Women's magazines Difficult start for Ringier's Edelweiss in German-speaking Switzerland: Three German women's magazines are launching a Swiss split. And others are thinking about it.Swiss women's magazines are having a hard time in the Swiss-German market. With the exception of Bolero, all titles have lost a massive amount of circulation in the last ten years, and Meyer's even had to pull the plug last June. The reason for this is probably the dozen or so German titles that have entered the Swiss German market, three of which - Brigitte, Cosmopolitan and Freundin - have had a Swiss split for around 20 years.Now, however, this very market in which Edelweiss wants to launch has been moving strongly again in recent months: Tamedia launched Annabelle Business as an independent quarterly title, Schweizer Agrarmedien GmbH tried to jump into Modeblatt selig's gap with Frauenland, also a quarterly, and this week Bolero is launching Blush, the first special in a four-part special issue series. As if that weren't enough, the German magazines Joy and Shape (both Marquard Media) and Elle (Burda) will each be coming with a Swiss-German split starting in March and May, respectively. And other German titles are considering this step. For Sie from Jahreszeiten Verlag, for example, which already offers a split in Austria. "We are currently clarifying the potential in Switzerland. But there is no concrete project," says Managing Director Hans-Joachim Waldrich.
Combi, duo and trio packWhat makes the start even more difficult for Edelweiss is that the splits also offer combination options. In future, Elle Deutschschweiz can be booked with the existing Elle Romandie split at a ten percent discount at Mediapresse in Lausanne, while Cosmopolitan, Joy and Shape will be sold at Raverta Marketing in Zurich as a duo or trio pack with a 10 and 15 percent discount respectively.
It was Mediapresse and Raverta that gave the impetus for these splits. Both justify them with the needs of advertising customers. That's surprising: Because last year, the three existing splits of Cosmopolitan, Freundin and Brigitte combined a total of 236 ad pages, only 6 percent of the volume of Swiss titles (including 347 pages of Meyer's). In 2001, it was even less than 4 percent. And yet the goals are ambitious: Olivier Bloch, Director of Mediapresse, for example, expects 100 advertising pages for Elle from May to December 2003, and even 200 in 2004. Bloch's confidence is based on the fact that the two Elle splits will cover almost all of Switzerland in the future - just like Edelweiss.
Skeptical advertising client L'Oréal, one of the most important customers of women's magazines, does not seem to be eager for further splits, however. Cania Bonamy, who oversees the L'Oréal print budget at Universal McCann, will consider primarily Swiss titles - including the Swiss-German Edelweiss - just for the sake of breadth. "The splits are mainly good for optimizing or diversifying," she says.
But what prompted the German publishers to make the respective split investment? Little can be learned from them. Marquard Media merely announced that Joy and Shape had now each achieved circulations in Switzerland that made their own splits seem worthwhile. Even Franz-Joseph Frei, who represents the Freundin split and all Burda titles (except Elle) in Switzerland with his agency FJF Intermedia, is surprised by this. "The heyday of splits was 20 years ago, when we had six to eight ad pages per issue," he says. In the meantime, however, the volume is "probably modest because of television. It is possible, however, that some customers no longer have enough money for expensive TV commercials and are therefore booking print advertising again.
Martina Allenspach, Managing Director of Bolero, also makes a plausible assumption: unlike the German market, the Swiss advertising market is comparatively stable, which is why German publishers are rushing to the local market after their losses, she says. Moreover, since Swiss titles generate significant sales with German customers, the German titles are now trying to win back at least these bugs with their splits.
Allenspach does not rule out the possibility of Bolero losing readers "at the margins" to the German splits or Edelweiss, but she believes that her magazine is occupying its niche well. Bolero has not reacted directly to the new interest in the Swiss German market. Nor does Allenspach want the announced four special issues to be seen as a countermeasure.
It's a similar story at Annabelle. The fact that the magazine beat the previous leader Schweizer Illustrierte in the number of ads last year and that Annabelle Business also got off to a good start with 121 ad pages gives publishing director Caroline Thoma reason to be confident. On the other hand, she doesn't think Edelweiss has too much of a chance: "As a new and yet not independent title, competing against strong Swiss magazines and numerous Swiss-German splits is something I find very courageous.
German women's magazines are pushing powerfully into the Swiss market, among other things, because the volume of advertising in Germany continues to shrink.
Figures on German-language women's magazinesTitle Circulation D-CH Readers EV Price Advertising Price D-CH
(Mach Basic 02) in SFr. (1/1, vf, gross)
Lucky post 170128 451000 3.50 12380.-
14-daily
Annabelle 100015 328000 5.90 18750.-
Brigitte 50000 163000 4.30 9300.-
Girlfriend 50000 181000 4.-- 9960.-
10 - 12x per year
Annabelle living 102866 189000 in pack m. 13200.-
Annabelle
Bolero 27066 91000 6.90 9270.-
Edelweiss**** 60000 - 14375.-
Elle 25000 - 7.90 7400.-
Cosmopolitan 30000 182000 5.20 10460.-
Joy 33000 - 3.-- 8400.-
Shape 22000 - 5.20 7300.-
Quarterly
Annabelle Business* 45000 94000++ 7.50 9000.-
Women's land* 80000 - 5.50 4250.-
* first published in autumn 2002
** appears from 26.2.03
++ Special evaluation Wemf January 03
underlined numbers = unaudited or projected editions
Markus Knöpfli

