Creation Today, the photographs taken by professional photographers from the Parisian advertising agency Paul Martial between 1930 and 1960 appear almost grotesquely amateurish, showing neither the end product nor its realization, but rather the difficult path that led to it - a detour that is hardly conceivable today, but was archived at the time. The often enigmatic and bizarre photographs, which are indebted to classical modernism, can be seen at the Fondation Herzog in Basel until mid-August.

Cinema The Swiss office of UIP (United International Pictures) and Take Two Publicity were honored for world-class film advertising.
His name is not Johnny Depp, but Johnny English. Other similarities with non-living characters such as James Bond or Mr. Bean are no coincidence. Rowan Atkinson as the goofy agent shook the diaphragm of almost 500,000 fans in Swiss cinemas last year. The film thus achieved the seventh best box office result of the year. Anything over 300,000 admissions is considered a dream quota in the industry, and for this success the Swiss office of distributor UIP, together with Take Two Publicity (TTP) in Zurich, has been awarded a prize for the best worldwide marketing for the hit film from British production company Working Title. As a thank you, the Swiss are allowed to drive the Aston Martin DB 7 Vantage used in the film.
The 12-cylinder worth CHF 250,000 is available to all fourteen people from UIP and TTP involved in marketing for three years. Only the gasoline for the 420 hp speedster has to be paid for. "We are the envy of all UIP branches around the world," says Max Dietiker, Managing Director of the film distributor in Zurich. The UIP President from Hollywood personally congratulated the Swiss in the worldwide newsletter.
The film advertising was awarded for "the best performance according to measurable and comparable criteria". This required a great deal of creativity in marketing, as the guidelines for such advertising activities are very restricted by the production companies. Various legal issues play an important role, and the artwork for posters is also subject to strict controls, as Paul Fischli, Marketing Manager for UIP, explains.
Tight corset for advertising
Nevertheless, his team managed to "find creative gaps", especially as they were helped by chance: The film was launched in Switzerland at the same time as the World Ski Championships in St. Moritz. UIP seized the opportunity and showed Johnny English skiing in advertisements. Another lucky coincidence was the broadcast of "Wetten, dass ..." in Lucerne. Here, "Mr. Bean" Rowan Atkinson was placed on Thomas Gottschalk's sofa as a betting sponsor - with enormous advertising impact.
Cinemas encouraged to join in
UIP also staged an agent hunt through Zurich for the public on the weekend of the film's release. Accompanied by Radio 24, a "Swiss Agent" was sought. A competition was launched with Blick and Falcon Travel, in which the winners were accompanied by a reporter to the official world premiere of the film in London. Flyers with quirky agent tips were created using appropriate scenes from the film and distributed at relevant locations. These subjects were also included in teaser advertisements. Cinema operators were encouraged to create a cheeky agent atmosphere in their foyers. The cinema with the most imaginative decoration was rewarded with a dinner for the entire staff.
"Such activities went beyond the normal launch of a film," says Gabrielle Jost, the current owner of TTP in Zurich. This film marketing agency was founded in 1985 by Max Dietiker, Managing Director of UIP Switzerland, and is the only full-service agency for cinema films. Today, TTP continues to act as UIP's in-house agency, but is also open to other distributors.
TTP and UIP also want to be able to use new cross-marketing ideas for future films. "In the fierce competition between entertainment offerings, we also have to work on new fields," Jost is convinced. In addition to classic product placement, more Swiss companies are to be approached for involvement in the distribution phase. For the upcoming "Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason", a supplier of jewelry or a chocolate brand could be won over for parallel advertising. "We have to show companies how they can benefit from the success of a film for their own image and brand awareness," says Paul Fischli from UIP.
Merciless predatory struggle
Potential blockbusters are launched in Switzerland with up to 150 copies simultaneously in cities and rural areas. Although this means high copying costs, the advertising budgets can be utilized in a much more concentrated way. Today, distributors have far too little time for the kind of careful build-up that used to be the norm. This was drastically demonstrated this spring, when the premieres of the blockbusters "Troy", "Van Helsing", "The Day After Tomorrow" and "Harry Potter" followed each other almost on a weekly basis. For distributors, there is a merciless cut-throat battle in the cinema, because not only the audience, but also the number of screens available cannot be multiplied at will.
This makes advertising all the more important. In the USA, 50 million dollars in marketing money is easily made available for a big box office hit. Internationally, expensive TV campaigns have become the new battle tool for movie advertisers. In the small Swiss market, the resources are correspondingly smaller. Despite this - or perhaps because of it - Johnny English's Aston Martin has now made its way to the small but unimaginative Swiss market.
Almost 500,000 viewers: "Johnny English" became a blockbuster in Swiss cinemas thanks to marketing.
Three years of Aston Martin driving (from left): Bea Roduner, Max Dietiker, Gabrielle Jost, Paul Fischli.
Andreas Panzeri

