Agencies Since the beginning of last week, a poster in front of Jung von Matt's headquarters in Hamburg has finally provided information about what it was really like when KS (Daniel Krieg and Uwe Schlupp) joined forces with SJ (Springer Jacoby) to form KSSJ. For all those who are not familiar with the German advertising scene, the two Swiss agency founders provide a Who's Who: Jean-Remy von Matt, head at the one, Ulrike Frohn, his assistant; Konstantin Jacoby, head at the other, Oliver Schwall, head of international at the other, and Holger Uhlhorn, head of finance at the other.

Education The newly created Executive MBA Marketing part-time course is proving very popular.Education The newly created Executive MBA Marketing part-time course is proving very popular. Accordingly, only a few places are still available. Those who want to sharpen their sense of marketing in the European-recognized postgraduate course - April 04 to fall 05 - should not wait too long to register. The course is run by the Hochschule für Wirtschaft und Verwaltung, Zurich (HWZ), in cooperation with the Gesellschaft für Marketing (GfM), and is headed by Professor Armin Seiler, full professor of business administration at the ETH Zurich. The teaching staff of the distinctly practice-oriented course is made up of university lecturers,
communication experts and representatives of companies together. Info at www.fhhwz.ch or tel. 043 322 26 02.

The Swiss outdoor advertising company Affichage, which already has a presence in Eastern Europe via Europlakat (EPI), a joint venture with the French poster company JCDecaux, also wants to become active in Germany and generally in countries close to the border: through investments in larger outdoor advertising companies, through poster concessions for cities and by entering small poster companies close to the border. According to Affichage CEO Christian Kauter, the entire foreign business should account for 25 percent of Affichage's sales in five years' time. EPI currently generates 10 percent.
Germany is not completely new territory for Affichage. In Stuttgart, it already holds a 25 percent stake in the JCDecaux subsidiary Klett-Decaux, which manages the local bus shelters. "On this basis, we can imagine further investments, including in larger companies," says Kauter. However, nothing is ready to go at the moment.
Entry via concessions, on the other hand, is only possible in the medium term. Since December, these have been controlled by the large-format provider Ströer, which bought their joint poster company Deutsche Städte Medien GmbH (DSM), the previous number 1, from the municipalities. These concessions will be put out to tender again by the cities in three to five years. Affichage then wants to join the bidding process.
Kauter is also in contact with small poster companies in the border region. Participations or takeovers would be interesting for Affichage. Will Affichage cooperate with other outdoor advertisers for its options? Kauter: "Partnerships are possible, but not essential. We are also under no obligation to JCDecaux outside the EPI area."
Markus Knöpfli

With CD Philipp Skrabal - from Matter & Partner - and copywriter/concept designer Markus Tränkle - from AY&R - Publicis is filling the gap left by the departure of CDs Uwe Schlupp and Daniel Krieg. Together with the new additions, Luigi del Medico, Ralph Kostgeld and Ralph Halder have also joined the new "Creative Board". In addition to the new CDs, other creative people have also been appointed: Thomas Ammann as copywriter/concept developer, Simon Sennhauser as junior copywriter and Andrea Dübendorfer and Isabelle Hauser as graphic designers....
At the beginning of June, Matter & Partner is strengthening its team with Christoph Bürge. The communications strategist is moving from Jung von Matt/Limmat. He will assume overall responsibility for consulting and, together with Daniel Matter, will form the agency's new management team. The previous head of consulting, Anita Haberthür, will become Bürge's deputy.
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At the beginning of March, the responsibilities in the publishing division of Migros-Presse were reorganized. Hansruedi Lüscher, previously responsible for the entire publishing division and the advertising market, is now in charge of Controlling and Services. He will also head the Service Center of Limmatdruck AG. New publishing manager for
Jrene Shirazi, who previously worked as Head of Marketing for both titles, will become Bridge Builder and Construire. Andi Huggel, previously Head of Marketing for Saisonküche, has also been appointed Publishing Director. Bernt Maulaz will be responsible for the advertising market for all three titles.
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Darryl Heinz von Däniken is the new Head of Marketing & Sales at the Grand Casino Luzern. Previously, von Däniken was Swiss Manager of the British club label Ministry of Sound.
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Eveline Fasser Testa has been the permanent Group Account Director of Euro RSCG Switzerland since the beginning of February. Also new at Gutstrasse is AD Patrick Beeli.
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The French-speaking Swiss business newspaper L'Agefi has appointed Christophe Roulet as Deputy Editor-in-Chief. Roulet has been working for L'Agefi since 2001. Before that, he wrote for L'Hebdo, Le Journal de Genève and Le Temps.

