As was inadvertently reported incorrectly in the article "Freixenet, a drop of pleasure for the blue hour", 43/03, Cava Freixenet is not a carbonated grape juice. Freixenet is a wine to which yeast is added and which then ferments in the bottle for at least nine months to learn to sparkle.

Consumer research Around 43 percent of the Swiss believe that their economic situation will improve in the coming year.consumer research Around 43 percent of the Swiss believe that their economic situation will improve in the coming year. Nevertheless, many are thinking about saving, according to the Demoscope research institute. 40 percent want to spend less on consumer electronics, 33 percent less on sports equipment and 17 percent less on clothes. In restaurants, bars and discos, 23 percent want to save money. Twenty-three percent are also planning to cut their vacation budgets. On the other hand, 27 percent of the Swiss want to invest more money in vacations. Fifteen percent want to spend more on electronics, 14 percent on sports and clothes and 10 percent on bars and discos.

Local radio station Silvio Miklau has apparently withdrawn his project for a youth radio station in the city of Zurich, according to a communiqué from competitor DJ Radio. Radio Argovia presenter Miklau had applied with City FM for the FM frequency that the Federal Office of Communications (Bakom) put out to tender in the spring. Neither Miklau nor a member of Bakom could be reached for comment on Tuesday. Without City FM, five projects remain in the running. In addition to DJ Radio, these are Music First from Radio 105, Radio Max from ex-Z marketing boss Mike Gut, Groove.fm with Swizz founder Suzanne Speich and Radio 3Fach from the Lucerne alternative radio station of the same name. According to DJ Radio, the consultation on the applications was opened last week. It will last until the end of January.

Since Martin Kall took over as Chief Executive Officer at Tamedia, an icy wind has been blowing through the corridors of the Glass Palace, which are open to all four wind directions: This year alone, the radical restructuring of Tamedia in three waves has cost 283 (out of a total of over 2000) jobs. This orgy of cuts not only depressed the stock market-relevant personnel cost ratio, but also the mood. The 20 Minuten takeover, which was rushed through at the last minute at the end of March, did not exactly inspire confidence internally either, as jobs were ultimately also cut with the Zürich Express despite cushioning measures. Kall thus became the bogeyman of the trade unions - and at the same time advanced in the business press to become the fearless "pacesetter" (Bilanz) of an industry frozen in existential fears. The main thing is that someone finally sets the tariff and the direction. There is no question that in order to achieve the turnaround, the warmth of Tamedia's various sheltered workshops first had to be cooled down to the operating temperature of a recessionary advertising industry. The next, no less difficult exercise for the weatherman by Coninx's grace will now be to win back the trust and goodwill of his employees by storm. Cooling down the operating temperature at Tamedia: CEO Martin Kall.
(oc)

Monique Stauffer, Head of Sales, is taking over the day-to-day management of the Radio Basilisk marketer Medag with immediate effect. Hans-Ruedi Ledermann is withdrawing from the operational business for health reasons, but will remain Chairman of the Board of Directors. ...
As of January 1, François Besençon will join the extended management of Publisuisse. He will be responsible for Publisuisse's activities in French-speaking Switzerland.
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Marc Reinhard will take over the management of AZ Wochenzeitungen AG in Lenzburg at the beginning of March 2004. He will succeed Marcel Suter, who is leaving the AZ-Medien Group at the end of the year. Reinhard is currently head of the supplement editorial department at the Aargauer Zeitung.
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Béda-Urs Schönenberger has been appointed Publishing Director of Limmattaler Tagblatt AG in Dietikon. He succeeds Oscar Meier, who has taken over responsibility for the regional advertising market of the Aargauer Zeitung. Schönenberger was previously Head of Marketing and Sales at Schaffhauser Bock.
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Christoph Dörig is the new publishing director of the weekly newspaper Luzerner Rundschau. He will assume operational responsibility and further development of the free newspaper. Dörig was most recently Head of the Consulting Department at Publicitas in Zurich.
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After 30 years at Allgemeine Plakatgesellschaft (APG), Reinhard Brunner is leaving the company. He most recently worked for APG in the Innovations/Projects division.
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The deputy editor-in-chief of HandelsZeitung, Reto Schlatter, will be setting up the MAZ Media Forum in Lucerne from March.
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Simone Reich will become TR-7 editor-in-chief René Hildbrand's deputy from January 1. Reich moved from Blick to the TV magazine in June.

