Sports marketing The truth can be quite painful at times, especially if it cannot be suppressed, which is why Mr. and Mrs. Swiss have recently been publicly confronted with their problem areas. A meat-cheese-colored potbelly grins from various billboards. The extra-long poster with the navel photo attached at the top and bottom comes from the calorie-rich creative kitchen of Publicis. The hanging belly is intended to draw the attention of all couch potatoes to the new range of fitness equipment at Sportplausch Wider. After all, anyone with a reasonably aesthetic disposition will probably feel the desire to shed a few pounds of excess weight at the sight of the mass bobbing in the wind. And anyone among the onlookers who is without "sin" should tear down the first poster.

Magazines Since Monday, Reflex has been available free of charge every two months at universities of applied sciences, universities and other educational institutions. According to the website of the project, which was launched by the three students Michael Zeugin, Christian Birmele and Veljko Stanic and is financially supported by the Winterthur Youth Parliament, "political, critical, scientific, sporting, sad, funny, mathematical or journalistic" texts are welcome. The initial print run is 20,000 copies, printed by Zehnder in Wil, according to a report in the Tages-Anzeiger.

Wemf Manipulated access figures at Net-Audit lead to tighter controls. Now the AG für Werbemedienforschung (Wemf) also has its case of fraud. The fact that the Internet study Net-Audit, which was only launched in February of this year, has been hit casts an ambivalent light on the New Economy. The manipulation came to light at the beginning of September. With the help of a computer program, artificial accesses had been generated for three panel members in the months of June and July. Initially unnoticed by Wemf, page impressions "in the order of around 20,000 per month and site were generated," explains Net-Audit project manager Christine Diemand. For the sites concerned, this resulted in a user increase of a good 10 percent. "This is undoubtedly a serious case," judges Wemf boss René Schmutz.Affected are three relatively small sites, which have little to do with each other: Bluebana, the online event agenda of the Basler Zeitung. EGames, a computer game site jointly operated by eBund and the Bern bookstore Stauffacher, and SwissGuide, a company directory sold by Cablecom to the management in November 2002. With Jürg Dangel, former CEO of Pixelpark Switzerland and founder and chairman of the board of Swiss Online, as a board delegate, SwissGuide was once again in the hands of Swiss web pioneers. At eGames, the artificially generated hits were in the order of magnitude of around 10,000 page impressions.
The perpetrator is caught. According to project manager Christine Diemand, he has drawn attention to himself (see interview). According to his own statements, Wemf boss Schmutz has been in talks with the culprit for "three to four weeks". But Schmutz leaves both the name of the person in question and the nature of his connection to the three affected sites in the dark.
The motive also remains vague at present. However, there are some indications that it was a hacker who wanted to identify weaknesses in Net-Audit. At any rate, this is the reason he gave to Wemf's managing director. "The person in question says he wanted to check whether the system was watertight," Schmutz said.
Expensive fake
And the forger obviously spared no effort for his "evidence". Because it is time-consuming and cost-intensive to realize such manipulated accesses. "The person in question worked for about a week on the program that was used for the manipulation," Schmutz explains.
It must also be taken into account that the more accesses one intends to generate with such software, the more complicated and costly it becomes. This is probably the reason why the fraud did not affect large sites, but rather three websites with comparatively low user numbers. "Only on sites with a rather small audience can a sufficiently large number of page impressions be achieved with the resources used, so that this also results in a considerable percentage increase," explains Diemand.
Abuses can never be completely ruled out, the project manager adds. But after this experience, new protective mechanisms will be installed that should make fraud much more difficult in the future. Corresponding clarifications have already been made with the system developer of Net-Audit. "We will carry out random checks even more intensively than before. And we will increasingly check if a website shows major fluctuations in its page impressions from one month to the next," she adds. However, she does not want to reveal exactly how this will work technically "for our protection.
However, the fact that the discovered hacker can hardly be taken to court seems to be disturbing. "Legally, the facts of the case are not easy to grasp, because the law often lags behind when it comes to new technical developments such as the Internet," explains Schmutz. But it is still too early to make any conclusive statements about the criminal aspects. "The matter is far from settled for us," says the Wemf boss.
Wemf CEO René Schmutz was put in a very tough spot by a hacker.
Daniel Schifferle

