Computers Anyone who went through puberty at the end of the seventies has not forgotten what bell bottoms feel like and what the soundtrack to "Saturday Night Fever" sounds like.Such aesthetic or acoustic traumas continue to have an effect, even in advertising. It is cruel, the commercial revenge of generational memory. And provincially ironic to boot. As if a vest-pocket Travolta with a neck spoiler and a carousel brakeman's moustache would make the retrospective torment(ing) more bearable! In the face of such nasty reminiscences, the message of the apparent in-house campaign is completely lost. But the virtual disco ball in the luggage rack is really not an eye-catcher. And the name of its carrier medium, "Joybook", mocks the martyrdom of an entire age group. Even the cozy setting of a six-car train compartment can't make up for so much emotional coldness. The fact that the BenQ train is stuck in a tunnel, just as we were when we were growing up, is only compensatory justice.
(oc)

89% of Swiss people are in favor of public radio and television: This is the result of a survey commissioned by the Coop-Zeitung.Fernsehen Only 6 percent consider the SRG SSR idée suisse service to be unnecessary. 2 percent only want to keep state television and a further 2 percent only radio. The Link research institute surveyed 616 people between the ages of 15 and
74 years old from German and French-speaking Switzerland.

Industry The Zurich agency Swisspromotions has been commissioned by Zielonka Wohnen & Leben to handle trade marketing for the whole of Switzerland.industry The Zurich agency Swisspromotions has been commissioned by Zielonka Wohnen & Leben to handle trade marketing for the whole of Switzerland. The label belongs to the German industrial group Zielonka CNC-Dreh- und Frästechnik. However, it does not produce machines - as might be assumed from the company name - but odour neutralizers. Swisspromotions organizes trade fair visits, direct marketing campaigns, promotions and sales force support for Zielonka. The Zurich-based company was also entrusted with the preliminary clarifications for market entry in Austria.

Portals The online real estate marketplaces of the cantonal banks of Lucerne, Obwalden, Schwyz, Uri and Zug are merging under the name ImmoMarktZentralschweiz.ch, with the Luzerner Kantonalbank platform being renamed ImmoMarktLuzern.ch and the sites of the other participants being renamed in the same way. Private individuals and commercial providers can advertise their rental and purchase properties free of charge. The responsible cantonal bank checks the offers and activates them for 60 days.

Adscreens Advertising on plasma screens at the point of sale is widely accepted by customers, according to a study conducted by marketer IP Multimedia (IPM) on its "adScreen" service at the Tamoil petrol station chain, Manor supermarkets and Swisscom stores. Tamoil customers noticed the screens the most. Only 7 percent were unable to remember the screens, despite aided questioning. At Manor, the screens were ignored by 41 percent and at Swisscom by 60 percent. The picture is reversed when it comes to recall. 64 percent of people who saw the screens in Swisscom stores remembered the advertising spontaneously. At Tamoil, 33.8 percent remembered. There is no corresponding figure for Manor.

Magazines In French-speaking Switzerland, the new satirical and cultural magazine Saturne is a media event. Launched at the beginning of March by Ariane Dayer, the former editor-in-chief of Hébdo, Saturne breaks all kinds of rules, drawing its originality from its counterpoint to the flood of information and content-free aesthetics of today's magazine culture. The launch campaign by McCann-Erickson, whose advertising idea "Discover" reflects Saturne's contrasting point of view, fits in with the concept and the urban target readership. The three print subjects show an astronaut landing in familiar surroundings: a gallery, a football pitch, the Place des Nations in Geneva. His reality-distorting intrusion into the midst of normal people is intended to evoke emotions and reactions and, like Saturne himself, to shake things up.

Advertising statistics Even after the departure of Hans-Jürg Gränicher (see p. 3), it is unlikely that the criticized shortcomings of the Advertising Index Switzerland (AIS) will be rectified quickly, and Wemf CEO René Schmutz sees no solution for the time being to the most serious problem: the coexistence of billed gross and gross-gross (Media Focus) in the same statistics. "We don't have enough power over the data suppliers." Schmutz has taken over the project management of the AIS himself on an interim basis. "Now we're going to organize the project really well and then see what happens," says Schmutz.
With the upcoming presentation on March 29, the hunt for paying subscribers is entering the decisive phase. There will be no trial subscriptions. "However, we are working on developing customized fee-based offers for non-subscribers as well. Special evaluations for certain market segments are conceivable," explains Schmutz.
(dse)

Awards The jury, headed by Christoph Oggenfuss (Comit Group), has selected the winners of the Swiss Dialog Marketing Award '04 from 303 campaigns in 12 categories: four gold, eight silver and 16 bronze. The winners will remain secret until the Award Night on April 30 at the Zurich Kongresshaus. Tickets can be ordered from March 30 at www.dm-preis.ch.

