The young Zurich agency Acapulpo Communications has convinced the Karer Group of its capabilities and two German agencies were also involved in the pitch for the account of the consulting group with companies in Switzerland and Germany. The Karer Group's redesigned website will be available from January 2004.

Thomas Stuckert new advertising sales manager at WerbewocheAfter seven years as advertising sales manager at Werbewoche, Chris Köppel is heading for new shores and leaving Media-Daten Verlag. We would like to thank him for his commitment to our company and wish him all the best.Werbewoche's new advertising sales manager is Thomas Stuckert. He has worked as a media consultant, product manager and advertising manager for various trade journals. In 1994, after a two-year exile from the industry, he returned to the publishing sector. In 1995, he moved to Publimag, a PubliGroupe company, where he was responsible for magazines and advertising.
and specialist publications, most recently as sales manager. After a good year on the client side, the now 37-year-old advertising professional returned to his roots in January 2004. And at the same address where he started his career in the publishing and advertising industry in 1989. (WW)

has joined the board of directors at Scholz & Friends in Zurich, works as a consultant, and is pursuing her MBA «purely for the fun of it.» The communications strategist has once again surprised the entire industry. Diana Strebel has joined the board of directors at Scholz & Friends in Zurich, effective immediately. The 43-year-old also retains the same position at Wunderman. At this dialogue agency, she has served since May 2002, first as CEO and then as a member of the Board of Directors. In addition, Strebel handles various private consulting engagements for companies outside the advertising industry. Is a new star beginning to shine in the firm of cross-industry professional board members?
«If I don’t do it now, I’ll never do it,» says Strebel. She is referring to a Master of Business Administration with a dual degree in American and Swiss law, studying simultaneously in New York and Zurich. That, she explains, is now «the starting point to which everything else must be subordinated.» The consulting work came about «unplanned,» as did the two board positions.
The decision to return to the lecture hall has nothing to do with settling an outstanding debt. «I just feel like it right now, and it’s a privilege to be able to study again purely for the joy of it, and not because I absolutely need a degree.» Diana Strebel almost seems to take a bit of a playful tone about the fact that she doesn’t yet know exactly what she wants to do for a career. «That’s my luxury right now.»
She studied business administration in St. Gallen until she was presented with the choice at Farner—which was facing a crisis at the time—to immediately take on operational responsibility. To this day, she has never regretted taking that bold step toward a rapid rise in her career. Strebel became a co-owner and managing director of Aebi Strebel and was later one of the co-initiators of the merger between Farner-Publicis and Aebi Strebel to form what is now Publicis Switzerland. She subsequently served as managing director and vice chair of the Publicis Group in Zurich. Strebel was also the youngest BSW president.
«She wants her current situation as a student and member of the board of directors to be understood as »far from a sabbatical or a time-out.« She also told the BSW board that she doesn’t believe she’ll ever return to an operational leadership role at an agency. »It was a wonderful time, and I learned a lot from it.” But one cannot face certain management tasks for the umpteenth time and handle them with the same
Tackle things with the same enthusiasm as the first time.
«I take my board appointments seriously and don’t view them as a mere formality, as many have done in the past,» she says firmly. At Scholz & Friends, the idea came about because Yvonne Hodel—already a board member—and Diana Strebel are also friends in their personal lives. However, the appointment was based on a professional assessment. She does not view her role as «a favor for a friend.».
Strebel does not see a conflict of interest with her seat on Wunderman’s board of directors because the agencies are positioned differently in the market. For individual projects, there could even be «a collaboration
»be in demand" if Scholz & Friends wants to leverage Wunderman's dialogue expertise with the client in Zurich.
Diana Strebel describes her curiosity about a future that is still unknown as a «mental breather.» «What I felt was intellectual enrichment,» she says—and hopes that this assessment won’t be interpreted as arrogant. She also enjoys «wandering between worlds» as part of her new way of life. By this, she means less the physical changes in location—although she’s looking forward to living on a campus in New York for three or four seminars next year. She also found it «enjoyable» to browse through books at Stanford University in San Francisco last week without any time pressure. Diana Strebel accompanied her partner to an awards ceremony in Palm Springs. He’s an entrepreneur in the IT industry, with a company in Zurich and a branch in the U.S., among other places. «I can learn a lot from him—and that rarely happens to me,» she laughs.
Andreas Panzeri

Creative competitions 24 Swiss entries have made it to the final of Eurobest 2003. The most successful Swiss agencies are Ruf Lanz and Matter & Partner with five entries each, Lowe and Publicis are represented three times, Jung von Matt/Limmat twice, Advico Young &
Rubicam and Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett and once each Wirz and Sulzer Sutter. The winners will be announced on Thursday evening, December 4,
will be announced on www.euro bestlive.com.

The communications agency Karl F. Schneider (PR-KFS) in Schlieren has won the art insurer Axa Art as a new client, and in addition to consulting, the mandate includes the planning and realization of various measures. Events, media relations and sponsoring as well as customer loyalty campaigns are planned for the coming year.

