Swiss Life has changed its logo following turbulence. ABB has kept its logo despite the crises. Logos are business cards, which is why companies are well advised not to change their logos like they change their shirts. ABB held on to its logo despite a dramatic crisis with billions in losses and rip-off scandals; Rentenanstalt, on the other hand, gave itself a new image with a fresh logo after severe turbulence. Unbalanced balance sheets and dubious, secret capital transactions by the resigned management shook the foundations of the once rock-solid pension insurer and damaged its public reputation. When it was founded in 1857, "Schweizerische Rentenanstalt" chose a Swiss cross in a patriotic halo as its logo, in keeping with the taste of the time. The pension company, which was organized as a cooperative, modernized its logo in several stages; in 1907, the Swiss coat of arms was surrounded by an oak wreath and advertised with Winkelried's quote: "Take care of my wife and children."
Several logo variants with the Swiss cross and cantonal coat of arms document the company's deep Swiss roots. Rentenanstalt was a national institution like AHV, SBB and Swissair. In 1978, the elongated double logo "Rentenanstalt/Swiss Life" was introduced - an unsatisfactory compromise.
1995 saw the dawn of a new era, as CEO Manfred Zobl transformed the cooperative into a public limited company, made one hundred
The company turned thousands of cooperative members into shareholders, thus doubling the number of shareholders in Switzerland. The hitherto cautious and risk-conscious insurer dazzled competitors and shareholders with a firework display of acquisitions. In quick succession, Swiss Life/Rentenanstalt bought Banca del Gottardo in Ticino from a Japanese bank, acquired the French private insurer Lloyd Continental, Schweizerische Treuhandgesellschaft and several other companies in Switzerland and abroad.
With around 200 consolidated companies worldwide, Swiss Life was now the leading international provider of collective pension products. The share price reached stratospheric heights at the turn of the millennium. But then, with the stock market crash, the Bengal light went out and Swiss Life/Rentenanstalt turned out to be an ailing general store that was urgently looking for buyers for its overpriced acquisitions. The stock market value of the blue chip plummeted to a tenth of its peak. The CEO, who had come under fire, and his CFO resigned under the barrage of a hostile press. Rolf Dörig, the new CEO of the Swiss Life Group, succeeded in turning the company around and rebuilding trust by concentrating on its core business.
At the beginning of 2004, the Group launched the optimistic new "Swiss Life" logo; the addition "Rentenanstalt" was dropped. The three cheerfully fluttering red flags - one adorned with a white cross - would also look good on a tour operator or sailing club. The logo radiates something cheerful, in sharp contrast to the worries that many people have about falling minimum interest rates and shrinking pensions.
"The brand change is a signal of a new beginning, both internally and externally," explains Andreas Hildenbrand, Head of Group Communications, in the employee magazine "Life".
With the advertising campaign for the launch of the new brand, the image makers address the vicissitudes of life. "I wanted to be a tamer once," reads a poster featuring a happy, beaming car mechanic, for example. "Everyone has plans, but life doesn't always stick to them," the copywriter came up with. Swiss Life can sing a song about wilted dreams - and recommends itself for pension provision.
ABB, another crisis-ridden Swiss blue chip that seemed to be built on rock, was created in 1988 from the merger of the traditional Swiss company Brown Boveri and the dynamic Swedish company Asea. Management, gurus and the media celebrated ABB as the "model company of the nineties". With the charismatic leader Percy Barnevik and the technological innovations of BBC, the future seemed to belong to the company.
The ABB logo defies the crisis
The choice of logo did not take long, because Tempo
was one of the Group's trademarks. The Swiss managers favored the "BBA" logo to signal the weight of the BBC in the merger company, which the Swedes did not accept.
were rejected, however. The Swiss Chairman Leutwiler agreed to "ABB", but in return insisted on Zurich as the company's headquarters.
