Financing Goldbach Media receives substantial support from investor 3i for the further expansion of its cross-media business.<<br />3i, a European private equity company with over 100 investments worldwide in the media sector alone, is acquiring a 10 percent stake in the cross-media company Goldbach Media AG. Goldbach is transferring shares from its own portfolio to the investor. With this investment, 3i is providing growth capital for the expansion of Goldbach Media AG in Switzerland and for its expansion in Austria. Markus Reich, one of the directors of 3i Switzerland, describes the reason for 3i's involvement as follows: "In addition to an excellent market position, Goldbach Media AG has a professional management team, outstanding customer relationships and strong growth potential." Goldbach, which achieved sales of CHF 145 million and breakeven in 2003, will grow by 15 to 20 percent in the current year, according to Michael Petersen, also a 3i director. He added: "This growth rate can also be expected in the coming years." He also pointed out that his company remains involved in such investments for an average of four to seven years. 3i is also prepared to provide further funding over and above the planned investments if necessary. However, nothing concrete is currently planned. (mk)

Storage The Zolliker dialog agency Alex Schmid supports Denios AG with its market entry in Switzerland.Denios offers products for the storage and handling of hazardous substances throughout Europe. The head office is in Germany, the Swiss branch was opened this year. Denios sells its complete range via the sales force and a general catalog. Alex Schmid will be responsible for sales support measures for the sales force and the catalog in the future.

Magazines After the academically dull cover and the comparatively refreshing V.i.S.d.P. ("Responsible in the sense of press law"), Berliner Journalisten is already the third new German media magazine this year.In contrast to its newsstand-present competitors, the quarterly magazine (circulation 5000 copies) is only available via the Internet for public relations workers in the capital. And rightly so, because the topics of the 48-page first issue ("Women in the media", "Fake press cards") are of interest to insiders at best.

Media policy The National Council's Political Institutions Committee (SPK) wants to allow political parties to broadcast TV and radio advertisements free of charge before referendums, as part of the implementation of a parliamentary initiative by Andreas Gross, which calls for fair referendum campaigns and wants to involve the parties more closely in the formation of public opinion and will. The SPK wants to grant the parties the necessary airtime by amending the Radio and Television Act.

Charles Naylor is to become the new Head of Corporate Communications at Credit Suisse Group. From the beginning of December, he will replace Karin Rhomberg at the major bank, who left to set up her own business in November. Naylor was most recently Group Director of Corporate Affairs at the energy and services group Centrica in London. ...
Urs Freudiger has been Head of Marketing and a member of the Executive Board at Globus department stores since November. He was previously Head of Marketing Communications at the mobile communications group Diax and played a key role in setting up the Qualiflyer system at Swissair.
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Kathy Horisberger is to become the new editor-in-chief of the Coop-Zeitung. She previously acted as deputy editor-in-chief to Dominic Geisseler, who is moving to the TV program guide Tele at the beginning of 2005.
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Karl Heinz Nuber (photo) is the new editor-in-chief of the business magazine KMU Business. He has taken on the position on a mandate basis. He will also remain active as a freelance business journalist specializing in the luxury goods industry. Nuber takes over from Patrick Senn.
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The former Prognos managing director Gustav Greve has founded Gustav Greve Consulting AG in Basel. It advises owner-managed service and industrial companies. Greve was Managing Director of the Basel-based research institute Prognos from 2001 to the end of 2003.

Sporting goods With low-budget funds, Publicis has brought awareness to the store "Gib mir einen Namen".The improvised-looking business concept seems to come from the days when Zurich was glorified as a "party metropolis" due to its countless creative outbursts on every corner. A piece of this refreshing do-it-yourself mentality is saved by the new store in the heart of the city at Werdmühleplatz - "Gib mir einen Namen".Part of the concept of the young sporting goods store is that it is constantly reinventing itself. The owners even want the name to be decided democratically in a customer competition. Customers were invited to submit their own suggestions on the Internet, on flyers and via word of mouth. In the meantime, they have wallpapered the store right up to the ceiling. The final name is to be chosen from all the entries at a christening party. The party community is already certain of the No name. After all, it is not only considered a store of quirky sports fashion - snowboard suits in a pinstripe pattern or other fancy pieces of famous brands that have not made it past the production stage. "Give me a name" positions itself at the same time as a platform and meeting place for "people, ideas and products of all kinds".
According to AD Flavio Meroni, the campaign achieved the maximum with minimal means: "Namely, to make the store known in the city within a very short time. It was the brainchild of the Publicis team, which has been beating the guerrilla advertising drum for the snowboard garage for years and wants to prove that creativity in advertising can also go other ways than posters and double pages.
Suggested names from customers adorn the walls of the store.
(la)