Samuel Helbling on the glory and misery of the WHS brand Reinhold Weber had a great time as CD at Aebi & Partner in the mid-1980s. Those were the euphoric years in which Jean Etienne Aebi's agency left hardly a cube to the competition at the ADC awards. But flying high is also dangerous, because the air at the top is getting thinner and thinner. Before the disastrous Elephant Wedding in 1988, the model advertiser left the agency, which soon turned out to be an oversized balloon with an alphabet salad of a name that has long since been forgotten.
was named Advertiser of the Year for the first time. In 1990, in faraway Denmark, he was caught off guard by the news that GGK had been sold. He could not accept being sold off without being asked and resigned immediately. It must have hurt him that he was labeled a deserter and almost the gravedigger of GGK.
The sequel is well known: While Reinhold Weber founded WHS with Yvonne Hodel and John Schmid, which was successful right from the start, GGK went into a nasty tailspin. In 1992, the creative talent was crowned for the second time by his colleagues. But his luck ran out at the end of the 90s. His expansion abroad failed spectacularly. The star advertiser wasted millions in Berlin and Vienna, then lost the Smart budget and had to drastically downsize his agency. Since then, things have gone quiet around him and the news of the grounding of his agency last Friday didn't really surprise anyone.
The only thing that made people sit up and take notice was Weber's boldly announced collaboration with GGK-Zurich. But Weber seems to have done the math without the GGK landlord. Hermann Strittmatter has been told by the SonntagsZeitung that he doesn't think much of Weber's plans. If anything happens at all, it is the integration of Weber's agency into GGK Zurich. So it is clear who is dictating the terms.
However, speculation about an imminent succession plan at GGK is premature. After all, the GGK patriarch considers himself irreplaceable, as he defiantly assured this magazine when he reached the statutory retirement age in 2002.
> Samuel Helbling, Editor-in-Chief

Regional press Despite declining sales, the Basellandschaftliche Zeitung in Liestal is defending its independence.
Since 1996, the circulation figures of the Basellandschaftliche Zeitung (bz) have fallen by an average of two percent annually. Today, the certified circulation of 24,300 copies is twelve percent lower than seven years ago. The decline in readership has also developed accordingly: in 2000 there were 69,000 readers, today the bz has 55,000 (-20%). The advertising volume also fell: in 2001, the bz was still 8 percent down on the previous year, in 2002 it was already down 15.6 percent, and in the first ten months of this year it lost a further 14.6 percent.
Anticyclical behavior
Publisher Mathis Lüdin puts his newspaper's turnover losses at around one million francs per year; in 2003, total turnover amounted to around 15 million francs. Viewed as an object, the paper has slipped into the red. However, thanks to the commercial printing plant belonging to Lüdin AG and a book publishing house, the company as a whole is making a profit, says Lüdin. "We are getting through this crisis without any problems, because we have reserves up to the ceiling and have not had to draw on the substance to date."
This is more than just optimism, at least Lüdin is backing up his words with action. There have been no redundancies, no job cuts or budget cuts at bz in recent years. On the contrary: in an anti-cyclical manner, Lüdin introduced early delivery a year ago after a long period of hesitation (incidentally with Prevag, the organization that distributes the Basler Zeitung BaZ), whereby the publisher only passed on half of the recurring additional annual costs of 1.2 million francs to the subscribers. For the coming year, however, he is foregoing any subscription increase, thus once again setting himself apart from the BaZ and other (major) publishers (WW 42/03).
Lüdin had hoped for around 2,500 new subscribers this year thanks to early delivery - the calculation didn't work out, there were 50 percent fewer. However, he remains upbeat: "We have at least halted the steady downward trend," he says. That's why bz is currently active again in the region with posters, radio and TV commercials and telephone marketing. "We want to hit the ground running and consistently communicate early delivery once again. We are expecting a real boost in new subscribers for the subscription renewals at the end of the year," says the publisher.
Unsolved succession problem
Even if this is successful, the bz still faces unanswered questions. The entire management team - publishing director Mathis Lüdin himself, his brother and print shop manager Alex Lüdin, editor-in-chief Franz C. Widmer and accountant Roland Raeber - will retire in the next five to seven years, and there is no successor publisher in the Lüdin family. And an alternative must also be found for the bz rotary press in the same period.
Early delivery only with BaZ
In an interview with Werbewoche, Lüdin admits that he is talking to all kinds of partners. He is confident that he will find an answer to everything in five years' time. "An independent, self-sustaining solution is the top priority," he says. He does not rule out cooperations, for example in the printing sector. But he does not want to tie himself down more. In this sense, he is also ignoring the offer from BaZ publisher Matthias Hagemann, who in September signaled his openness to cooperation to various publishers in northwestern Switzerland (WW 33/03). "I told Mr. Matthias Hagemann at the time: 'Apart from early delivery, we will certainly not be doing anything with BaZ for the foreseeable future'," Lüdin clarifies.
"We expect a real boost in new subscribers": Unorthodox strategies and campaigns for the Basellandschaftliche Zeitung.

