Column Emotions can be managed in a targeted manner. The decisive factor for the journalistic and commercial success of "high involvement" media is, above all, the right dosage in line with the zeitgeist. And of course television is to blame. But was and is it so different with print products? And if not, what's so bad about it? After all, advertising is not a lecture, but a communication game. Even academic courses cannot do without an affective stamp if any of the material taught is to remain in people's minds over the winter; after all, what is felt sticks longer than what is known, and so - also from a political point of view - revenge is still sweet even when the reason for it has long since been forgotten. In the face of an economy that is constantly churning out ever more similar goods of ever more comparable quality, emotionality is fully part of rational purchasing decisions and is therefore completely respectable as "emotionally-driven rationality". So long live emotional added value!
But which one and how much of it? In no time at all, the communication game turns into psychological hard work, diffuse feelings become difficult calculations. Advertising could learn a thing or two from the popular press, but especially from titles such as Schweizer Illustrierte, Gala or Glückspost, which dose their emotional charges in a remarkably target group-oriented way and place them with great accuracy: for the variety-seeking SI readers, the eternally emotional celebrity ups and downs, for the Glückspost readers in need of harmony, the wide trail to the weekly happy ending.
This emotional-strategic momentum is called "involvement" and is the all-important benchmark for how much of their own emotionality potential customers invest in a product and what kind of affective stamp of the advertising message also colors the product image attractively. It is well known that the positive or negative product image starts with the packaging (in every sense). And the less important the advertised product or service is for the soul of the target audience, the more the advertising message itself must touch the heart. A tightrope walk, no doubt, and no advertising primer in the world is a foolproof guide to emotional success.
What is needed instead is empathy, especially in bad socio-psychological weather conditions. This is when the population reacts particularly sensitively. Especially in times of war and catastrophe, it's time for the journalistic appeasers and comforters to take charge. In such times, the advertising industry, as a fair-weather industry, holds back somewhat shamefacedly, but also calculatedly. But who is surprised when, for example, aircraft manufacturers and long-distance tour operators cancel their advertising orders in the face of air disasters.
Between Scylla and Charybdis: woe betide advertising that violates the emotional consensus, but woe betide advertising that leaves us emotionally cold. In view of these findings, the only question that arises is what kind of recklessness continues to drive even more surplus recruits into the arms of this tightrope-walking industry.
> Ulrich Saxer was professor of journalism at the University of Zurich and professor of communication sociology in Lugano.

Borsalino Managing Director André Michel is convinced that customers and Ringier will benefit from the networking of Cash.ch and Borsalino.ch to create a new business and finance site.WW What prompted the decision to convert the Cash and Borsalino Internet offering into a new finance and business platform? André Michel This step is related to the new Internet strategy adopted by Ringier last fall. The media company currently has around two dozen Internet sites in Switzerland. With the new strategy, we want to limit ourselves to four sites in the future: First, an entertainment platform based on Blick Online. Second, Betty Bossi Online. Third, a business and finance platform with Cash.ch, Cashtv.ch and Borsalino. And fourth, a service and marketing platform that combines the offerings of all Ringier titles. That's why we at Cash have set ourselves the goal of turning what were previously three sites into a single joint presence.
How will customers benefit?Our customers will find the range of products and services they have been familiar with concentrated in one place. We will also save money by operating just one Internet site instead of three. We will use this money to offer our users more content and strengthen the service.
Nevertheless, there are already many financial sites, none of which are in the black. Is it even possible to make such an offer profitable?
I don't think we would launch a completely new financial site today. But thanks to Borsalino, we have a good chance to put together an already well-functioning financial site with the excellent brand "Cash" into something new and something better.
But even today, five years after its launch, Borsalino is still not in the black.
That is so, but I also don't know of any other financial platform that is in the black. On the other hand, I am firmly convinced that it will be possible to make a profit in the future. In the meantime, not only have all competitors in the financial information space driven down their costs - many have pulled the plug. In this cleansed market, there should basically be enough room for the remaining ones.
You have also tightened the cost-cutting screw at Borsalino?we have cut costs at Borsalino by around a third. However, no further redimensioning is planned. We now also want to implement new ideas.
What will the new site be called? For legal reasons, I'm not allowed to say yet. But it will certainly be a name built around the "Cash" brand. However, the existing names will remain as subbrands. For example, if you type in Borsalino.ch, you will be taken directly to the stock market information within the new business and finance platform.
Interview: Daniel Schifferle

The job advertisement platform www.JobScout24.ch now also offers professional advice for jobseekers. They can have their application documents checkedThe job advertisement platform www.JobScout24.ch now also offers professional advice for jobseekers. This
can have their application documents checked or undergo individual coaching. JobScout24 operates this service under the name
"Career Services" in cooperation with a network of career experts. It is to be successively expanded.

