Advertising media The insignia of a successful society are also a daily companion for young people: they wear clothes with labels, have a cell phone, a homepage - and of course a business card. If you're really cool, however, you won't have them printed for ten francs in a station vending machine. The cards that youngsters have recently been getting sponsored for free by advertising companies are very popular. Mediabox is responsible for the exclusive marketing of the new "advertising window" for young people. And the test run has gone down "like a bomb", says Florian Biafori. With the free business card for kids, advertising companies can have any motif printed on the back of the card. Of course, snappy slogans or target group-oriented visuals are best.

Advertising bans The Schaffhausen government is campaigning for a federal ban on advertising cigarettes, saying in a statement to the Federal Office of Public Health that the federal government's proposed revision of the Tobacco Ordinance with packaging regulations and warnings is inadequate.

Mach Basic The cinema reach figures presented in this issue are the last of their kind. cinema marketer Cinecom and Wemf have quietly agreed to end the previous reach survey for the cinema medium. Since work on Mach Basic 2003 was completed in April of this year, Wemf has therefore no longer carried out any surveys. The cinema reach figures shown on page 34 are the last of their kind. This is confirmed by Wemf research manager Harald Amschler and Cinecom marketing manager Jean-Claude Bruhin: "Cinecom wanted monthly data in order to better show the seasonal fluctuations. However, the Mach Basic sample was not designed for this and is too small. A massive increase was not possible with the available budget," says Amschler. There will now be a data break for the time being. "We will present new reach figures from January 1, 2005 at the latest," adds Bruhin; however, he leaves open what the new currency will look like. New research models are currently being evaluated with Wemf - the Telecontrol Group's new Mediacontrol (see WW 31/03) has not been ruled out either.
All indications are that the cinema admissions collected by ProCinema, the association for cinema and film distribution, will be used. However, these have two disadvantages: they are based on the declarations of the cinema operators and do not include any free admissions. Discussions are therefore underway between the association, Cinecom and Wemf regarding changes, as ProCinema Managing Director René Gerber confirms. Amschler is also talking about "external admission statistics", which could possibly be linked to Wemf research. This probably means that the self-declaration remains, but that Wemf could be commissioned to check it on site, as with the print editions. But what about Cinecom's competitor Mediavision? Cinecom is evaluating on its own, but Mediavision is being guided. "An industry solution makes perfect sense," says Bruhin.
Harald Amschler
(mk)

PR At the beginning of August, the bankruptcy judge of the Zurich District Court declared the Zurich PR agency Marengo bankrupt, according to the Commercial Register. Marengo had already applied for a moratorium in June. As probably last activity the agency organized the Albis mountain race for historical racing vehicles on July 19 and 20. Nothing is known about the background of the bankruptcy. Agency boss Alex Beeler could not be reached by the time of going to press. Marengo a subsidiary of the Bonaparte advertising agency, but was taken over by managing director Beeler at the end of 2000. For 2002, the agency reported a 40 percent growth in fee income to 1.45 million Swiss francs with twelve employees. Growth was also expected for the current year.

Free newspapers The free newspaper 20 Minuten has long had more readers than the Tages-Anzeiger. According to the latest readership figures from Wemf, the commuter newspaper 20 Minuten has gained almost as many readers as in the record year 2002. With a total of 720000 readers - an increase of 194000 (+37 %) - the commuter newspaper is now the second largest daily newspaper in German-speaking Switzerland. Just behind Blick. The gap to the tabloid is now only a wafer-thin 26,000 readers. 20 Minuten is almost certain to overtake the tabloid next year. The overtaking maneuver has probably already taken place. This is because an important step in Zurich, which is likely to have brought a further boost in new readers, has not yet been recorded by the current Mach Basic. Following the discontinuation of the Zürich-Express in April and the disappearance of its distribution boxes from the city and agglomeration, numerous additional commuters are likely to have used 20 Minuten. However, the survey period for the readership study ends on March 30, which is why the readership inheritance is not yet shown.
New growth impetus
Rolf Bollmann, CEO of 20 Minuten, believes that the potential is far from exhausted, not least because of his monopoly position. His aggressiveness is unbroken: "Growth, growth and more growth is my goal." However, it is not the reader segments that still need to be addressed that stand in the way of a further step in this direction, but simply capacity bottlenecks. "We have at least 20,000 copies too few in Zurich every day - because we simply can't deliver more copies in the necessary time with the printing plant in Vorarlberg, which prints the Zurich edition," says Bollmann.
The contract with the print shop runs until March 2005, after which the company will probably have to switch to a new one. The lights are not yet green for the next expansion steps. Everything that Bollmann is currently putting into the pipeline ready for implementation depends on the decision of the Competition Commission (ComCo). If it approves the takeover of 20 Minuten by Tamedia and Espace Media Groupe, the doors will be open, according to Bollmann.
As soon as the Weko has given its word in favor of the deal, the expansion is likely to pick up speed. "In this case, 20 Minuten will have a new Board of Directors, to which I will submit my proposals," says Bollmann. He will then also put possible areas of expansion back on the table. The regions of Lucerne and St. Gallen, which have been under discussion for years, are at the forefront.
"But all of this involves investment," explains Bollmann. And it needs the support of the new owners. If the Competition Commission agrees, they will play the leading role in a historic act: Tamedia and Espace Media Groupe will oust Blick publisher Ringier from the top spot in the lucrative Swiss-German news business. And probably with a not too narrow lead over Blick. Bollmann is already thinking ahead: "My goal is one million daily readers and a cash flow that satisfies investors." However, he is not yet sure how long it will take to exceed this threshold.
Unique recipe for successThe expansion of readership continues to make rapid progress, particularly in and around 20 Minuten's core regions. Zurich was once again the high-flyer last year. The commuter newspaper gained around 35 percent new readers in WG 43 and now serves its 303,000 readers with free news. Things are also looking up in the two markets with their own editions. In both the Basel area (WG 31) and the Berne area (WG 34), the number of free readers rose by 33 percent to 129,000 and 118,000 readers respectively. There is still potential in Lucerne and St. Gallen. Here, readership figures are only in the single-digit thousands.
20 Minuten's recipe for success appears to be unique. Even the Basel staff could not stop the rapid advance in its catchment area. Nevertheless, the paper of the Basel media group - with a slight upswing (plus 8 %) and 188,000 readers - is still almost 60,000 ahead of its strongest competitor.
Among the other free titles, only one in a different category recorded a real success: AZ Medien's Aargauer Woche increased significantly by 32,000 readers. (dse)
Daniel Schifferle