The renowned London agency Pentagram, which specializes in corporate identity, designed the ABB logo and the new image system for the group in a very short time for 25,000 British pounds. During our visit to the creative workshop on the Thames in 1989, agency owner Alan Fletcher, co-designer of the ABB logo, explained: "The mystique was missing from this job, everything had to be clear and transparent, but then it's no longer interesting."
Unable to speak to either CEO Barnevik or President Leutwiler, Fletcher concluded that ABB's top management was oblivious to the profound value of a corporate identity.
Nevertheless, the three letters made an immediate impact; never before in business history has a logo established itself so quickly. "ABB - global and local" was one of the ingenious advertising slogans of the trend agency Saatchi & Saatchi, which created the international campaigns for the new electricity giant.
The core business sold offABB quickly amassed a hundred companies of all calibers in a wild buying spree - there are parallels to the
Rentenanstalt. The companies were hardly ever really integrated, and
Some turned out to be real cuckoo's eggs. First and foremost was the American company Combustion Engineering, which later brought ABB billions in asbestos lawsuits and drove the Group to the edge of the abyss. The heavily indebted ABB sold off its core business, power plant construction, which had achieved global renown under Brown Boveri, and divested its traditional locomotive manufacturing operations, along with a number of other business areas.
But the ABB logo survived all crises, including the revelation of the huge pension payments secretly transferred by CEO Barnevik and his successor Lindahl. Even when ABB's share price plummeted from a high of almost 55 francs to 1.41 francs in less than two years, the replacement of the logo was not an issue, although the three letters were now tainted with a reputation for mismanagement and betrayed visions.
The compact ABB logo is still strong and present in the world of electrical engineering, thanks to the Group's still innovative technology. However, brand specialists say that after the amputation of important business areas such as power plant construction, it is no longer clear what the logo actually stands for. However, changing the ingenious combination of letters or repainting the logo was not an issue for those responsible even in ABB's darkest days.
Cosmetics aren't everythingAfter severe turbulence, Swiss Life has flushed the 150-year-old "Rentenanstalt" from its logo. The term obviously no longer carries a stigma, as it resonates with the dirty word "pension theft", for which the company is not entirely innocent ... The freshly launched, somewhat overly cheerful brand logo attempts to draw a line under this and signals a new beginning with the slogan: "Ready for the future."
In order to regain credibility with customers and investors, major efforts will be required at all levels for a long time to come. This applies to both Swiss Life and ABB - with or without cosmetic changes to the company's image.
Werner Catrina, the author of the books "BBC. Splendor, Crisis, Fusion" (1991)
and "ABB. In "Die verratene Vision" (2nd edition 2004), he reflects on the logos of ABB and Swiss Life.
Neither ABB nor Swiss Life figure in the top 100 most valuable brandsBusinessWeek publishes together with Interbrand, the global
leading brand consulting firm, for the fourth time in a row the
Ranking of the 100 most valuable brands in the world.
The top ten brands are Coca-Cola, Microsoft, IBM, General Electric, Intel, Disney, McDonald's, Nokia, Toyota and Marlboro.
The clear winners of this year's ranking are brands that have managed to build close customer relationships with their products and services and create a high level of identification with the brand.
Four of the top five winners are brands from the technology sector, while established brands such as Coca-Cola, Microsoft, Disney and Nokia lost brand value.
Neither ABB nor Swiss Life feature in this world ranking. ABB is still well-known in the international world of electrical engineering, but to make it into the top 100, the broad impact of the
international consumer goods industry, which is also essential for Swiss Life, an insurance group primarily focused on Switzerland.
goes off.
The first Swiss brand in the Top 100 is Nescafé in 23rd place, followed by
UBS, which was not on the list last year, follows in 45th place.
Nestlé (rank 62) and Rolex (rank 70) are other Swiss brands among the world's most valuable brands.
Despite a dramatic crisis, losses in the billions and scandals involving rip-off artists, ABB has stuck to its logo to this day.
Swiss Life launched the streamlined new logo at the beginning of 2004.
Werner Catrina

