Column Recycling, retro thinking and return on investment are leaving television in agony. It's no wonder that more and more media consumers are turning away from the former leading medium with boredom. What sounds like a ritual complaint about the annual depletion of the program in the summer months, when its makers react to the wanderlust of their viewers by repeating old films, is a sober finding. After all, the boredom that the screen radiates has long been more than just a seasonal phenomenon.
One indication of this is the media pages of the newspapers. For months, they have been dealing with mere garbage: the return of the old "Sportschau", the private and public activities of Dieter Bohlen or the pity-inducing nonsense of the Ostalgie shows are discussed for days and pages. Depending on the level of the paper, this is done either as simple PR for the trivial program product or in the gesture of the postmodern critic of the times, culture and media, who deciphers the lines of flight of social development from the last junk of popular culture. However, even such efforts provide nothing more than mere background noise for pseudo-events. It looks as if everything has been said, written and discussed at "media days" about TV content. This medium can obviously no longer trigger an exciting, critical discourse.
Not even Haim Saban's entry into the German television market caused a public stir. Even in the journalistic battlegrounds, from where rhetorical barrage against "media moguls" such as Leo Kirch or Rupert Murdoch came not so long ago, this step was only reported in sober protocol prose. The fact that television is a product that is subject to the same market laws as deodorant or baked goods no longer provokes anyone. No wonder that in the USA, the motherland of this idea, the last regulations are currently being removed.
TV coverage of the Iraq war has also made it clear that the core competence of visual information about dramatic current events attributed to it is an illusion. Even if thousands of camera eyes were watching the battlefield, it became increasingly puzzling as to what the "reality" of this war was. The promise of breaking through the propaganda facades with one's own presence was not kept. The only reliable thing that the many journalists knew how to report was a disillusioningly self-referential message: we are at the scene of the action, which we understand just as little as you do at home.
Media analyst Lutz Hachmeister recently pointed out that television entertainment programs have also lost their appeal: Broadcasters are relying on a safety program that only routinely varies once successful formats and concepts. The almost complete economization of the medium has long since blocked the desire for innovation. It is now only a matter of exploiting synergies, expanding brands and thereby binding the audience's attention to one's own program or its advertising.
But even here the limits have been reached: the International Consumer Electronics Fair has brought the news that the nightmare of commercial marketers will soon come true and viewers will finally be able to escape advertising messages with the help of technology.
The almost complete modernization of the medium, which has pushed its journalistic mission completely into the shadow of its economic function, is forcing us to rethink the revenue model and content profile of television. Those who have retained their optimism can only hope for this.
> Heribert Seifert is the media and culture correspondent of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung in Germany.

Publishers Tamedia is trimming its magazine business for profit and the publishers concerned for synergies. A process that Ringier and Jean Frey have already undergone: vendor's tray salespeople first of all advertise their most attractive products - especially if they receive a share of the sales via a bonus system. In media companies with centralized advertising acquisition and sales representatives with various products in their portfolio, this understandable sales reflex regularly causes resentment, bad blood and, in the case of titles with little sex appeal, occasionally even existential fears.Roland Wahrenberger, publishing director of Schweizer Familie (SF), which is unglamorous compared to Annabelle and Facts, is unfamiliar with such feelings. This could soon change in view of the imminent restructuring of Tamedia's magazine division (see interview). Wahrenberger admits that three separate publishing organizations are quite a luxury today, and at the same time is optimistic about the "door-opening effects of the joint presence with major customers". Nevertheless, skepticism and uncertainty about the planned concentration of sales forces cannot be ignored.
For Duke Seidmann, the fact that the big titles - not in terms of image and not in terms of numbers - are ahead of the smaller ones in the advertising sun is also one of the cherished myths of the publishing business. His experience as advertising market manager at Ringier, where he implemented the decentralization designed by the then magazine boss Beat Lauber from 1997 to 2002, has even convinced him of the opposite. "Despite occasional frictional heat with constant staffing levels, we were able to practically double sales within five years with our hybrid solution of professional central sales and title-specific support from brand managers." Seidmann answers the question of whether all four titles benefited equally from this in the affirmative, but adds that market success depends just as much on editorial work as it does on sales work. "It's the product that makes the numbers; numbers never made a product" - a publishing principle that Tamedia is currently feeling the effects of at Facts (see guest commentary).
Income statement still missing
Seidmann's advantage was that Schweizer Illustrierte, Tele, Glückspost and Gesundheit Sprechstunde are all located in the conservative-extrovert southwest of the psychographic media radar. For the partial commercial merger of Weltwoche (north-east) and Bilanz (north-west), on the other hand, the key argument was not homogeneity but the complementarity of readership and advertising customers. "Our flagships complement each other more than they compete," says dual publishing director Uli Rubner. The Jean Frey model has yet to prove its success: But this much confidence should make Wahrenberger, whose SF - unlike Facts and Annabelle - is based in the staid southwest, even more hopeful about the future.
Could convince major customers together: the publishers of Facts, Schweizer Familie and Annabelle.
Oliver Classen

