Auctions A symbiosis of aesthetics and speed can be found in sports posters. A collection of 650 posters will be auctioned off at the Swissôtel in Zurich on October 4 from 12 noon. A further 50 exhibits show the fashionable development of the shoe in sport and everyday life. 40 cigarette posters attempt to seduce, and 100 exclusive posters revolve around the world of railroads. The auction is accompanied by a catalog.

Associations John Peter Strebel is to become the new director of the Swiss branded goods association Promarca.Strebel was CEO of Intersport Schweiz AG until April. At the beginning of November, he will replace Jean-Bernard Bosset, who is stepping down due to age.

Publishers The Basler Zeitung (BaZ) is launching an extensive campaign to attract subscribers, focusing on so-called "vanity numbers": free telephone numbers such as 0800-RABATT or 0800-CLEVER. The letters can be easily converted into numbers using the cell phone keypad. Anyone who calls and orders the BaZ annual subscription for 2004 reads for free until the end of 2003. The target audience is "younger, mobile people, in short: the cell phone generation", according to a statement from the advertising agency cR DDB, whose creative department came up with the campaign.

Health insurance companies Changes to the Health Insurance Act are forcing policyholders to swallow particularly bitter premium pills this year. Despite this, the insurance companies are hardly writing any new prescriptions for their autumn communication. When the new health insurance cards arrive in October, the faces of Mr. and Mrs. Swiss will get longer and longer. In addition to the now obligatory increase in premiums, changes to the Health Insurance Act (KVG) will also come into effect this year, which could really hit the fan: An increase in the deductible, the minimum deductible and a standardization of the premium regions. Premiums can rise by up to 50 percent. For many insured persons, this is a reason to look for a new insurer. Despite these upheavals, the insurance companies see no reason to adjust their advertising to the public. This fall, too, they are polishing their image - after all, every insurer wants to create a healthy impression. Only the health insurance giant Helsana, which has been cooking on a low communication flame in recent years, is taking the KVG changes as an opportunity to give itself a new advertising outfit. The poster campaign from Wirz is intended to inform existing and potential customers about Helsana's special benefits. The key visual of the campaign is a bandage tied around various objects to draw attention to a specific product. "Who else will look after your sick child?" asks the slogan next to the connected teddy bear, for example. "With around 1.4 million members, it was important to create a campaign that everyone could understand," explains CD Matthias Freuler.
Market niche TwensCSS has come up with a "novelty in the insurance market": the Lucerne-based health insurer has expanded its portfolio to include Spital20 hospital insurance especially for young people up to the age of 30. This offers young adults more freedom in their choice of doctor and hospital for less money. The new product is intended to "close the gap between childhood and one's own family", emphasizes Christof Wirthlin, consultant at Pinx, the agency responsible for the product. Parallel to the product launch, CSS is continuing to focus on families in the basic campaign and is also relaunching the commercial that was also designed by Pinx last year.
The former SBB health insurance company Atupri is also reviving last year's fall campaign from the Bern-based agency Fruitcake. However, with a smaller budget, as agency co-owner and CD Lahor Jakrlin confirms. According to Jakrlin, the winner of the Cash-Kassen rating enjoys annual customer growth of five to ten percent, which he attributes to the quality of its services. The advertising slogan "Atupri has many friends" for the cash register, which advertises with the clown Linaz, therefore seems to have been confirmed for the time being.
"Life happens", proclaimed Concordia and its in-house agency Ottiger & Partner, both based in Lucerne, last year. The health insurer launched its fall campaign with an almost identical implementation but a new agency. "After almost ten years of working together, we wanted to take a new approach," says Concordia GL member Hans-Rudolf Castell, explaining the change. Felder und Vogel, Lucerne, is responsible for the current subjects. The elements introduced a year ago - black and white images and the corporate colors orange and blue - have been retained. Castell: "The tonality of the campaign is very similar, but the messages are a little more pointed."
The Winterthur agency Partner & Partner for Wincare is also based on the content of last year's website. However, the implementation for the "Winterthur" health insurance company had to be adapted to the newly designed face of the entire group. This fall, as every year, health insurers are dominating billboards and advertising spaces with their image campaigns. One health insurer, however, sees no need to become active at the usual time for the industry: KPT in Berne has already experienced the peak of its advertising year with the launch of its online platform at the beginning of this year.
