Advertising spend4.48 billion dollars With the acquisition of Wella, this year's world champion in
In terms of advertising expenditure, Procter & Gamble further extended its lead with almost 4.5 billion dollars (+21.9%). With this impressive budget, the US consumer goods group is once again ahead of the other two big spenders: Unilever, which increased its advertising expenditure by almost 19 percent, putting it well ahead of the previous number two, General Motors.

Agency rating Jung von Matt/Limmat, Publicis and Wirz Werbung are the best Swiss agencies. This ranking was determined by the advertising market survey of advertising clients.
500 advertising clients received mail from Media Research Group at the beginning of the year. 164 of them completed the questionnaires and returned them. More than half of all large advertising clients (56.4%) work very often with an advertising agency, according to the study. Another quarter (27.6%) still does so frequently. Only 6.7 percent of the clients do not use an advertising agency. Before this background it surprises that only two of three clients (67%) want to or can judge at least one of the 20 queried advertising agencies. 17 percent of the clients, who nevertheless work quite intensively with an advertising agency, did not want to comment on the quality of their agency's services. Nevertheless, in absolute figures, practically the same number of clients gave their verdict on advertising agencies (see box) as media companies recently did in the Media Trend Award of the Media Trend Journal (MTJ 9/03).
Since the respondents had been expressly asked to evaluate only those advertising agencies whose performance they knew from their own experience, it is obvious that the case numbers of the individual agencies are relatively low. No agency received more than 56 assessments. The agency with the fewest mentions received just 14 evaluations. On average, the 20 advertising agencies surveyed were each rated 29.2 times.
Only 18 advertising agencies met the minimum requirement of at least 20 entries. Consequently, only the results of these 18 advertising agencies are shown in the Media Research Group's 2003 advertising market study.
In addition to the decisive overall impression, creativity, strategy and advice were also evaluated. Remarkable: Despite the large number of responses, there is no clear winner in the overall impression. The two best advertising agencies, Jung von Matt/Limmat and Publicis, scored exactly the same, except for two decimal places, namely 7.79 points.
Clear rules of the game
There is one difference, however, between the two first-place finishers: Jung von Matt/Limmat received 56 mentions, Publicis only 38. And there is another difference between the two: Jung von Matt/ Limmat also comes out on top in the three individual categories of strategy, consulting and creativity. Publicis has to be content with two second places and one third place (creativity). However, the rules of the game clearly state that the winner is the advertising agency that achieves the highest quotient - determined from the sum of all scores and the number of mentions.
Wirz Werbung can also be pleased about a very good overall impression among the major clients. With 7.60 points from 40 entries, Wirz is well ahead of the next two agencies, which are separated from each other by only a few hundredths of a point in fourth and fifth place: Advico Young & Rubicam (7.20 points with 50 mentions - second most of all advertising agencies) and Lesch+Frei (7.18 points with 22 mentions). Lowe, in sixth place, is the only advertising agency to have an above-average overall impression, but to fall short of the average in all three individual performances, albeit very narrowly in some cases. The situation is just the opposite at Seiler DDB: the agency's overall impression is below average with 5.9 points, but it is above average in all individual performances.
In the individual creativity ranking, first place goes to Jung von Matt/Limmat, with the highest score in the entire survey of 8.2 points. Weber Hodel Schmid follows very closely in second place with 8.1 points. In third place for creative performance is Publicis with 7.9 points. This top trio clearly sets itself apart from the advertising agencies that follow: There is a larger gap between third and fourth place than between fourth and tenth place.
The average score of all advertising agencies for creative performance is 6.75, which is significantly higher than the average score for overall impression (6.41) and for the other individual services of consulting (6.36) and strategy (6.32). The high average score indicates that agencies do their homework well when it comes to creativity. In addition, 10 out of 18 advertising agencies are above average, which proves that creative performance overall is not as weak as is repeatedly criticized.
In terms of creativity, the clients differentiate most strongly between the individual agencies: the difference between the highest grade (8.2) and the lowest grade (4.8) is 3.4 points here. The highest score is therefore 70 percent higher than the lowest. The clients' verdict on creativity is thus significantly less homogeneous than that on overall impression, where the difference in score between the highest (7.79) and lowest (5.1) is only 2.69 points. For consulting, the difference is 2.1 points, and for strategy, 3 points.
Creativity is not everything
However, the good assessment of creativity cannot always be transferred to the overall impression that the clients have of the advertising agencies. Only 6 of the 10 agencies with an above-average score for creativity are also in the top half of the table for overall impression. Even Weber Hodel Schmid is in the bottom half in terms of overall impression, despite its brilliant result for creative performance.
In the strategy category, in contrast to the other three categories, there is a clear break between the top two advertising agencies: Jung von Matt/Limmat is in the lead with a lead of 0.39 points and a score of 7.8, followed by Publicis and Wirz with 7.41 each and Advico Young & Rubicam with 7.40 points.
The ranking for consulting is exactly the same: here, too, Jung von Matt/Limmat takes first place with 7.5 points. The next two advertising agencies, Publicis and Wirz, come quite close; they each score 7.44 points and thus end up in joint second place, as they did for strategy. Behind the top trio, the largest gap of the entire survey opens up: Advico Young & Rubicam follows in fourth place, 0.64 points behind.
The scores for consulting leave a slightly ambivalent impression. The difference between the best and worst score for this individual service is only 2.1 points. This result sometimes indicates that most clients have a less clear picture of the consulting.
* Walter Weder is co-owner of the Media Research Group and initiator of the advertising market study.
The survey modeThe best advertising agency 2003 was determined on the basis of the evaluations of 164 clients. In March, they responded to a written request from the largest 500 clients to answer these questions: What is your overall impression of the following advertising agencies and how do you rate their performance? The criteria:
1. overall impression. 2. creativity. 3. strategy. 4. consultation. Respondents were asked to give each advertising agency whose services they had used their own
experience know, for each performance area a grade between
1 and 10 (1 = extremely poor; 10 = exceptionally good).
The 20 largest Swiss advertising agencies were to be judged. The best advertising agency was the one that achieved the best overall impression. The individual performances only served to determine the proof, on which
their overall impression can be attributed. In addition, the selection of the
The survey was not conducted on the basis of customer lists, and the responses were not checked to determine whether they came from a customer or non-customer. The survey was conducted by Media Research Group in Zurich. (WW)
Currently doing the best job from the point of view of the advertising clients: Dominique von Matt (Jung von Matt/Limmat), Fredy Collioud (Publicis) and Jost Wirz (Wirz Werbung).
Jung von Matt/Limmat was the only advertising agency to convince the majority of advertising clients in terms of creativity, strategy and consulting.
What the ranking also expresses is that Zurich is and remains the advertising capital of Switzerland.
Walter Weder*