Mode Wirz+Fraefel has shot a shoe commercial for Vögele that will make even hardened types swoon.The advertising agency Frei & Partner on Ausstellungsstrasse in Zurich has been managing the budget for Vögele shoes for 15 years. The fashion company with the Dalmatian as a figure of identification has only the name in common with the Vögele clothing chain. This Dalmatian, which was created by CD and agency owner Mäni Frei ten years ago as an identifying symbol for the shoe company, ensures that Vögele remains unmistakable on carrier bags and in other advertising. But Vögele shoes also know how to strike a striking pose at the Miss Switzerland elections. Just two days after her election as Helvetia's prettiest grace, the photo shoot with Bianca Sissing as the new "shooting star" took place on the Titlis. Cooperation with the organizers of the Miss Switzerland competition has been part of Vögele's advertising concept for ten years. The broadcast of the election show on Swiss television on Saturday also provided an opportunity for the premiere of the new commercial. Frei & Partner has made two commercials a year its advertising duty. One in the spring, one in the fall.
Emotional knock-out
The new 25-second spot realized by Wirz+Fraefel shows two gym boxers fighting. During the training fight, one of the men is knocked out. He staggers onto the mat and is counted out by the trainer. Just before the ninth second, his will to fight returns. The boxer tries to pull himself together. But just at that moment, still lying on the mat, he glances at the boots of a woman watching the fight between the two men. Confronted with Vögele's sexy shoes right in front of him, the boxer falls back into a coma and is counted out.
Ernst Wirz made this tongue-in-cheek commercial in co-production with Fiftyseven-mm Filmproduktion in Berlin. The music was composed by Crazy Tunes and Billy Wirz, the director's son, who has already made a name for himself as a saxophonist with Jo Geilo and the Heartbreakers.
The commercial will be shown on TV and in cinemas for four weeks from mid-September. The Frei & Partner agency is also working with brochures as inserts and supplements as well as with measures at the point of sale.
Andreas Panzeri

The European creative competition Eurobest is once again looking for the best advertising in print, posters and TV/cinema. For the first time, all entries can be submitted online at www.eurobest.com. Advertisements and posters can be uploaded directly in digital form. Like the Cannes Festival, Eurobest uses the online service Beam.tv to broadcast the film subjects. The deadline for submissions is October 3.

Paolo Tonti wants to strengthen Contexta as the second CD Now he can talk like he grew a beak again: Paolo Tonti spent his primary school years in Bern after coming to Switzerland from Italy with his parents in 1964. His dialect was "extremely Bernese German" until his secondary school days. When he studied graphic design at the School of Applied Arts in Zurich in the 1970s and gained his first experience as an advertiser in the city on the Limmat, his speech sounded different.Paolo Tonti still lives in the Mecca of fast-talking advertisers. However, he now commutes back to the city of leisurely people every morning at six o'clock in his mobile SBB office. "Bernese people are not slow, but more relaxed. They have an almost Mediterranean feel and a very lively culture," he has already noticed in his first two weeks as a new CD at Contexta. Tonti therefore wants to find a new apartment as soon as possible in addition to his new job in Bern.
Professionally, this change was "simply a very good fit". Tonti had long felt that a change of scenery at work would be good. The fact that Contexta wanted to reorganize its management following the departure of CD Hannes Weber finally brought the two right people together. "He fits in with us," says co-owner Bernhard Abegglen at Contexta. The choice of ADC-award-winning Zurich-based designers who wanted to move to an agency in the federal city was not exactly small.
Paolo Tonti gained his first references at Advico. Two examination experts, including the then Advico CD, had already made him a job offer during his final exams at the School of Arts and Crafts. "Those were the wild seventies," recalls Tonti, who first wanted to live out his creative side as a designer at the Museum of Decorative Arts for a year before giving in to the wooing of Advico's advertisers.
His second agency was the newly founded Lesch+Frei in 1978. Tonti was also taken on again here when he returned from a five-year stay in Asia in 1989.
His wife at the time had been working in Bangladesh as an aid worker on behalf of Switzerland. As an "accompanying husband", as the Swiss government officially called it, he was not allowed to work in Dhaka. At least not for money. So Paolo Tonti painted stage sets for a Bengali theater. He decorated Bert Brecht's "Threepenny Opera" in the style of the large-scale "Bollywood" posters.
He also trained local graphic designers and even founded a small advertising agency with a local friend, which is now part of the JWT network.
After Lesch+Frei, Tonti enjoyed advertising for clients such as SBB, Shell, Swissair and Tages-Anzeiger at GGK Zurich. He won several prizes, but "like many" never for work that he himself liked best. He became ambitious and finally moved to Lintas for the first time as a CD. However, as their international clients "didn't want anything creative", he returned to GGK once again. However, this was soon followed by liquidation, which today "everyone involved remembers a little differently". Tonti escaped the agency split by working as a freelance designer for the following years. He did less advertising and more design. At the end of the millennium, however, he was drawn back: Tonti accepted an offer from Remy Fabrikant.
At Contexta, Tonti believes he can now find something like the agency spirit of his early advertising years again. Contexta is owner-managed, but employs 60 people, some of whom have been working for clients for many years. Tonti: "This testifies to the quality of the agency."
He could imagine putting down roots in Bern again - well, there would still be a bit of commuting, as his new partner doesn't want to live in Bern all the time for professional reasons. Conversely, Paolo wants to continue to cultivate his newly discovered gardening skills in Zurich. Growing roses has now become his great passion.
Paolo Tonti has become a passionate rose grower in his spare time.
Andreas Panzeri