Only Helsana came up with a completely new campaign this year.
Pinx advertisement for the new CSS product Spital20: young people addressed.
Simone Keller

Daniel Schifferle on the latest reach figures for the Swiss-German pressThings are looking up again. After two years of losses in the readership markets, the print media are back in a stronger position: reading is back in fashion, and for various daily newspapers at least the erosion of their readership has been halted. The magazine market is even in excellent shape. Together, the magazines in German-speaking Switzerland have gained over 800,000 readers - a real expansion of the audience has been achieved.print media are not only successfully defending their position, they are even creating new growth markets and injecting dynamism into existing ones. Titles as diverse as NZZ am Sonntag and 20 Minuten alone have brought the
Newspapers together attract over 600,000 additional readers within a year. Taken together, the Sunday press, commuter market and magazines attract almost one and a half million additional readers to the Swiss print media.
The print media currently have the sympathy of the media audience on their side. This is a clear statement from Mach Basic 2003, and the fear that the target audience of the press is increasingly migrating to the Internet does not seem to be coming true - at least for the time being. The popularity of the print media confirms its central role as a platform and shaper of social discourse.
At the same time, however, the advertising market continues to stutter in a worrying manner. Yet now would be the ideal time for advertising investors to return. After all, advertisers would benefit first and foremost from the increased attention that the press is currently receiving. In view of the growing hope that the global economy will recover soon, the reluctance of advertisers should now recede into the background.
Anything else simply makes no sense.
> Daniel Schifferle, Head of Media

Declining sales triggered an image alarm. A global advertising campaign made in Germany is repositioning McDonald's as a lifestyle company and the McDonald's board in Oak Brook (Illinois) has realized that global growth in the fast food segment is slowing down. That is why, according to Larry Light, Vice President and Global Chief Marketing Officer of the hamburger roaster, everything is now being put to the test. The first results: Almost everything will be different - the uniforms, staff motivation, menus, packaging, décor, merchandising, image and overall communication. McDonald's is embarking on a "blitzkrieg" against a stale image and sluggish sales and is digging deep into its coffers to do so. The German agency Heye & Partner is one of the first winners in McDonald's global audit program: under the leadership of Jürgen Knauss, the advertising agency from Unterhaching won what was probably the biggest pitch of the year. McDonald's tender was disguised as an ideas competition among its top 15 agencies worldwide.
Heye was awarded the contract on June 11. The campaign had its world premiere in Munich on September 2. The fast pace of the repositioning was set by the reactivated McDonald's CEO Jim Cantalupo together with his Global Chief Marketing Officer. Light, former manager at Arcature and BBDO Worldwide, said in Munich that McDonald's would develop into a lifestyle company and that the image had to be charged with popular culture. Because: "Great brands only survive if they change. And we will change."
Sung declaration of love
MTV Award winner Justin Timberlake as a singing and playing testimonial as well as hip-hop and rap music set the pace for McDonald's new brand identity for the time being. The new global claim "I'm lovin' it" is communicated in five TV commercials. It is written in lower-case letters, converted "global-local" into twelve different spellings (German: "ich liebe es") and applies to 119 McDonald's countries with immediate effect.
"I'm lovin' it": McDonald's customers need to say this sentence with conviction again, demanded Russ Smyth, President Europe. According to the former PricewaterhouseCoopers manager, the top priority is not to forcefully present two or three brilliant quarterly results after a low. Satisfied customers instead of unrestricted growth is now the motto. This is why McDonald's decided to change its strategy back in January.
Under the term "Rolling Energy", the fast-food multinational has for the first time developed a globally integrated marketing plan for the next two years in addition to its first worldwide advertising campaign.
And so McDonald's wants to conquer the world with its new declaration of love "I'm lovin'it":
- In Austria, 1.5 million cell phone owners will receive a free cheeseburger if they text back "I love it".
- Millions of Japanese will be able to see the new commercials non-stop on big screens in places all over Tokyo.