Food Following a pitch, chocolate producer Lindt & Sprüngli Switzerland has decided to work with Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett (SFLB), a Zurich-based advertising agency that impressed with a good understanding of the Lindt brand and a clear vision of its future development, according to a press release from Marketing Director Stefan Jost.

Competitions The audience and the expert jury were almost unanimous at the Publicitas Print Media Trophy in Bern, where the best advertisements in Bern were awarded the Print Media Trophy for the 11th time at the annual Publicitas Bern customer event. "Urs" is the fitting name of the coveted "trophy" for advertising work relating to the city of bears. The artistically distorted heraldic animal was awarded at a party in the Kursaal in the categories "Best small Bernese advertisement" and "National best Bernese advertisement". For the first time, the jury also awarded a special "Long Living Campaign" prize. Jury President Fredy Collioud was able to invite his colleagues from the Publicis agency in Zurich onto the stage to present this award. The award went to their long-standing successful campaign with the claims sketches for Schweizerische Mobiliar in Bern, and Publicitas Director Walter Althaus was delighted with the total of 130 entries submitted for the competition. As part of the
Fredy Collioud has noticed a general "shift from large-scale advertisements to more small advertisements" in the first year of judging. Creatively, however, he wanted to speak of "a very good year".
The Urs statue is a unique collector's item and is created anew every year by a Bernese artist. Urs'04 was designed by graphic artist and exhibition organizer Claude Kuhn and was very popular with the public.
In addition to the funny trophy, the winners received attractive prizes in the form of free advertisements. The Wabern-based aid organization Terre des hommes, agency Publicis, Zurich, was awarded a 4-colour page in the Berner Zeitung and the Urs for the "best national Bernese advertisement". For the "best national Bernese advertisement", either the client or the agency must be based in the canton of Bern.
A free advertising space worth 1000 francs in the Anzeiger
Region of Berne Complete Edition as well as the Urs for the "best small Berne
inserat" was won by the Verein Region Bern, VRB, together with the agency Z.B. Werbung in Bern. An audience jury, which was also questioned during the presentation, would have preferred to see the advertisements with a missing M in the town signs as advertising for station stores with Migros participation as the winner. This series was designed by the Formelzwei agency.
The public jury and expert jury were unanimous on the national advertisement, although the expert jury rated five different works as worthy of the shortlist. In the end, the Terre des hommes message written in the holes of a piece of bread won because the emotional problem of "hunger" was implemented here "with a simple but brilliant idea", as Fredy Collioud said.
The best advertisements in Bern were awarded the "Urs" for the 11th time.

The jury (from left) with Robert Riesen, Line Up communications agency, Bern, Marie-Rose Nyffeler, Konsumentenforum Sektion Bern, Fredy Collioud, jury president, Publicis, Zurich, Erwin Hänni, Schule für Gestaltung, Bern. Alberto Gemperle, Migros Aare Cooperative.
The bread from Terre des hommes (Publicis) won the prize for national campaigns, Mobiliar (Publicis) won the prize for "Long Living Campaign", Anzeiger (Z.B. advertising agency) for small advertisements and Heiberg (Formelzwei) won the audience prize. We particularly liked the
Poster for the Dance Days (Lang Gysi Knoll).
Andreas Panzeri

Public Relations Farner PR is now the exclusive Swiss brand partner of the globally active Porter Novelli network, which was previously represented by the agency Frei Group Communications. Although Farner PR intends to work closely with Porter Novelli in the areas of consumer, corporate, technology, healthcare and public affairs in the future, Farner PR will remain under the ownership of the management and will continue to operate under its original name.

Promotional placemats have been around for a long time, and their advertising effect seems undisputed, but the international company ELAG ast GmbH claims to have discovered an enhancement in the napkin bag - "there is hardly a better time than the waiting time between ordering and service to attract the guest's attention," say the bag makers. As a practical and labor-saving service utensil, it is an unobtrusive advertising tool which, as its use in Italy and France shows, has attracted a great deal of attention. Now it is also being launched in Switzerland, where it is being given to restaurants free of charge. The costs of the product are covered by advertising and sponsorship.

Psychology Neurologists have discovered that people are 99.9 percent guided by emotion when shopping. Only 0.1 percent of the purchase decision is determined by our intellect. Our brain is constantly taking in information via the various senses. So before we consciously perceive a certain product in a store, the information sent out by it - and of course its appealing presentation - already unconsciously enters our head via the sensory impressions - and from there, unfiltered with 0.1 percent of our mind, into the shopping cart. Source: Cash

Body care Karin Müller Kommunikation has won the PR mandate from Kérastase. The hair care line is part of L'Oréal and Karin Müller is now the contact person for all PR matters and is also responsible for media planning.