Guest commentary The "Ich-AG" has recently fallen into disrepute. For its inventor, however, the "bad word of the year 2002" still stands for the life concept of the future.Ich-AG is the bad word of the year and Dieter Bohlen is the most successful Ich-AG in Germany. He is a musician, producer and PR manager in one. What he tackles, he pulls off. He knows best what he wants. He writes music, an autobiography and markets his private life. He is self-confident, builds networks and uses synergies like no other. He is a master of self-marketing and earns millions with communication. In short: he is the hero of the media society - and a prototype of the "Ich-AG. Aren't individualism and self-responsibility goals that old Europe has been propagating since the French Revolution? Aren't these skills, which we already practice in our leisure time and consumption, also applicable to our working hours? The industrial society is irrevocably coming to an end. Employers and employees are no longer adhering to what used to be ironclad guidelines. Both sides are practicing flexibility. Companies are gearing their personnel policies to the fluctuations of the market. Employees are taking advantage of the offer of early retirement and are increasingly working in the black economy.
The collapse of the old system harbors both risks and opportunities. The "Ich-AG" must manage itself - whether it wants to or not. The previously externally determined lifetime is the limited equity, the only resource that everyone has and no one can increase. This is being re-evaluated and marketed in the media society, namely individually. In the USA, for example, a student can be sponsored by a bank; in return, he holds information events for the financial institution. Such arrangements are becoming more and more socially acceptable, turning one's own life into a strategic planning game. Economic thinking, previously the dominant knowledge of companies, is reaching consumers and citizens. The term "Ich-AG" stands for this change in values.
This artificial word is less a play on words than a programmatic symbol. And it is a working term from trend research, functional and extremely successful. "From the Deutschland-AG to the Ich-AG" was the agenda of our 5th German Trend Day in 2000, when the linguistic bridge was built between the individual and the economy. As the term spread like a virus, Federal President Johannes Rau warned of the consequences: a selfish elbow society. "Work, education and prosperity for all", promised Ludwig Erhard, the minister of the German economic miracle. The solidarity principle of post-war society had a name: Deutschland-AG. Ich-AG stands for the opportunities and risks of the media society.
You may deplore it or welcome it: The majority of people today want to live a self-determined life and are doing so. The "Ich-AG" stands for nothing else. Anyone who deduces permanent damage to the German language from this is an unworldly purist in their field, linguistics. Linguists simply don't like it when reality intrudes into their ivory tower.
> Peter Wippermann is the founder of the Hamburg Trend Office and has been Professor of Communication Design at the University of Essen since 1993.

Agencies In the current issue of the German industry service Kress Report, the Jung von Matt network is mentioned twice: while the Zurich branch was awarded a "smiley" for its Swiss campaign - more precisely: the motif with "Swiss-style child rearing" - the Tjaereborg advertisement of the Stuttgart sister agency, which is a bit of a joke at the expense of the weaker sex and good taste, received the "crybaby of the week". Whether this will lead to quality assurance measures between the Limmat and Neckar rivers remains to be seen. Those who are geographically closest are often worlds apart - even in (travel) advertising.smileys or howlers? - JvM has it all