Cigarettes Lesch + Frei's social responsibility campaign aims to highlight the BAT's point of view and soften dividing lines Switzerland is one of the countries with the highest per capita consumption of tobacco products. There are many attempts to change this. But as long as tobacco prices in Switzerland remain the cheapest in Europe in terms of purchasing power, little is likely to change.but when even non-smoking advertisers' heads are spinning, it's most likely about the threat of advertising bans. Not so with Zurich agency Lesch + Frei (L+F). Since February 2000, it has been designing an opinion campaign for the German market on behalf of the cigarette group BAT (British American Tobacco) (Lucky Strike, Barclay, Parisienne and others), which aims to objectify the emotionally charged debate. Whether it was able to soften the hardened fronts is doubtful. After all, the blue haze in Germany has dissipated noticeably - by exactly one fifth. This is the extent of the slump in cigarette sales so far this year. Around 380 million cigarettes go up in smoke every day in our northern neighbor, a good 4 percent less than a decade ago.
Ernst Brückner, Managing Director of the German Cigarette Industry Association, fears that the decline for the year as a whole will be close to 20 percent compared to 2003. The negative trend appears to be accelerating. Although L+F proudly points to the success of the conciliatory BAT campaign and announces that it has been adapted in Spain, Serbia and Italy, it is not this campaign that has caused German cigarette sales to slide, but the increase in tobacco tax. For Brückner, it is clear that it is not the number of quitters that has increased, but the trade in substitute products such as smuggled goods and fine cigarettes. To prove this, the industry association wants to use waste controls to determine actual tobacco consumption and compare this with cigarette sales.
Switzerland has not yet reached that stage. A few months after the Federal Council, following the German example, decided to massively increase the tobacco tax, L+F's BAT campaign is now also intended to put people's minds at ease here in Switzerland. According to L+F Managing Director Walter Tagliaferri, the campaign addresses topics such as tolerance, youth prevention and advertising bans and shows that BAT is facing up to its responsibilities with a whole range of measures. The creatives have translated the sensitive content into nine subjects in order to make the discussion more objective. In view of the planned budget, this request seems a little too ambitious. In 2002, advertising expenditure for tobacco products amounted to 59.3 million francs.
BAT advertising subject: The tobacco debate should finally become objective.
Luca Aloisi