People Tyler Brûlé becomes a TV presenter. The Canadian advertiser and Swiss by choice has won a pitch from the BBC with his production company Winkontent to produce and present the show "The Desk" on BBC 4 from January 2005, which will take a look behind the scenes of the media world. Ten episodes of the half-hour program will be produced for the first broadcast. Winkontent has no previous TV experience. The daughter of his advertising agency Winkreative has not yet been active, says Brûlé to Werbewoche. She pitched for the first time for "The Desk". Winkontent can rely on the expertise of its partner Moonbeam Films for the production.
Brûlé himself began his career as a correspondent at the BBC. The decisive factor, however, was "a strong sense of how new technology and an international perspective will develop into dominant themes", says BBC head of department George Entwistle. In Switzerland, BBC 4 and "The Desk" cannot be seen on free TV.
(sm)

Press Association Although 20 Minuten is the most widely read newspaper in Switzerland, it is still not a member of the Swiss Press Association, whose Managing Director Daniel Kaczynski believes that joining before Tamedia acquires a majority stake in Pendlerblatt would be "a highly desirable signal" of a balance between paid and free newspapers. As the new parent company of 20 Minuten already pays the association the maximum annual contribution of CHF 1,800,000, the commuter newspaper would automatically be incorporated after the takeover of the second tranche in the course of next year.
After two positive meetings with association president Hanspeter Lebrument, Rolf Bollmann is no longer reluctant to formally join soon. "Actually, I'm just waiting for an application form," the 20-Minuten managing director jokes to Werbewoche. We - like the rest of the industry - are curious to see whether Kaczynski will now take him at his word.
(oc)

Commuter newspaper 20 Minuten is moving its Zurich headquarters to the Tamedia Glass House next March, and the printing contract for the Zurich edition of 20 Minuten will also be transferred to Tamedia at the same time as the move. According to 20 Minuten Managing Director Rolf Bollmann, the contract has been put out to tender. The proximity and the best cost-performance ratio spoke in favor of Tamedia. 20 Minuten Bern and Basel will continue to be printed by AZ Graphische Betriebe, whose contract does not expire until 2008.

Column Thoughts are free, and so are their reproducers. This is especially true when the original is called Michael Moore and delivers journalistic innovations à discretion. It is rather rude, Mbwana, to walk through the rooms of friendly hosts and ask: Who did you steal all this from? (The more interesting the answer, the more likely you are not to be invited back, by the way). If we walk through immaterial rooms of ideas, the same question is a compliment: "Who did you steal this from?" Culture has always been a chain of thefts - the simplest definition of a classic is that it has been stolen from by a great many people. Good ideas remain good ideas, even if they are not your own to begin with. An expert, according to Bert Brecht, is someone who does not repeat what has been successful. This was no theory with Brecht: several dozen of the cheekiest verses in his Threepenny Opera came from Kipling and Villon.
Anxious minds do not call theft by its name: They prefer to use words like inspiration or import-export. The number one export country for promising ideas is undoubtedly America. Whether in banking, music or journalism: without American chewing gum, German (Swiss) brains would have a strong Aryan bad breath.
The hottest candidate for current thefts is a newly rich dollar millionaire: Michael Moore. After all, his hit "Fahrenheit 9/11" was the first documentary film to break the magical 100 million dollar barrier. A number of things can be imported from this and Moore's other work for the Swiss market:1 An astonishingly large audience is interested in information, politics and polemics - as long as they are entertaining.
2. what Moore delivers is the big picture: big politics and little people at the same time. He delivers what the media does not - an overview in the chaos of individual reports, opinions and local reports. With simple cuts from Washington strategists to disoriented soldiers in Iraq, from General Motors managers to debt collectors in Detroit, he provides the answer to the question often neglected by the media: What the heck is the hiccup of politics and the jargon of the economy to us?
3. what is interesting for copyists is that Moore entertains with great complexity. He jumps back and forth at breakneck speed between such different genres as commentary, cartoon, reportage, satire, expert opinion, self-dramatization and human drama. The mix of official politics and local reportage, seriousness and humor, fact and fiction is obviously appreciated and understood by the blockbuster audience. The conclusion for us: many Swiss media products are too clean and not bold enough. They follow through with their arguments and tone from start to finish. (Take a look, Mbwana, at how rarely the perspective is changed in reports! There's hardly ever a swivel between the microscope and the view from Mars and back. Quality journalism in particular loves the safe, clean semi-distance of the desk: no raw meat, never the cold eye of God, instead Valium with level).
4 Conveniently, a how-to book by Moore has just come onto the market: "Hurray America!". Unfortunately, the title corresponds to Moore's writing style: in writing, his gags are as clumsy as a political Peach Weber. Which makes the material all the more sensational: ready-made ideas on how to make self-produced reports. For example, Moore's program "TV Nation" bought its own America-wide holiday from a congressional lobbyist for 5,000 dollars, asked neoliberal Republicans whether they would pay back the subsidies they had personally received, and had an ex-KGB spy investigate whether Nixon was really dead.
Some things in this book, Mbwana, are highly usable, i.e., barkable. What exactly? Well, since I'm planning to help myself soon, I'd rather leave more precise details where we thieves feel comfortable: in the gray of the night.
> Constantin Seibt is editor for politics and economics at the weekly newspaper (WOZ) and will also be a columnist for Weltwoche from September.