Kö, the industry register for communication and production, has been published in its 2003/2004 edition, with 200 pages containing more than 10,000 addresses from 50 industry segments such as agencies, advertising media, direct marketing and sales promotion service providers, pre-press and printing, and many more. It can be ordered online on the website of the publisher Künzler-Bachmann Medien (www.kbmedien.ch).

Cosmetics marketing FCBLK presents the enlightened woman with a pinch of cynicism and launches an unconventional cosmetics promotion for Juvena.
Juvena's marketing cure is having an impact: With sales growth of 6.5 percent in 2002, the international company based in Volketswil has more than held its own in less than pleasant times. According to the Swiss Cosmetics and Detergents Association (SKW), growth in Switzerland in 2002 remained below the average growth of the last ten years at just over four percent. And because the Swiss are the most frequent consumers of creams worldwide, the slump due to market saturation is not surprising. For the past two years, Juvena, which celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2004, has been repositioning itself as a care brand in the medium to higher price segment. At the same time, the cosmetics company is relying on its core competencies and pioneering spirit. For example, the product range has been streamlined and reduced - especially in the decorative cosmetics segment. The entire communicative appearance was also completely redesigned, from the CI to the classic advertising materials and packaging.
"In the last two months, we have repackaged all products worldwide," says Brigitte Roth, Brand Director International Marketing, describing the consistent focus. By the end of September, the Beiersdorf subsidiary will have completely refreshed its brand image with the launch of the new campaign. The brand's origins, which have so far been an integral part of the brand with values such as quality, trust and safety at the forefront of its image, will hardly feature at all. "Symbols such as the Swiss mountains have diluted our quality standards over time," says PR Manager Liliane Mester. For retailers and consumers, the departure of the stylized mountain ridge from the logo makes the brand more recognizable.
In the oversaturated cosmetics market, an attractive brand profile is just as important as the constant launch of new formulations. With its pharmaceutical heritage and innovations such as the first "Light Cream", which was Juvena's breakthrough in the field of highly oily, ointment-like creams in 1954, the cosmetics company also wanted to bring its dynamic spirit to life in its advertising. "We have had the claim 'The Beauty Guarantee' for some time because it reflects the product quality and sets us apart from the competition. However, we have not yet filled it with life," Roth looks back. She wants to make up for this with the advertising agency FCB Leutenegger Krüll (FCBLK).
For enlightened womenIn order to present the guarantee in a differentiated way, CD Mike Krüll and his team do not use the industry-standard, but shallow, perfect female face. Instead, the advertisers provoke with cynical slogans aimed primarily at an enlightened female target audience: "There's no guarantee on husbands - but there is for Juvena care products," is written in gold letters above the pack shot. The ironic campaign bursts similar illusions about effective diets or eternal love like soap bubbles.
In addition to the creative approach, the strategic approach in the discreet cosmetics sector is also likely to attract attention. The central message, reflected in the self-confident attitude of the brand, does not correspond to the well-known money-back guarantee. Rather, it leaves open the option of switching directly to a competitor's product in the event of dissatisfaction. This bold promise, which is unlikely to embarrass Juvena thanks to the proverbial loyalty of its customers, is also a subtle form of comparative advertising. Although the competitor is not mentioned by name, it is clear what conclusions the ad triggers in the viewer: Anyone who guarantees such a thing demonstrates greater self-confidence in their products and does not have to resort to pseudo-scientific graphics or wrinkle-free faces of underage models. In a first wave, the campaign is running in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, where it aims to achieve over 36 million reader contacts. In a possible second wave, expansion to Europe and Australia is conceivable, reveals Roth.
Has banned the Swiss mountains from the logo: Teaser and resolution of the new Juvena campaign.
Cosmetics industry The beauty company Juvena has removed the Swiss mountain crest from its logo and presents itself with an emancipated wink >> p. 7
Juvena in figuresJuvena emerged in 1954 from the pharmaceutical laboratory Divapharma, founded nine years earlier by the Swiss entrepreneur Edmund G. Locher in Zurich. Even after the takeover by Beiersdorf AG in 1990, the Volketswil-based cosmetics company remains independent in terms of organization and management. Its field of activity comprises the development, manufacture and distribution of preparations for high-quality depot cosmetics with a focus on anti-age skin care. Juvena is represented in 50 countries worldwide and employs around 960 people. In 2002, the company reported sales of CHF 261.2 million. Most cosmetics manufacturers - including Juvena - reacted to the eroding sales in the current year with price increases, as reported by the industry association Ascopa. (la)
Luca Aloisi

