Golf has become a classic advertising sport. For the second time, members of the Idée-VfW communications association and their guests had the opportunity to attend a golf taster course. They met at the M-Golfpark in Otelfingen, where they were able to take their first steps on the green under the expert guidance of the golf pros, and immediately put their newly acquired skills to the test. For the beginners, there was a putting contest sponsored by Publimedia, in which the aim was to let the balls roll into the hole with as much feeling as possible. Andreas Baur took the top spot. Due to a mix-up, Nicole Zubler was still happy about second place during the prize distribution,
but unfortunately the result had to be corrected. The new runner-up was Vivianne Rauch-Lyoth from the NZZ. Nicole was still allowed to keep her prize. Ex
aequo in third place were Ueli Hofstetter and Reto Rüedi.
Publimedia marketing manager Markus Ehrle was also there, but he came away empty-handed from the contest, even though Publimedia was a sponsor of the competition - which proves that everything was above board.
The more accomplished golfers measured their skills in the Idée Golf Trophy, which was supported this year by Touring magazine. On the two rounds on the rather demanding 6-hole course, the shortlist author achieved the highest score. Due to a registration error, however, Eschenmoser advertising manager Markus Schärer was only able to complete one round. He achieved such a brilliant result that first place, combined with a one-year subscription to the Golf-
magazine Drive, was ceded to him. Third place went to Leos Gerteis, followed by Ueli Weber and Heinz Egli.
Basel-based Tanner Communications invited marketing enthusiasts to an event at the Glatt shopping center. The second Innovation Party was organized as part of the exhibition "The World of Pleasure". Interesting presentations went hand in hand with the enjoyment of cigars and cognac from the Davidoff and Zino labels.
Dr. Ernst Schneider, Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Oettinger-Davidoff Group, explained the philosophy and sales strategy that have contributed to Davidoff's success.
Dr. Olaf Marks, CEO of Cosmotech showed how the innovative marketing tools that helped his company, a raw material supplier to the cosmetics industry, to succeed work, and Jan Tanner spoke about the
work on "The World of Pleasure" and the measurability of the success of events. Before the audience finally indulged in the pleasure, they heard some thoughts from Prof. Manfred Bruhn, Professor of Marketing and Corporate Management at the University of Basel, which rounded off the topic.
On the same evening, those responsible for the media agencies Bemberg Gedenk Media, Optimedia and ZenithMoremedia played a somewhat more daring game. Instead of a shopping center, the Tiefenbrunnen lido was chosen as the venue for the annual aperitif party, which in principle would not have been a bad idea. Except in pouring rain and wind forces of 6 and more. Nevertheless, the bad weather did not dampen the good mood. The guests stayed a bit less long, but didn't let it spoil their party mood. And those who wanted to continue partying when it was definitely too cold outside, went late at night to the Purpur.
Diego Bally and his partners Christoph Fuchs and Rafael Masera hosted a Say Cheese event to celebrate the agency's anniversary. The motto "Say Cheese" made sense in several ways. On the one hand, guests could feast on exquisite cheeses from the Zurich region at the buffet, and on the other hand, an oversized cheese bell called "Say Cheese-O-Mat" stood as a gadget in the entrance area, under which guests with a valid "Say Cheese Passport" could have their picture taken. The result could then be immediately examined in the whisky and cigar lounge in the agency's brainstorming room.
Finally, the Beobachter concluded the long week of events with the Prix Courage awards ceremony in the Puls-5 foundry hall in Zurich's West End. Not a typical advertising event, but for many in the communications industry a welcome opportunity to visit an event with a partner. The audience is well mixed, because in addition to some of the advertising and publishing celebrities, many politicians also don't miss the event. Showbiz stars are also represented in rows - in addition to various comedians such as Schlatter or Giacobbo, almost the entire business and news anchor crew of SF DRS also shows up in corpore at the Prix Courage.
Beat Fritschal's self-confessed cigar smoker supposedly flouts the current prohibitions. But don't worry, the shortlist author is no tobacco anarchist, the smoking ban in the Glatt Center was temporarily lifted for the innovation party of Tanner Communications and the Oettinger Davidoff Group, otherwise the cigar lounge would probably have made little sense. Also on the program of the eventful last week: the golf party of the Idée Association for Advertising Communication, the rainy lido party of BG Media, the agency birthday of Diego Bally and last but not least the Prix Courage of the Beobachter magazine.