Film Wirz+Fraefel wants to rejuvenate itself After 15 successful years as a one-director company, the film company founded by director Ernst Wirz and producer Stefan Fraefel has decided to expand its range of directors. "We want to retain the concept, the character and the quality criteria," explains Fraefel. At the same time, they want to bring young and foreign cracks onto the set. In addition to Wirz, who is still "enthusiastic about shooting", Ivo Wejgaard, the "number one Swiss video clip director", is joining the team. Post-production crack Steven Hiam has been hired from England. He worked on Cunningham's Madonna clip "Frozen". The young film school graduate Jenny Almendinger from Berlin "convinced us with her graduation film for Audi", says Wirz happily. Also joining the team in the future: Les Sharp, who was decorated in Cannes, as well as Ali Goezkaya and Munir Abbar from Berlin. With this reinforcement, Wirz+Fraefel also wants to be more active in corporate film. (pan)

SWA The Association of Swiss Advertisers (SWA) gained seven new members in the past year - one member, the Swiss Cancer League, resigned, saying that it saw a conflict of interest in the SWA's fight against advertising bans, writes SWA President Gérard Stalder, adding: "I regret this, but I can understand the step due to the special situation of the institution." Bruno Meili, Managing Director of the Cancer League, confirms the resignation. "It's hair-raising how the tobacco industry is able to instrumentalize the entire advertising industry to achieve its goals," he says. The Cancer League, which is trying to stop people from smoking with modest means, therefore had no other option but to withdraw in protest. Meili would have expected the SWA to take a neutral stance on the issue of advertising bans. "The efforts to ban tobacco advertising, for example, are not just an idea, but are in line with the global policy of the World Health Organization (WHO)," says Meili.
(mk)

Free magazines The people and lifestyle magazine Faces is expanding from four to six issues a year, while at the same time increasing its format to 230 x 300 millimetres. Faces is published by the Fairlane Consulting agency with a print run of 45,000 copies.

E-Commerce On December 15, the publishing house Baur Medien launched ShopScout: a printed directory of 500 Swiss online stores. the A6-sized brochure is sold at newsstands for 4.50 francs. It is also available in all Office World branches and is sent to subscribers to the Online PC Zeitung. The second edition is planned for March 2004 and will be published in a large print run of 250,000 copies.

The poor 2002 was followed by an even more difficult business year for the advertising industry in 2003, and although network agencies are now strictly prohibited from publishing business figures, industry experts estimate the renewed decline in total gross operating income (GOP) at 10 to 15 percent. The number of employees has also shrunk to a similar extent. Edgar C. Britschgi, CEO of the Advico-Young & Rubicam Group Switzerland, is confident that the industry has now bottomed out. With regard to the acquisition situation, however, he predicts that the curve will remain flat. There are a few lucky exceptions that have been able to keep their headcount stable, such as Contexta, Jung von Matt and Euro RSCG. But the majority have had to make significant cuts. The general tenor is that times will never be the same as they once were, which the Wallisell agency FCB Leutenegger Krüll exaggerated and self-deprecatingly used for a self-advertising motif. Still the eleventh-largest BSW agency in 2002, they, like most of their colleagues in the industry, ate hard bread last year. "Mergers and the resulting loss of two global clients should not simply be concealed," says Peter Leutenegger, CEO of FCB Leutenegger Krüll. "No one believes our eternal fair-weather talk anyway, so we're standing by the fact that we've become a little smaller." FCB Leutenegger Krüll's offensive: no "fair-weather talk".
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The Zurich advertising agency Publicis is now in charge of Schweizer Illustrierte, the weekly magazine from the Ringier media house, which has entrusted Publicis with its entire advertising budget, announced Executive Creative Director Markus Gut. Work is already in full swing on the campaign, which will be launched in the new year. Wirz Werbung has been in charge of Schweizer Illustrierte's reader and advertising campaigns for many years.

Advertising statistics The fact that Wemf and Media Focus (MF) will each be offering advertising statistics from January 1 is no cause for celebration for the Swiss Advertising Association (SWA). He wants to find out from the largest SWA members by means of a questionnaire what their actual needs are. MF and Wemf were asked to merge their statistics at an Igem event in November (WW 43/03). Does the SWA also want to do this? "Not in the first instance," says Siegrist. The SWA primarily wants customer and market-oriented data without methodological flaws, but with a uniform basic currency. This should also be affordable. (mk)