Obtaining international addresses for direct marketing purposes is becoming easier. This is the promise of the AddressGuide from Swiss Post International, which lists detailed information on more than 400 providers of company and private addresses for 15 European countries. The offer is characterized by key figures such as the number of company addresses, decision-makers, private addresses, selection options and the scope of special address databases. The AddressGuide costs CHF 95 and can be ordered at www.swisspost.ch/addressguide.

Trade fairs On September 24, the IT trade fair Orbit/Comdex opens its doors in Basel with around 400 exhibitors on 11,000 square meters, not even half as many providers as last year. In view of the poor response, the computer trade fair is now focusing on the needs of SMEs. In the market segment of solutions for large companies, Orbit is currently evaluating other events, said exhibition director Alain Pittet to SDA.

Pork belly The retail giant Coop has recently been making a name for itself with its innovative spirit in the convenience food sector, with the active support of Betty Bossi, the noble mother of all Swiss housewives who grill sausages. Coop's advertising department, pork belly advertising department, office for frivolous derailments, insinuates without being asked what thoughts they might (but don't have to) have when preparing sausages. The campaign ad for the Zurich boys' shooting competition (where girls also take up assault rifles) deliberately evokes analogies to male body parts in an undecided state of aggregation. What is really annoying about this ad for enlightened women - apart from the rather unfortunate pick-up line - is the suggested garnish: onions with testicle-shaped bratwurst? Yawn. But sage as a pubic hair allegory? Absolutely inedible - even at a special offer price. (cb)

Guest Commentary The market shows a lot of faith in magazines, but little in daily newspapers, writes Kurt W. Zimmermann.Ever heard of Meredith Corp? Maybe their shares wouldn't be a bad idea. Don't worry, I won't give you any investment tips. But it's worth taking a look at the stock market if you want to track down future megatrends in the publishing business.analysts have been observing a new trend for a good year now: the share prices of magazine publishers are performing significantly better than those of newspaper groups. In the USA, for example, the performance of a magazine publisher such as Meredith (Ladies Home Journal) clearly outperforms that of Knight-Ridder (Miami Herald) or New York Times Co. And in the UK, magazine publishers such as Highbury (Country House and Home) clearly outperform traditional newspaper companies such as Daily Mail PLC on the stock market.
In Switzerland, the situation is identical - even without stock market prices. Magazines such as Schweizer Illustrierte and Weltwoche, like the related Sunday titles, are gaining market share. Facts, too, would belong in this category if it were not so poorly published. Newspaper monuments such as NZZ or Tages-Anzeiger, on the other hand, are crumbling.
The reason for this is that the current industry crisis has economic and structural causes. Newspapers are affected by both factors, magazines are only suffering from stagnation. As soon as the advertising economy recovers this winter, magazine sales and returns will increase noticeably. It will be like before. This will not happen to the same extent for newspapers, as the structural problems will remain. It will never be the same again.
Nationwide campaigns are still often bypassed by the daily newspapers. And a good proportion of classified ads no longer return from the Internet. The fact that newspaper publishers around the world have missed out on this substitution is having a fatal effect.
In the golden age, newspaper publishers reported returns on sales of up to 30 percent. Today, even top performers such as the Washington Post or the British Johnson Group (Yorkshire Post) achieve a maximum of 15 percent. Magazine publishers, on the other hand, rarely achieved returns of more than 15 percent, even in the golden age. However, they have remained more stable and are now believed to have higher growth potential.
The stock market anticipates the future: the nineties were the decade of the daily newspaper. The decade of magazines lies ahead of us.
> Kurt W. Zimmermann is the owner of the consulting firm Consist Consulting and was previously responsible for the magazine business at Tamedia, among other things.

Media The US beverage group Coca-Cola wants to consolidate its overall media budget in the United States with one agency, with Starcom Mediavest previously responsible for planning and Universal McCann - for over 20 years - for buying. Coca-Cola invited both account holders to a pitch, together with Mindshare and Carat. The budget covers the entire beverage portfolio and is estimated at 300 million dollars.