Distribution More expensive postal rates affect magazine distribution in particular. On behalf of the media groups Tamedia, NZZ, Südostschweiz and Ringier as well as the retail giant Valora (K-Group), a seven-member project committee has been working for around twelve months on an "Alternative Delivery Organization" (AZO), which could do without Swiss Post if necessary. "The aim is a nationwide delivery service that delivers weekly titles and magazines to recipients between 8 a.m. and 1 p.m. the day after they are posted," says Walter Lütolf, Head of Sales at Ringier and spokesman for the project committee.
One of the reasons for this gigantic project: From 2007, the federal government no longer wants to subsidize press postal rates, which will primarily result in higher postal charges for magazines. Daily newspapers, which are mostly distributed by publishers' own early delivery companies, are less affected (exception: Blick). In terms of prices, customers therefore expect AZO to maintain price stability at the current postal rate level over the long term. "AZO must be able to assume price leadership in the press sector from 2008 at the latest, otherwise the project has no chance," says Lütolf. The prerequisite is that AZO functions according to business principles. "AZO cannot be in the service of press promotion," explains Lütolf. Large-circulation titles and those with a high circulation density would therefore have to pay less per distributed copy. In addition, only titles with a minimum circulation of 50,000 copies were included in the initial calculations.
The project is already well advanced: Various models are being examined and six sub-groups are at work. Concepts and business plans should be available in November, and in December the clients want to decide on the involvement of further partners, the founding of a company and its service contract. Implementation could begin in 2005. "Depending on the contract, it would take between one and three years to set up AZO," says Walter Lütolf. He estimates the potential AZO sales volume at 100 to 150 million Swiss francs per year.
The minimum variant guarantees the delivery service for customer and member newspapers as well as weekly titles and magazines. Lütolf estimates that this would take perhaps 25 percent of the workload away from the letter carriers and women who currently distribute around 700 million magazines to households every year. The maximum variant, on the other hand, also includes the distribution of catalogs, addressed or unaddressed advertising and a full service with packaging and addressing through to subscription management.
It is currently assumed that AZO will be founded as a general contractor (GC) that will purchase the corresponding services from existing logistics providers. Possible contractors include the early delivery companies of the publishing houses as well as K-Group or Naville with their distribution networks, logistics companies such as TPS and the logistics organizations of the major distributors.
Swiss Post is not excluded either - on the contrary, its expertise alone would make it desirable. However, the deadlines set there have been missed. AZO is therefore now also sounding out interested foreign parties. They hope to gain a foothold in Switzerland by acquiring a stake in AZO, says Lütolf.
However, the GU model has not yet been determined. A hybrid form is also possible. "We are currently examining the efficiency of each company. It may be that we don't include companies from publishers or set up certain services ourselves," says Lütolf. It is likely that the publishers' early delivery companies will be integrated into AZO. In this case, it is planned that their time slot from five to seven in the morning will continue to be reserved for the early delivery of daily newspapers. After that, however, the same carrier would add another tour for magazines. The publishers are hoping for a side effect: "The full-time jobs created in this way should make the delivery companies more attractive as employers again and make it easier to recruit staff," says Lütolf.
According to current calculations, however, AZO will only be able to cover around 80 percent of all Swiss households at a reasonable price - and only twice a week. Lütolf: "Tuesdays with Schweizer Illustrierte and the Migros and Coop titles would be interesting for AZO." For the time being, delivery to the missing households or on missing weekdays would probably have to continue to be purchased from Swiss Post.
In future, an "Alternative Delivery Organization" (AZO) will deliver magazines and weekly titles the day after they are posted.
Two projects - two playersThree weeks ago, Swiss Post and publishers' associations announced that on August 8/9 they would be restructuring postal logistics for daily newspapers in order to save CHF 10 million and keep press postal rates at their current level, at least for 2005 (WW 24/04). It is important to note that AZO has nothing to do with the project in which Swiss Post is in charge, nor is there any competition. AZO is concerned with the distribution of magazines, while the Swiss Post project is exclusively concerned with those daily newspapers that leave the printing plant early in the morning and reach their destination a few hours later by post. (mk)
Markus Knöpfli

Sportplausch The summer campaign by Sportplausch Wider and in-house agency Publicis continues at breakneck speed, with bike racers using professional equipment from Sportplausch Wider so fast that they can easily keep up on the highway. This is dramatized on the poster with the compulsory vignette for racing bikes from Wider. A second motif warns motorists to be careful as they wind their way through the mountains. This is because downhill bikers with heavy-duty equipment from Wider shoot down the rock faces, similar to a rockfall. A new signal board from Publicis draws attention to these "creeps" in road traffic.

Congresses At the annual congress of the Swiss press in September, German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder will appear as a guest speaker and the Swiss government will be represented by Federal Councillor Christoph Blocher. Joseph Deiss was originally scheduled to attend, but has been prevented from doing so by official commitments, as reported by the SonntagsZeitung. The annual congress of the Swiss Press Publishers Association will take place in Lausanne from September 16 to 18.

Internet The Lausanne daily newspaper Le Temps is looking for a leading role in the electronic marketing of news.sports results on your cell phone or the latest politics on your laptop: the French daily newspaper Le Temps wants to make its online news offering a supplement to the printed edition. With information that is "fast, factual, enlightening and of high quality", the newspaper wants to "simultaneously multiply and present itself as a unit" via the ever-increasing number of online channels, according to the publisher. The news items should be recognizable in spirit and style as journalistic achievements from the Le Tamps editorial team, and the offerings in the electronic kiosk, from dispatches to dossiers from the newspaper's archive, will be publicized by the advertising agency Angebault Portenier Communication in Lausanne with several advertisements. The play on words "Le temps, tout le temps" was an obvious choice for the claim. The images work with a similar wink. In parliament, someone calls up the results of a bullfight on their cell phone. The display of the cell phone shows the arena in Spain. At the same time, the cell phone is held up in front of the "arena" of the Federal Palace. The headline reads: "Comprendre les enjeux de l'arène politique. www.letemps.ch."
With such image and word play, the agency aims to ensure that the messages first have to be decoded so that they stick in the memory all the more lastingly.
Mysterious: word games and poetic picture puzzles for Le Temps.
Andreas Panzeri

Magazines Since the beginning of June, Cicero has also been represented in the Swiss market by GWP, the Düsseldorf-based Holtzbrinck subsidiary that previously only carried Ringier's monthly political magazine in its German portfolio, which also includes HandelsZeitung, Bilanz and Weltwoche. The paper is well received by readers. There is still room for improvement in terms of advertising: the July issue had 26 pages of advertising on 148 pages.