Reality TV In spring 2005, SF DRS will be showing the new series "Traumjob - nur einer schafft es" ("Dream job - only one can do it"), in which twelve candidates compete for a one-year position as project manager in the Marquard Media Group on Tuesdays during prime time on SF 2. In eleven episodes, practical tasks have to be solved. Publisher Jürg Marquard decides who is eliminated at the end of each episode. The winner receives a guaranteed annual salary of CHF 200,000.

Advertising Guido Tön has been organizing auctions of artistic posters since 1989. 180 subjects from advertising campaigns for London Underground Transport will be auctioned for the first time on October 2. For lovers of railroad and tourist posters, "the catalog is a must," says Tön. The auction of a total of 650 posters will take place at the Swissôtel International in Zurich.

Column Multiple utilization as a way of coping with the publishing crisis: The Theodor Wolff Prize is one of the most prestigious awards in German-language journalism. It goes without saying that the speakers at the award ceremony use flattering holiday prose to talk about the guild. A few days ago, when this year's award winners were honored in Berlin, the Chairman of the Board of Trustees said that newspapers depend above all on the "personalities" of their creators. What a wonderful profession we have, in which people with distinctive individual characteristics are challenged and encouraged. If the laudators are to be believed, subjectivity is just as much a basic resource and requirement in this profession as curiosity, personal interests and independent thinking.
However, the elation after such celebratory speeches has a very limited half-life. Even a glance at the newspapers on the same day as the report on award-worthy journalism was disillusioned again, as it reported on the launch of a new daily newspaper.
The Handelsblatt publishing group, which belongs to the Holtzbrinck Group, wants to attract the "iPod generation" for a daily 10 to 20-minute read with the tabloid-Blatt News. The scope for development given to the personalities of the 20 editors is limited: News primarily processes texts from other Group products such as Handelsblatt and Tagesspiegel as well as from the titles of Milchstrasse Verlag. In addition, the News editors plunder weblogs unrestrainedly without even asking the bloggers. In other words, the editorial team of the new paper acts as a content filling machine in a multiple utilization chain.
Holtzbrinck is merely copying what Springer has already done and is now propagating as an innovative example of a publishing crisis management strategy: In the Springer high-rise in Berlin, an editorial team "generates" the material for three daily newspapers: Die Welt, Berliner Morgenpost and Welt Kompakt. The long version with background for the national quality newspaper, shortened for the local paper and rewritten for Welt Kompakt, the company's tabloid.
Like a lemonade with different flavors, content is prepared in this way to suit the target group for products that are primarily intended to occupy every conceivable market niche. This filling of the same material in different containers has been around for a long time, but was previously limited to the tabloid press segment. Now it is also gaining ground in the core journalistic sector.
Economically, this approach probably works. After all, such corporate writing rooms are not only smaller than independent editorial offices. Holtzbrinck's news editors are also consistently underpaid. Behind the smokescreen of the invocation of personalities that characterize the newspaper landscape, a rapid devaluation of journalistic work is taking place, which is also reflected in the high number of unemployed people in the industry. Content is no longer the unmistakable product of individual research, thinking and writing, but the synthetic product of an industrial production process.
This is certainly not entirely new, but it was easier to ignore it in the boom times. It remains to be seen whether readers are even aware of this creeping change. If not, this will probably confirm the theory of the dwindling social significance of our media public sphere.
> Heribert Seifert is the media and culture correspondent of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in Germany.

Social institutions The St. Gallen communications agency Complecta has won the communications budget of Virtuelle Werkstatt Ostschweiz (VWO), an association of 17 workshops for the disabled with the aim of acquiring more major contracts from the private sector. Complecta supports the VWO in planning internal and external communication. For example, a newsletter will be sent to customers, members and interested parties for the first time at the beginning of October. In addition, a multi-stage mailing will be sent out in the fall to draw attention to VWO's competitive strengths.

Press In August, the Swiss daily press recorded little change in advertising volume.1.0% decrease compared to the same month last year is attributed by Wemf to the fact that the Bund is now included in the Berner Zeitung complete edition. Its advertising pages are no longer measured separately. The free daily newspapers recorded a significant increase (7.2%). The regional weekly press increased by 1.7%, while the Sunday newspapers lost 5.4%. The business press lost 11.6% in German-speaking Switzerland and gained 2.5% in French-speaking Switzerland. In terms of job advertisements, the daily press achieved an increase of 0.2%, while the Sunday press even gained 9.5%. Wemf also points to the growth in inserts in the daily press (+45.1% compared to August 2003). This development has continued throughout 2004 and is partly due to the fact that there has been a certain shift towards advertising supplements at the expense of advertisements.