- In China, the restaurant staff are supposed to perform dance moves in front of the guests to match the TV commercial music.
- In Russia, there will be a parade on Red Square and children from all over the country will play in a football tournament.
Insiders assume that the new campaign, including the repositioning of the brand, will cost at least 350 million euros worldwide. In Germany alone, McDonald's main European market, 51 restaurants are to shine in the new design, which was developed in France, before the end of this year. And: the staff must be committed to the new slogan. The employees should actively exemplify the new claim. In plain language: the success of the new campaign will secure their jobs.
On September 29, the mega McDonald's campaign made in Germany launches in the United States. And when the new McDonald's singer Justin Timberlake performs on tour in Munich on November 19, more and more people from the overall target group will understand that the American concept of a lifestyle restaurant has more to do with a "feel-good youth club with excellent staff".
The global campaign launched at the beginning of September aims to position McDonald's as a lifestyle company.
Heye & Partner GmbHThe owner-managed full-service agency in the DDB network is based in Unterhaching near Munich and was founded in 1962. The CEO is Jürgen Knauss. It has 328 employees in Germany and achieved a BBE of 253.5 million euros in 2002. Its clients include Esso Deutschland, Eckes Granini, Johnson & Johnson, Karstadt Warenhaus AG, Löwenbräu, Molkerei Alois Müller, Montblanc and Quelle AG. (pe)
Peter Ehm

German Chancellor Gerhard Schröder is happy to put up with this: as a former member of the Volkswagen supervisory board, he unexpectedly receives support in the endless war of nerves over the military absence of the Bundeswehr in Iraq. From VW of all companies. The laser-welded sheet metal of the Wolfsburg cars provides a dozen US cops with as much hard-hitting cover as they could possibly need.
is needed to arrest a gangster armed to the teeth. This vehicle is "extremely well-built", DDB illustrates to the reader in an advertisement that inspires confidence when the twelve cops entrench themselves stormtrooper-like behind the smaller German Wertarbeit Polo and not behind the more immobile Police Department limousine. No question, the ad belongs framed in the Oval Office, of course. Any bets that the next CDU candidate for chancellor will not be at a loss for a present when he visits the White House - even if it doesn't have four wheels?
(cb)<

Sunday press Sunday newspapers attracted even more readers than commuter newspapers last year: Their reach increased by a whopping 25 percent in German-speaking Switzerland alone.There is no longer any question: the German-speaking Swiss's favorite Sunday activity is reading the newspaper. The market for Sunday newspapers experienced a dynamic upward trend last year that has not been seen for a long time. No wonder, as the figures from NZZ am Sonntag (NZZaS) are now available, which Mach is reporting for a whole year for the first time. The 434,000 men and women who leaf through it on Sundays give the entire reading public in German-speaking Switzerland a boost to 2.3 million readers, but not at the expense of the previous market players SonntagsZeitung and SonntagsBlick, as one might have assumed when the Sunday edition from Falkenstrasse was launched on March 17, 2002. On the contrary, the Tamedia-Sonntagsblatt even registered the strongest upward trend of the last four years (plus 30,000 readers). With 813,000 readers, its audience is still almost twice as large as that of the NZZaS.
Although the SonntagsBlick was no longer able to make further gains, its reach of 25.2 percent is still higher than in 2000 - and with 10,26,000 readers it is still the lonely leader among Swiss-German newspapers.
The heir is already full
After Ringier discontinued its Sunday title Dimanche.ch on June 22 and the paper therefore no longer appears in the readership study, the French-speaking Swiss Sunday market is now 123,000 readers short - the last time the newspaper, which is only three and a half years old, reported this figure.
The loss will hardly hurt for long, as the division of the inheritance is already in full swing - with, of course, only one contender: le Matin Dimanche from Edipresse. Even after deducting a number of double readers, it is still likely to win tens of thousands of copies.
Le Matin Dimanche, which has now regained its monopoly, did not even need to do this. Even though it was slightly on the defensive in the reporting period, it remains the absolute leader among Switzerland's newsstand newspapers with a new reach of 45.4 percent - only Corriere del Ticino (43.5 %) has a similarly strong circulation.
