In the latest Mach Basic survey, the business titles did not experience any growth spurts in readership figures, but the downward trend of previous years has been halted.Cash, the title with the highest readership, was one of the losers in recent years, but is now trending slightly à la hausse again. Nevertheless, the Ringier paper is still far behind its record result from 2000, and the same trend can be seen with HandelsZeitung and the investor papers Finanz und Wirtschaft and Stocks. The readership figures for all three titles stabilized at the previous year's levels.
The only business title with a clear but statistically insignificant growth trend is Bilanz, which has 17,000 more readers (+3.8 %).
By contrast, the western Swiss business newspaper Agefi is not really making any headway, losing readers for the third consecutive survey period - and currently has a readership of just 20,000.
(dse)

The OMD Switzerland media agency group has won the mandate from Bank Leu, which will be handled by the team at the OMD Zurich See branch under the leadership of Managing Director Luise Diem. The mandate includes both image and product advertising for private and institutional clients. Bank Leu's creative budget has been managed by Matter & Partner, Zurich, since 2002.

Corporate Publishing Contract Media produces a newsletter for Deutsche Post. Sacha Widgorovits' Contract Media Publishing has been commissioned by logistics group Deutsche Post World Net to produce the global "Star Newsletter". The newsletter is sent electronically every month to the 380000 employees of the Group subsidiaries Mail, Postbank and DHL. The letter is intended to promote the integration of the various companies in 220 countries and is published in eleven languages. Journalist Max Fischer (ex-Ringier) is in charge of the concept, content and editing at Contract Media Publishing. Rico Brazerol (ex-20 Minuten) is responsible for production. (pan)

McDonald's "I love it": Jürgen Knauss knows how to reanimate the image of the hamburger roaster. In the pan with the claim or on the grill? Please send menu suggestions to www.werbewoche.ch/adratingSwisscom
Spillmann's tailoring atelier sewed neatly: the skinati suits, pulled over unathletic skins, were truly astonishing.
Top 57,53%
Flop 42,47%

Public transport Since 1969 at the latest, riding a Harley-Davidson has been the epitome of freedom. And even today, many people dream of being an "easy rider", a dream that is now also available without emissions: "More and more people are switching to the BäreAbi", says the slogan about the unusual passenger with the blonde appendage. The creative minds at Lang Gysi Knoll want to prove that even die-hard "private transportation enthusiasts" often dare to take a side trip - even if they don't easily give up old habits. Seasoned BäreAbi owners will only have a weary smile for the Dennis Hopper double. They know that the hellish angel's easy ride is over when granny complains about the wind on the train...

The new advertising agency for Switzerland Cheese Marketing AG has still not been found. At the end of August, pitch participants Advico Young & Rubicam, Jung von Matt/Limmat, Grey and Euro RSCG Zurich presented their proposals, but none of the agencies were convincing, Marketing Director Pierre Gwinner told Werbewoche. A rebriefing will therefore now take place. The cheese marketing organization has been looking for a successor to budget holder Economia in Hamburg since last December. Due to a change in management, the pitch had to be postponed until the summer. The marketing management was also replaced in August with Pierre Gwinner.

