The future of advertising Communication is increasingly becoming synonymous with marketing. And reality the result of communication. If you read the same statistics I did in February, you know what the most communicated terms in Switzerland were last year:- Do you have a Cumulus card?
- For risks and side effects, read the package leaflet and ask your doctor or pharmacist.
- The person you have called is not available.
Since March 1, this statistic has become obsolete. Since the Alinghi victory, people only talk about port and starboard, and every housewife knows what a double sheet stay is. Since March 1, every second Swiss would trade the view of the Eiger and Mönch for free access to the Mediterranean.
Communication is addictive
And there's plenty of evidence that communication not only changes mindsets, but is downright addictive:
In Holland, a cab driver had to be hospitalized because of SMS addiction. On average, he sent 267 messages a day. That almost ruined him. In America, there has been a club of anonymous phone callers for 10 years. One member, a photographer, calls her voicebox every 3 minutes.
In Lausanne, a company fired an employee in December who had made it to 193 private
e-mails. Finanz & Wirtschaft complained in February that employees were chatting privately for up to four hours.
The secondary cell phone is also
such as second car, second home, second partner. There are consumers who belong to 50 customer clubs, have 42 credit cards, are subscribed to 39 magazines and receive 78 mail-order catalogs.
In Stockholm, since December, every day in the metro
1.4 million free newspapers distributed, although the city has only 750000 inhabitants.
In Thorberg, the inmates did not mutiny before Christmas because of the hated Birchermüesli for breakfast, but because they can only receive 27 TV channels instead of 43.
At the same time, we all have the old kindergarten fear that someone might take our marbles away. Today, we have more freedom than ever. But very few want that much. And more and more community is dying out. Mr. and Mrs. Swiss still go to Migros together, but take two shopping carts because they can't agree on one toilet paper.
In America, bowling was out until bowling alone came along. Shielded from others, the bowler now bowls alone - and bowling is booming like never before.
Our problem today is not too little, but too much. Buying and spending even more, learning even more, communicating, eating, drinking, living, working - having fun and loving no longer works.
Today, 50000 new articles are launched on the market every year, 90 percent of which disappear again immediately. Because after 115 years of branded articles, there is still no car that is bigger on the inside than on the outside.
The primacy of tempo is everywhere: food becomes fast, love becomes quick, the nap is now called a power nap.
Women are the new heroes
Advertising, on the other hand, has become sluggish. It has to reorient itself because the old images are no longer right:
- It is not men but women who are becoming the heroes of the new century. In 2002, more motorcycles were registered to women than to men in Switzerland. And Franz Carl Weber sells the Barbie doll today best in the outfit of a female dentist with a doctorate.
- Kids today no longer want to hear the story of the mouse, because it's annoying. They ask about the Dax and the Swiss Performance Index. I've been told that responsible parents today equip their child with a cell phone from the age of ten so that he or she is not isolated among peers.
- But even the oldies are no longer what they once were in advertising: bladder-weak buyers of Klosterfrau Melissengeist, modestly munching their Ankezieger in the Stöckli and solving the crossword puzzles in the Glückspost.
In reality, today we are dealing with colorfully dressed pensioners in the forever-young outfit of fitness doctor Ulrich Strunz. Tanned brown like Indian squaws, they populate the piazza of Ascona in droves with flowing white hair and bomber jackets. And it looks like tomorrow's world will no longer be the preserve of young deer, but a hunting ground for gray panthers.
No doubt, the situation of advertising is hopeless. But not serious. When Pope John Paul II on Good Friday again, out of tradition, hears the confessions of five faithful from five continents, I have hope that those who are responsible for communication being the way it is today will also go to confession for once.
First, the clients. Who talk about Customer Satisfaction and make everything disappear: Ticket offices and car washers, mailboxes and post offices, the Migros trolley, the dwarf schools in the Onsernone Valley, the fault service and telephones with which you could simply dial - and make a call.
I mean the pale bureaucrats who have two piggy banks and three cash registers inside. And who fear nothing so much as the impudent, masses of loitering private customers who bring in nothing. They hardly have any money in their accounts, live in rented accommodation, don't understand telebanking, but make transfers by hand, book tickets by hand - and are as bold as brass and complain about everything straight away.
You have to understand that more and more companies are signing up with Martin Mustermann. No more second-class people whimpering at every price increase. Either business customers only. Or reckon like Swiss, which designs the private customer for wood class on a small scale so that two of these fabulous creatures can fit in one seat.
Agencies should also be held accountable, as today the classic approach to direct marketing is like the father who sends his underage daughter out on the street so that he can finance the son's theology studies.
When you enter an advertising agency in Zurich today, you are greeted not by creative chaos but by the frosty charm of a bank branch. The controllers who call the shots there are distinguished by their ability to enter a revolving door behind you only to exit in front of you. In their mousy vestons, they look as inconspicuous as Mormon missionaries and are as cool as if they could spit ice cubes.
The women in the graphic, who always stare at the floor in the elevator, resemble avenging angels: pale complexion, black lips, ascetically short hair, ominous club feet, heavy gravedigger skirts.
The disenchantment of the worldWe must also question the role of the consumer: Is he really a king? Wise, just, sovereign? Does he really want to know whether the Happy Cow from Migros had it nice before it landed on his plate as a breaded cutlet?
Customers find child labor appalling. And yet they expect a hand-knotted carpet for 64 francs at the hardware store. At Tschibo, the 2 pounds of coffee beans for 2.95. At Franz Carl Weber, the leather ball for 6.75. Without being asked which little hands might have pawed at it!
And most customers look anything but regal, instead appearing meek, as if overwhelmed by the rhythm of the new realities: Log-in, log-out, log-on, log-off.