Television Although SF DRS refrained from broadcasting the World Cup live in 2002, all DRS TVs together achieved a record market share of 44.1 percent.Last year, SF DRS and the Swiss private TVs gained market share in both primetime and all-day viewing, while the foreign ones did so only partially. In primetime, SF 1, SF 2 and SF info together achieved a new record market share of 44.1 percent, up 2.8 percent from 2001. The biggest gains were made by SF 2, which reported a primetime market share of 8.4 percent (+2.3 percent). The reasons given for the gains were the intense sports year, with the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, FC Basel's success in the Champions League, and the redistribution of market share from the stations TV 3 and Tele 24 that had been absorbed.
Press TV (PTV), whose programs are broadcast on SF 2, may also have helped push up SF 2's market share at times. Programs like "Al dente," "Gesundheit/Sprechstunde" and "Konsum.tv" were all well above the SF 2 average, while others like "Café Bâle," "NZZ Format" and "MotorShow" were below it.
RTL ahead of ARD and Pro 7The Swiss private stations also achieved a brilliant result, rising from 1.6 percent to 4.2 percent on the prime time evening. The gains and losses of the individual foreign stations were all within the confidence range, but overall their market share fell by 5.4 percent to 51.1 percent. The most-watched channels were RTL (7.1 percent), ARD (5.9 percent), Pro7 (4.8 percent). In fourth place is Sat 1, with 4.6 percent.
In the all-day comparison, SF DRS improved by 2.2 to 35.3 percent, again thanks to SF 2, which posted an 8.1 percent (+1.7 percent) market share. Swiss private stations gained 2.4 percentage points to 4.1 percent, while foreign stations saw changes similar to those in primetime. The exception was Sat 1, which gained 1.3 percent to 6.4 percent for the full day, and took second place, just behind RTL (7.9 percent). The reason: live coverage of the World Cup.
SF DRS's good performance is a personal satisfaction for TV Director Peter Schellenberg, who is stepping down at the end of the year, all the more so because SRG decided not to broadcast the World Cup live for cost reasons. What SF DRS missed out on as a result can be read to some extent from Sat 1's figures. Schellenberg himself laconically described SF DRS's results as "typical figures for a station that suffers from an innovation backlog.
SF 2 is doing "splendidly," the director said, and the station is already refinancing itself to 90 percent. But SF DRS, like other media, has to make savings. The budget has been cut by 43 million francs, and 45 full-time positions have been eliminated. This was the only way to achieve a balanced account for 2003, it was said.
In addition to the SF-DRS stations, the private stations - the heirs to TV 3 and Tele 24 - also made gains in the TV market.
Retires with a record market share for the three SF-DRS stations: SF-DRS Director Peter Schellenberg.
Markus Knöpfli

New media In addition to the 20min.ch portal, the commuter newspaper 20 Minuten has also been available at 20min.tio.ch since February.New media In addition to the 20min.ch portal, the commuter newspaper 20 Minuten has also been available at 20min.tio.ch since February. The entire current content of the free newspaper can be accessed there, and each individual article can be read but not downloaded. The service is provided by the Ticino press portal TicinOnline.

Anzeiger Region Bern plus has significantly reduced its rates for color advertisements. A full-page, single-color advertisement now costs 42 percent less than in the previous year, and the price for a four-color advertisement has even been reduced by 44 percent compared to the 2002 rates. The official gazettes of Berne and six agglomeration communities are combined in the combi. Publicitas is responsible for marketing.

Luca Aloisi on the 27th ADC Awards judgingThe Art Directors Club (ADC) Switzerland narrowly avoided a debacle. Igros - sorry: Migros - is the savior in need. Publicis' highly resonant "Big M" campaign for the major distributor's Expo.02 commitment not only made the "Strangers in Paradise" exhibition on the Expo site a hit with the public. It also strengthened the image of the big M - and saved the creative club from a free fall into insignificance in a year of recession. After all, Migros, Switzerland's second largest advertising client, was the only heavyweight among the award-winning works this year. Against the backdrop of the ADC's preferred equation "creativity equals efficiency", the two gold cubes for the retail giant can be seen as a kind of salvation for the creative club. Nevertheless, the ADC is increasingly lacking in credibility if it only succeeds in improving the quality of the less prestigious and revenue-generating courtesy campaigns and the really relevant players don't give a damn about the ADC's verdict.
Accordingly, the accusation cannot be denied that outstanding or even pioneering communication solutions are increasingly becoming the playground of underchallenged creatives who want to help their neighborhood bar or the Figaro on the street corner gain some publicity. Most big spenders, on the other hand, are once again relying on tried-and-tested advertising models in the difficult economic climate. However, the ADC is less to blame for this misery than clients lacking in courage and imagination.
Instead of giving creative people their spurs, they are grabbing the reins across the board.
> Luca Aloisi, Deputy Editor-in-Chief