Bignasca on the upswing again
The (free) Sunday papers also continued to gain ground in Ticino. The still young Il Caffè della Domenica has slowed down its audience expansion somewhat. However, together with the 3000 new readers, the paper, in which Ringier holds a 45 percent stake, now has a respectable reach of 38.5 percent - that's exactly 100,000 readers according to the Wemf surveys.
In addition to the slower advance of the competition, the Mattino della Domenica is now benefiting. After the Lega paper had lost a massive amount of readership in the previous three years - partly due to the relaunch of Il Caffè della Domenica - it now has 10,000 more readers. Giuliano Bignasca's Sunday title is making up for the accumulated losses of the previous year and is also gaining additional readers.
readers, but remains well behind the competition with 86,000.
For 2.3 million Swiss people, the newspaper is already a must for breakfast on Sundays.
Daniel Schifferle

On Monday, November 17, 2003, Weltwoche celebrates its 70th birthday with a special anniversary edition that will be published on Monday and looks back on the past 70 years. According to a press release, Weltwoche would like to thank its advertisers with anniversary subjects in this special edition. The advertising agency Guye Benker has designed two ad variants that can be used as desired. Anyone who places one of the two variants will receive a one-off discount of 19.33 percent - based on the year Weltwoche was founded.

Magazines Florian Illies, author of two cult books on the subject of "Generation Golf" and former head of the "Berliner Seiten" at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ), is planning a new magazine with the working title "Monopol", a "magazine for art and life" which, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung, will appear for the first time in spring 2004. The industry service Kress.de writes that Illies wants to "fill the genre of cultural reportage with fresh content". A bi-monthly publication with a circulation of around 30,000 copies is planned.

Jiri Scherer, business economist and project manager at MCI Group, Switzerland's largest event organizer, has developed an innovative management tool for harnessing creativity called the "Ideas Box", which comprises 56 methodical approaches and creativity techniques for finding, evaluating and implementing ideas. The box is published by Sauerländer Verlag (ISBN 3-0345-0069-6) and costs 45 francs with booklet.

The future of advertising Part II Jean Etienne Aebi describes twelve trends in the development of advertising in his book "Einfall oder Abfall". Werbewoche presented the first six trends in its September 4 issue. You can read about the next six on these pages, where Jean Etienne Aebi uses many examples to identify twelve trends in current advertising and places them in a social context. The first six relate primarily to the emotional access that advertising seeks to potential customers when presenting new or old products, and show the entire range of advertising possibilities. In the second part, Aebi now looks at the various means of marketing communication that are used successfully today - and will not be yesterday's news tomorrow. The fantasy highway
Futurism is just one thing to give the post-Star-Wars-Independence-Day generation in our dotcom-Playstation-society a new thrill. The other is modern fairy tales that serve the growing need to replace the old heroes and losers. Fourth art at its best, which will create and nourish new and existing brand cults. Advertising that provides tremendous pleasure and gives free rein to the imagination of its recipients.
Beware of things made in October. Because in October, the Major League Baseball playoffs take place on Fox Sports Television. Which is why the workers in the factories just stare at the TV - and no screw is stuck, no solder joint holds. This is the resolution of commercials in which people can no longer steer their motorboat, the leaf vacuum becomes a fire spout, the nail gun goes off by itself and a hullabaloo of the strangest disasters ensues. Fortunately only hilarious.
Already one of the benchmarks in this field, Budweiser's communication once again anticipates a lot with the completely different series "Real Men of Genius". With a rock singer and a choir of female backing vocals singing the soulful praises of the "Real Men of Genius", for example, the innovative spirit of those who do their utmost to breed hot dog sausages that are longer than anything the world has ever seen is celebrated and praised. Mr. Foot-long-Hot-Dog-Inventors: simultaneously celebrated as heroes and exposed to ridicule, this film is dedicated to them. There is no mention of beer anywhere. And why?
But one product feature can also be stylized into science fiction. Which is why, in the commercial for the Levi's "Twisted to fit" jeans that have already been wrung out, people are able to turn their heads, hands, legs etc. 360 degrees as a matter of course.
