Advertisement combos The Tages-Anzeiger is leaving the Swisspool advertising combine and Tamedia terminated the contract in June with effect from the end of the year. Group spokeswoman Franziska Hügli confirmed this to Werbewoche. She denied speculation in the Klein Report that this was a cost-cutting measure. "We have determined that the Swisspool for national advertising is no longer a market-driven offer," said Hügli, explaining the termination.

Publishers The Italian edition of Vinum has also been published in time for the international wine fair MiWine in Milan. 130 pages of the first issue, 30 of which are "sold advertisements" according to publishing director Alicia Mettler. The print run is 35,000 copies and ten issues are planned per year. Vinum was founded in Switzerland in 1980 by a small circle of wine lovers. Editions are now published for Germany, French-speaking Switzerland and Spain. Vinum has a total circulation of 80,000 copies in Europe.

Cooperation Press TV does not feature in SF DRS's new strategy. Hansjürg Deutsch, Managing Director of Presse-TV (PTV), describes the cooperation between publisher television and SF DRS as "an amazing, marriage-like symbiosis". This marriage has now existed for almost nine years and is contractually guaranteed until the end of 2009. SF DRS's corporate strategy, which was presented last week by TV Director Ingrid Deltenre, also extends to this date. It may be that PTV is therefore not mentioned at all in the strategy. This was confirmed by the SF DRS press office: "There is almost nothing to say on this subject, the contract is running", they simply said, and yet it is astonishing that the partner who seems to be most affected by the rebuilt and rejuvenated SF 2 has no place in the strategy. Or only indirectly as a format supplier: the PTV program "Al dente" is to be moved to SF 1. There, however, it will come under the control of SF DRS - for licensing reasons - and will only become a commissioned production for Ringier-TV.
According to Deutsch, PTV does not seem to have a problem with the non-existence in the strategy paper. At any rate, PTV was "pleased" to note that Deltenre sees the PTV license as a contribution to diversity of opinion. She will not change anything fundamental and will leave the cornerstones - PTV at the weekend and sport - in place. The TV director had also noticed that "Al dente", "GesundheitSprechstunde" and "Konsum.tv" were among the programs that gave SF 2 the highest ratings - apart from sport - and helped to push up the average SF 2 market share. It had also agreed to do without its own business magazine.
"But we are not blind: a rather younger audience on SF 2
doesn't necessarily fit in with PTV's programming," says Deutsch. And he does not deny that children's programs in the surrounding area will make PTV programs appear even older. At least for some Ringier TV programs, "we will therefore review the concepts," says Deutsch. However, as viewing behavior is different at weekends than during the week anyway, the SF-2 rejuvenation is not too much of a problem for PTV.
But wouldn't it make more sense to move information-heavy PTV programs such as those of the NZZ or Cash to SF 1 as part of the repositioning of the two SF chains? This is currently not possible for licensing reasons, says Deutsch. PTV will remain fixed on SF 2, but he will seek talks with SF DRS to resolve detailed issues due to the realignment. "It is quite possible that we will come up with a completely different cooperation model. But if this were to be the case, it would be a matter for the PTV Board of Directors and would certainly not be something for the short term."
New on SF 1: The cooking program "Al dente" will in future only be a commissioned production for PTV.
Markus Knöpfli

Cinema A veritable bargain fell through the cracks for many cinema advertising clients in the first week of June: Actual audience figures turned out to be 100 percent higher than the Cinema Admission Monitor (CAM), which was launched in June, had predicted. However, this does not mean that Cinecom's new forecasting and post-control tool is generally characterized by underestimation. Rather, the reason for the underestimated forecast was a concentration of particularly popular blockbusters such as "Troy", "Harry Potter" and "Shrek 2", which boosted audience figures to extraordinary levels.
to new heights.
(ds)

Sanitary A jogger has returned from her morning run on the beach with stomach cramps and is now seeking relief in her peculiarly transparent, yet quiet little toilet - but wait, this is probably less about the being of the user and more about the design of private sanitary facilities. 150 years after the blessed invention of the flush toilet, the trend seems to be going straight back to the vulgar open-air toilet - leaving out the venerable outhouse.
But admittedly: If you want to live out your exhibitionist tendencies in style, you're better off with the glass branded toilet than with the old, clumsy coat trick. And it doesn't make you liable to prosecution. But perhaps the cramped, dreamy runner is the installer of the luxury fittings. Or the Jane Fonda offcut is part of the fittings for what the manufacturer calls "living bathrooms". An appealing thought, but then there would be no time left to read the trend magazine Wallpaper, from which this Duravit motif also originates, to stimulate the imagination.
(oc)