With every new Tibits opening, the Frei brothers and co-owner Rolf Hiltl treat their customers to a new promotional menu. Since their first veggie take-away in Zurich's Seefeld district, they have succeeded in doing this every year: Since 2002, the people of Winterthur and, since last year, the people of Bern have been able to enjoy vegetarian fast food. Although not a new branch, the Orange Cinema in Bern is this year's occasion to recall Tibits with a new campaign. "The culinary offering at Tibits is also reinvented every day, so the advertising must not come across as stale," says Matthias Freuler, CD of the in-house agency Wirz. three posters were created, each showing a plate on which the vegetables are arranged in such a way that no meat can get through. The commercial, which is to be shown in cinemas after the Orange Cinema in Bern, dramatizes the tastelessness of fast food meat products: The eater does not realize that he has caught the box instead of a bite of hamburger.
Restaurant Hiltl has also ordered a new commercial from Wirz for the Zurich edition of Orange Cinema. In it, a vegetarian hunter unintentionally makes animal prey: he chases a hare away from the carrots with aerial shots and in the process snatches a duck from the sky.
Eye-catcher: Tibits surprises with new advertising menus every year.
Simone Keller

Pharma Virus Ideenlabor has won Novartis Consumer Health Switzerland as a new client, commissioning the Biel-based agency to develop and implement promotions for its cold medicines. Virus writes that consumers should be made aware of the wide range of coordinated care options for colds and flu in an appealing way. In addition to an information brochure, various displays and other measures will be implemented.

Daily newspapers NZZ and PubliGroupe join forces in the Zurich regional newspaper market. The NZZ Group is taking up the cudgels for newspaper diversity in Zurich, a city of millions. It praises the coup it has landed with PubliGroupe as a contribution to preserving the regional press landscape: The Lausanne-based advertising group is transferring minority shares in Akeret Druck und Verlag (Zürcher Unterländer) and Zürichsee Presse to the previously wholly-owned NZZ subsidiary Freie Presse Holding (FPH). In return, PubliGroupe will acquire a stake in FPH and take over the advertising management for the NZZ and NZZ am Sonntag. According to NZZ editor-in-chief Hugo Bütler, this lays the foundation for a platform that will enable regional publishers to work together on an independent basis. A network is to be created around FPH that will allow various forms of cooperation: in printing, in advertising management, in an article exchange and with or without mutual participation.
"It is clear that we are offering an alternative to the regional expansion plans of the Tages-Anzeiger," says Bütler. The takeover of the Tagi mantle by the Zurich regional papers was previously a strategic option for Tamedia. Following the NZZ Group's acquisition of Zürichsee Zeitung and Zürcher Unterländer, Landbote and Zürcher Oberländer remain. This could also change. "We are now sending out a signal", says Bütler: in addition to the Tages-Anzeiger and the NZZ, there is a third opportunity with FPH to "build something together".
Tamedia remains calm. Group spokeswoman Franziska Hügli assures that a shell contract is only one of the various conceivable strategies. The focus is on the further development of the Tages-Anzeiger. The spectrum ranges from cooperations to the launch of own split editions. Tagi publishing director Maili Wolf emphasizes that her newspaper can "also grow on its own". The decline in circulation in recent years has already been halted.
FPH was founded in the 1970s as the sponsor of the St. Galler Tagblatt, in which the NZZ Group now holds a 70 percent stake. In addition to this share package, the company also holds stakes in the Berner Bund (40 percent) and the Tagblatt der Stadt Zürich (40 percent). Hugo Bütler explains that the majority stake in LZ Medien AG will also be transferred to FPH in the foreseeable future (see also page 18). The size of PubliGroupe's stake in FPH will only be determined once the due diligence evaluation has been completed. In any case, the majority will remain with the NZZ Group.
Stefano Monachesi

Facility Management The Swiss-Liechtenstein building technology association Suissetec has awarded its communications budget to the Zurich-based communications consultancy Arcanis following a pitch. In collaboration with C-Matrix Geneva (strategy, aspects of French-speaking Switzerland) and Piar (strategy, media relations), Arcanis is developing a concept as lead agency for three to five years, which will appear externally from 2005.