Advertising Good teasers create an audience and make the advertiser's life easier - but the budget more difficult. "Euro millions for the Swiss people" is what posters in bright EU blue and yellow have been promising since the beginning of the week. The creator or creators are just as unknown as the message and intention of the poster. Who could be so well-meaning as to announce the gift even with an expensive, media-heavy appearance? Who is behind the posters and TV commercials with wildlife motifs that are supposed to remind us of the alarming decline in biodiversity? At least the sender provides two clues here: the website and the fact that it has been keeping records of species extinction for over thirty years. What is unusual about this advertising campaign is that it is obviously no longer just consumer goods that rely on this hard-selling mechanism before launch. Organizations and associations from the non-profit sector, which use advertising primarily in fundraising, are also using teasers to overcome the ever-higher perception threshold of media consumers. Frank Bodin, CEO of Euro RSCG, sums up the mechanism in simple terms: "If advertising is the unsolicited answer to a need, then the teaser poses the clever question." Good teasers succeed in triggering "huh-question marks" in the audience.
Two Swiss agencies are currently targeting such reactions. For their French clients - two car brands - they want to use the teasing pull mechanism to increase viewer involvement. Be it with the call not to act so grown-up (Publicis for the Renault Modus) or with the opposite statement that it is time to grow up (Euro RSCG for the Peugeot 407 SW).
Even after the recently resolved puzzle campaigns such as those for Parisienne, PartnerWinner.ch or the Basler Zeitung, there still seems to be a lot of potential in the use of curiosity-provoking implementations. "Basically, you can use the teaser mechanism for anything," says Jean Etienne Aebi, spiritual godfather of the "Angie Becker" masterpiece for APG's Poster Performance Index and other witty campaigns. The days when teasers were used exclusively to announce new products are long gone.
According to Aebi, the current accumulation is probably more of a coincidence and he cannot recognize a seasonal trend. Only the technical-media application types have now been explored in all sorts of funny ways: from submarine ads (for Amnesty International), guerrilla campaigns (for the Zurich Theater Spektakel) and SMS appeals, as in the case of Bugsy the rabbit (Swisscom), to cross-media resolution links, as in the case of the wild animal campaign, for which Spinas Gemperle is responsible.
The puzzle game with the anonymous and unexpected alone draws the attention of the viewer and fascinates practically everyone. It is by no means only the advertising material that provides a talking point on the way to work. The public media willingly and above all free of charge support the suspense hype and thus often save the client PR costs. However, this does not mean that teaser campaigns are cheap by any means. On the contrary: "Without sponsorship, i.e. financial support, the teaser campaign would not have been possible for our client," says CD Lorenz Spinas, hinting at the media budget required.
The Big Bang has its price
Although the media budget can vary depending on the type of media, frequency and area of application, it is unlikely to be possible to reach the general public for a national campaign for less than 800,000 to one million francs. Without high advertising pressure, the teaser will quickly run out of steam. However, the question of money does not play the central role. "The success of a teaser depends heavily on the close cooperation between the media and the creative team," explains Monica Jäggi, co-owner of the Konnex media agency.
This is because ensuring that the resolution is recognizable as such and reaches the same audience as the teaser is very challenging. Experience shows that posters are preferred to all other media types for teaser campaigns, despite the high prices. Monica Jäggi: "Depending on the strategic choice of location, the corresponding budget and the clearly defined target group, a poster with a strong impact can usually generate more publicity than other media." If you try to build up the same excitement in other media over several days, you quickly reach your limits. The advertiser often resorts to the trick of dissolving it in the immediate vicinity, a few pages further on. With the inevitable effect that the resolution follows too quickly and the surprise fizzles out.
Martina Schörghofer, consultant at the creative agency Ruf Lanz, points out that the client's willingness is often a question of price. "Even if there really is a great idea for a teaser, the client often has to assume double the costs for production and logistics reasons. In many cases, they then decide against the teaser campaign and choose another idea that can be spread over a wider time frame," she says, summarizing the problem. It is not uncommon to see resolutions that cannot maintain the level of the teaser, evoke the wrong associations or are simply lax. "You only see teasers that really hit the mark once every two years," she concludes.
Greater chance without a sender
Markus Gut, Managing Director Creation at Publicis, is prepared for a similar period of patience. It was under his aegis that the Prinz smash hit was created, which not only received great media coverage. The response and acceptance also exceeded all expectations. After this exploit, "the teaser seems a bit exhausted to me," he says with a grin.
Nevertheless, the teaser always retains one important advantage, says Lorenz Spinas, a specialist in political and NGO communication. These areas in particular benefit from being able to place their messages without a sender. In this way, the statements are perceived more neutrally by the audience instead of being immediately pigeonholed because of the sender. "Target groups react much more openly and neutrally to teasers," explains Spinas. Whether this makes the sender appear more credible and likeable to the audience after the resolution is up for debate in the meantime.
Fundraising and awareness-raising are the focus of the secret client's ongoing campaign. Several sponsors were found for the difficult financing.
Riposa beds: While eye-catching, the resolution was misleading for many.
Parisienne: The campaign as a puzzle, but not the new product.
PartnerWinner.ch: Angelo Prinz looked for one and found thousands.
Attracting attention as a goal: teaser poster.
So that the world may finally be shaken up: teaser campaign to be launched shortly by an unknown client >> page 7
The year of the teaserMysteries have a tremendous attraction for people's curiosity. Segments that would otherwise not even be reachable for the advertised product also get involved in mystery games. The success of a teaser in 2004 remains a question of budget and an astonishing resolution.
Luca Aloisi