Audience research Only with an effective creativity boost can daily newspapers still stop the momentous loss in audience favorability shown by the latest results of the Univox study.
As if newspapers were not already suffering enough from the sharp downturn in advertising, the latest survey results from the Univox study now bring further bad news to the media houses: the reach of daily newspapers has fallen from 70 to 63 percent since 2000. The proportion of the population who profess to read newspapers every day has thus shrunk by a whole seven percent in just two years.
The Univox study confirms what the Mach Basic of the past two years had already anticipated: More and more Swiss people are leaving the daily newspaper to the left.
Every two years, the GfS research institute takes the pulse of media usage habits in Switzerland. The author of the survey is Heinz Bonfadelli, a professor of journalism in Zurich.
The more than 15-year development since the start of the study in 1988 shows a drastic change in the media menu of Mr. and Mrs. Swiss.
The development of usage habits for daily newspapers is particularly worrying. If you draw a straight line along the development of daily newspaper reading since 1988, which at that time still showed the proud reach of 83 percent, you get a steeply sloping line. If this downward trend were to continue at a comparable rate in the future, daily newspapers would drop to a value of less than 45 percent reach in the next 15 years.
Goodbye to Printland Switzerland?
However, things are unlikely to get quite that bad. Although the importance of reading newspapers is still dwindling, the ceiling is now coming into view, explains Bonfadelli. He expects the downward trend of newspapers to come to a halt at a reach of "between 50 and 60 percent" and to level off there.
The trend away from newspapers comes as no surprise to him, the author goes on to explain, pointing to the pioneering role played by the USA. "There, newspaper reading has already slipped just below the 50 percent mark." Even if it's not likely to go quite that far down here and by today's standards, he says, the effects will still be painful - with unpleasant consequences for the remaining newspaper audience. "In the future, the expensive production costs of newspapers will have to be distributed among fewer and fewer subscribers and newsstand buyers," the journalism professor points out.
Self-inflicted cancerThe fact that newspapers are not falling behind even more dramatically than they already have is thanks to free papers like 20 Minuten. "These have managed to better pick up young readers with new appealing concepts in the service and culture sections or with daily offers in the Internet area," Bonfadelli explains. In other words, at least part of the decline of daily newspapers is self-inflicted and due to the fact that these titles have not succeeded enough in keeping pace with audience needs.
But this is only one of several possible explanations. To some extent, the creeping decline in the audience for newspapers is also a "force of nature," i.e., a direct consequence of the ongoing trend toward electronic media. The fact is that more and more people are meeting their basic needs for up-to-date information on radio and television and - with a strong upward trend - also on the Internet. That's why we have to talk about a double trend today, says Bonfadelli: one in the direction of electronic media in general - and within these, an increased pull toward digital media such as the Internet.
In line with this interpretation, the current Univox study has already identified a significant decline in daily TV consumption - by a full 10 percentage points to a new 48 percent. However, the journalism researcher himself does not fully trust this figure and speaks of a "possible statistical outlier. Especially since the figures collected by SRG via Telecontrol for 2002 did not show such a kink, but actually showed a slight upward trend in TV use. "We will have to wait for the next wave of surveys in 2004. I assume that the figure for television will then be higher again," Bonfadelli adds.
Even if this were to occur, a fundamental problem of the
TV landscape already recognize today: It's getting more and more difficult,
The challenge is to develop compelling new formats that will remain a success with audiences for a longer period of time. "Innovation cycles are getting shorter and shorter, which is also an expression of TV production that is increasingly reaching its limits," says Bonfadelli. In recent years, he says, little new has been added to television - while at the same time the existing successes are getting old and slowly running out of steam. TV directors face difficult challenges. They have to get their companies to be more innovative and creative again.
SRG radio stations continue to declineBut radio director Walter Rüegg will also have to develop good ideas in the coming years. For SRG radio, the Univox study has established a downward trend since 1988 with virtually no respite - similar to that of daily newspapers. In contrast to the print medium, radio has merely seen a shift from DRS radio to the private providers. Overall, then, radio usage in Switzerland has not declined noticeably.
At least not so far. However, recent trends - for example, in the greater Zurich area - also point to a drop in listener numbers. The timing of these losses coincides with the streamlining of the music carpets at the affected radios, which German consultants had prescribed. Here, too, Bonfadelli detects a certain lack of creativity. "The problem of such consultants is, after all, that they mainly try to simply duplicate a few success formulas." Which, of course, is not enough. At the same time, Bonfadelli notes a certain fear of being "really creative and daring to do something new." However, this lack does not only apply to radio and television, but more or less to the media in general.
The classic and oldest of all cultural techniques, reading, is being marginalized among the general public: newspapers and books are being picked up less and less, while local radio stations and the Internet are gaining in popularity as sources of information.
The Univox study has been conducted since 1986 as a personal face-to-face study.
survey is carried out. The sample size is generally 700 people, distributed between German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland. It should be noted that Univox measures the reach of the media surveyed, and thus the softest of all values collected in audience research. Therefore, the Univox results for radio and television, for example, are not directly comparable with the usage data collected electronically via Radiocontrol and Telecontrol. (dse)
Daniel Schifferle