Another way of satisfying the imagination is the bizarre cabinet of cool cult dolls and weird symbolic objects. The "Muppet Show"-like, bearded, orange Flat Eric with his normal-human friend Angels in the commercials for Levi's Sta-Prest. Jack with the attached white spherical head in intellectual dialogs with his friends for the Jack in the Box fast food chain.
The two life-size pupils that irritate people everywhere on the street - "Irritating Eyes?", advertising for Livostin eye drops. The monstrous beer belly in the chase of a fleeing, blameless citizen, who then gets rid of it after all: Reebock - Lose the Beer Belly.
The nostalgia pathThe opposite direction to the latter. The oversaturation and demands of new technologies, new lifestyles, a new world order, constant news and ever faster replacement of the latest trends - this constant pressure from outside also creates an inner defensive attitude. Not a new glorification of the good old days, but the feeling that not everything that is new is necessarily better and more valuable.
Reflection is not taboo. "Back to the roots" is becoming a common phrase. This is not a reaction limited to the older generations. Some flower power is becoming stylistically viable again. Blues and rock become bar-ready. Bob Dylan gets a new digitalized edition. John Wayne sends his regards.
Retro, as the advertisers call it, is a frequently used category. From visual quotes from old Orson Welles films to road movies in the style of "Easy Rider", an attitude to life à la "Howl" by beat poet Allen Ginsburg in the Gap ad to the computer-animated appearance of the late Steve McQueen in the TV commercial for Ford.
Sustainable nostalgia is also the new historiography for Heineken beer. For example, the big night-time Rock Open Air. A guy clicks on his lighter because he's looking for his beer bottle on the ground. Title: July 15, 1978 - The Lighter Phenomenon is Born. With the bottle found, he stands up again and lo and behold: others have followed his example. Eventually there are thousands - a sea of lighter flames. Slogan: It's all about the beer. Heineken logo. Or the fat-disc jockey. Because he obviously doesn't like the record that has just been played, he excitedly searches for another one, his beer bottle tipping over and spilling onto his record player. Our DJ tries to clean the record by hand, creating the back-and-forth scratching noise: March 8, 1982 - The Birth of Scratching. The whole room is enthusiastic. And so on.
The show-down stage
"To have lunch or be lunch" is one of the more recent self-cynical slogans in business, which boils down to ever tougher competition. Harder tones are also being struck in communication. Comparative advertising will increase. But now not only in factually offensive argumentation, but - much more effectively - also emotionally underpinned, certainly with mischief and charm.
The duel was not only the recipe for success in the old Western, it also ensures better ratings between presidential or chancellor candidates in today's politics. Häkkinen versus Schumacher was much more popular for Formula 1 than the all-Ferrari show that followed for years.
The showdown is the best infotainment. Whether between equals like Pepsi vs. Coke or as a David vs. Goliath game like Avis vs. Hertz back in the day. Both will be used again in advertising in new and more frequent ways. "Hooray! Avis rents out the Smart for 99 marks a day" and on the next page: "Haha! You can get a Mercedes for that money at Sixt." - Sixt shows the way again and again. The BMW ad, which implements the brand positioning "The joy of driving" with the fact that the parking space in the underground garage between a Mercedes and a Jaguar remains empty, is also nice. Mercedes cheekily counters with an illustration of the top models from BMW, Lexus, Audi and Jaguar: top class. But not S-Class.
Such an exchange of blows is fun and gives the advertising of the other players a priceless plus in attention. This is especially the case for the Apple switcher campaign, in which former, disappointed Windows users and today's enthusiastic Mac fans argue in favor of Macintosh in a way that no other advertising copywriter could ever do.
It's also funny when an imaginary competitor is set up: After the title song "Komm sofort zum Stierli-Sport", a Heinz Stierli rails against Sportplausch Wider in Wallisellen in a series of radio spots. The latter was not a city center at all, which is why he had Wider banned from selling its popular city bikes. Stierli's racing bikes were faster and he had removed all the brakes. And so on.