Sport In the last 20 years, the number of obese children in Switzerland has tripled, with one in five children being overweight. The causes: too much and too fatty food - and too little exercise. Children no longer romp around in the playground, but sit in front of the Playstation for hours on end. They are constantly snacking. What is too much is not burned off, but simply stored.
"Do some sport again" has long been the headline above various subjects in an image campaign for Och Sport. Now the store on Bahnhofstrasse in Zurich has made the latest statistics on obese children the subject. With the "Prevention" campaign, the sports store wants to "make a contribution to public health". The idea was implemented by the Zurich agency Felber Kristofori Group. Posters and streetcar posters show different age groups in more or less unathletic postures around the same slogan. In collaboration with a specialist in cardiology and a specialist in orthopaedic surgery, Och Sport has also published a brochure on various types of sport. This provides information on which sports are suitable for which people. The booklet is also distributed by the Sports Office of the City of Zurich.
(pan)

Column Out of the dirty corner, into the (next) publishing adventure: The timing seems more favorable than ever for an upmarket daily newspaper from Switzerland's largest media company.The Neue Zeitung project, which the Ringier Board of Directors will decide on this week, is the largest Swiss publishing house's renewed attempt to consolidate its position in the "upmarket reader segment" - whatever one may understand by that. In any case, Blick, although more of a contrast to the Neue Zeitung in journalistic terms, is to be used as an aircraft carrier, which will ensure an enormous distribution performance at low cost, at least in terms of single copy sales. At the same time, this distribution channel opens up nearby readership circles; after all, we have known for years that around one in three Blick readers also regularly access the NZZ. In terms of content, the paper aims to "convey the daily newspaper content from the mindset of the weekly newspaper", as one of the people in charge told me, which is a contemporary approach. Since they can no longer be the first to report breaking news due to television, radio and online media, daily newspapers have had to rely on what could be called "second-tier news": Backgrounds, analyses, commentaries, viewpoints, columns, portraits, forecasts, services, updates. The new paper is therefore forced to arouse interest through the variety of its journalistic forms of presentation. Project manager and former Weltwoche editor-in-chief Rudolf Bächtold is a champion in this discipline.
So there are good reasons for such a newspaper - but why now of all times, in the deepest depression in the industry since the end of the war? With the self-confidence of the strong, Ringier's management should be asking the question the other way round: Why not now? Compared to others, the publishing group is in excellent shape, both economically and structurally. The magazine sector has suffered far less than the extremely cyclical A titles among the daily newspapers, whose advertising business has been hit by the collapse of the management job market, the advertising crisis and the stock market slump.
As a result, the two old arch-rivals Tamedia and NZZ are weaker and easier to attack. The risks for the future also appear to be better distributed at Ringier than at others. The foreign business has become a solid contributor, and none of the care cases, of which there is no shortage in this company either, have the dimensions of a cluster risk. Ringier today benefits from a clever corporate structure that has never lost the balance between the geographical markets, but also between publishing and print, print and new media.
Since decent publishing is never just a strategy game, but always has to do with "soft" factors such as socio-political (self-) commitment and reputation, the old Ringier-specific ambition of wanting to have a say in the serious press may also play a role. However, this distinction alone (elitist = serious, popular = dubious) is based on a doctrinaire and detached view of the world. Defined non-ideologically, respectability today means nothing more than the fulfillment of customer demands while respecting the special constraints inherent in the media industry. This form of quality is possible at any level; some Ringier titles have been proving this for years. What's more, the words of Brecht apply particularly well to Switzerland's largest publishing house: "No one need be ashamed to merely entertain."
If the decision regarding the Neue Zeitung is positive, it is to be hoped that the project will be given the necessary time to mature. However, if the Board of Directors' thumbs were to point downwards, it would not be a tragedy. After all, research and development in this business is based on the principle of "trial and error".
You have to kiss a lot of frogs to meet a prince.
> Karl Lüönd is a journalist and head of the Media Institute of the Swiss Press Association.

Trade Press On April 20, Zehnder Publishing in Wil will launch the magazine *Schützen-König*. In doing so, it is filling a gap left by the Swiss Shooting Sports Federation (SSV). At the end of last year, the SSV discontinued the *Schützen-Journal*, which it had previously taken over from an independent publisher. The federation continues to publish its weekly title, *Schiessen Schweiz*. Zehnder has now acquired the exclusive mailing list for *Schützen-Journal*. The first issue of the new *Schützen-König* will be mailed directly to 93,721 people. Like *Schützen-Journal* before it, the new magazine will be published five times a year.

Print media St. Galler Tagblatt AG would like to bring its free newspaper to railroad stations. "We have made enquiries with the SBB," confirms Daniel Ehrat, Publishing Director of St. Galler Tagblatt and the free weekly newspaper Anzeiger from Eastern Switzerland. Ehrat also wants to bring the Anzeiger, which has been published in tabloid format with a new concept since the beginning of the year and is distributed to all households in a print run of 200,000 copies, to rail commuters. "A commuter newspaper is not a weekly title that consists primarily of advertising, but a newspaper that is published at least five times a week with up-to-date brief information," says Beat-Gaudenz Schwarz from SBB-Immobilien - and also wrote this to St. Gallen.
Ehrat sees it differently. "We don't think it's entirely fair that the SBB expects a paper along the lines of 20 Minuten." The Anzeiger fulfills the requirements profile of a commuter newspaper very well, as it has expanded the information section and offers tips for going out, life advice and pop stories from Eastern Switzerland. Ehrat: "We receive extremely positive reactions from the reader market."
Schwarz, however, is adamant: "The Ostschweizer Anzeiger does not yet meet our requirements." Nevertheless, he informed Ehrat last week that the SBB is now considering a box tender in St. Gallen - but "hardly before the end of summer 2004". St. Galler Tagblatt AG will of course also be invited.
Is Ehrat considering making the Anzeiger a daily newspaper? "That wouldn't pay off," he says. "Besides, the Anzeiger shouldn't compete with our flagship."
And what is the reaction at 20 Minuten? "St. Gallen is not yet an item on our agenda," says publishing director Rolf Bollmann.
Markus Knöpfli