Newspapers The daily newspaper association Die Südostschweiz (SO) is to have a new printing center in Haag SG, where all local titles with the exception of the Schwyz editions are to be printed from 2006. Until now, the SO titles Liechtensteiner Vaterland, Sarganserländer and Werdenberger & Obertoggenburger (BuchsMedien) have operated a joint printing plant in Haag. The largest partner publishing house of SO, Südostschweiz Print AG, is now included. The Rheintalische Volkszeitung, which is not part of the SO group, is also a new shareholder. All partners each hold 20 percent of the company. The printing center will cost around 22 million francs.

Advertising impact research Formal factors such as size, colors or length have a strong influence on the impact of advertisements and commercials - knowledge of these influences and their orchestrated interplay optimize advertising messages.If you want to bring some order into the multitude of factors that influence the impact of advertising, it is advisable to first distinguish between content and formal factors of advertising impact.The content factors include the reference of the advertisement to the product, the qualitative design of an advertisement and the creativity of the presentation - these are influences that are difficult to put in a row. Content-related qualitative factors are tricky for research. They are difficult or impossible to quantify and often impossible to identify.
Research is easier with formal factors such as ad size, spot length, switching frequency, use of color in ads, magazine size or placement in the magazine. They offer the advantage that they can be measured quite easily, as can their impact.
What is the result of all these measurements? For decades, most of the formal factors of advertising impact were boundlessly overestimated. Moreover, they were considered the hobbyhorses of researchers and the favorite children of advertisers, who sometimes attributed immense importance to them. In reality, however, many formal influencing factors play a rather subordinate role. But not all of them. It is important to separate the wheat from the chaff.
For example, the size of the advertising medium is important. The findings here are clear. Common sense tells us that. Large ads have a greater impact than small ads. Large posters attract more attention than small posters. But beyond these truisms, the crucial question is of course: does an ad twice as large have twice or even more than twice the effect? Or expressed in francs: Does a large and correspondingly more expensive ad have a greater impact if it costs more? In other words, is it worth the money?
Advertising research has been looking for answers to this question for over a hundred years. In 1908, the American psychologist William D. Scott discovered that large advertisements are noticed disproportionately more often than small ones. A half-page ad attracts around three times as many glances as a quarter-page ad. Based on similar studies, the German advertising researcher Theodor König came to the following conclusion in 1926: "Whoever pays for an eighth of a page thus receives by far not the eighth part, but barely the twentieth part of the psychological influence that a full page produces."
Overall, the research results on the influencing factor of ad size are quite contradictory. The exact correlation between the increasing size of ads and the resulting increase in attention, recall, recognition or advertising effectiveness varies considerably:
- Numerous studies have come to the conclusion that there is a constant correlation between ad size and ad attention. All the evidence suggests that this is not entirely true.
- Other studies have shown that the increase in attention is less than proportional to the increase in format size. This means that the law of diminishing returns generally applies to the advertising effectiveness of different ad sizes.
- Similarly, the increase in effectiveness with increasing ad size is not proportional, but disproportionately low. However, the specific impact curve is sometimes steeper and sometimes flatter, depending on the advertising problem. While the increase in effectiveness is relatively high for smaller format sizes, the additional gain is always smaller for large formats.
Strong Starch formula The American media and advertising researcher Daniel Starch investigated the relationship between ad size and recall and came to the conclusion that the proportion of people who remember
can be predicted from the proportion of people who can remember a half-page ad using a simple formula (the Starch formula): if 10 percent of the readership see a half-page ad, a full page generates an additional 10 percent of the rest of the readers - so it is remembered by a total of 19 percent of readers. The increase with a larger format is therefore disproportionately low.
If one tries to reduce the sometimes contradictory findings to a common denominator, one thing is certain: Large advertising media generally work better than smaller ones. In reality, however, there are many exceptions to this rule. In most cases, the increase in effectiveness is disproportionately lower with increasing size, which means that the increase in effectiveness is often achieved at a high price.
By analogy with ad size, the same principles also apply to spot length. Long commercials are generally more effective than short commercials, but not in every case. Two short commercials can sometimes be better received by the television audience than one long one. Here, too, the law of
formal advertising impact factors: by extending or doubling the length of the campaign, a disproportionately low increase in impact is achieved in the best case, rarely more (see box on p. 9).
There are also reliable findings on the subject of "magazine size". For example, a long-term comparison of copy test results of the magazine Hörzu published in 1991 under the title "Qualitative Resonance Analysis" examined the influence of magazine size, among other things. The study came to the following conclusion: There is less competitive pressure for the advertised product in thin magazines with fewer advertisements. Thick magazines are picked up more often, however, as they contain more reading material. The first argument speaks for higher recall values in thin magazines, the second for higher recall values in thick magazines.
The figures from the Hörzu copy tests did not reveal any significant differences. It is possible that the two opposing influences - competitive pressure versus repeated reading - cancel each other out.
A large part of the empirical research results on the factors influencing advertising can be dispensed with - at best, they produce contradictory findings. The key to explaining the significance of formal factors lies in the so-called orientation reflex.
The main thing is stimulatingPerceptual psychology describes a reflex-like, involuntary reaction to activating stimuli as an orientation reflex. It adjusts the organism to the stimulus, sensitizes the information system and increases the supply of information from the entire environment. The more intense a stimulus is, the more likely and the stronger the orientation reflex becomes. The reaction does not depend on the person themselves at all, but solely on the stimulus.
The orientation reaction is largely automatic. It is determined in particular by the following aspects of a stimulus:
Intensity, color, size, novelty, uncertainty. Color in particular triggers strong orientation reactions and automatically attracts the viewer's attention.
Similar reactions can be expected from all stimuli with strong activation potential. In advertisements, the strongly activating elements are fixed on average around 40 percent more frequently than the weakly activating elements.
There are essentially three
Properties of stimuli that trigger the orientation reflex:
- Everything that is new, conspicuous, unfamiliar and surprising leads to an orientation reaction.
- Everything that is important to a person and promises very pleasant or very unpleasant experiences.
- And above all: everything that is loud, shrill, garish, large or colorful. This applies in particular to the colors yellow, orange and red.
Colorful ads with bold colors are therefore generally more effective than ads that are gray in gray.
come along. But their effect naturally fizzles out in a print world where everything is colorful. Black and white is more striking.
Insignificant choice of placementThis orientation reaction also explains why some other formal factors of advertising impact are rather secondary. Placement, for example. Whether an ad is at the top right or bottom left of a page, whether it is at the front or back of the magazine, is relatively insignificant for its impact. In any case, there are far more important aspects of advertising impact than placement.
When it comes to placement, researchers have long racked their brains over a very strange phenomenon. Hundreds of studies conducted worldwide have repeatedly confirmed the fact that the advertising impact of advertisements in print media is virtually independent of their placement in the editorial environment. In any case, there are stronger factors influencing advertising impact than the editorial environment. It is therefore relatively irrelevant whether an advertisement promoting schnapps is placed next to an article about how a circular saw works.
The program environment on television and radio, on the other hand, has a completely different effect. The program environment is decisive for the effectiveness of a TV or radio commercial. Virtually all studies that have looked into this topic agree on this. If spots are placed in an unfavorable environment, their effect largely fizzles out.
The key to the explanation is provided by the construct of "psychological-emotional closeness": someone watching a romantic movie is not "receptive" to a commercial advertising the use of a vacuum cleaner. Anyone who follows the plot of an action movie spellbound has no interest in oatmeal.
What promises very pleasant experiences triggers an orientation reflex in people: Diesel's eye-catching display.

