Sporting goods marketing The mountain sports specialist Mammut shows courage and has Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett design a "snowy" appearance Wild snow flurries and impenetrable fog - the mountain sports outfitter Mammut presents its new products in such bitingly cold surroundings. However, consumers never get to see the equipment in the advertisements - visibility is too poor. But fortunately there is the ad text. It describes what would be on display if the heavenly weather maker had a heart for alpinists. "The competition often works with beautiful mountain images," says Jon Forrer, Head of Advertising at the Mammut Sports Group. "We wanted to do something completely different," he says, explaining the decision to use snow and fog. In addition, the advertisements would be placed in specialist magazines worldwide, where the Mammut brand and its products are already well known. "We are therefore convinced that we are on the right track," says the advertising manager optimistically. The creative sherpa on the high alpine advertising tour was the team from the Zurich agency Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett (SFLB). They brought the international budget to Aemtlerstrasse at the beginning of this year.
Advertising with Yeti "Tested by extreme alpinists under the most adverse conditions" is the motto that CD Martin Spillmann and copywriter Peter Brönnimann consistently implement in the visuals: The images show hard-boiled trekkers who have set off into the mountainous wilderness. With a lot of imagination, the blurred figures in the Nepalese fog could easily pass for yeti.
Despite clouds in the economic sky, the Mammut Sports Group, based in Seon in the canton of Aargau, just managed to maintain its previous year's sales in 2002, reaching 106 million Swiss francs - compared with 109 million in 2001. In addition, the company has succeeded in offering a complete outdoor and mountain sports range with the acquisition of Toko, a company specializing in ski wax and care products, and the mountain boot brand Raichle. In addition to Toko and Raichle, the Norwegian sleeping bag specialist Ajungilak and the namesake Mammut are also united under the Mammut Sports Group brand umbrella.
The outfitter is not alone in its efforts to offer everything from a single source. Forrer adds: "The trend at the moment is towards being a full-service provider, which is why we are constantly buying and selling." In the export markets, where Mammut Sports Group generates around 65 percent of its turnover, it faces tough competition mainly from the American manufacturers North Face and Patagonia, while its competitors in Switzerland are Salewa and Jack Wolfskin.
The four subjects of the "summer campaign" are currently appearing in trade journals worldwide. A "winter campaign" is planned for the second half of the year. It is certain that this will follow the same concept, but those responsible do not yet want to reveal any more details.
SFLB ads for Mammut: Fog shrouds the products.
Simone Keller

Tobacco advertising It's not easy to get away from cigarettes - not only for smokers, but probably also for Formula 1, which has been cashing in on sponsors from the tobacco industry for years. The EU wants to put an end to this from 2006. The BMW-Williams team has already found a suitable replacement: According to the industry magazine Horizont, it is now sponsored by the anti-smoking patch Niquitin. The manufacturer, GlaxoSmithKline, emphasized that this is the first time a tobacco cessation product has been used as a logo in the Formula 1 business.

From May 12, Blick will appear in a new layout. This is possibly the most comprehensive renovation of the Ringier tabloid, as Markus Rohr from the editorial team explains, and there are said to have been no taboos. Newspaper designer Kurt Schwerzmann has revised the logo and even banned the bright yellow from posters and kiosk displays. A large poster designed by the agency GGK Zurich will be displayed in Zurich's train station concourse from 3 May, giving a foretaste of the new Blick look: instead of the garish yellow, the basic color is a soft light blue, the logo is in the previous red, but with smaller lettering. The same applies to the kiosk displays: in future they will appear in blue, olive, pink and light yellow - now also in A3 format. These colors (with the exception of light yellow) will also be used on the inside of the paper, at the expense of red and black. The pastel shades are also intended to reflect the new content concept: "Editor-in-chief Werner de Schepper wants to differentiate more, make a more open paper, moralize less - and yet not lose the bite," says Rohr, adding that perhaps we will soon see Blick with completely different eyes.