Online marketing Swiss websites are selling search engines below their value. Angelink Yourposition offers beauty advice and more.nothing has been found on the World Wide Web for a long time without search engines. But even Google and other search engines only find sites that present themselves clearly. The average Swiss website is ill-equipped for this, as the new company Angelink Yourposition has proven. It operates search engine marketing. Its services include the free tool Suchmaschinenoptimierung.info, which provides information on the degree to which websites are optimized in terms of findability. 6000 Swiss web addresses have been tested to date. The average result is 59.2 percent. At 60 percent, a site can be found "with difficulty if you search for the company name", says Managing Director Roger Schnider. 60 percent is "unsuitable", says co-owner Markus Gabriel. He therefore sees potential for the company, which is a joint venture between his advertising and web agency Angelink, the IT service provider Insign and the consulting firm Envia. They now want to ensure that their customers' websites appear as high up in the hit lists as possible.Angelink Yourposition's second field of activity, keyword advertising on search portals, is also a clear growth market. Google and Overture are in a neck-and-neck race here. Both have more than doubled their turnover from advertising that is displayed for certain search entries in the current year.
Nose in the keyword wind
"Keyword advertising is a targeted and cost-effective type of direct marketing," emphasizes Gabriel. However, for advertising to be successful, it must also be well written - one of the reasons why Insign and Envia have joined forces with an advertising agency. Gabriel is convinced that search engine marketing is now making inroads into marketing departments. The young company benefits from the fact that established online marketers have so far ignored this area. "We see ourselves as an adlink for search engine marketing," says Gabriel mischievously. The company is happy to offer itself to marketers as a subcontractor.
Stefano Monachesi