30 seconds feel like 75 percent of 60 seconds

Comparative studies on the different effectiveness of 30-second and 60-second television commercials in the USA have produced the following findings:
- On average, 30-second spots achieve around 15 percent lower spot awareness than 60-second spots.
- 30-second spots achieve the same motivational effect as 60-second spots.
- 30-second commercials are more effective with younger viewers than with older viewers.
- Two 30-second spots achieve considerably higher effects in terms of spot awareness and knowledge of the advertising content than a 60-second spot that is only used once.
- 60-second commercials are often "rejected" more than 30-second commercials - and always when the advertising content is repeated too often in the 60-second commercial.
- 60-second spots are often more effective than
30-second commercials for the launch of new brands,
or when thematically new and relatively complicated
Advertising messages should activate the advertising of a brand.
- The comprehensibility of the advertising texts does not suffer if the time is reduced from 30 seconds to 24 seconds.
- The effect of a 10-second spot is 78 percent of that of a 30-second spot in terms of changing brand preference and 60 percent in terms of recall.
- All in all, the overall effect of 30-
seconds spots have about 75 percent of the effect of 60-second spots.
Second spots. (wjk)
Less spot time often brings the same amount of attention.
Wolfgang J. Koschnick

SunriseSunrise sells everything, from cell phones to landlines. And Wirz Werbung designed the image campaign for it. What's still missing? Exactly: Critical words and clicks galore on www.werbewoche.ch/adratingMobitare
The young designer rip-off story by Jung von Matt/Limmat for the furniture store in Dübendorf went, sorry, down the drain.
Top 34,39%
Flop 65,61%

After the photo frenzy from the image archives, the good old illustration with the draughtsman's handwriting is currently experiencing a striking revival.
Illustration with the handwriting
of the draughtsman is currently enjoying a striking revival. In one such
situation, suddenly good
illustrators. You can now find them in the book "Freistil" by
Raban Ruddigkeit. His first overview of the illustration scene in Germany, Austria and Switzerland presents 175 of the best illustrators and their working styles. Listed are
References, the most important publi
cations, a description of the techniques and the contact address.
Verlag Hermann Schmidt, Mainz, ISBN 3-87439-651-5.