Science should also be sent to confession. Because it's making it harder and harder for us advertisers to enchant the world. It used to be clear to everyone why the Mon Chérie cherry tastes so good. The praline makers said it contained an original Piedmont cherry. Ferrero's confectioners explained that Byzantine royal nuts were crushed for their Baci balls.
That's what people believed - until the scientists came. They brought microscopes and test tubes. They weighed and dismantled every myth. X-any cherries were in Mon Chérie. They had never heard of a Byzantine king nut, the nut researchers explained.
Increasingly, advertising is also being hampered by the army of judges and objectors. A few weeks ago, a senator in Washington DC proposed revoking smokers' civil rights.
And an EU commissioner now wants to ban carmakers from any form of advertising, arguing that the desire to race is reprehensible. Seen in this light, it's a miracle that advertising still exists at all.
And surely it's only a matter of time before it's discovered that TV ads for sweets promote tooth decay. That ads for coffee are to blame if the heart beats faster.
Style groups instead of target groups
Advertising has never had such a hard time. But it has also never been so harmless. Just think of the Americans. They follow all the advice given in advertising and even buy mineral water that is "cholesterol-free. Because everything in the USA is labeled "no fat" and even Big Macs are available "light," Americans should have been floating high above the earth as ethereal beings long ago. But they do not
Or take the commercials that usually air on TV after midnight. Vibrating electric blankets, self-inflating guest beds in seconds, on which heavy men test-hop to the delight of the housewife: Wow - the bed can take us!
I think we finally have to stop talking about target groups, because we're dealing with style groups. Because it's more important if people wear the same tie than if they are the same age or have the same profession.
And we have to be prepared for offensive marketing. In other words, leading the markets by delivering superior customer benefits, by taking the initiative ourselves, by taking the risk of going our own way, and by forcing competitors into the copycat position.
Above all, we must allow the lightness of being again. Realize that buying has ideological qualities. That consumption does not satisfy needs, but fulfills desires.
And that services bind feelings of happiness.
Advertising is vital. Even if it will never be able to prevent conflicts and bring people to their senses. But it can build bridges between social utopias and normal consumers. And must therefore remain the driving force in marketing. It will never be enough to tell people what percentage of strawberries are in the jam. Because they also want to know who picked these strawberries and what stories are told there. Only advertisers can make Valerie Klitschkow read Dr. Faust in the boxing ring. Even make God the buyer of Toni yogurt and let Boris Becker be "in" again, while Verona Feldbusch adds her "blub". We need creative virtuosos who write so close to the truth that they succeed in selling the emperor's new clothes as haute couture.
Marketing must lead
Because it doesn't help any company to leave the customer relationship to mega-intelligent CRM software. Just as little as the illusion that marketing of the future can live on customer consent. If people only buy what they really need, our economic system will collapse within 10 weeks.
And if advertising is made dependent on customer consent in the future, half of all companies will file for bankruptcy. Because marketing must lead instead of follow. It must pick up the customer and take him to where he wants to go before he realizes it.
September 11, the Swissair grounding, the economic slump and the start of an unfortunate war have not changed that. But many things seem to have become questionable overnight, and nothing seems to fascinate us as much as the expectation of the worst.
If you could vote on the future today - many Europeans would be against it. And the age of uncertainty has also devastated the advertising environment. No wonder that never before have so many psychotropic drugs been sold in Switzerland. And that nine out of ten people have no greater desire than to return to everyday life, to normality, to news without the words Rumsfeld, mass layoffs, manager compensation.
However, scare stories have always been part of the advertising environment. And the content of the advertising has nevertheless remained the same: So it must go on. And it will continue. But: We have to create new contexts for a world in which nothing is as certain as the feeling of uncertainty. In the future, we will also need more respect in marketing and communication. Respect for what people feel and what really moves our customers.
We must learn to think beyond the boundaries of marketing and communication. Realize that the tasks of advertising have no beginning and no end. And we must encourage advertisers and allow laughter again, because no happy fart comes out of a despondent ass.
When I say advertisers, I mean the unpredictable alpha dogs. The lateral thinkers, the counterthinkers and the left thinkers. Who are never cool, but always on fire. They have to reinvent advertising now. And they must have the courage and the passion to keep looking at the world with new eyes, to mix new colors for the sky, the earth and the water, to create a new language, a new code and new contexts for this millennium.
We do not need to abolish the laws of nature for this, but only to make our fist wedges more efficient, to lift the prohibition boards and to create a few biotopes with species protection. Because the raw material - the creative human being - is available.
In the past, only geniuses were creative. Today, it can also be the plumber, because the new creatives no longer sit in the ivory tower - but in the midst of the bustling life. Just recently, I read in the ad of a Zurich hair salon: "We put ideas in your hair" - which almost tempted me to let Yvonne or Uschi twist a few ideas into my hair.
Messages on the meta level
The advertising situation seems hopeless, but it is not serious. Because it won't be enough in the future to tell customers how easy their car is to maintain. Instead, people expect messages that lead them on a treasure hunt into their own memories via the meta-level. At the risk of appearances sometimes mutating into reality. But with the chance that the cliché of happiness, reproduced a thousand times, will become reality the thousand hundredth time.
And because meteorologists have taught us that the flutter of a butterfly's wings can ignite a hurricane on the other side of the world, we should not underestimate the leverage of creative advertising. After all, scientists are still searching today for the rational explanation of why cows in Switzerland have purple coats.
"Consumption fulfills wishes," says Friedhelm Lammoth: Kaufhof store on Frankfurt's Hauptwache to accompany the "Shopping" exhibition at the Schirn.