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Allgemeine Plakatgesellschaft (APG) has published its first official environmental report.outdoor advertising The 28-page booklet documents APG's environmental strategy, its fields of action and goals as well as initial successes in the areas of fuel and electricity consumption.
APG already published an interim report in 2001. The environmental report can be ordered free of charge at www.apg.ch.

Competition "Sex sells" is a tried and tested advertising maxim. The Lisbon Erotic Advertising Festival (Leaf) is therefore awarding prizes for advertising with erotic content for the third time.competition "Sex sells" is a tried-and-tested advertising maxim. The Lisbon Erotic Advertising Festival (Leaf) is therefore awarding prizes for advertising with erotic content for the third time. The creative idea and quality of execution will be judged. Works from all over the world published after January 1, 2001 are eligible to participate. New categories are packaging, illustration and websites.
introduced. The closing date for entries for the Leaf Award is December 31. The festival takes place at the end of January in Lisbon. The Portuguese industry magazine Prisma is the organizer. Information is available at [email protected] or at www.prisma-mag.com.

Media At the end of November, MA Strategy, Wemf's intermedia planning tool, was relaunched.Media At the end of November, MA Strategy, Wemf's intermedia planning tool, was relaunched. In addition to updating the basic data sets, a new version of MA Strategy Consumer is also available with the option of making target group-specific links from numerous consumer characteristics. With the new
visualization tool Media-Orbit, the positioning of individual media, products and brands can be visualized on three freely selectable feature axes. All licensees of the Mach
data records have free access to MA Strategy.

Training In October, 33 young copywriters graduated from the Texterschmiede Hamburg. Former model Anne Pilgrim was honored as the best of her year, and a Swiss hopeful also successfully completed the elite school for copywriters: Simone Paulzen came third. If you would like to do the same, browse through the new course catalog. The program for the 10th course can be ordered at www.texterschmiede.de.

Regional TV TeleBasel is parting company with Tamedia's own advertising time sales company Medag at the end of the year: TeleBasel is prematurely terminating the three-year exclusive contract with Medag, the advertising time sales company belonging to Tamedia, and intends to start its own acquisition department with two employees as of January 1, 2004. The decision is primarily based on the desire for greater proximity to the market and greater independence. Too often, the independent TeleBasel has been associated with media groups in terms of image - previously with Basler Zeitung Medien, now with Tamedia, says TeleBasel Managing Director Pia Bossert, but there are other reasons. Because there are personnel changes at Medag and Medag boss Hans-Ruedi Ledermann "may no longer be there by the middle of next year", the opportunity to become independent has been seized, adds Bossert. She also confirms rumors that Tamedia has exerted pressure on TeleBasel via Ledermann. For example, as part of TeleNewsCombi (TNC), which plans to offer the Trendpool from January. To this end, all TNC members should broadcast the TeleZüri programs "Swissdate" and "Lifestyle" in order to create a regional language advertising platform with an identical target group. "But we don't want a Zurich program. Our concept envisages programs with a regional focus," says Bossert.
For this reason, TeleBasel will broadcast its own program "Pur" instead of Lifestyle with
similar target group. And Swissdate will not be placed in prime time.
50 percent under budget
However, the most important reason for the separation is financial: "Medag has not been generating the jointly planned turnover for more than half a year. It is 50 percent below budget," says university professor Heinrich Löffler plainly. Löffler is President of the Committee of the Cable Network Foundation, the sponsor of TeleBasel (see box). This makes Löffler something like the chairman of the broadcaster's board of directors. TeleBasel is convinced that it can generate more advertising revenue without Medag, he says. This reflects the age-old suspicion that Medag, which also markets Radio Basilisk, is only half-heartedly committed to TeleBasel.
Medag did not wish to comment on any of this. However, Andreas Meili, Head of Electronic Media at Tamedia, admits that the agreed turnover was not achieved. "We had clear ideas about how to achieve the targets," he says. For example, TeleBasel had been suggested to create a more attractive advertising environment in its program with target group-specific broadcasts. However, because Tele Basel rejected this, Medag came to the conclusion that selling advertising was not worthwhile for the station. Meili: "In future, Medag wants to concentrate on the economically much more interesting sale of advertising for Radio Basilisk." Meili did not want to comment on the accusation that Tamedia had exerted pressure on the station via Ledermann. And when asked whether Ledermann would actually be leaving Medag, he replied succinctly: "That's wrong."
Special case TeleBaselTeleBasel is the only regional TV station to have the status of a
The public broadcaster is supported by the state-initiated cable network foundation, which owns the local cable network. In 1998, this foundation obliged the cable network operator Balcab (now part of Cablecom) to pay TeleBasel an annual indexed amount of
1.5 million francs. In addition, Balcab must pay off CHF 5.8 million in installments until 2010, including CHF 4 million to pay off an earlier debt.
According to Pia Bossert, the event is expected to generate a total turnover of 3.7 to four million francs, with advertising income of around 700,000 francs (2002: 77,000,000 francs). In addition, there are self-acquired sponsorship revenues of a good 300,000 francs. TeleBasel's broadcasting area covers 450000 people in over 200000 households.
The average daily reach is around 100,000 viewers. (mk)
Heinrich Löffler, President Balcab
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