Facelift On September 17, the HandelsZeitung will be published with a fresh new look. Because large companies are decentralizing and introducing flatter management structures, generalists are once again increasingly in demand in the business world. "These are precisely the people we want to appeal to," says Ralph Büchi, publisher of HandelsZeitung (HZ). This raises eyebrows, as the HZ previously had the reputation of being a paper for SMEs. Does it now want to establish itself in a higher managerial league? Büchi waves it off, he doesn't want to know anything about a change of target groups, at best an expansion. According to the publisher, large companies today are nothing more than a collection of smaller entrepreneurial units. "For the managers in the individual subsidiaries, the tasks are the same as in a medium-sized company: they need to understand something about personnel management and accounting, but also be able to make IT or marketing decisions. And we want to support them in this." Accordingly, the claim of the new HZ campaign from Jung von Matt is also called "Arguments for decisions".
Razor-sharp logo
In any case, the HZ, which will appear in a new look on September 17, will be more upmarket. "An evolution, not a revolution," says Büchi. However, he's staking his claim a little low. Certainly, the HZ will remain true to its concept, format, four frets and specials. But it is saying goodbye to the previous newsprint and now uses a brighter and more expensive paper. The logo has also been changed. Büchi: "It's no longer so nebulous, but sharp as a tack - just like the articles should be."
The entire newspaper now has a six-column typeface, including the front and gutter pages. In addition, the title and running text fonts are now identical. Some of the bundle architecture or its concepts have changed: The second fascicle is now called Manager instead of Management. This is a clear indication that the focus will increasingly be on doers in future. Each issue starts with a portrait of a successful top manager. Finally, the Money section has been expanded to include investment advice and contains new sections such as "Stock Market Week" and "John's Dow". Overall, there are more points of orientation everywhere, in the form of fixed sections or graphic elements.
The new HZ bears the signature of Hamburg newspaper designer Wolf Dammann, who has also designed Stocks and New Management, both from the HZ publishing group. HZ, which belongs to Axel Springer Verlag, was also supported by Springer's editorial coach Peter Balsiger.
Deep black figures
Ralph Büchi emphasizes that HZ did not plan the relaunch out of weakness. "We did lose advertising volume, but less than other business publications. We have even gained market share." The HZ is doing well. "It is in the black and has a double-digit return on sales," he adds.
Büchi can only see good things in the postponement of the relaunch from May to September. "We have caught the optimum time - because the mood on the stock market is now also improving. The fact that we are starting the planning phase for 2004 with the new newspaper is also an advantage." And finally, a further boost can be expected for 2004, because that is when the change of editor-in-chief from Kurt Speck to Martin Spieler will take place.
Handelszeitung.ch with foreign exchange trading
The HandelsZeitung internet portal is not being redesigned as part of the relaunch, but is adding a foreign exchange trading service. The new e-paper of the HZ title Stocks already recorded high access rates on the first day of its launch: it was clicked on by over 1000 people. (mk)
HZ is not suffering from a loss of trustIn recent years, the business press has lost the trust of its readers. Should the HandelsZeitungs relaunch therefore also be seen as an attempt to win back the affection of these readers? "No," says Ralph Büchi, "neither HandelsZeitung nor Stocks have suffered from a loss of trust." What has been lost in terms of circulation and readership is due to company and private cost-cutting measures. There was also a psychological factor. "After some people had already lost money on the stock market, they no longer wanted any more negative news from the economy, so they jumped ship," says the publisher, explaining the loss of readership. (mk)
Markus Knöpfli

Computer Atelier Heinzelmann designed a cinematic presentation for the market launch of the new Microsoft PC mice and keyboards. Even though the Microsoft founder is now under constant fire from antitrust authorities, patent holders and competitors. Nevertheless, this very film, in which Lester Burnham, alias Kevin Spacey, ends up in a pool of blood, should help a wireless mouse from Microsoft to be successfully launched on the Swiss market.
For the design-conscious
For each member of the new hardware family - there are five in total - Winterthur-based Atelier Heinzelmann has designed an advertising motif that recreates a poster for a well-known movie with a matching mouse. However, the cinematic analogies of the appearance are not to be found in the person of Mr. Microsoft. Rather, the Swiss branch of the US multinational, which is worth over 270 billion dollars, wants to inspire a trendy, design-conscious and affluent audience for the new mice in cinema magazines. And with good reason: you have to fork out at least 70 francs for the tame little PC animals.
It is no coincidence that the Winterthur agency was entrusted with the implementation of the "movie poster" ads by the Swiss branch of the software giant: owner André Heinzelmann and his team have been producing the cinema magazine Close-up for six years. The company has also been one of Microsoft Switzerland's pool agencies for years - mainly in the DM sector. For the launch campaign, which includes POS posters and cards for free as well as advertisements, the creatives have reinterpreted the movie posters for "A Beautiful Mind", "Twins", "Scream" and "Basic Instinct" in addition to "American Beauty". The motif for the latter shows two of the dickless or cordless mice in an explicit position. It is therefore not surprising that those responsible at Microsoft's US headquarters initially had moral qualms about accepting this motif, as André Heinzelmann confirms. Nevertheless, the ad was used, as the sight of copulating mice does not immediately make Swiss consumers, who are used to all kinds of things, blush.
Borrowing from Hollywood movies: Campaign from the Heinzelmann studio in Winterthur for the US multinational Microsoft.
Simone Keller

Content provider The previously fee-based Swiss financial platform First-stocks.com has been offering its basic service free of charge since Tuesday, with news now freely accessible; free registration is required for other information. Only a number of "first-class offers" remain subject to a charge. According to a report by Netzwoche-Ticker, the financial portal is also no longer free of advertising. Managing Director Hans Fischer explained that they want to place skyscrapers "with suitable content". First-stocks.com is to remain a premium platform even in the free version. The site was launched in June by Fischer, Peter Keller and Nicolas Berg.