Print In June, Tamedia decided not to make any more investments in its commercial web offset printing plant (ARO) on Baslerstrasse in Zurich and to close the printing plant by mid-2005 at the latest.Print In June, Tamedia decided not to make any more investments in its commercial web offset printing plant (ARO) on Baslerstrasse in Zurich and to close the printing plant by mid-2005 at the latest. It has now been possible to find a solution that is compatible with staffing levels and which also preserves the site. Printpark AG Jona based in Rapperswil, formerly Meyer Druck AG, is stepping into the breach. In addition to the print shop, the company is taking over the 30 or so employees and ARO's order backlog for free. These include the print jobs for the Tamedia titles Facts, Schweizer Familie and Das Magazin.
(dse)

Beauty I Japan's cosmetics mail order company DHC wants to conquer Europe. The Zurich-based agency Code focuses on Far Eastern coolness.
Their products have long been a hit in the land of the rising sun. Now the Japanese cosmetics company DHC is investing millions of yen to expand into Europe. The first stop is Switzerland. With good reason, because the quadrilingual country is considered the "test market" par excellence in the conquest of the old continent. Kathrin Reber, General Manager Communications of DHC Europe (Switzerland), puts it this way: "Switzerland is an ideal location for launching our products throughout Europe." Next year, Austria and Germany are to be added to the list. DHC wants to operate the expansion of the supply zone from Switzerland. The necessary basis for this has already been created: since March, 25 employees have been working in the newly founded DHC Europe office in Zurich: Yokoso, DHC - welcome to the land of the Swiss consumers who are spoiled with care.DHC spokeswoman Reber defines the target group as follows: "Women between the ages of 25 and 49 and men between the ages of 19 and 39 who have a high level of interest in body care and like to order from the catalog. Consumers who combine H&M with Gucci and shop according to the patchwork principle," she adds.
DHC is well aware that conquering the European market, which is well occupied with all types of cosmetics, will not be an easy task. Nevertheless, the Japanese group believes it has very good chances in the market: DHC is the first luxury cosmetic brand to rely exclusively on direct mail order, offering its range via the Internet and telephone sales. "When you know that 59 percent of all 18- to 69-year-old Swiss will have made at least one purchase via mail order this year, we are right on trend," DHC is convinced. The fact that the Japanese cosmetics manufacturer can offer its products at lower prices than the competition thanks to direct sales should also have a positive impact. A moisturizer (40 grams) costs only 45 francs with the Japanese.
Plain advertising campaign
However, DHC's communication strategy is also unusual. "Based on trend analyses, we find that the image of Japan has a positive connotation. That's why DHC has to come across as Japanese as possible, Japanese from a European perspective, in other words purist, reduced and noble," says Ewa Heusser, Client Service Director and co-responsible for DHC's advertising presence at the Zurich advertising agency Code. The look was adapted to the prefigured Japanese image: The logo is kept in subtle gray and reduced to the name DHC. The sans serif typeface has a calm effect. The red signet blends in harmoniously. The company name and the slogan Secrets of Care in Japanese document the origin of the manufacturer.
The advertising measures are also deliberately restrained. Instead of full-page advertisements and lots of naked skin, DHC relies on print campaigns that focus on the product. A product brochure with the same look and feel on glossy paper is also used. The communication strategy and advertising campaign were developed in collaboration with the Zurich-based agency Code, Werkstatt für Grafik. The campaign will be used in women's magazines, weekly magazines, TV magazines and special interest titles. In the first half of 2004, the campaign will also be extended to all German-speaking countries in Europe.
DHC is as well known in Japan as Lindt & Sprüngli is in Switzerland. According to its own figures, the beauty manufacturer sells over one million products a day. DHC was founded in Japan in 1983. Originally, however, the parent company was not a cosmetics laboratory, but a competence center for translations. In addition to Japan, the cosmetics manufacturer is currently represented in Taiwan, the USA, Korea and, since March 1, in Switzerland. It employs 2800 people worldwide. DHC Europe's product range comprises 88 products. It consists of basic facial care for women and men "of every skin type, special products for individual needs, body and hair care." DHC became famous thanks to its plant-based water-soluble cleansing oil, which, according to DHC, "cleanses facial skin deep into the pores."
In Japan, DHC Deep Cleansing Oil is the absolute bestseller. 2002
this product was sold just under six million times. (af)
Annelies Friedli

Weisse Arena Bergbahnen AG is promoting Flims Laax Falera and the companies involved in winter sports in the three mountain villages with a comprehensive new concept implemented by Fisch Meier Direkt. The first work to be published is an elaborately designed catalog.