Gifted speakerFriedhelm Lammoth is the creative head of the advertising agency Lammoth Mailkonzept, St.Gallen, which specializes in direct marketing, and Honorary President of the German Direct Marketing Association. He has made a name for himself not only as an advertiser, but also as a gifted speaker and publicist. This text is a slightly abridged version of a speech Friedhelm Lammoth gave last week at the spring festival of Blickle Direktmarketing. His next book, "Changing Course in Marketing: More Offensive - More Innovative - More Creative," will be published in the summer. (sh)
Friedhelm Lammoth

Guest commentary Those who fail to recognize and implement innovations in time will have to pay dearly for them later. Like Tamedia for 20 Minuten - whereby the free paper could soon turn out to be a Trojan horse in Tamedia's stable. The closure of the Express before its publication will go down in media history as a brutal version of cut-throat competition. What Tamedia and 20 Minuten signed on Friday, while the Express team unsuspectingly toasted their new newspaper, looks like a radical but sensible solution. After all, nobody has made money with free newspapers in Zurich since 1995 (apart from the old Tagblatt and ZürichExpress until 2000), and the stock market-driven newcomers Metro and Schibsted have pushed the previously comparatively idyllic competition into new dimensions: The daily cadence and the new form of distribution along commuter routes required huge investments. So far, all those involved have only lost: Metropol, which was the first to drop out, the old and formerly profitable Tagblatt, because it was upgraded to ZürichExpress, but stopped halfway and failed to manage the balancing act between official gazette and commuter newspaper. But the entrepreneurial breakthrough has not yet been achieved at 20 Minuten either and its future is uncertain. Although the project was a success on the readership market, it never reached the repeatedly announced break-even point - presumably due to high editorial and distribution costs. In total, 100 to 120 million francs have probably been invested in the Zurich free newspaper market over the last five years - or lost, as the case may be.
Tamedia's flagship paper has suffered the most, losing a quarter of its readers since 1996. Of course, this is not only "thanks" to 20 Minuten. Under new management, the Tagi Group changed its strategy last year. After bloody market adjustments in private radio and television and in the online sector, it has now finally started to protect its core business. Publisher Eugen Russ from the comparatively poor Vorarlberg demonstrated how to do this at the last Dreikönigstagung. The clever top dog is securing his debut by - if nothing else - making competition for himself. In this way, the commuter newspaper, which was supposed to open up a new strategic field, becomes the "underbody protection" for the endangered subscription newspaper.
Tamedia could have had all this three years ago and at a lower price. But those responsible at the time were afraid for the Tages-Anzeiger and rejected existing plans for an offensive counter-strategy. The purchase price for 20 Minuten, which is still being kept secret but is certainly high, is, so to speak, the fine for riding the train of time. If you don't invent innovations in time and bring them to market, you have to buy them. Roger Schawinski grins in the background. He too was able to hand over his basically failed company to Werdstrasse just in time.
With 20 Minuten, Tamedia and its minority partner, the fiercely competitive Espace Media Groupe, have taken on a major challenge. With the traditional daily newspapers, which have also earned the money for this acquisition, they have reached saturation point - or are already well into the yellow zone as far as Tagi is concerned. They will have to brutally reduce the costs of 20 Minuten; the generously promised continued employment of forty Express staff without a page will not exactly help. At the same time, however, the market position of the expensive new acquisition on the reader market must be strengthened. This means being forced to aggressively promote "free reading", which has already failed in the online sector and is cannibalizing the core business with the 300-franc subscriptions. The prize, of course, is air supremacy in the regional advertising markets. In future, advertisers will have to pay close attention to ensure that they are not the ones who end up paying the heaviest fine for the general black market that is becoming fashionable.
> Karl Lüönd is a journalist, author and head of the Media Institute of the Swiss Press Association. He voluntarily left the free newspaper business in 1998 with his Züri Woche.