Business media The French-speaking Swiss business media group Agefi posted a loss of around CHF 779,000 in the 2002 financial year.Business media The French-speaking Swiss business media group Agefi posted a loss of around CHF 779,000 in the 2002 financial year.
In the previous year, a profit of 41,000 Swiss francs was recorded. The loss was partly due to the acquisition of Success & Career in February 2002, when the Agefi Group took over 47 percent of the provider of career guides in print and online for 1.24 million francs. As the objectives of Success &
Career had not been achieved, Agefi had decided to terminate the purchase agreement.
to dissolve the agreement, according to a press release. Legal steps have been taken to recover the entire purchase price.

Trade unions The Swiss Federation of Journalists (SVJ) welcomes the publishers' decision to enter into negotiations on a new collective labor agreement (CLA) instead of simply terminating the existing one. The Swiss Press Association (VSP) is thus taking up an initiative of the SVJ, according to a press release. A situation without a contract would jeopardize social peace and further exacerbate the economically strained situation of many publishers.

Tabloid newspapers The sports editors of Blick and SonntagsBlick have decided to dispense with the services of Roman Kilchsperger and have agreed to terminate the contract at the end of July, editorial director Bernhard Weissberg told Werbewoche. The Ringier publishing house had poached Kilchsperger from Radio 24 at the end of last year as a presenter for the TV project "Blick Sporttalk". After the show was postponed in January until at least the fall, Kilchsperger wrote columns for the Blick sports editorial team instead. "But neither Kilchsperger nor we had a good feeling about these columns," says Weissberg. Although the former radio presenter had a fixed and well-paid contract for over a year, he reportedly only received modest compensation. Ringier spokeswoman Eva Keller denied that the separation from Kilchsperger would also mean the definitive end of "Blick Sporttalk". However, there is apparently no date in the autumn either: the show will not be realized "for the time being", Eva Keller explained the official language. (sm)

Guest commentary The ongoing brand hysteria is mainly for self-promotion, says Dominik Imseng. And calls on his colleagues to show moderation.
Stylists currently have reason to frown. Roger de Weck, for example, wrote: "Neoliberalism, rarely has a brand been so strong and treacherous." The demand to control economic processes via the market wherever possible should therefore no longer be a philosophy. Nor a principle or concept. But a brand. The second example: Rudolf Augstein "launched an idea into the world in 1947 and allowed it to grow into a brand for over fifty years", according to Cordt Schnibben in an obituary of the Spiegel founder. For Schnibben, the fact that the Hamburg magazine became a brand is no less an achievement of the journalist of the century Augstein than the fact that he turned his magazine into the much-cited "assault gun of democracy".
Both quotes are telling. De Weck's fauxmot makes it clear how much the term "brand" has degenerated into a commonplace word. It's not just neoliberalism that is now supposed to be a brand. But also countries (like our own). Or cities (like his alleged "downtown"). And last year's German Advertising Congress had a special theme: "The human brand." Patron of the event: Wolfgang Thierse, President of the German Bundestag. Not a man to be harnessed to any zeitgeist cart.
The fact that he did it here anyway has to do with the sound, even the enamel, that the long-simple term "brand" has today, and to which Schnibben's basically less than honorable tribute to Augstein also owes itself. In fact, "brand" is a kind of magic word these days, a term of fascination. No wonder: brands are not only "sexy" - they are the "new gods", as Norbert Bolz and David Bosshart taught in their 1995 bestseller "Kultmarketing".
But is there really a form of brand awareness that can be called "cultic"? Isn't the assumption of a quasi-religious worship of brands merely an assumption?
a) a handful of ads that - like the PlayStation motif with the Lara Croft crucifix - make use of the creative spin "So good that we have nothing else on our minds", and
b) the tendency of young people to constantly come up with new recognition formulas: Sometimes something is "strong", then "cool", then "awesome", then "shrill" and currently "cult".
Despite such doubts, brands are stylized as "lighthouses" that are supposed to help us reduce the complexity of our society and even cope with our metaphysical homelessness. Among advertisers in particular, a new type is developing that is now making itself out to be a priest with the same zeal as it did as an artist in the 1980s.
This is all the more disturbing as advertising is one of the most important instruments of brand management. And should therefore contribute to its professionalization instead of further irrationalizing the discussion. Last but not least, in the interests of advertising itself: The last thing our industry, which is currently in one of its worst crises, needs is bad - if you'll pardon the term - "self-branding".
> Dominik Imseng is Creative Director at McCann-Erickson Switzerland.

