People Martino Bammatter is the new Chairman of the Board of Directors of 20 Minuten Schweiz AG, replacing Sverre Munck, who held the position alongside his duties as CEO of the parent company 20 Min Holding. Bammatter, a self-employed financial consultant, has been a member of the Board of Directors of 20 Minuten since last September.

Media policy The Committee for Transport and Telecommunications is asking the National Council to approve the revision of the Radio and TV Act, and will focus in particular on the structure of fee splitting, advertising and sponsorship regulations and the planned organization of authorities during the detailed debate at the end of March. The debate will be divided into subject areas instead of voting on each article of the law individually. According to committee president Peter Vollmer, this will allow fundamental decisions to be made at an early stage.

Trade fairs The seventh Internet Expo (iEx) recorded a drop in the number of visitors from 28,000 to 2,790, which is just under half the record number of visitors set in 2001. Nevertheless, the minimum target of 20,000 visitors was just exceeded. To achieve this, a large number of free admissions were distributed in the run-up to the trade fair. The accompanying iEX conference also lost much of its appeal: instead of the expected 3000 participants, around 2000 attended one or more of the 83 seminars this year. The next Internet Expo will take place from February 4 to 6, 2004.

Agencies The new agency Ideenwerk was founded in Olten as a "partner for the right print measures and Internet solutions". "We want to make a difference in the Mittelland region," say the two partners Marc Tabeling and Walter Brenner. There are currently three full-service agencies and smaller specialist agencies in Olten. The newly founded Ideenwerk wants to concentrate primarily on advertising for regional SMEs, but is also open to larger contracts. Ideenwerk is currently working on a national budget for a women's program for the Coop Bank. The first clients also include the Oltner Tagblatt with a subscription advertisement and Publicitas Olten. Marc Tabeling is responsible for consulting and concepts at Ideenwerk. After an apprenticeship as a typographer, he trained as a marketing communications planner at Sawi. He was also employed as a production manager for marketing/communications at a Swiss bank. Walter Brenner is responsible for graphics and concept. He also completed an apprenticeship as a typographer, worked as a graphic designer in an agency and trained as a Teko web publisher in Lucerne.
(pan)

Advertising Market Print Online has lowered its prices for digital ad delivery once again as of the beginning of the year. Up to now, it did not matter whether Print Online (PO) transmitted large or small ads: publishers always had to pay the same amount per order. At the beginning of this year, PO has now reduced the price per transmission order from 11 to 10 francs (-9.1 %) for advertisements that are smaller than a quarter of a page (for large publishers who pay PO an annual connection fee of 15,000 francs). If it is an advertisement of the smaller category, the order still costs 6 francs, which even corresponds to a rate reduction of 54.5 percent. For small and medium-sized publishers without a connection fee, the price per order drops from currently 36 to 30 francs (-16.6 %). For a quarter ad, these publishers will still pay 18 francs (-50 %). One rate, on the other hand, remains untouched: In any case, a transmission costs two francs per megabyte of data.PO has thus lowered its prices per job for the third time in a row. The major publishers now pay at least 33 percent less than in 2000, depending on the size of the ad, and the smaller publishers even pay at least 50 percent less.
Previously, PO CEO Kurt Obrist had justified the lower tariffs with the rising volume. But not this time, because PO also
felt the effects of the decline in advertising: in 2002, 92737 ads were processed via the digital intermediary, 1446 fewer than in 2001. "That is slightly less, but overall we have gained market share," says Obrist. In addition, PO wants to offer an industry solution and is not profit-oriented. Ringier, NZZ, Tamedia and Publicitas each have a 25 percent stake in PO.
The Association of Swiss Free Newspapers (VSGZ) is also satisfied with the price reduction. "The fact that PO has now introduced two size categories meets our wishes," says VSGZ Managing Director Hannes Zaugg. At the beginning, VSGZ had criticized PO's tariff policy as too expensive and discriminatory for small publishers, and therefore filed a complaint (in vain) with the Competition Commission. It had also worked out a cheaper alternative project together with Adlink. But the PO tariff cuts at the beginning of 2002 already took the wind out of the VSGZ project's sails. "We achieved what we wanted in several steps. Now the matter is settled and our project is off the table," explains Zaugg.
Markus Knöpfli

Media Two of the four announced Bolero special issues are entitled "Bo - Bolero for men" and are described as "the first men's magazine in German-speaking Switzerland".Bolero Managing Director Martina Allenspach confirms that this is a line extension. However, it will be launched cautiously, as a special that will be sent to Bolero subscribers, sold as a special issue at newsstands for three months and available at selected points of sale via distribution partners. Even today's Bolero is not only read by women; the readership (91,000 people) also includes around 25 percent men. The aim now is to address them first with Bo and probably also sound out their interest. Allenspach is leaving everything else open. The question of whether Bo will appear more frequently and perhaps even monthly from 2004 remains unanswered: Bo - Bolero campaign.