Advertisements Peter Studer favors immediate publication of advertising boycotts. The President of the Swiss Press Council, Peter Studer, is in favor of rapid publicity when advertisers exert pressure on publishing houses, regardless of whether the action is purely punitive or whether conditions are imposed. In connection with the publication of the advertising freeze by tobacco multinational Philip Morris following an article about the tobacco industry in the news magazine Facts, which the Tages-Anzeiger published on November 8 (see page 15), Studer told Werbewoche: "The Tages-Anzeiger acted correctly. But it would also be desirable for Facts itself to publicize the matter." Studer relies on the "Rights and Duties of Journalists" and related commentaries. Studer also recommends the same approach for boycott-style cancellations. "That is a deterrent." However, the prerequisite is that the article in question is not "unacceptably bad journalism". (mk)

Media policy Minority motions in the National Council committee prevent the new law from being discussed in December The National Council will not deal with the new Radio and Television Act (RTVA) until the 2004 spring session. The Committee for Transport and Telecommunications (KVF) concluded its deliberations on Tuesday and passed the bill by 20 votes to 1. However, because 51 minority motions were submitted to the National Council, Committee Chairman Peter Vollmer expects the debate to last two days. In the last reading, the KVF weakened some controversial resolutions again. For example, licenses may now be granted to applicants who own other media with a dominant market position in the coverage area. The prerequisite is that the diversity of opinion and offerings are not jeopardized. According to Vollmer, this could be ensured by measures such as an editorial statute. The KVF also returned to its decision to exclude non-commercial private radio stations in conurbations from the licence fee. The KVF stuck to its hard line on advertising: no spots for alcohol and medicines on radio and TV, no advertising and no sponsorship on SRG radio stations. However, minority motions are pending in the National Council.
(sm)

The Ranz advertising agency was commissioned to transform the corporate design of the company OpenMed into Openmedical AG and to realize its business and sales documents. Openmedical is active in the e-healthcare sector. It offers hospitals, laboratories and doctors online services and hosting for the transmission and exchange of medical data.

Internet The migration of Ringier websites to a common technical platform is nearing completion, according to a report in the in-house newspaper Domo, and eight sites can already be seen on the web in the new layout. Ringier wants to operate the websites of all its products, with the exception of Blick, Cash and Betty Bossi, via the joint platform in order to save costs. The Group's own agency Previon was commissioned with the implementation. According to Domo, the total costs amounted to CHF 412,000. The budget is said to have been exceeded by a good 6 percent.

Advertising bans III The government council of the canton of Basel-Stadt has presented a package of measures to combat the increasing consumption of alcohol by young people, which will be accompanied by an extension of the ban on advertising addictive substances. Poster advertising for alcohol and tobacco has been prohibited on public property since 1997. According to the government council, in future this should also apply to private property that is "visible to the public".

Newspapers The Competition Commission (ComCo) has provisionally approved the joint marketing of the Berner Zeitung (BZ) and the Bund, which must be able to position itself in the advertising market for 2004 in the coming weeks, ComCo spokesman Patrik Ducrey told SDA. For this reason, cooperation in the areas of publishing and advertising has been approved for the next three months. BZ's parent company Espace Media Groupe (EM) had applied for provisional enforcement.