Agencies The merger project with the working title "Swiss Leading Agencies" received little applause at the general meeting of the Association of Public Relations Agencies (BPRA). 16 members spoke out against the merger and four in favor, according to Peter P. Knobel of the agency of the same name. Only the large agencies had promised themselves advantages. According to BPRA President Ulrich Bollmann, the importance of integrated communication was questioned during the presentation of the project, as argued by the boards of the BPRA and the industry association of Swiss advertising and communication agencies. Bollmann emphasized to Werbewoche that no vote had taken place. Rather, the board had presented the project to the members in order to obtain a picture of the mood. It was self-evident that the BPRA board would not continue to work on projects that obviously had no chance of being approved. (sm)

Internet With e-Cash appearing a day earlier, Ringier's business paper is primarily targeting multinational Swiss companies and the impatient.André Michel, Managing Director of Borsalino and member of Ringier's Business Media Management Board, puts it bluntly: "What cash.ch has offered so far was simply unworthy of Switzerland's leading business newspaper." With the launch in mid-April of e-Cash, the new full version of the newspaper on the Web, for which a fee is charged, a first step has now been taken to expand the online offering both quantitatively and qualitatively, he says. To ensure that the virtual menu also whets the appetite, subscribers to the Internet version will receive their e-Cash as early as Thursday, i.e. one day earlier than the newspaper.Hundreds of subscriptionsHowever, Michel is not setting his expectations particularly high. "It certainly won't be thousands, but maybe a few hundred," he estimates the number of subscribers who will only order the Internet version. The business manager has two main target groups in mind: On the one hand, people living in Switzerland who are temporarily moving abroad and don't want to do without their business newspaper. On the other hand, multinationally active Swiss companies. "For such companies, it could be attractive to provide their employees working abroad with quick access to current topics on the Swiss economy - by providing them with a subscription to e-Cash."
But the one-day earlier publication is also an attractive USP for certain Swiss audience segments. "For example, for people who are involved in the stock market and want to access information as immediately as possible. On the other hand, there are also impatient Cash subscribers who spend the extra 20 francs so that they can browse a little on the Internet in advance," explains Michel.
One thing, however, is clear: e-Cash sees itself primarily as an additional distribution channel for the print edition of Cash, but one that is not designed to generate high revenues. This is due to the low additional investment for the online newspaper - according to Michel "thanks to the
already existing infrastructure under 50000 francs per year" - also not mandatory.
Password problems can be solvedThe problem of access authorization for e-Cash subscribers has not yet been definitively solved. One could, after all, come up with the idea of subscribing to the online newspaper only once, but then passing the password on to other employees by e-mail. "We will limit possible misuse, in such a way that a maximum of two or a maximum of three logins can be made at the same time with the same password in a given period of time," says Michel. At the very least, he says, this will put a stop to abuse on a larger scale. "Abuse on a smaller scale, on the other hand, hardly bothers us. Even Cash in paper format is read by more than five people per copy. And our main goal is to generate as many readers as possible."
Ringier's main aim with e-Cash is to generate additional readers.

Get a day ahead with e-CashSince mid-April, the business newspaper Cash has been available as a full version in the
Internet available. Subscribers to e-Cash pay 184 francs per year - the same as for the paper edition. For an additional 20 francs, they also receive the newspaper delivered. Of course, the reverse is also possible. To an existing
Newspaper subscription can be purchased for 20 francs
the new Internet offer can also be booked. In contrast to other full versions of print media on the Internet, which usually take longer to download, e-Cash is characterized by rapid data transfer, according to its creators. (dse)
Daniel Schifferle

The media budget of the online marketplace eBay will now be managed by Initiative Media in the German-speaking region, the decision was made after a multi-stage selection process, the Hamburg office of the media agency announced.

The media agency group OMD Switzerland is now responsible for the entire product range of the dairy group Emmi.The unit OMD Zurich City already supported Emmi with the new launch of Aloe Vera Sensitive yogurt. Based on the positive cooperation, Emmi decided to extend the mandate to all advertised products, OMD announced.

The marketing agency Richterich & Partner in Zollikon significantly expanded its client portfolio in the first quarter of 2003. It is now working for the chocolate manufacturer Barry Callebaut, which has its roots in Belgium and France and is now headquartered in Zurich. Other new agency clients include the international management consultancy firm Booz Allen Hamilton and the consumer goods brands Kellogg's, Braun, Oral-B and Duracell.