The Zurich-based image agency Comet Photoshopping is taking over the distribution of images from the catalog "The World of Monsoon" in Switzerland and Austria with immediate effect.the New York agency Monsoon Images distributes its images exclusively on the Internet. All images from the new catalog will be available in high resolution in Comet Photoshopping's online image database Globalpictures.ch from February.

After two years as a partner in the Thalwil agency JF Werbung, Francis Bissat is going freelance. He left JF Werbung, where he joined at the beginning of 2001, at the end of 2002 and offers his services as a freelancer under the name FB Kommunikation. ...
Silvia Behofsits is the new Head of Communications at Zurich University of Applied Sciences Winterthur (ZHW). She took over from Ursula Hasler at the beginning of February.
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Friday Communications was only formed at the end of August 2002 as a member of the Swiss Grey network from the advertising agency Dorland and the PR agency CGI. However, before the end of the year, it was merged with the Musqueteers agency for corporate identity and PR.
laid. Most of the ten employees were taken on. Friday managing directors Mark Sommerhalder and Philipp Welti have left the Grey Group.
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The art direction of the Ringier program magazine Tele will be managed by two people in future. The Austrian Doris Oberneder previously worked at MediaGroup Berlin, which realized the redesign of Tele in October. The Lausanne designer Stéphane Carpentier has also previously worked for Ringier. He worked for several years as AD of L'illustré and most recently designed the men's magazine Type for Ringier Romandie. They replace the
former AD César Hernández.
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Scout 24 Switzerland is striving to increase its media presence. To this end, a position for public relations was created and
Stefan Züger is in charge.
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The Baar-based PR agency C-Matrix has strengthened its consultancy with Bernhard Schweizer as Account Director. He was most recently consulting group manager and member of the management team at PR agency Peter Bütikofer & Company.
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Alexander Haldemann and Bruno Schmidt, Managing Directors of MetaDesign Zurich, have acquired a majority shareholding in the company.
...
René Schoch has owned 100 percent of the company since January 1, 2003
from Primetime AG in Schlieren.

Publishers The cost-cutting program, with which the Ringier Group aims to save 30 million francs, is also taking effect in internal communications: Domo, the in-house newspaper of Switzerland's largest media group, will in future only be published ten times a year instead of eleven. The number of pages will also be reduced. This means that the target of ten percent savings will even be exceeded, writes editor Rolf Gebele in the editorial of the latest issue.

Agencies An oversized blood bag with the text "Bloodletting in the advertising scene" can be seen on large-format posters in Zurich. It's not just the eye that hurts. Another bruise in the advertising scene?pah! Pure deception! The Zurich advertising agency Red Cell is presenting a completely different kind of bloodletting. The resolution of the teaser campaign can be viewed on the homepage www.unsere-spende.ch - and is astonishing: the thoroughbred advertisers from Red Cell have undergone a joint energy boost. "We played down our nervousness and donated blood as a team," can be read on the agency's homepage. Red Cell not only lives up to its own name - after all, red blood cells are responsible for generating energy in the circulatory system - but also demonstrates action instead of words. "In a sluggish economic environment, a creative adrenaline rush is the only way to get things moving!" And, of course, the newfound oxygen in the blood should also go crazy for new ideas. Red Cell Zurich is part of the WPP Group's Red Cell Network, which was founded two years ago.