Sporting goods marketing company Sennhauser Communications is giving Alpine & Climbing Equipment a new look for its camp products. In the last UN Year of Mountains, the Swiss Alpine Club (SAC) huts recorded an eight percent increase in visitors. For Peter Mäder, SAC Managing Director, this is a sign that nature and the mountain world represent an increasingly important contrast to the sensory overload of everyday life. For Silvia De Vito from Switzerland Tourism, the fact that this also reflects the persistently poor economic situation is another possible reason why these low-cost accommodations are preferred. Due to recent events, the organization recently had to revise its expectations for 2003 downwards and is expecting another year of decline. De Vito explains that it is difficult to predict whether domestic tourists will make up for part of the slump. In any case, the safety factor has a major influence on vacation planning, but those who want to storm the Swiss peaks instead of the Himalayas are not immune to dangers here in Switzerland either and will therefore not be able to avoid good equipment. Such equipment is primarily defined by safety and weight. Camp, the Italian specialist for alpine hardware, also tries to combine these main characteristics in its products. The brand is distributed and promoted in Switzerland by the general importer Alpine & Climbing Equipment (ACE) in Amden.
To kick off the climbing and hiking season, Richard Bolt, owner of ACE, launched a consumer campaign with Sennhauser Communications. Advertiser Rene Sennhauser, who has been in charge of the camp budget for three years, tried from the very beginning,
to design the campaign "differently" for the modest market segment - Bolt estimates the volume at around one to two million francs. Whereas the advertisements used to be based on product images, accompanied by a witty headline, this year Sennhauser and his team are focusing on unusual stagings of pimples and ko.
Campaign for every age group
To dramatize the key benefit "safety" of Camp's "Startech" helmet, a helmeted skull with numbered bones is intended to show that there are "more than 1000 good reasons for the Startech". Another motif plays with the SAC logo, in which the outdated ice axe has been replaced by the contemporary "Alpax" from Camp. Sennhauser is eager to see how the club reacts to this, as its members' magazine Die Alpen is the most important medium for advertising. ACE wants to target alpinists of all ages with its current appearance. Nevertheless, the cheeky campaign is aimed more at a younger generation, says Bolt. This is also the clientele of tomorrow.
Sennhauser plays a witty, sometimes morbid game with alpine motifs for the Italian climbing outfitter Camp.
Simone Keller