At the beginning of July, Guye Benker art director Barbara Strahm and copywriter Daniel Müller opened their own advertising agency. Strahm Müller Werbung is based in Zurich's Kreis 5 district. The two founders have been working as a team for seven years, first at Wirz Werbeberatung and from August 2001 at Guye Benker....
The C-Matrix Group is expanding its management team. Ingo Buse will join the PR agency in Baar as Account Director in mid-August. Buse is currently a partner in the Bern-based consulting firm Lexsys AG, which specializes in regulatory and strategic issues in the telecommunications and CATV market.
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Grey Zurich expands its consultancy. Nicole Bretscher-Boss joins the advertising agency as Account Director. She previously worked for Ruf Lanz, Honegger von Matt and Publicis, among others.
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Fredy Pillinger is the new sales manager of the weekly magazine Anzeiger in Eastern Switzerland. He took up his position at the free publication of the St. Galler Tagblatt on July 1. Pillinger previously held the same position as well as training the sales team at Allgemeine Plakatgesellschaft (APG) Ostschweiz. He also teaches at the BVS St. Gallen training center.
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Regula Bochsler will take over as head of the "Kultur aktuell" editorial team at Schweizer Fernsehen DRS in the course of the summer. She replaces the interim head Damian Schnyder. Bochsler has worked for SF DRS since 1988. She is currently a producer in the "Kultur aktuell" editorial team.
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At the beginning of July, Thomas C. Maurer took over as Chairman of the Professional Register Commission of the Swiss Public Relations Association (SPRG). He replaces Peter Zoebeli, who has held this office for the past six years. Maurer is the founder and owner of the agency Thomas C. Maurer & Partner in Bern.
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Marcel Trachsel, Managing Partner of Int/ext Communications in Basel, has been appointed to the board of the PR Organization International (PROI). He was elected by the General Assembly as one of two Vice Presidents Europe.

Kultur Hausagentur Matter & Partner gives the 25th Theater Spektakel a provocative image In the foreword to the program for the Zürcher Theater Spektakel, City Mayor Elmar Ledergerber states that the theater festival is not a pompous retrospective, but rather a celebration of how
as usual with a production selection that "takes the sleeves off" the audience.
The event organized by the Presidential Department of the City of Zurich is already making a name for itself weeks before the start thanks to the new - now the thirteenth - campaign by Matter & Partner. The communication campaign is as unconventional, experimental and cheeky as most of the 761 productions to date. "We wanted to go beyond the ordinary, not only in terms of content but also formally," says strategic planner Christoph Bürge. The aim was to open up a new medium for the theater festival.
Theater is everywhere, but ...
CD Daniel Matter's crew were guided by the specific qualities of the festival. On wall stickers in a reduced agitprop style, figures in situations that are negatively coded show that everyday life does not always offer the best theater. And because people are voyeuristic and gleeful by nature, even prominent contemporaries who are said to be putting on a show get their comeuppance.
They have all been given their own personal theater stages in the print products of sponsor Tamedia. Köbi Kuhn, Klaus J. Stöhlker, Pastor Sieber, André Dosé, Uriella, the Knie brothers and other celebrities have already appeared in full-page advertisements promoting the better theater on the Landiwiese. Despite the ironic undertone, the stars and starlets were very happy to take part, emphasizes Bürge.
They were seconded by an implementation at the level of the local population: with life-size images of people stuck on 85 house walls throughout the city, the creatives reflected everyday life in and of itself as theater. Initially as a teaser, a traffic warden can be seen at the
bus distribution, a screaming child, a prostitute and other outlandish characters.
A few days later, the sticker provides the solution to the riddle: Unlike the Theater Spektakel, everyday life does not always offer the best theater. "The time was ripe for a new concept that no longer uses the venue as the focal point, as in previous years," says Bürge, explaining the basic idea.
Over 80 "guerrilla wall stickers" throughout Zurich announce the upcoming theater spectacle.
Striking: Klaus J. Stöhlker as an advertising figure for the spectacle.
Luca Aloisi

Awards The jury for the Crossmedia Award 2005 organized by Goldbach Media will be chaired by Dominique von Matt. The award is intended to recognize innovative and successful campaigns that are published or used between April 2004 and March 2005. In the fall of 2004, an expert jury will be formed, consisting of personalities from the fields of advertising, science and politics, to judge the entries.