TV formats Because of the fees collected from the "MusicStar" telephone vote, SF DRS has been heavily criticized.Now the broadcaster, exposed to public pressure, is trying to take the wind out of the critics' sails. The unbudgeted additional revenues from "MusicStar" would be used for the production of
sitcoms, said television director Ingrid Deltenre. In 2002, in-house-produced sitcoms had been canceled to save money, despite being popular in some cases. "'MusicStar' was a show outside the budget; we had to look for ways to refinance it," Deltenre defended the telephone voting. According to its own figures, SF DRS took in a total of around four million francs from the calls.

Web job market Significantly more jobs were advertised online in the 4th quarter of 2003.Web job market Significantly more jobs were advertised online in the 4th quarter of 2003. The Jobpilot index rose by a whopping
10 points to 48 points. Compared with the 4th quarter of 2002, this represents an increase of 3 points. This is the first notable increase since mid-2001, with job exchanges in particular being used more frequently again: The corresponding sub-index jumped from 34 to 47 points. The sub-index for company websites rose more slowly from 46 to 49 points. For comparison with the development in the print sector, the Manpower job index (normalized to the Jobpilot index) is now used instead of the Adecco job index. This remained at the previous quarter's level of 29 points.

Communication design Those who took part in the Red Dot Award for Communication Design 2003 received very special international attention through no fault of their own, and the yearbook is apparently so important that counterfeits were produced in China. One copy turned up by chance at the Frankfurt Book Fair, writes the Design Zentrum Nordrhein-Westfalen, which organizes the competition. Apart from a few barely recognizable graphic differences, the only really clear difference between the original and the duplicate is a ribbon as an integrated bookmark. "We take this as a suggestion," writes the Design Zentrum, which takes the illegal competition with humor. The Chinese award yearbook has now received an award itself, namely a special prize for counterfeits from the Plagiarius campaign.

Cinema The multiplex cinema planned by cinema entrepreneur Enrico Ceppi has cleared the first hurdle: no objections were received within the deadline for the nine-screen, 2,400-seat project to replace Ceppi's "Küchlin" cinema and the former "Komödie". "This means that both the new use and the demolition of the 'Komödie' have been approved," Ceppi states with relief when asked.Roland Bader from the Basel building inspectorate also confirms this fact. Bader notes that Ceppi has only submitted a preliminary project, for which he still has to work out a detailed project. However, the current preliminary decision is "a huge step forward" for Ceppi's multiplex, explains Bader. Ceppi submitted the building application last fall, a few days after a referendum in which another multiplex project in which he was involved was rejected (WW 43/03). At that time, it had become known that four more multiplexes were planned in and around Basel. According to Bader, there were preliminary talks about these, but no planning applications had yet been submitted.
(mk)

Agencies The British advertising holding company WPP wants to add a third network to its media agencies Mindshare and Mediaedge|CIA, and the US trade magazine Advertising Age assumes that the network will be formed from WPP's previously independent media subsidiaries such as Maximize in Asia and Media Insight in Europe.