Due to the large number of entries, the International Advertising Festival in Cannes has extended the submission deadlines for this year's festival (June 15 to 21, 2003) The deadline for advertising films, advertisements and posters is now March 28. Direct marketers and media planners still have until April 4 to submit their entries and the deadline for the Internet category is April 11.

Internet newspapers The German online newspaper Netzeitung is changing hands, with Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief Michael Maier and Ralf-Dieter Brunowsky, owner of the communications agency Brunomedia, taking over the website founded by BertelsmannSpringer in 2000. Netzeitung has been part of the specialist publishing group since Bertelsmann acquired the Internet company Lycos Europe. According to a press release, the new owners see the independent journalistic orientation as the best basis for the further development of Netzeitung. The current political situation shows how important the Internet has become in the news sector.

Bank marketing I Bank Coop positions itself as a decent bank with a spicy image campaign by Ruf Lanz.
Money makes the world go round and doesn't stink. The bankers of the Imperum Romanum already knew this. And because the Helvetii were so careful to follow this credo, Switzerland became one of the most important financial centers in the world - even if it took almost 2,000 years to do so. Admittedly, the secretive banking nation has had to make the painful experience in recent years that its image has been tarnished by the excessive strain on business ethics. The more bribery and corruption money was confiscated and dormant assets appeared in Swiss bank accounts, the more stubbornly the image of a hub country stuck, and the more seriously banking secrecy came under pressure. Nevertheless, the morally serious questions raised by the Swiss Federal Banking Commission (SFBC) not only brought the shortcomings in due diligence to the attention of the media. Above all, the SFBC succeeded in imposing stricter standards on all financial institutions.
Always a decent bank
Against this backdrop and the banks' declining advertising spending, Bank Coop's focus was given new relevance because, according to the brand founding, it was to position itself within the triangle of values of credibility, discipline and decency. "Bank Coop has always been a decent bank. This is the grace of its history as a bank of cooperative members and trade unionists," says Christoph Loeb, Head of Communications and a member of Bank Coop management. Even if all banks today can boast these attributes, there is still a small difference in the history of Bank Coop. In order to fulfil the mission - to raise awareness among Coop customers and SMEs and to position the bank - Ruf Lanz boldly and pointedly dramatizes the UAP enshrined in the company's guiding principle in the brand campaign: prosperity through decency.
The focus of the campaign is on the subject of "potentates", which was implemented in a TV commercial and a double-page advertisement. In it, the agency lists those unscrupulous tyrants who have placed "their" assets in safekeeping in Swiss bank accounts and have been legally convicted for doing so. Dictators such as Manuel Noriega, Mobutu Sese Seko and Ferdinand Marcos indirectly advertise Bank Coop - which proudly states in the headline that not everyone has an account with it. In the second print motif, the creatives show where the Basler-Kantonalbank subsidiary has no branches: in the notorious tax havens.
In addition to the main commercial, there is another film featuring the notorious US lawyer Edward Fagan. How is that possible given his popularity, you might ask? Quite simply: the damages claimant who has made the Swiss banking groups sweat is asked by a reporter on arrival at Zurich airport what he thinks of the Swiss bank Coop. The otherwise well-informed lawyer thinks for a long time before he confesses helplessly, "Bank Coop - I don't know. Never heard of it" and walks on, exasperated.
Markus Ruf also uses unconventional means such as movie tickets to reinforce the positioning, with a clear statement on the back: "If a numbered account at a Swiss bank plays a role in the following feature film: We are proud to say that no one will think of Bank Coop."
Markus Ruf at his best: The ads build up an image for Bank Coop with negative associations.
Bank marketing Ruf Lanz is creating a new image for Bank Coop - with negative connotations. One of the main roles is played by US star lawyer Ed Fagan (in the TV commercial) >> p. 7
Luca Aloisi