Customer Newspapers The Coop newspaper has overtaken the bridge builder. With a circulation of over two million copies, the customer magazines of Coop and Migros are the largest newspapers in Switzerland. The two major distributors are in a neck-and-neck race. Since the Wemf certification in 2002, the Coop newspaper has been ahead: it increased its circulation (German, French and Italian) by three percent to 2129160 copies. Although the Migros titles Brückenbauer, Construire and Azione also recorded growth (0.6 percent), they fell behind their competitors with 2116005 copies, having already suffered a drop of 0.1 percent in the previous year.Even if the difference is only 13155 copies or just 0.6 percent - together with a drop in net reach of 1.1 percentage points, there is a need for action for Brückenbauer and Construire. The publishing house Limmatdruck had already reacted before the Wemf certification. At the beginning of the year, a central position was created for Brückenbauer's marketing. Previously, the tasks were distributed among the advertising management, the publishing manager and the corporate communications department of Limmatdruck. Jrene Shirazi now holds all the strings of marketing. Shirazi was most recently publishing manager of the Migros cooking magazine Saison-Küche and before that worked at Tamedia as project manager for Annabelle, among other things.
Bridge aid for car brandsIn addition to intensified marketing by the publisher, the Migros regional companies and the Cumulus bonus program, a redesign is also intended to make Brückenbauer and Construire and Azione attractive to new subscribers. The project was launched at the end of last year. Monica Glisenti, Head of Corporate Communications at the Federation of Migros Cooperatives, is responsible. Details about the new concept and appearance were not yet available. The launch is scheduled for early 2004.
While efforts seem to be necessary to counter stagnation on the reader market, the bridge builder, on the other hand, reports successes on the advertising market.
The volume of advertising sold has increased significantly over the past three years. According to publishing director Jean-Pierre Pfister, about half of the total costs of 100 million Swiss francs for Brückenbauer, Construire and Azione are financed by advertisements. According to Factum, clients such as brand manufacturers and car importers, who were hardly represented in Brückenbauer just a few years ago, are also booking more frequently. However, the Migros paper continues to refrain from advertising alcohol and tobacco. Advertisements for branded articles that Migros does not sell are also not acquired.
Rejuvenates
at
Beginning 2004
his
Performance:
Bridge Builders.
Stefano Monachesi

Trade unions The media trade union Comedia has reacted in a combative tone to the Swiss Press Association's call for a new collective labor agreement, fearing that individual publishers are seeking to worsen working conditions "instead of basing their strategies on perseverance and social responsibility". Instead, Comedia would like to see a substantial improvement in the working conditions of media professionals.

The job market The job index published by employment agency Manpower raises hopes of an end to the crisis in job advertisements, with the index rising by 0.5 points in March, as it did in February, and now stands at 31.5 points across Switzerland. Indexed job vacancies in the daily press increased in six of the 13 regions surveyed, writes Manpower, namely in Aargau, Basel, Bern, Fribourg, St.Gallen and Solothurn. The index fell in Geneva, Lucerne, Schaffhausen, Valais and Vaud, while it remained unchanged in Biel and Zurich.