Guest commentary Claude Catsky, the Swiss Lion winner in Cannes, defends his colleagues Last week, a colleague from the writing guild gave a sober assessment of Switzerland's once again so-called poor performance at the Cannes International Advertising Festival. I would like to vigorously contradict this. And I would like to take up the cudgels for the numerous shortlist nominations that Swiss agencies achieve year after year: a shortlist at this most difficult of all competitions, which with over 18,000 entries is rightly regarded as the world championship of advertising, is not just nothing. Anyone who disdainfully and almost disrespectfully ignores these placings and even interprets them as a failure should perhaps get up from their deckchair on the hotel beach, put aside their flip-flops and sherpa sunscreen and wander through the wonderful Press&Poster exhibition in the festival building without sunglasses, but with their eyes wide open. Or, in the air-conditioned cinemas, indulge in an in-depth study of the film shortlist, which features incredibly imaginative and surprising TV spots that demonstrate the high standard of this competition.
Then the scales will fall from the Gucci-glittered eyes of many a notorious pessimist, and they will immediately be inspired by the profound realization that anyone who achieves a shortlist here can be proud to be one of the world's best in their field. Because that's what a Cannes shortlist means. And every advertiser who achieves this ranking has a right to at least receive from the local trade press what has become as rare in this country as Cannes lions: respect.
With this in mind, I would like to sincerely congratulate all agencies and their creatives who have reached a shortlist this year. Especially those who are able to repeat this small miracle year after year. It is a great achievement to have left countless Swiss agencies and graphic design offices behind at the advertising world championship, whose mediocre to poor work is light years away from a shortlist.
And: those who regularly achieve shortlist placements in Cannes also have nothing to hide internationally. Because even abroad, people only boil with water. And if you want to win a Lion, you don't need a huge lobby, but simply a breathtakingly good idea and sometimes just a bit of competitive luck.
> Claude Catsky is the owner of the advertising agency Catsky & Partner.

Fashion The mail order company La Redoute is launching its summer sale on the Internet, for which it has engaged the online agency Agence Virtuelle in Geneva. Agence Virtuelle is implementing a targeted cost-per-click campaign to bring the special offers to customers in a cost-saving way. The measures will run until La Redoute's warehouses are emptied.

Oliver Classen on cabal, Köppel and corporate columns.Opinion pages (like this one) are paper lighthouses in an ever-increasing flood of information. They are intended to provide readers with orientation, but also as a source of friction. Friction is known to generate heat. Which, in the language of publishing marketing, means reader loyalty. So it's no wonder that opinion leaders are increasingly being heaved into the paper by the publisher himself, such as Roger Köppel's column in the HandelsZeitung. How else can the - to put it mildly - unprominent placement of his first contribution in the fold between pages seven and eight instead of on the opinion page introduced specifically for this purpose last fall be interpreted, if not as the hidden revenge of a duped editor-in-chief who has been overshadowed? This impression is reinforced by the simultaneous aggressive promotion of the newcomer by the publisher via notices and advertisements, but also by the editor-in-chief's usual balanced, i.e.: frictionless editorial.
There is a venerable tradition of publishers shaping the ideological orientation of their products, or allowing it to be shaped, and there is nothing fundamentally reprehensible about this - even if, as in this case, the suspicion of corporate opinion journalism can arise. After all, the HandelsZeitung and Die Welt, where Köppel has recently taken the lead, are part of the Springer portfolio.
The EU bashing of his first guest column was read at least as attentively in Berlin as it was in Zurich. Does this already herald the expected change of direction for Köppel's new editorial team, which until now has been decidedly pro-Brussels? After all, Köppel was brought into the world because of his repositioning expertise. However, it is questionable whether he will be able to help Springer's struggling prestige title with anti-European reflexes (imported from Switzerland). If not, the HandelsZeitung would certainly welcome him as opinion-leading co-editor-in-chief.
> Oliver Classen, Editor

Internet The upturn in Swiss online advertising faltered in May, with the PWA Index falling for the first time this year, by 0.8 points to 124.1 points. The online advertising consultant Publimedia Webadvertising (PWA), which calculates the index, commented that the summer doldrums were already looming.