Health insurance Life, according to the Darwinian theory of evolution, is paved with ups and downs and only the fittest should scurry around the globe. In Switzerland, where people have double and triple insurance against all eventualities, natural selection is not controlled by volcanic eruptions, plagues of locusts or tribal wars, but by forces such as speeders from the Balkans, viruses from the Far East or health insurance premium surcharges. The latter may seem more humane. Concordia's advertisement disproves this impression. These shock therapies can also have serious consequences, as the advertising agency suggests in one example: fashion consultant Jessy M., who handles her private correspondence at work.
In this case, it is the company that is visibly devastated by the announcement of the premium surcharge.
The consequences of her shock are barely tolerable for society: A pensioner who has been straining the eyes of passers-by in Miss Sixty stretch jeans and a spaghetti strap top since shopping at Jessy's. At least the creative director was lenient with us and didn't show what the outcome of the same letter would have been if a Novartis warehouse worker had had the same shock while carting around highly toxic substances or if a Swiss pilot had opened the letter just above the Leibstadt nuclear power plant.
(la)

Telefonie Lowe accompanied the launch of Orange Optima with an integrated campaign and entered it for the Marketing Trophy.mobile chatterboxes don't like to do the math. They faithfully rely on the correct bookings and refrain from searching for the cheaper provider in the proliferating jungle of tariffs. When buying a new cell phone or renewing a contract, other criteria are often more important than the tariff model. According to international surveys, the majority of cell phone users think that mobile phone calls are too expensive, but are unable to answer the question of how much they pay for a call minute. They tend to try to make calls more or less consciously with their cell phones. This is despite the fact that mobile network companies are constantly launching new and often even more complicated price models on the market: mobile calls at fixed network prices, within a certain zone, cheaper tariffs for people under 26, business subscriptions, various models for frequent to budget callers, not to mention the new flexible price plans that can be adapted to calling behavior. Sunrise introduced such a comparison tool as a free service a few months ago.
Optimal subscription customization
Orange then went on the offensive in mid-September with the launch of Optima - an automatic, monthly integration program into the cheaper price plan. With this subscription adjustment, Optima takes over the calculation and automatically selects the most suitable of six price plans.
The product is aimed at anyone who uses their cell phone for more than one minute a day - i.e. a broad target group - as well as frequent callers, explains Marcel Benz, Head of Advertising at Orange.
True to the brand philosophy that customers should not worry about technical stuff or price models, but communicate freely, the advertising idea for the campaign almost came naturally: There are more important things in life than comparing price plans, and that Optima automatically settles in the customer's favor.
Lowe Zürich used a teaser countdown for the product launch consisting of press advertisements and then switched to a mix of advertising media that included two TV spots, a cinema spot and a radio spot, as well as flanking advertisements and posters. Below the line, the information about Optima was communicated in more detail.
While the two films for TV audiences come close to the look and feel of previous image campaigns both in terms of their plot and atmosphere, Lowe-CD's Sebastian Stolp and David Köder and their team have expanded the tonality of the brand for the specific target group in the cinema spot "Asteroid".
Dramatic movie spot
The situation-appropriate interpretation of Optima's consumer benefits culminates here in pitch-black humor - in a dramatic nod to doomsday: in the campaign's fillet piece, an asteroid field approaches our planet in the best Emmerich style, while the voiceover explains with laconicism that there are more important things in life than comparing price plans.
Just two months after the Optima launch, Marcel Benz reports a marked increase in purchase intent, customer loyalty and
-satisfaction, which creates brand value. This is expressed more clearly by the acquisition targets that were more than achieved. "In the first month, over 55 percent of all new contracts were for Optima models," says advertising manager Benz.
Customers don't have to compare prices, Orange does it for them.
Luca Aloisi

Printing Meier Waser Druck AG has commissioned the Zurich agency TBS Identity to develop a new corporate identity, which is to be implemented by the end of 2004. Meier Waser was created at the beginning of 2004 by Tamedia and Meier + Cie. as a joint venture between Waser Druck and Meier Schaffhausen.