The Art Gallery
The unmistakable key visual as the visualized brand property of a brand has always been a wish of all advertising clients, and rightly so. The most interesting examples have played with it, varying the occupied symbol in such a way that it has been recognized again and again. For example, the long-standing campaign for the luxury cigarette Silk Cut with its cuts through every conceivable fabric and surface.
This reduction leads to solutions that can be "pure art". Advertisements that hang framed above the sofa or even in museums. Advertising art that can also take place outside - Austrian Airlines, for example, has given large poster sites to artists with the "Museum in Progress". Whereupon rows of color in the spirit of constructivism and portrait galleries delighted passers-by. And such a simple and beautiful idea also leads to a small cultural experience in cinematic realization: the spots for Fnac record/video/book stores, for example, in which the searching fingers leaf through the CD series to the rhythm of Tä-tä-tä-tä-täääää... and then pick out Beethoven's Fifth, show how it works.
The Stella Artois campaign does the same with its artistically highly stylized advertising images, which suggest that this is such a high-class premium beer delight that it doesn't matter if the car hood or designer chair is destroyed when the crown cap is opened: "Reassuringly Expensive". Photographic artistry that turns product positioning into a cultural momentum.
The diamond-studded luxury watch, which reads "Lotto" instead of the Gucci logo, is simply beautiful. An advertisement by Nordwest Lotto-Toto-Gesellschaft. The Air France motifs, in which the plane seems to fly out of a woman's ear, for example, are pure aesthetics.
The guerrilla strategy
West has her brand image shot into space on a Soyuz capsule. In Steven Spielberg's "Minority Report", floating cars of the future bear the Lexus logo. Fay Weldon is paid to write a novel entitled "The Bulgari Connection". Vodafone on the T-shirts of leading actors in commercials for Strato's Candy Bar or Pepsi. Commercial soap operas for Nestlé, gas station sitcoms for DEA.
A crude commercial for Reebok, in which two adventurers drink their own urine, is only allowed to run on the Internet - but is advertised in the press. "Drugs? Piss on it!" is stuck on urinal bowls in Poland (Anti-Narcotics Program). "Don't jump" can be read on the roof of a bus when you look down from the window in Virginia - on moving advertisements for Careerbuilder.com. The Springfield police in Florida make arrests on behalf of McDonald's, which sponsors their cars. Schools in Texas display the logo of their "donor" Dr. Peppers.
In addition to the comprehensive air weapon effect of classic advertising, guerrilla troops and special commandos are increasingly being used. Communicative encirclement, infiltration, subversion. Not only through event marketing, sponsoring, product placement and bartering (own commercial broadcasting channels). In future, even those who fry smaller rolls will no longer only advertise where they are expected, but increasingly elsewhere too.
Behind-and-off-the-line, surprise attack and stun grenades. Like Swatch in the train tunnel with a sequence of images that creates a movie at train speed. In this sense, the real jeans from Dockers hanging at bus stations in New York. The zeppelin that flies over the city for Orange.
The Tages-Anzeiger newspaper's "Wir bleiben dran" campaign is highly effective in triggering media and public reactions. It intervenes in local and global current affairs directly at the scene of the action. With subversively placed posters or poster-covered vans parked in front of the offices or on the premises of those affected - and taking them at their word. In Zurich, this was directed at the Swiss private television pioneer: we already know that television is merciless. Roger Schawinski, we'll stay tuned. In Bonn, aimed at the (then) incumbent head of government: We will reap what we have sown. Mr. Chancellor Kohl, we'll keep at it. These street campaigns then multiplied by reproduction in advertisements.
It is not traditional sponsorship when Reebok has its contractual partners collectively tattooed on the most interesting parts of their bodies for the athletics championships. When the Puma predator label flashes on Marlene Ottey's ring finger and looks out of Linford Christie's contact lenses. When ice hockey players' mouthguards greet the camera with "Nike".
The play-along virus
Another form of communicative infiltration is advertising that involves the audience in its development or distribution. BMW commercials that only run on the Internet and can be rated there. Brand chat rooms in which net freaks say what they want. Viral marketing and advergaming. Ads with nothing but a telephone number on which the sound commercial then runs. Louis Vuitton distributes special glasses in Berlin with which traffic lights and car headlights suddenly reproduce the brand logo.