This, in this order, is the name of Ernst Meier's WWW. At least that's what it says in the personal dedication that the wine specialist wrote to the shortlist author in the latest copy of Westentaschen Weinkenner. This is the ninth time that Barrique-Verlag has published the small and therefore extremely practical booklet by wine writer Meier with lots of interesting facts about fine grape juices from all over the world, reason enough for Ernst and Heidi Meier to offer their favorite wines for tasting at the book launch at the Edelweiss advertising agency. Over 60 wines were available for professional tasting or simply for drinking. This was duly appreciated, as Didi Bruna, a top chef, provided all the culinary trimmings. High praise for this enjoyable and full-bodied event with a slightly unsteady finish!
Up-and-coming director Daniel Cherbuin also received praise at the finissage of Clubselection.ch. Cherbuin, one of Switzerland's most promising film talents, is responsible for the latest video by Zurich pop duo Yello. Jacqueline Joos from The Guide Company is also constantly on the go. As the new publishing director, she is said to have a number of fresh projects in the pipeline. The reason for the party in the new Maag-Eventhalle was the upcoming relaunch of the iconic Zurich party website, which will soon be renamed Selected.ch.
Finalmente was also celebrating an anniversary. What began in the 1980s as the Palais X-tra party and concert label - the first Swiss organizer to discover the Fantastischen Vier - has been an institution with a permanent home for six years. The music club and restaurant has become a permanent fixture on Zurich's cultural scene. The X-tra parties are always great - especially thanks to the VIP and backstage areas with lots of free drinks and a constantly refreshed buffet.
Beat Fritsch held a speech at the vernissage of the latest Westentaschen Weinkenner at the
Edelweiss advertising agency put his vinous nose deep into the glass, because there was only the very finest and noblest to taste. Even on the
Program last week: the finissage party of Clubselection.ch and the
This was the sixth anniversary of the X-tra.
Where the communications, media and publishing industries meet for their events is where we locate the various events on the scene. Do you already have something to report? Pick up the phone (01 296 97 98) or hit the keys ([email protected]). Event tips and further shortlist images are available online at www.werbewoche.ch.
Advertiser and wine specialist Ernst Meier with chef Didi Bruna and Rolf Probala (from left), Head of Corporate Communications at ETH.
Close friends and great wine lovers: host Heidi Meier with Francis Sulzer from the Sulzer Sutter advertising agency.
Privateers with a penchant for the finer things: Marianne and Hans J. Willi with Uli Rubner (right), Bilanz and Weltwoche publishing director.
George Häberling, Chairman Casinopartners, with SonntagsZeitung editor-in-chief Andreas Durisch and wine merchant Frank Ebinger (from left).
Graphic designer Nando Palla with the Edelweiss women Christine Hirzel (l.), Art Director, and Stefanie Proch, Junior AD.
Art buyer Lilo Killer with Michael Gallmann, former Edelweiss AD who has returned from Australia, and artist Roman Casanova (from left).
Jürg Zentner (left) with lawyer Manuela Lipp and Pete Kurath, partner at Blofeld Entertainment and co-organizer of Jeunesse dorée events.
Old acquaintances: The beautiful barmaid Marysol (l.) met Asha Pandya from Promotion-Tools with her boyfriend Sadi Brügger.
Clubselection photographers Eddy Meltzer (l.) and Boris Kranjcec also welcomed Anka Wessely, graphic designer at Publicis.
Supermodel Nadja Hermann with screenwriter and producer Henrik Petro (l.), Zap-Media, and director Daniel Cherbuin.
Under power: Jacqueline Joos, Publishing Director at The Guide Company, with Peter Beeli from the communications agency Brandnew.
Party people: Nicole Spring, freelance production manager, Patrizia Kettenbach from Pumpkin Film and textile merchant Nicole Hurter (from left).
Birthday guests: TeleZüri reporter Ana-Belina Schiess came along with Pascal Kohlbrunner from the event agency Groove-Masters.
They had a lot to laugh about at the X-tra party with Katja Lück: journalism student Daniel Hohl (right) and catering expert Jens Schlüter.
Fun is a must: Benny Goldstein, Ruf Lanz, X-tra manager Markus Kappeler with PR wife Eliane Fischer and advertiser Markus Ruf (from left).

Internet The consumer magazine Der Beobachter has redesigned its website. According to a press release, the new look is intended to be simple and pragmatic.Internet The consumer magazine Der Beobachter has redesigned its website. According to a press release, the new look is intended to be simple and pragmatic. The online team is responsible for the design and architecture; the media agency Additiv implemented the plans and realized the content management system.

The German confectionery manufacturer Storck has entrusted Sulzer Sutter with its advertising activities in Switzerland, with the Zurich agency mainly realizing below-the-line measures. Most recently, the account was managed by Scotti. Storck owns the brands Knoppers, Merci, Toffifee, Nimm 2 and Werthers Original.