Daniel Bruengger becomes Managing Director at Lowe Direct and focuses on dialog-oriented communication. On the same day that he left OgilvyOne as co-owner and co-Managing Director, Daniel Bruengger was already able to take the helm as the new Managing Director at Lowe Direct. "Such a change was not planned," he explains. But because the dialog marketing specialist was offered his "dream job" on Zurich's Talstrasse, Bruengger had no time for a long vacation or even a rethink, as is often the case with such job changes. Both customers and employees at Lowe Direct wanted "a seamless transition" when the previous boss Christian Hansen wanted to take on a new challenge after five successful years at Lowe. In any case, "there could not have been any better alternatives" to what Bruengger can do at Lowe Direct today. His vision and now also his task at Lowe is to combine dialog-oriented communication with classic advertising. He sees this dual understanding as one of his most important strengths.
Daniel Bruengger started at Datron in Dübendorf and St. Gallen in 1987. This company specialized in databases and developed mail order systems throughout Europe for Quelle and the former Kurfürst-Warenversand, among others. It was here that he learned how to use a database to communicate and what sales-oriented dialog marketing is.
He then wanted to start his own business with a "great project". But it wasn't the right time yet. "The ideas were there, but we didn't have the customers." So Bruengger developed innovative real estate marketing projects instead. At AT&T NCR, he managed the Direct Marketing profit center and used customer and prospect data to enable users to communicate with specific segments. Millions of mailings were realized annually in this production agency.
Then the time was finally ripe for self-employment. Together with industry colleague and then founder Guido Wietlisbach, he set up Wietlisbach Bruengger Dialog in 1997, which became OgilvyOne through various names and stations.
A lot has changed in the 18 years he has been working as a direct marketer. New technologies have made large print runs of mailings ever cheaper. At the same time, such floods of mailings have increasingly met with rejection.
More precise definition of target groups and relevant messages are the challenge in this development for Bruengger. "Today, we want to move from pure mass dialog marketing to a more in-depth dialog with follow-up." And whereas in the past the main focus was on acquiring new customers or today CRM ("an overused term by which many people only understand software"), tomorrow it will be the balance of these conflicting objectives that will ensure the long-term success of companies.
For Bruengger, the concept is to build dialog in order to develop and secure the business sustainably. To achieve this, the various communication disciplines need to be better integrated. A new approach will be to treat direct marketing as permission communication in the future and in certain markets.
In order to stay at the forefront of these and other developments, Daniel Bruengger teaches at Sawi as a specialist lecturer for production in dialog marketing. "Thanks to my students, I can keep my finger on the pulse," he says with conviction.
Daniel Bruengger, Managing Director at Lowe Direct, has his finger on the pulse when it comes to dialog marketing.
Andreas Panzeri

It is thanks to a dessert that Rivella founder Robert Barth ate in Australia that Passaia has been one of the most famous Swiss soft drinks for 40 years, despite declining sales.Barth developed the drink, which has an equally exciting marketing history, from the dessert in 1964: From the threatened lawsuit from Pepsi - because of the similar brand name Passi - to the christening of a baby elephant at Prague Zoo in 1969, to the launch of the new bottles with dark-skinned, exotic beauties or the sponsored Boney tour.

Automotive Following the takeover of Suzuki's automobile import business by Emil Frey AG, the BSW agency Metzgerlehner Worldwide Partners has managed to retain the Suzuki mandate, with plans to develop a repositioning in line with the brand. The Metzgerlehner Worldwide Partners agency is now in its tenth year of advertising for Suzuki.