You can expect something special when Cumi Karagülle, customer advisor at the magazine Kochen, invites you to enjoy Anatolian cuisine at Valentine's restaurant, but an hour or so after the first guests had arrived, you wondered where the host was... He must have got stuck in a traffic jam, joked Stephan Suter and Reto Feurer, and they weren't far wrong. Karagülle was indeed stuck in a traffic jam and arrived a little late.
Apart from that, however, everyone was quite happy with Cumi - especially when a really pretty and slender belly dancer whirled past the tables after the meal. As the icing on the cake, which made the ambience perfect, some tables even smoked shisha (not to be confused with hashish) during the performance. This is the name given to the traditional water pipes, the sweet smell of which can even tempt die-hard non-smokers to take a cautious drag from time to time. Cumi, tesekkur ederim!
Host Cumi Karagülle (l.) with Reader's Digest advertising manager Paolo Placa and Filizia Gasnakis.
Caught in front of the lens at the aperitif: Jacqueline Zygmont (l.) from TV-täglich and Bea Baltensperger from Optimedia.
Shisha specialist Jenny Best (l.) from OMD with Timm Schweiger, architect from Hamburg, and Katja Biffiger from Cinecom.
Hanj Hajdu, AZ Fachverlage, joined Astrid Crotti from Spengler and hairstylist Jana Scheel (from left) from Sesto Senso.
Eternal detractors: Stephan Suter from Adlink (left) and Reto Feurer from Cinecom complained about the host's unpunctuality.
Yvonne Zeltner and Nadine Gaille from Johnson & Johnson chatted at the table with Andrea Galatti (from left) from Initiative Media.
Promoted the advertising trend study event: Bettina Möhr and Musti Asaf from Stocks.
Enthusiastic about belly dancing: Jean-Christophe Francet (l.) from Publimedia and Dieter Meier, advertising manager at Kochen.
Always great at discussing the most diverse media issues: Oliver Huber from OMD Zürichsee and Nicole Zubler from Carat.
Beat Fritsch

Education The Zurich University of Applied Sciences Winterthur (ZHW) and the private training center Sawi are launching an educational community under the label "ed-win", which aims to link science and practice in the field of marketing for the first time and act as a national hub for exchange. The initiators are also currently in negotiations with a university in Germany that wants to join "ed-win" as a third partner. The new offering currently comprises four events per year. A trend conference will be held regularly, and there will also be events on various topics from the fields of marketing and customer relationship management. A two-day educational excursion to the Autostadt in Wolfsburg is already being offered at the beginning of May. Further information can be found at www.ed-win.ch.

Oliver Classen on the light and shadows of the Jean Frey turnaround: That's what you get for it, Filippo Leutenegger must have thought when he opened the thick mail at the end of last week: barely back in the black and the trade unions are already at the door (again)! Less than 48 hours after announcing the surprisingly generous annual profit of 10 million Swiss francs that Jean Frey Verlag (JF) was able to achieve in the crisis year of 2003, Comedia called on its CEO to make the ultimate compensation payments to the internal victims of the turnaround.This appeal is as obvious as it is naive: if Leutenegger had not chosen his salami-slicing tactics for the 40 redundancies at the time - which Comedia rightly criticized - he would not be able to report a double-digit result today. And without successful restructuring, not only would the future of the remaining 250 jobs remain uncertain; a radically slimmed down and gold-covered JF would also definitely look more attractive as a potential bride on the international marriage market.
Springer Verlag remains the most highly traded suitor in industry circles. This is not so much because the Welt publisher has joined forces with
Roger Köppel has already secured the intellectual crown jewel of Jean Frey. In fact, the doubling of annual profits to 130 million euros and a correspondingly bulging war chest are crying out for an increase in silverware. It will therefore be interesting to see whether the "new scope for investment in the core business", which Springer CEO Matthias Döpfner spoke of at the annual press conference in Berlin, will reach as far as Switzerland.
PS: Despite cutting over 1,500 jobs last year alone, Döpfner has not received any threatening letters from the German media union. Instead, some Springer editorial offices recently went on strike as part of the wage negotiations. Leutenegger will be thinking to himself, "Then I'd rather have a proper, but ultimately toothless demand for back pay.
> Oliver Classen, Editor