Press statistics Frustration in spring, highs in fall: despite circulation losses, Mach Basic shows growing reach for many print titles. Nothing out of the ordinary, say the media researchers. "The above-average, sometimes significant changes in circulation and readership of individual titles require an explanation," demands Roland Oetterli, Publishing Director of the Aargauer Zeitung. And he is not alone in this view. "We have already asked Wemf to explain this phenomenon to us, which is inexplicable at first glance," adds Jürg Brauchli, Head of Newspapers at Tamedia. Ringier spokeswoman Eva Keller would also like some clarification from the AG für Werbemedienforschung. The fact that a large proportion of print titles are experiencing falling circulations and rising readership figures at the same time is indeed giving rise to some heated discussions in the publishing industry. Even doubts about Wemf's methodology are being raised here and there. Some people are also asking whether the "phenomenon" can perhaps be explained using the figures from the MA Leader, at least for the titles surveyed.
Hands off, say the professionals, because the picture only seems more confusing. The only constant here: A title that loses a lot of circulation usually also loses a lot of top leaders - or vice versa. Gains and losses among the leaders, on the other hand, show no correlation with circulation fluctuations.
Own newspaper as a luxury...
The explanation from NZZ publishing director Tobias Trevisan may be more helpful. He recalls that newspapers had increased in circulation for many years without increasing their reach to the same extent. This was primarily due to the individualization of households. Trevisan deduces from this that "in good years, people have the 'luxury' of subscribing to their own newspaper, while in years when they have to save money, they share the newspaper or read it elsewhere." This theory is not only supported by other publishing professionals, but also by experts such as Josef Trappel from Prognos and Professor Gabriele Siegert (see page 38).
Daniel Sommer, publishing director of Basler Zeitung, on the other hand, states clearly: "Circulation and readership surveys produce two values that are not directly dependent on each other."
Wemf Head of Research Harald Amschler takes a similar view. It can happen that circulation and reach show opposing trends, at least in the short term: "In a long-term comparison, however, both factors generally point in the same direction." He also points out that circulation fluctuations of plus/minus three percent can certainly be described as stable. Last spring, the majority of print circulations were within this range. On average, Swiss-German newspapers with 40000 or more copies only deviated by 2.6 percent from last year's circulation figures. The deviation was only 1.3 percent for smaller newspapers, one percent for advertisers and 3.1 percent for magazines.
Hardly any significant movement
The Wemf researcher also noticed nothing unusual in the readership figures. "Of the 271 titles and combinations that we surveyed in German-speaking Switzerland, only 28 or 10 percent showed significant changes compared to last year's Mach Basic; all the others are in the confidence range and can therefore also be described as stable." In French-speaking Switzerland and Ticino, there was even only one title each with significant changes. Incidentally, Amschler receives support here from Uli Rubner, publishing director of Weltwoche and Bilanz: she came to the same conclusion through her own checks.
Is it all just a storm in a teacup? Amschler doesn't want to go that far, but he speaks of a "Zurich phenomenon": because of Tamedia's new circulation policy, the gap between circulation and reach has widened particularly markedly at first glance. And because some other titles - albeit to a lesser extent - showed similar tendencies, the phenomenon was confirmed, but the relations were lost sight of. In reality, however, "even a SonntagsZeitung can still be described as stable", says Amschler.
However, he admits that this year's figures appear "special" on the surface in that many circulations have moved downwards together and many reach figures have moved upwards in corpore. But that is pure coincidence, said Amschler.
Circulation and reach do not necessarily have to develop in parallel, says Wemf.
Markus Knöpfli

The Bern-based brand consulting agency Brandpeople has won Gastrofacts GmbH as a new client, and the Contexta subsidiary will optimize the brand structure and CD for the industry portal operator. With Gas trofacts.ch and Foodfinder.ch, Gastrofacts offers two online services for tourism, gastronomy, hotels and suppliers.

Weekly newspapers The weekly newspaper market is experiencing two pleasant surprises with the latest Mach Basic study: WoZ and PCtip have both significantly increased their readership; although the left-wing alternative paper has only gained 19,000 readers in absolute figures, this corresponds to a hefty increase of 21 percent to 11,100,000 readers. This means that this title has made up for the losses of previous years. Another high-flyer is the weekly PCtip. It has continued the upward trend of previous years and has once again picked up speed: The current increase of 42,000 readers is the biggest leap that the computer title has achieved in the last four years. The PCtip does not need to shy away from comparison with major daily newspapers either. With 313,000 readers, it is positioned between the Berner Zeitung and the Neue Luzerner Zeitung.