Private TV The Kanal 1 TV Group, owned by Austrian brothers Erwin and Hanno Soravia, is growing. Their Swiss managing director, Thomas Sadecky, is at the forefront of this growth. Last year, the Kanal 1 TV group acquired stakes in the "metropolitan area" stations TV München and TV Berlin. It also bought the TV 3 studio in Schlieren and commissioned former Moneycab business editor Thomas Sadecky to found two companies: Kanal 1 TV AG and U1 TV Programm AG, each with share capital (AK) of CHF 100,000. Sadecky, who has headed the investment company TST Qualitäts-Aktien-Investor AG (share capital: CHF 2.2 million) since 1999, holds "a small percentage" in the newly founded companies, as he says, but not in TST. Nevertheless, he is the only authorized signatory in each case.
Sadecky is also working on the license application for the U1 TV station. A first
He had to improve his application at the behest of the Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM): Swiss investors were missing. Since February, Sadecky has been regularly talking about presenting the investors "soon". So far, however, only
one well-known: the ex-tennis ace
Jakob Hlasek. On April 25, Sadecky announced the investor presentation "within the next 14 days". He also maintained that U1 would be launched in September.
How Sadecky manages his two employees and the purchase of
old Metropol boxes for a planned daily free TV program guide has not yet been disclosed. In any case, the AK of his two companies is unlikely to be sufficient for this. Not only that: Sadecky already acquired a good 10 percent stake in the listed Webfreetv.com Multimedia Dienstleistungs AG in Vienna last summer via U1 Programm TV AG. Webfreetv.com has an AK of 4.56 million euros (as of May 2001)! According to the Austrian press, the Soravia brothers have confirmed that this was only possible thanks to subsidies from them. Nevertheless, why are the Soravias weaving their network of shareholdings via Switzerland? And how are the investments accounted for? That is "not interesting", Sadecky told Werbewoche.
On the other hand, Sadecky justifies the investment in Internet TV pioneer Webfreetv.com, where he has been a member of the Supervisory Board since September, as follows: "Perhaps we could use Webfreetv.com one day." In any case, they are currently talking about joint projects at TV München and TV Berlin.
At Webfreetv.com, Sadecky made the acquaintance of Michael Lielacher, Chairman of the Supervisory Board. He is one of the founders of the financial information and communications service provider Bluebull AG in St.Gallen, where he is also Chairman of the Board. Like U1, Bluebull has held a good 10 percent stake in Webfreetv.com since May 2001. In February 2003, Lielacher appointed Sadecky to the three-member Bluebull Board of Directors, which now also includes Nicolas Berg, co-founder of Borsalino.ch. Sadecky said that he sits on the Bluebull Board as a private individual and has no personal stake in the St.Gallen-based company, neither via U1 or TST.
However, the Bluebull-Webfreetv.com-U1 investment triangle and the dual Lielacher/Sadecky connection suggest that Bluebull could be one of U1's future investors. Two other things make this even more likely: Whenever Bluebull AG (AK: 100,000 francs), founded in March 2000, has wanted to make investments, it has seemingly effortlessly found (mostly) unnamed investors - most recently at the beginning of the year, when it had its AK increased by 0.5 million francs to 6.5 million francs in order to take over a loss-making call center in Linz (A).
In addition, Bluebull changed its articles of association at the same time as Sadecky joined the Board of Directors. Previously, the purpose was "Operation of
Financial portals as a platform for providers of financial services", with the new addition of "Operation of an electronic issuing house, handling of telephone customer services and sales hotlines, maintenance of a multimedia information and shopping center, particularly on the Internet". These additions are justified by the call center purchase. But what does "electronic emission house" mean? Could this mean a stake in a TV station? Sadecky's answer is vehement: "That is not possible and will not be."
Thomas Sadecky participates in the Viennese Webfreetv.com for the Austrian Kanal-1-TV

Thomas SadeckyBorn in 1951, Thomas Sadecky graduated from the University of St.Gallen and then joined Unilever. After studying at the University of Berkeley, Thomas Sadecky played a key role in developing a new tennis and sports collection for the Bally shoe group.
Michael Lielacher Austrian citizen (photo), is the only one of the original three company founders still on the Board of Directors of Bluebull AG. In December 2000, he was appointed CEO of Webfreetv.com, where he took over as Chairman of the Supervisory Board in spring 2002. Throughout this time he remained
but Chairman of the Board of Directors at Bluebull. (mk)
Markus Knöpfli

Fashion Until now I was of the unshakable conviction that the human, let alone the female pubic hair, still belonged to the few taboos that would not be touched by advertising. Far from it. Gucci, the Italian fashion label of the well-heeled, disposes of the taboo right down to the pores and artfully with a razor. The effect touches the affect: Disgusted, one turns away from the G-fris, and even the supposed lover may not really look. In contrast, the Miss Sixty ad is refreshing. A sharply photographed, exciting mood setter. And last but not least, because the Gucci subject is ominously close to the subject of sex education, if male readers think the hairy "G" is a reference to the G-spot, they are sitting on the wrong side of the bed. (ck)