse 7, where the PR agency Vipr is already based, stating at the time that the two agencies expected to benefit from synergies in market development, but would remain independent. Now that they have moved in, they are apparently aiming for a closer connection: Piar has announced a close cooperation with Vipr, which should lead to a merger, writes Pressetext Europa.

SeriPlakat AG has specialized in posters for more than seven and a half years and has been the market leader in the outdoor sector for two years, with a market share of 45 percent in the F4, F12 and GF formats and as much as 60 percent in the F200 NP and LP (LP illuminated posters with slide printing) sectors. The print shop currently has the largest capacity in the Swiss poster market. SeriPlakat uses three different printing processes to produce its posters. "This means we can use the printing processes to suit our customers' perception of quality and are not tied to one process for any reason," says Thomas Lorenz, Head of Marketing and Sales. SeriPlakat has kept its prices unchanged since the company was founded. When the company entered the market, it undercut the then standard printing prices for posters by half. "Today, competitors also have to base their prices on these prices," says Lorenz.
"Your partner for large-format advertising media" now has 34 employees, works on 14 large-format printing units and confidently recommends itself as the provider with the best price-performance ratio.

After 13 years at Credit Suisse, Karin Rhomberg wants to capitalize on her good reputation and is setting up her own business.
She started out gluing envelopes at a PR agency. But then everything happened very quickly. Karin Rhomberg, now a foundation board member at SPRI and a promising young entrepreneur, earned her degree in history and journalism in Zurich with a 40 percent job in a communications office. After graduating, she applied for an internship at Credit Suisse. Actually, she was supposed to do something with market research there. But then a place became available in the press department, which Karin Rhomberg was able to secure, perhaps thanks to her Liz thesis - a field study on public relations training. After a few months, Volksbank was taken over by Credit Suisse, and the new banking giant suddenly needed people in a restructuring project. Karin Rhomberg seemed ideally suited for this team. "A stroke of luck," she says today, because in the following three years she got to know the bank in such detail during the reorganization that many others probably don't manage in an entire career.
Back on the line, this knowledge of all departments was the perfect qualification when - "second time lucky" - the head of the press office had to be filled. And after the restructuring of Credit Suisse Group at the end of 1996, Rhomberg was appointed head of communications. The PR woman was given the task and opportunity to set up an integrated communications department at Group level for the first time. By the time Rhomberg left this November, this had grown from a handful to over a hundred people, with the translation service and intranet and Internet making up a large part.
"A fascinating job," Rhomberg looks back. Not only did she personally supervise a whole series of top bankers, but she also experienced quite a few ups and downs. "The most exciting were the intensive projects in which the whole team outgrew itself," Rhomberg says. "In the press department of a global company, you also get very interesting insights into foreign media worlds," the "thwarted journalist" recalls of the task when she and some of her team members almost had to rush out of the office several times to catch the next possible plane to Tokyo.
"In 13 years, I have never been bored for a single day," says Rhomberg, summing up her work. What she found most satisfying about her job was working with a wide variety of people. "In a large company, you have a lot of contact from the communications department - from the porter to the print shop to top management."
Nevertheless, Karin Rhomberg has now decided on a complete reorientation away from the global bank to a one-woman business. It had "been in the back of her mind for a while" that she wanted to become self-employed one day. "Doing the 'same thing' in another company had no appeal for me," she says.
With her own company, Karin Rhomberg doesn't want to specialize only in finance, contrary to the advice of some colleagues. In addition to classic business, she also wants to do something cultural, to look after nonprofit organizations or individuals. "I'm not only interested in CEOs, but also politicians and other leaders."
In her office in a former print shop on Zurich's Hornbachstrasse, where various illustrious media people have rented space, Karin Rhomberg is currently still working alone and with freelancers. "I first want to independently develop the contours of the agency, then I can specifically look for additional people." Her husband helps with the administration of the finances. Although she herself once worked at a bank.
Karin Rhomberg doesn't remain fixated on banking: "I'm also interested in politicians and other leaders."
Andreas Panzeri