Print A woman's thoughts are not always easy to comprehend, which logically always leads to assumptions or misinterpretations, as is the case with the two advertisements that seem to speak primarily to female body awareness. While one is training her biceps on a wall in the hope that her stockings won't burst, the other is trying to strengthen the tissue of her breasts by lifting a chair. Why she's naked while doing this must be due to the room temperature. Or am I totally wrong again, and chairik chairs all contain a hidden message on the underside that leads women to expose themselves? (ck)

Media policy Anyone hoping to receive licence fee money thanks to the RTVA will have to be patient. In its message on the revision of the Radio and Television Act (RTVA), the Federal Council wrote in December that the new law would hardly come into force before 2005. As a result, local TV stations were counting on not being able to benefit from license fees until 2006. But even this date could prove to be an illusion. It could even be 2007 or even later. This is because the current RTVA, which came into force in 1991, has been stuck in parliament for four years, and Telesuisse President Filippo Lombardi expects the debate in the federal parliament "to be concluded in mid-2004". But only then will ComCom begin work on the necessary RTVA implementing provisions. And only then will the sticking point come to the fore: the designation of the ten to twelve licensing areas for future fee recipients. Delays are inevitable here, as the tug-of-war between the 18 currently licensed broadcasters will begin at this point.
Lombardi remains confident that the RTVA will be discussed in line with the wishes of regional TVs. "In recent years, there have been a relatively large number of initiatives in favor of local TVs, with the Federal Council always referring to the overall revision of the RTVA. We hope that the numerous parliamentarians who co-signed these initiatives will actually support us in the parliamentary debate."
(dse)

In 1997, the guide "Sponsoring" by Elisa Bortoluzzi and Hansrudolf Frey was "the first easy-to-understand reference book on the subject", as the NZZ wrote after reading the first edition, and the third edition has now been published by Paul Haupt Verlag Bern/Stuttgart/Vienna. The standard work, which is regarded in Germany, Austria and Switzerland as the "course book for cultural managers and fundraisers", has been editorially expanded and updated for the latest edition (ISBN 3-258-06496-2).

Sexism Advertising and science crossed blunt blades at a conference in Zurich It is true that ultimately almost everything is a question of interpretation. In principle, any advertising depiction of a cliché situation can be perceived as discriminatory. It also goes without saying that this is particularly often the case with target groups that are particularly sensitized because they are socially disadvantaged, such as women.Dani Bürgi's presentation at the event on "Attractive advertising" organized by the City of Zurich's Equal Opportunities Office only became more original when the member of the management board of the Basel agency cR DDB tried to point out "alternatives to the all too often tasteless and irresponsible (re)production of female stereotypes". However, he only knew how to illustrate the "increased visualization of female competence" he was calling for with the ageing actress Sophia Loren, eternal advertising icon of the Lux soap brand.
Bürgi thus naturally provided his co-speaker Christiane Schmerl, author of the standard work "Frauenzoo der Werbung: Aufklärung über Fabeltiere" (Women's advertising zoo: Enlightenment about mythical creatures), with a steep template. The psychology professor at the University of Bielefeld criticized the fact that, even after 30 years of emancipation, the commercialized image of women still has far more to do with the male advertising psyche than with the depiction of social realities that creative people like to claim. The controversial academic countered the objection from the audience of around 40 people that just under half of all advertisers in Germany are female with the question: "And how many of them are art or even creative directors?"
Apart from this appeal, however, Schmerl also only offered the familiar. And occasionally reached deep into the mothballs of feminist resentment. For example, she accused the advertising patriarchs in corpore of only focusing on female primary stimuli because they simply couldn't think of anything better. Even if there is certainly some truth in this thesis, the goal of "creativity instead of discrimination" - the subtitle of the Zurich conference - is not one step closer to being achieved with this kind of rhetoric.
The current campaign by Internet provider Tiscali is as target group-specific as it is sexist.
Oliver Classen