Economic forecasts Josef Trappel expects advertising growth to return soon, despite the gloomy climate. For the head of media and communications at Prognos in Basel, daily newspapers have no choice but to turn their attention increasingly to young readers.
WW Mr. Trappel, when will the upswing come? Last fall, you predicted that advertising spending would grow by six percent in 2003. That would be nice, of course, but it's definitely not going to happen. What is your new forecast for the current year?Josef Trappel Forecasts are always an estimate of the possibilities and opportunities that arise from the information available at a given time. In the nineties, we had the situation several times where two bad years were followed by a very good one. This pattern could repeat itself now. However, there are external risk factors, such as the threat of war against Iraq. From today's perspective, an economic recovery is at best still conceivable in the course of the second half of the year. But that would be very late for an advertising upswing.
So should we expect zero growth this year, or even more likely a further decline in advertising investment?
The macroeconomic environment is not so bad that we have to brace ourselves for minus growth again. At the moment, we expect stagnation or even slight growth this year.
The long-term advertising market study from your company predicts that advertising spending will develop at a brisk pace in the period up to 2012. Advertising spending is expected to grow by an average of more than three percent per year. Doesn't the current trend force you to revise this long-term forecast downward as well?
No, we still expect this growth to occur. Our long-term view is based on the intensified competitive constellations, which will inevitably and sustainably increase the demand for market communication. This is especially true for some very advertising-intensive sectors such as the IT, telecom and financial industries. These are characterized by increasingly similar products that can ultimately only be differentiated through marketing communication. The same differentiation problem preoccupies many other sectors as well, for example the automotive industry, the electricity markets, or the entire food industry. We are therefore convinced that advertising volumes will grow in the long term.
Might the economic future not be more uncomfortable than is currently hoped?
I cannot answer this question, because we are not economic researchers. In the medium to long term, we expect moderate economic growth of around two percent.
Among the media, there are also encouraging examples such as television, which has vigorously expanded its share of advertising spending over the past ten years. But not quite as quickly as was expected a few years ago. Will the much-vaunted race to catch up with the German advertising market, for example, still become reality?
Germany was a special case that will not be repeated here. That's because in our neighboring country, television's advertising boom was directly linked to the triumph of private television. There is no such thing in sight in Switzerland. Of course, TV advertising will also increase in our country. But not at an accelerated rate, but rather at a slower rate. This also has to do with the fact that TV usage in Switzerland is still much lower than in our neighboring countries. Advertising follows usage, and because this only grows slowly with TV, the growth rates for TV advertising also remain subdued.
The other highflyer of the last ten years has been billboard advertising. Can it expect a continuation of its unique enduring success?
Outdoor advertising will continue to develop well in the next few years because it is creative and new forms of offering are constantly being added. Catchword electronic advertising or e-boards in train stations - here one can definitely speak of a certain pent-up demand, also compared to other countries. Outdoor advertising has an important emotional component, which makes it very attractive. Nevertheless, outdoor advertising will not grow into a hype. The really big growth rates were recorded in the mid-1990s, but since then they have slowed down again somewhat.
The main losers in the past decade were the daily newspapers. The situation was particularly dramatic in 2001 and 2002: they accounted for 82 percent of the total loss in these two years. Will the importance of daily newspapers as an advertising platform continue to dwindle at the pace we have just experienced?
You have to put things into perspective a bit, because the daily newspapers are
by far the biggest advertising medium in Switzerland. That's why they suffer the most when the industry as a whole is doing badly. But they are also hit particularly hard because they have greatly increased their cost structures in the good years. However, the situation of daily newspapers should not be overdramatized; the rest of the media industry, which lives from advertising, has also experienced a fairly dramatic slump.
How can daily newspapers make up ground?
Newspapers have structural problems that are primarily related to
of the younger readership. Advertising has a strong affinity with younger target groups. That's why daily newspapers need to fundamentally rethink their business models. It's not as if young people don't pick up newspapers as a matter of principle. The example of 20 Minuten teaches us otherwise. But that doesn't mean that I recommend launching a free newspaper. But the daily newspapers must make an effort to build sustainable new business models that are also increasingly aimed at young people. But that will take time. According to our long-term advertising market study, the printed media will not have found any recipes for halting their decline by 2006.
Daily newspapers have lost nearly ten percent of their advertising dollars in the last ten years, while TV close-up has caught up with general-interest magazines.

Interview: Daniel Schifferle

Samuel Helbling on partially addressed advertisingMany Swiss people find unaddressed advertising annoying. Around 30 percent of all households therefore protect themselves with advertising stickers on their letterboxes. But at the end of last year, these stickers were increasingly losing their effectiveness. Partially addressed advertising has recently started to land in letterboxes with inscriptions such as "to all gardening enthusiasts at Blumenstrasse 6" or "to all women at Gertrudstrasse 19". This service is made possible by a new offer from Swiss Post: selectively partially addressed PromoPost, which - according to its own advertising - is delivered like addressed advertising. It is hard to blame Swiss Post for offering a service that allows companies to circumvent advertising stop stickers and exploit a legal gray area in the process. Another question is whether it is politically wise to provoke consumers who clearly signal that they do not want advertising mailings. Precisely because advertising is always an attempt to persuade, it always teeters on the edge of harassment. And this danger is naturally all the greater the further away the real need and benefit of the addressee is from the message. Anyone who has a stop sticker on their letterbox is unlikely to develop buying sympathies towards products whose promotion is forced on them against their will.
Even if the political agenda is currently dominated by an emphasis on the personal responsibility of citizens and consumers, this climate can change overnight. Developments in the USA, the EU and also in Switzerland (such as the announced ban on sex ads) show that the advertising industry can expect further waves of bans or restrictions at any time. Against this backdrop, Swiss Post is doing the communications industry a disservice with its new service because it is recklessly jeopardizing the "truce" with consumers.
> Samuel Helbling, Editor-in-Chief