People Despite the advertising crisis, Swiss media entrepreneurs are not going begging. The list of the 300 richest people published by Bilanz on Wednesday includes six entries in the media sector, with the Zurich publishing families Ringier and Coninx at the top of the list, both with an estimated fortune of 900 to 1000 million francs. The Bilanz estimates the wealth of magazine publisher Jürg Marquard at 300 to 400 million. Peter Gmür is said to own the same amount after selling the marketing company Cinecom to PubliGroupe. The grand seigneur of Espace Media Groupe, Charles von Graffenried, is also in this weight class. The Lamunière family (Edipresse) owns "only" 200 to 300 million, while Tito Tettamanti is not a member of the media industry but an investor. The Ticino native owns 25 percent of Bilanz parent company Jean Frey AG and assets of CHF 400 to 500 million.
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The specialists at Christinger Partner in Schlieren say: "Whether it's decoratively wrapped scaffolding, covering your own four walls or using rented mega poster sites: "The image and advertising effect amazes the consumer and makes competitors jump for joy." Thanks to "Switzerland's leading Technopark" with digital large-format printing on 12 different printing systems, Christinger can guarantee uplifting results in all dimensions and for all applications. The customer list is also impressive, and not just in the megaposter sector. Christinger has just received an order to re-label 1,300 kiosks by mid-2006 and has also provided 150 Zurich cabs with a new motif.

The cable network group Cablecom has appointed Stephen Wright as Director of Corporate Development. He joins the Executive Board. Wright has worked for Sunrise for the past six years. ...
Stefan Aeschimann will take up the newly created post of Head of Corporate Public Affairs at Aare-Tessin Ltd. for Electricity (Atel) on December 1. He has been Head of Political Issue Management at Zurich Airport Ltd since 2003.
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Stefan Züger, Head of PR/Communications, is leaving Scout24 Switzerland at the end of November. His area of responsibility will then be merged with the Business Development and Marketing divisions and managed by their previous head, Patrick C. Price.
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Katja Biffiger leaves the media marketer after four years
Cinecom at the beginning of December. She will be succeeded as Print Consultant by Andrea Blatter. In future, she will be responsible for the cinema magazine Close-up and the Teleclub magazine.
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Jeannine Jäger joined the Konnex team as a media planner on November 1, 2004. For the last four years she was
works as a media planner at the media agency mm+b.
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A few months after taking up his post as publishing director of TR7, Roger Knabenhans is leaving the program magazine of Jean Frey AG. The former head of the NZZ classifieds market took over as publishing director of TR7 in September.
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From the beginning of 2005, Christoph Voser (picture) will head the sales team at Radio Basel 1 Werbe AG. He replaces Martin Gisin, who is leaving the company. Voser has been responsible for marketing in Switzerland at the German Radio Regenbogen for the past 12 years.

The supervision of radio and TV programs should be regulated in the same way in the new RTVA as it is today.media policy The Committee for Transport and Telecommunications of the Council of States has spoken out in favour of this. The National Council wanted to combine the competencies of the Independent Complaints Authority (ICA) and OFCOM in one authority. According to the Commission's wishes, Bakom will now remain responsible for advertising and sponsorship. The UBI is to judge disputes concerning program access.

Guest commentary Poster design means contemporaneity and effective oscillation between art and commerce, says graphic designer K. Domenic Geissbühler.
For the younger among us, let's start with an attempt at a definition: poster [das; French, Dutch], publicly displayed, usually large-format poster with a communicative or advertising character, often artistically designed. A distinction is made between the textless picture poster, the text-only poster and, as a mixture of these two types of poster, the picture-text poster and the text-picture poster.the poster has always been a child of the street, made for the people on the streets of this world. But what is its communicative uniqueness, its aesthetic appeal, its artistic fascination? Is the poster even a pioneer of contemporary art? Absolutely. More precisely: it is a forerunner of serial art.
It is also a medium with a high historical significance. Whether film, theater, drinks, insurance or cars: everyone uses it to illustrate their uniqueness and contemporaneity. Accordingly, the poster designer has increasingly mutated into a communicator who is supposed to lead this or that product to success.
In the past, commercial posters were often qualitatively superior to cultural posters; today it is the other way around. The laws according to which posters function have not changed - or not. Brassieres, liverwurst and gold jewelry have one thing in common: they need a certain size in order to be shown to advantage in this medium. Enlarged advertisements from the advertising campaign are therefore not enough.
The majority of the posters had no artistic value at any time. But some have stuck in the collective memory, have challenged and touched viewers. These figureheads of our craft achieve astonishing auction prices and are hoarded in collections. As gratifying as this form of appreciation is, it is also dangerous. Because musealization is the death of contemporaneity. And this is precisely what characterizes the poster as a street medium.
The artistic recognition inherent in the term "musealization" is also pleasing. The advertising pillar as an open-air museum: in fact, the achievements in the field of posters are in no way inferior to the masterpieces of graphic design. Conversely, for graphic designers, the poster is and remains the medium with which they can say the most about themselves.
PS: As a long-standing recipient of commissions from Zurich Opera House and other cultural institutions, I greatly appreciate sponsorship, because it gives us the opportunity to create without compromise.
> Karl Domenic Geissbühler is a member of ADC and an independent
Graphic designer in Zurich.