Newspapers To counter the migration of classified advertisements from the newspaper to the Internet, the AZ Medien Group is reorganizing its classified advertising business and making greater use of synergies between its various media (print, online, radio and TV). The project is being led by Roland Oetterli, previously Publishing Director of Aargauer Zeitung. Ueli Eckstein, Head of Print Media, will be responsible for the Aargauer Zeitung publishing house from October 1.

As of 2004, advertisers will have the opportunity to place radio spots on both sides of the language border with the Swiss Radio Pool.The new advertising combo consists of the existing City Pool members Radio 24, Basilisk, Extra Bern, Pilatus and Zürisee, as well as Radio Aktuell, Toxic.fm, Lausanne FM and One FM. The Swiss Radio Pool is now represented in Zurich, Bern, Basel, Lucerne, St.Gallen, Lausanne and Geneva and, according to its own figures, reaches almost one million listeners. The existing City Pool offering remains unchanged. In addition, there will be the new module version City Pool++ (Eastern Switzerland) with Aktuell, Toxic.fm and Zürisee. For information on the new pool, contact Andreas Meili at Tamedia (Tel. 01 448 25 25).

Newspapers The makers of daily newspapers can breathe a sigh of relief: the negative development of previous years appears to have been halted for the time being, and there are signs of a change in trend: after two years of decline, readers are returning to daily newspapers. Of the twelve largest newspapers in German-speaking Switzerland, not a single one lost readers last year. All of them are on the upswing. In the previous year, the opposite was true: of the twelve titles with the highest readership, only one - the Zürichsee-Zeitung - had not lost any readers. Nevertheless, the champagne will have to stay in the fridge. Because this is merely a positive trend - the developments observed are only statistically significant for very few titles. In the case of the daily newspapers, it is only the Berner Zeitung. It increased its readership by 38,000 readers to 34,000. By contrast, its former competitor Bund, which has now also been brought under the umbrella of Espace Media, is stagnating.
The advance of the Berner Zeitung (see box) is also a historic one: in the hit parade of daily newspapers with the highest readership, the Berner Zeitung has overtaken the NZZ to take fourth place among the largest paid newspapers in German-speaking Switzerland - behind Blick, Tages-Anzeiger and Mittelland Zeitung.
Positive trend prevails
Despite this overtaking maneuver by the Bernese newspaper makers, the NZZ has also made gains. Even if the current increase in reach is not (yet) significant, it still represents the strongest growth in recent years. With 27,000 new readers, the paper from Falkenstrasse is in a better position than in 2000.
The trend at the Tages-Anzeiger, which had lost many readers in the previous two years, also looks promising.
Although the additional 28,000 readers reported are also within the statistical confidence range, it is reasonable to assume that Tamedia's flagship is picking up speed again.
The trends of various other daily newspapers can at least be interpreted as consolidation. Several of them have achieved their strongest results in the last four years. The Neue Luzerner Zeitung, for example, reported 31,000 additional readers. Or the St.Galler Tagblatt with an increase of 19,000. But the Basler Zeitung and Südostschweiz are also above the figures for 2000 with 18,000 and 15,000 new readers respectively.
The daily newspapers in French-speaking Switzerland are characterized by a remarkably high degree of stability. Although the gains here are also far from statistically significant in most cases. Nevertheless, they can at least be interpreted as an upward trend. Take Le Matin, for example, which has increased its reach by three percentage points since 2001.
However, the sky is not quite so clear for the daily newspapers in Ticino. Both the Corriere del Ticino and the Giornale del Popolo have lost several percentage points of their reach, although the changes remain within the statistical confidence range. Important for the Giornale del Popolo: this title is no longer included as a complete edition in the current Mach Basic. The reason for this is that its front page Giornale di Locarno was discontinued at the beginning of 2003 and its subscribers have been receiving the Giornale del Popolo since then. Accordingly, its figures correspond to the net combination of all readers of both titles.
Either way, the two negatively trending titles are not yet an indication of a newspaper-weary audience in southern Switzerland. After all, the second-largest daily newspaper in Ticino, La Regione, is doing just under one percentage point better in terms of reach than in the previous year.