Marketers The winners of the 1st Crossmedia Awards will be decided by a high-caliber jury, with the advertising agencies represented by jury president Dominique von Matt (JvM/Limmat), Frank Bodin (Euro RSCG), Markus Gut (Publicis) and Martin Spillmann (SFLB). Thomas Brenzikofer (Netzwoche), Beat Lauber (NZZ), Oliver Prange (Persönlich) and Franziska von Weissenfluh (BZ) will represent the media. Dietmar Gedenk (BG Media) and Urs Schneider (Mediaschneider) represent the media agencies, Claudio Dionisio (Namics) and Pascal Urscheler (Nemos) represent the web service providers. Other jurors are Rolf Müller (Publica Data), Stefan Nünlist (Swisscom) and Joachim Kernstock from the University of St. Gallen.the Crossmedia Award 2005 will be announced next January and presented on May 25.
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Internet Following the slight summer lull, the PWA index rose by 1.9 points to 124.0 points in August, having fallen by a total of 2.8 points between May and July. According to Publimedia Webadvertising, the recent increase is optimistic for the development of online advertising budgets in the coming months.

Jewelry The good, pious people in the neighboring Ländle not only have a good monarch, fat bank accounts and an exiled bishop with a strong character, but also a certain jeweler named Huber, who is obviously at odds with the arch-conservative image of his homeland. He prefers the manner of the hard-boiled master, even if he does make certain concessions to his origins. For example, he has his servant Maria S. mime the saintly figure in a prayer position during the high-profile bondage games, which she can do without any tension at all.The jewelry dealer's recommendation is clear: nothing awakens the animal in a man as reflexively as clinking chains on bare skin. With just a few pounds of gold and a little finesse, any defenceless slave girl can switch off the macho mind and turn on its turbo aggregate. Equipped with this attractive accessory, even those women who otherwise rarely storm the summit together will finally be able to climax during lovemaking. However, even the sharp restraints cannot guarantee success for a passionate night of love. Much still depends on the right dedication and technique. Even in beautifully wicked Liechtenstein.
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Campaigns For the launch of Anti Mosquito, the insect spray with the highly effective active ingredient menthanedio, IPC and Euro RSCG Zurich put a stop to what is probably the world's most famous insect. In a slightly morbid print motif, the agency "proves" with a lot of black humor that even the movie hero Spiderman doesn't stand a chance against the new Anti Mosquito. Contrary to the expectations of the distributors, the Hollywood film "Spiderman 2" only managed to stay in theaters for a short time. Now we finally know what perfidious means drove the film out of the charts.

Showbizz The Singing Waiters have been around for a long time. Now there are the Singing Bankers. "Money, Girls & Swing" is the name of the CD that Dave Hertig has recorded with his "Upswing Band" and recommends as a give-away for customers, employees and shareholders. The former banker and business journalist for Cash and the SonntagsZeitung evokes the upswing with titles such as "Madame Upswing", "Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend" and "A Millionaire Someday". All that's missing are the Singing Advertisers.