Large circulations The readership figures for titles with normal and large circulations have been recalculated. The changeover of Mach Basic from the K1 to the LpA value marked the beginning of years of unpleasantness for publishers of large-circulation titles (see box). These now seem to have come to an end. "The new figures are now closer to reality than those of the last three years," says Mathis Lüdin, publisher of Basellandschaftliche Zeitung, breathing a sigh of relief. This is understandable: according to Mach Basic 2004, his newspaper has 107,000 readers in large circulation (GA), compared to around 25,000 fewer in each of the last three years. The Thurgauer Zeitung (TZ) now reports 134,000 readers, compared with between 9,000,000 and 104,000 between 2001 and 2003. "The new figures are closer to the truth and more plausible," says publishing director Urs Bucher. And Erland Herkenrath, Managing Director of Zürichsee-Presse AG, adds: "I think these are now the hardest figures we have ever had." The GA of his Zürichsee-Zeitung rose from 106,000 to 120,000 copies.
However, the new GA figures have nothing to do with a sudden increase in additional editions, they have methodological reasons: Wemf surveys titles with GA differently. "If an interviewee states in the Mach Basic interviews that they read a title with a GA, they are now asked three additional questions at the end of the interview," explains Harald Amschler, Head of Research at Wemf. The questions are used to clarify how and with what regularity the interviewee participates in
the newspaper edition in question. Because the additional circulation of a GA is distributed free of charge, readers can be assigned with a high degree of certainty to either the normal or additional circulation of a title thanks to the additional information. "The readership of the GA is then calculated by adding the readers of the normal and supplementary editions," says Amschler. In addition, the additional circulation is now treated like a weekly newspaper in terms of calculating reach.
The GA were underestimatedIt is important to note that the new approach changes the values of both the normal and the GA. The readership figures for titles that use a GA are therefore no longer comparable with the previous readership figures. This also applies to combined editions in which they are involved. Or for complete editions such as Südostschweiz, Mittelland Zeitung and St. Galler Tagblatt, which contain individual titles with a GA (such as Limmattaler Tagblatt, March Höfe Zeitung ...). "With the previous method, we tended to overestimate the normal circulation and really underestimate the GA," admits Amschler. Based on the readership figures for 2003, however, the reduction in normal circulation is minimal and is consistently within last year's confidence range.
The Basellandschaftliche Zeitung is a double exception. It is the only title with a GA that shows an increase even in normal circulation, and a significant one at that, if you compare it (illegally) with last year's figures. Lüdin assumes that this means he can reap the first fruits of the early delivery introduced almost two years ago. "For the first time in years, we haven't lost any circulation in this year's circulation certification, and now we've even lost circulation in
more readers than the normal circulation. That shows me that my newspaper is on the up," he says happily.
The tale of woe of the large-circulation titlesIn the first LpA-Mach-Basic 2000, Wemf did not collect the readership value for the GA separately, but as a mixed value, which was higher than the previous K1 value for the normal circulation and lower than that for the GA.
At the insistence of the publishers, for whom the GA accounts for 25 to 65 percent of total revenue, Wemf found a way to collect the GA separately again: If, for example, a title with a Wednesday GA was mentioned in the Mach Basic interviews on Thursday, the mentions were counted towards the GA because of the question about "reading yesterday". On the other hand, Wemf added the mentions on the other days of the week to the normal circulation.
The result: In the Mach Basic 2001, the GA were again
The figures are shown separately, but according to the figures, the additional copies distributed free of charge generated far fewer readers than the normal circulation sold. Some free copies even performed worse than free newspapers. No wonder the publishers once again questioned the results. With the new solution found by a German expert, they now seem to have been proved right. (mk)
The previous method overestimated normal print runs and underestimated large print runs.
Daniel Schifferle