With an increase of 38,000 readers, the Berner Zeitung is this year's winner in the daily press category - and believes its growth potential is far from exhausted.
Berner Zeitung still has potentialFor this year's winner among the newspaper reach winners, the fluctuations in connection with the integration of Berner Oberland Medien (Thuner Tagblatt, Berner Oberländer) are now also over. The discontinuation of the Oberländisches Volksblatt, whose subscribers now receive the Berner Oberländer, apparently caused irritation among those surveyed in the readership study, as is usually the case when new names are introduced. "Now we have gained a significant number of readers in the Oberland", explains a satisfied Franziska von Weissenfluh, Publishing Director of the Berner Zeitung.
There is even more joy about the success in Solothurn. The newspaper fighting against the Mittelland Zeitung, the Solothurner Tagblatt, is now rapidly gaining momentum - 67 percent were added in one fell swoop in the most recent survey period in WG 32. With 40,000 readers, the Tagblatt now has almost half the audience of the Solothurner Zeitung, which also experienced a slight upswing with 86,000 new readers. The Berner Zeitung was successful in its core area, the city and agglomeration of Bern. Despite the advance of 20 Minuten (see page 24), the Espace title gained 15,000 new readers there. The outlook for the future is rosy. "We still have a lot of potential both in Solothurn and in the Oberland," says von Weissenfluh. (dse)
Daniel Schifferle

Cinema More and more Swiss people - especially those in Ticino - are going to the cinema more often - and are also seeing more advertising. The advertising time marketer Mediavision gained further market share in Geneva and Lausanne. The cinema industry recorded an extremely strong influx last year - 6.3 percent more visitors bought tickets. Box office hits such as "Harry Potter", "Lord of the Rings II" and the latest James Bond film brought an average of 486,000 weekly contacts to the cinema medium throughout Switzerland in the survey period from April 2002 to April 2003, 29,000 more than in the same period the previous year. However, the growth was only really significant in Ticino, where the weekly reach increased by 33 percent to 21,000 visitors, while in German-speaking Switzerland the increase in visitors (+17,000 or +5.5 %) reached exactly the limit of the confidence range. In the French-speaking part of Switzerland, on the other hand, cinemas only gained a total of 6000 contacts (+4.3%). The change was far less significant. In contrast to the previous year's survey period, new multiplex cinemas did not play a significant role in the increase in reach this time, as only one new large cinema opened its doors in Baden (fall 2002). At the same time, however, small cinemas were closed in the city of Aargau.
Medivision catches up slightly
At the level of the two competing cinema marketers Cinecom and Mediavision, the good cinema year brought hardly any shifts in their market shares (MA). In terms of Switzerland as a whole, the two even remained in exactly the same positions as in the previous year: Cinecom continues to hold 86.4% and Mediavision 13.6%. As Cinecom still leases all cinemas in German-speaking Switzerland and Ticino, it has an MA of 100% in both parts of the country. The situation is different in French-speaking Switzerland, where Mediavision improved its MA slightly from 45.3% to 46.2%.
What is significant, however, is the fact that Mediavision was able to expand its combat zone in the hardest-fought centers of Geneva and Lausanne. In these cities, Cinecom also achieved slight, albeit not significant, improvements in market share. However, Mediavision - with an increase of 4,000 visitors in Lausanne and 5,000 contacts in Geneva - was ahead: these gains are exactly on the significance threshold.
As a result, Mediavision now has a market share of 26.4% in Lausanne, 4.7% more than last year. In the city of Calvin, the figure is now as high as 57.4%, 3.2% more than in the previous survey period. By contrast, Mediavision was unlucky in Valais, where it won all leases but still suffered significant losses in reach (-28.6 %).
Multiplex: primarily leased by CinecomThere are currently nine multiplex cinemas in Switzerland: Balexert in Geneva, Cinétoile in Prilly, CineStar in Lugano, MaxX in Lucerne, Cinemax in Zurich, Kinepolis in Schaffhausen, Trafo in Baden, Cinedome in Abtwil (SG) and Flon in Lausanne. Further projects are in the planning phase in the Basel, Berne, Zurich-Oerlikon and St. Gallen regions. Apart from Balexert, Cinecom has succeeded in signing contracts with all other major cinemas. (mk)
Markus Knöpfli