Bank CoopIs it chutzpah for a bank to advertise that it doesn't serve bullies? But certainly a campaign that deserves a profound appreciation on www.werbewoche.ch/adrating.Peugeot
Too bad for Euro RSCG that millions of people protested - against war and not for clean Peugeots.
Top 39,57%
Flop 60,43%

Internet Publimedia webadvertising AG is launching adManager - a free tool that supports companies and agencies in the creation of Internet advertising. adManager can be used to create banners. In addition, existing interfaces - as Publimedia writes in its press release - enable advertising to be placed on the most important regional and national websites according to target groups.

Commuter newspaper 20 Minuten launches its weekly nightlife magazine called "20 Minuten Week" on April 3, covering lifestyle topics such as music, fashion, film, computers and mobile communications as well as event tips. According to the advertising documentation, "20 Minuten Week" is published independently of the daily edition and has its own face, but is clearly recognizable as a member of the 20 Minuten family. The 50,000 copies will be distributed in Zurich, Berne and Basel on Thursdays from 4 p.m. onwards. According to Managing Director Rolf Bollmann, Tamedia's investment in 20 Minuten should have no influence on the launch. "I have not yet received a stop from the Board of Directors", he told Werbewoche.

RTVA By 13 votes to 10, the National Council Committee for Transport and Telecommunications (KVF) deleted the article from the proposal to revise the RTVA that would have allowed private broadcasters to advertise beer and wine. The KVF also wants to ban advertising for therapeutic products in accordance with the Therapeutic Products Act and political advertising. On the other hand, it has decided to completely liberalize interruption advertising for private broadcasters.

Honors Under the jury leadership of Tages-Anzeiger editor-in-chief Peter Hartmeier, Gossweiler Media AG has awarded this year's media prize to Reinhold Messner, who receives 5,000 Swiss francs and the sculpture Herbert. According to the press release, the sculpture Herbert - made of pure silver and an alpine stone slab - symbolizes the most important character traits of company founder Herbert Gossweiler: stubborn, helpful, sociable, courageous and agile. The prize is awarded to people who have rendered outstanding services to the Alpine region in Europe through the media. Previous winners were the former ski racer Bernhard Russi (2001) and Klaus Schwab, founder of the World Economic Forum in Davos (2002).

Following an agency evaluation, Rive Gauche\TBWA has won the account for L'Hebdo magazine. The Geneva-based agency was commissioned with the launch campaign for the redesign, with the editorial redesign planned for the beginning of May. The campaign will begin in spring and continue throughout the year.