Internet research The measures taken would greatly increase the hurdles for future hacker attacks, explains Christine Diemand, project manager of the manipulated Net-Audit.WW Why are the names of the fraudsters not disclosed? And why are three very different websites affected, all belonging to different operators? Christine Diemand The investigations are currently underway. I cannot give you any names. Nor can I say anything about how the selection of the manipulated sites came about. We don't know ourselves.
Wouldn't publishing the name already be necessary for damage control?
It is still too early to talk about measures. The further procedure is currently being discussed.
How were the manipulations discovered in the first place?
We received a tip from the person who carried out the manipulations. That was the trigger. As a result, we initiated more detailed investigations.
Is there a suspicion that fraud has been committed before?
Manipulation can never be completely ruled out. In principle, however, we assume that the participants in the Net-Audit are willing to cooperate and do not have fraudulent intentions. This also applies to all our other statistics. These are always relationships of trust in which Wemf is also dependent on the participants abiding by the rules.
Net-Audit only launched in February of this year: push the
were manipulations attributed to the study's teething problems?
Actually, no. After all, we are not the only ones who use Net-Audit's system. The agencies concerned, which measure Internet usage in Germany and Austria, work with exactly the same tool. However, no comparable case of fraud has been detected there to date.
It is also astonishing to see how strongly the Net Audit Panel has since the
launch has grown: It started with ten websites. Now, only
Just eight months later, the figure is already 60. Was Controlling overstretched?
No. As the number of participants increased, we had to expand our technical support anyway. That's why we now have considerably more capacity than at the start. At the same time, our know-how has also been strengthened once again. Basically, we are not at all unhappy that the manipulation took place at a time when we are already working on further optimizing the processes.
Wemf also examines web usage with the MA Net and MA Comis studies.
Can you provide assurance that these are free of tampering?
The MA Net and MA Comis studies differ fundamentally from Net-Audit: these two studies do not measure accesses; usage is surveyed. For this reason alone, a site operator cannot exert any influence there. Technical manipulation by persons who are not directly involved in conducting the study, as in the case of the fraud discovered, can also be ruled out here.
Christine Diemand.
Interview: Daniel Schifferle

Publishers Claude Catsky experienced a "nasty surprise" at the celebrations to mark the 35th anniversary of Tages-Anzeiger cartoonist Nico's service.publishers Claude Catsky experienced a "nasty surprise" at the celebrations to mark the 35th anniversary of Tages-Anzeiger cartoonist Nico's service. When Werd Verlag presented "the ultimate Nico book" for the occasion, the creative artist learned that the yearbook in honor of his father would only be advertised in Werd Verlag coupon ads. After seven years, this marked the end of an unprecedentedly fruitful "family" collaboration: the advertisements, some of which were double-page spreads in Tamedia titles, made the Cannes shortlist three times and also won gold and silver at the ADC. The classic campaign was canceled for reasons of economy. (pan)

On 19 and 20 November, sports managers and sponsors will meet in Lucerne for the 9th Sport Forum Switzerland, organized by the European Sponsoring Exchange (ESB) and the Sportart agency, with speakers Jörg Ullmann, Head of Sport at RTL, Peter Jauch, Managing Director of Wankdorf Management AG, Christoph Graf from Blick Sport and Urs Wyss, Managing Director of GC Zurich since October. As last year, over 150 participants are expected. The program and registration form can be found at www.esb-online.com. Further information is available on 071 223 78 82 or [email protected].

The new poster offer from Allgemeine Plakatgesellschaft (APG) is now available on the Internet and is valid for weeks 9 to 48 in 2004. All networks were created on the basis of the new 2003 population data from the Federal Statistical Office, taken from the 2000 census. A new feature is the Rail Rollingstar200L CH service. Rollingstars are free-standing, synchronized rotating machines with illuminated posters in the RailCities (station shopping areas) of Zurich, Basel, Berne, Geneva, Lausanne, Winterthur and Lucerne. The PDF documentation can be downloaded at www.apg-netzange bot.ch/download

In a competitive presentation among three applicants, ID-Segmentmarketing has won the budget for personnel advertising for the Zurich municipal police force, and from 2004 the young Zurich agency will be advertising the various vocational training courses and vacant positions in the municipal police force. In doing so, it wants to take into account both the need for personnel and the image factor, as stated in a press release.

Print The Basler Zeitung (BaZ) is to save around CHF 3.5 million in its editorial and publishing departments due to the drastic slump in advertising revenues, according to a press release. A total of 17 jobs are to be cut in the editorial department. The weekend supplement Basler Magazin and one of the three daily stock market pages will be discontinued.