Member press After a poor 2002, Brückenbauer and Construire have recovered. But there is no sign of a turnaround in the duel with the Coop-Zeitung.Karl Vögeli no longer wants to talk about a race. "This race is probably decided," says the publishing director of the Coop-Zeitung, commenting with satisfaction on the Mach Basic figures for the membership press. His newspapers have not only gained readers in all parts of the country - they have also grown more strongly everywhere than the newspapers of retail rival Migros. But the orange giant also has reason to be pleased: after Brückenbauer, Construire and Azione had lost considerable reach in the previous year, they returned to the road to success in 2003. With an increase of 1.7 percentage points or 81,000 readers, Brückenbauer even surpassed its 2001 figures. The growth is clearly in the statistically significant range.
Catching up in French-speaking Switzerland
The French-speaking Swiss edition Construire, on the other hand, increased by just 0.4 percentage points, which corresponds to 11,000 additional readers. In French-speaking Switzerland, the race between Coop and Migros is still in full swing. Two years ago, Migros had a comfortable lead of five percentage points. Now Construire is still in the lead with 42.9 percent reach, but Coopération has caught up further: it has gained 27,000 new readers and is now only 1.3 percentage points behind its competitor.
"In recent times, we have simply become better at meeting readers' wishes in terms of content and design," says Karl Vögeli, outlining the secret of the Coop press' success. A problem that Migros has also recognized and is tackling systematically. Since the beginning of this year, a relaunch for Brückenbauer and Construire has been in preparation under the leadership of Head of Communications Monica Glisenti. The new concept is to be launched in May 2004. Ticino's Azione is already further along: the newspaper, which differs significantly from its German and French counterparts, is being given a new look this week.
However, the bridge builder has managed to reverse the trend after the slump in 2002 even without a relaunch. According to Monica Glisenti, circulation is increasing in line with the number of Migros cooperative members. "However, the positive development in the readership survey shows that we have also become more attractive in terms of content."
Gray spots in big cities
This year, a trial subscription to Brückenbauer and Construire has been offered so that the Migros Press can be distributed beyond the circle of Cooperative members. This is a strategy that Coop has already been using for two years to increase its readership. "We still have potential, especially in the big cities of German-speaking Switzerland," believes publishing director Vögeli. "There are not exactly white areas, but there are gray areas where the Coop newspaper is only weakly represented."
Vögeli sees a range of around 70% as a possible growth ceiling. While this figure seems to be within reach in German-speaking Switzerland, it is still a long way off in French-speaking Switzerland. This is partly due to historical reasons, says the publishing director. As a major distributor, Coop has always had a weaker foothold in French-speaking Switzerland than Migros. However, neither Vögeli nor Glisenti have a plausible explanation as to why both Coopération and Construire reach far fewer people than their German-language counterparts. There has never been a study on the differences in reach between French-speaking and German-speaking Switzerland, says Glisenti. "That's a very good question that we should look into."
Stefano Monachesi

The theme of this year's Swiss Post Direct Day is "Direct marketing on the brink of extinction? The transparent customer in the area of conflict between politics and marketing", with publicist Roger de Weck shedding light on the transparent customer. A high-caliber panel of experts will examine conflicts between data protection and direct marketing. The Direct Day will take place in Fribourg on November 27 from 12:00 to 17:30 and is subject to a fee. Interested parties can register at www.post.ch.

The black sheep of the journalist herd are called Tom Kummer or Jayson Blair. They falsify or copy their articles out of laziness or a desire for recognition. What is forgotten is that the media distort or abbreviate more often than they reinvent. When Burkhard Müller-Ullrich first took the "zeitgeist amplifiers in an indignant tone" to court in 1996, he was cut by colleagues but celebrated by the public as a disenchanter, whether it was forest dieback, the legend of organ harvesting or the false martyr Taslima Nasrin: the experienced editor researched the still instructive favorite subjects of enlightening journalism. And comes to the conclusion that certain topics and groups of people trigger Pavlovian reflexes in the "solidarists" of the guild. Roger Köppel would be the right person to finally rewrite this important book for Swiss conditions.
Media fairy tale. The perpetrators of misconduct in journalism by Burkhard Müller-Ullrich. Goldmann Verlag, Munich 1998. 254 pages, Fr. 14.30.
(oc)