The producers of Swiss milk invite viewers to take part in an online Advent quiz in competition with their highly popular advertising character, Lovely the dairy cow. The product placement is enhanced by the ABC channel by offering the products shown in the soap opera "All My Children" directly for sale during the commercial breaks.
The world will experience even more of this new dimension of interactive advertising. It will have spectacular features as well as amusing, sustainable forms. In "Mission Mini", 21 teams from 17 countries in 121 new BMW Minis have already taken part in a Hollywood-style agent hunt for stolen images in Barcelona. Pursued by a horde of police officers and over 100 journalists and camera teams - media multiplication around the globe. Thousands of people voluntarily apply to become the new Coke Light Man - just to get their name in the advertising.
It can also be done on a smaller scale - as with our campaign for the Swiss Press Association. To demonstrate the unparalleled intensity of our engagement with the medium of the press, celebrities are invited to make their comments in red pencil directly on the printed pages of editorial publications. Countless free advertisements, as it were, designed by readers, in hundreds of titles.
Either way, the specific, own, original idea remains decisive
Some trends are of a substantive nature, while others are more concerned with implementation, including the media. No trend will develop clear dominance and exclude others. It goes without saying that some of them are therefore very contradictory or conflicting. Everything has its place. Nothing is impossible. Only more so in the future.
It has little to do with technical concept categories and formal design criteria. Come on, let's make a celebrity commercial, that's not an idea at all. On the other hand, it is a striking idea when the party president of the CDU is shown with her staid hairstyle and her hair standing on end, with a caption underneath: Fancy a new hairstyle? Rent a convertible. From Sixt.
We use a famous sportsman as a "voice of authority": a suggestion like this doesn't achieve anything. Having the 40-year-old Michael Jordan compete against himself as a 15-year-old (in a digital version) to show that he can last just as long today as he did 25 years ago - this brilliantly dramatizes what the isotonic drink Gatorade is good for.
So will there be more or fewer testimonials in future? It will. Is the before and after scheme still suitable or not? It is. Has the presenter spot had its day or does it have a future? It has. Will product demos make more sense or less? They will. Will reduction continue to be a good recipe or yesterday's coffee? It will. Will double pages be in or out in the future? They are.
These questions are wrong and therefore uninteresting. Successful creatives have hardly ever asked them. They look for the unusual, surprising idea. They may then implement it using one or other means, which in the terminology of diligent first semester advertising students is called a testimonial, demonstration or reduction. The other way round is a dead end.
Knowledge of categories and the use of thought patterns do not produce outstanding advertising with the desired effect. Only the idea does not become waste.
Classification attempts are regulatory anyway, never innovative. This also applies to trend forecasts. Not excluding the ones presented here. So which path should you choose for your next campaign? Fantasy highway or nostalgia path? Ideally your own.
Knowing how and whyThis text is taken from the 436-page book "Einfall oder Abfall - Was Werbung warum erfolgreicher macht", which will be published in early October by Verlag Hermann Schmidt Mainz, ISBN number 3-87439-638-X, Fr. 79.80. The Swiss presentation of the book will take place on October 1 from 6 p.m. in the new Kunsthaus Zurich lecture hall. (ww)
The fantasy highwayModern fairy tales can also be told ironically, as in the Budweiser commercial "Real Men of Genius" with the "inventors" of the world's longest hot dog sausages.
The nostalgia trailRetro can also be cool when stories are invented in TV commercials: Pop music owes the sea of lighter lights to a desperate search for Heineken.
The show-down stageBeautifully cheeky, BMW's positioning campaign for "The joy of driving" - even better when the competition takes up the theme and invites you to a show-down on the advertising stage. Because of this
both brands benefit in the end.
The Art-GalleryPhotographic art level conveys the product positioning for the Stella Artois beer and thus elevates the advertisement to the nobility of the
cultural momentum.
The guerrilla strategySurprising where advertising is not expected is a feature of a successful guerrilla strategy: here for the Careerbuilder.com website
The play-along virusProminent people comment on the media with a red pen: readers become
ad designers, in this case for the Publicis campaign for the Swiss Press Association.
Jean Etienne Aebi