The Simko agency in Geneva, which designed the campaign of the year for the Cardinal brewery, sees itself as a full-service agency for classic advertising and is ranked 39th in the national rankings and in the top ten for independents. It was founded in 1990 by the two international marketing specialists Pedro Simko and Josée Bélanger-Simko. Pedro studied at Harvard and worked as Marketing Director at Jacobs Suchard Switzerland from 1988 to 1990. Josée studied in Montreal and worked in Promotions & Direct Marketing at Jacobs Suchard Switzerland from 1988 to 1990. Simko currently employs 27 people, 13 of them in the creative department. Olivier Girard has been the CD responsible for creation since October 2001. Simko's most important clients include H&M, Caran d'Ache, Cardinal and 24 Heures. In the first seven months of 2002, Simko took part in eight pitches and won seven of them. According to the agency, the new accounts mean around 22 million francs in additional sales. Zero appetite for alcohol: Simko ad for Cardinal.
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After being available for download at the end of the year, the Advertising Primer 2003 can now be ordered in printed form from Ringier Verlag, and contains key data on the largest Swiss newspapers and magazines, an overview of the most important media studies and much more. It can be ordered at www .go4media.ch in German, English or French. It is also available as a PDF file.

The Anzeiger Region Bern has cancelled the Thursday edition in the city of Bern at the beginning of the year and will now only be published on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Fridays, citing rationalization measures in view of the decline in advertising. The existing contract between the municipal association Anzeiger Region Bern und Stadt Bern on the one hand and Bund Verlag as the concession holder will not be affected by this, said Therese Frösch, Finance Director of the City of Bern, when asked by SDA.

Zurich-based dialog marketing agency OgilvyOne is taking over the communications budget for the passenger vehicle division of Volvo Automobile (Schweiz) AG, having won the contract without a pitch against the previous budget holder, according to a press release. "A niche product like Volvo sells more efficiently through niche communication," says Daniel Brüngger from OgilvyOne with conviction. Media buying will remain with Mindshare, which, like OgilvyOne, is part of the WPP Group. Most recently, Volvo was managed by the Grey subsidiary Dorland. This merged with Grey's PR agency GCI in September to form the communications agency Friday.

The Küsnacht-based advertising agency Bunt has won the mandate for Coop's online supermarket in a pitch and the first work will be seen this spring in the greater Zurich area on traditional advertising media, on mailings and in Coop branches, the agency announced. Coop is continuously expanding this business area, which is why the offer will also be advertised in Bern and Basel in the summer, and in Geneva and Lausanne by the end of the year. Coop offers around 3,500 everyday items in its online store for Zurich.

Swisscom and APG irritated the public before Christmas with the question "slaughter or release?" The much-noticed poster campaign showed a rabbit under the axe. Thanks to several thousand text messages from people who saw the poster and took part in the pseudo-vote, the "Chüngel" was released into the wild. A witty parody of this poster campaign has now brought Laura Gomez not such an impressive number of useless text messages, but six actual interviews for an apprenticeship as a graphic designer. The graduate of the preliminary course at the Zurich School of Art and Design stuck her striking job advertisement on the letterboxes of potential instructors and also had the motif distributed as a flyer. For the photo, she of course put her creative mind to work herself. The picture was then "adapted as accurately as possible to the original Swisscom poster" in the photo store, as the future graphic designer with the now saved career dreams reveals.Laura holds her head out for an apprenticeship.

PR agency Following positions at Farner and the Opera House, Paul Martin Padrutt founds Padrutt PR in Zurich.Paul Martin Padrutt, Head of Marketing and Press at the Zurich Opera House for five years, took the plunge into self-employment in January and founded the PR agency Padrutt PR in Zurich. The company will position itself in the market with marketing PR and sponsorship support in particular, in addition to the classic products of PR consulting.After graduating as Lic. oec. publ. the 36-year-old worked for one year at Isopublic, three years at Farner PR and now five years for Alexander Pereira. "I left a dream job at the Zurich Opera. But I already said that at Farner," says Padrutt, who now wants to realize his dream as an independent entrepreneur.
Completely without a safety net, he does not fly to freedom. The Padrutt PR agency will continue to organize media partnerships for the Zurich Opera House as well as conceive and implement various ideas for customer relation marketing. A sure customer is likewise already the opera of Helsinki. Padrutt, however, does not want to specialize as a PR agency primarily for cultural organizations. "There are already many others in the market here," he says.
An important new customer is therefore also an "interesting brand" from the food industry as well as a company from the chemical sector. Paul Martin Padrutt has moved into an office with three fully furnished rooms "for further developments" just behind the opera house. For the time being, however, the new agency wants to work with freelancers. Wife Karin Padrutt will manage the back office, having already gained relevant experience in well-known companies.
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Advertising pages The local press in German-speaking Switzerland provided a ray of hope in a dismal 2002: The smallest in the industry in terms of circulation sold almost 17% more advertising space.17 916

Télévision Suisse Romande (TSR) once again lost viewers to other television stations in 2002. The market share fell from 31.3 to 30.3 percent, and TSR director Gilles Marchand said that television in French-speaking Switzerland was feeling the pressure from commercial stations in France. The goal for 2003 is not to fall below the 30 percent mark. Nevertheless, TSR remains number 1 in all age groups.

The launch campaign for the non-alcoholic Cardinal beer from the Geneva agency Simko was voted campaign of the year.original ideas also have a better chance of catching the public's eye in advertising. Readers of WerbeWoche, Schweizer Illustrierte and Tele have voted the launch campaign for Cardinal non-alcoholic beer Campaign of the Year. This is the second time that the three magazines have jointly voted for the most popular campaign. The determination of the favorite campaign by an extended reading public is an addition to the most important industry event, Advertiser of the Year - this title is awarded each January to the most creative mind in the industry for his or her achievements.The campaign for Cardinal was conceived and designed by the Geneva agency Simko. In the 35-second spot, two owls sit on the windowsill of a dive at night and wonder why the young people inside the bar can be happy without alcohol. The owls like it. They stay put and join in, as befits real night birds.
Pro Infirmis and Migros honored
The readers of the three magazines awarded the silver medal to a Pro Infirmis image campaign. In this awareness-raising campaign, advertiser Alfredo Briccola, together with the Metzgerlehner Worldwide agency in Erlenbach, wanted to show the "normality" of a disability. Fathers and mothers have themselves photographed with their disabled children in their arms. The slogan: "We will not be hindered."
The Migros campaign for Expo.02 was voted the third best campaign of 2002. The posters with the missing orange "M", which temporarily resides in the Migros pavilion at the national exhibition, as well as the commercials in which actors cannot pronounce the "M", were developed by the Zurich agency Publicis.
The campaign for Cardinal achieved 18% of the vote, Pro Infirmis 17% and the missing M of Igros 12%.
Ranks 4 to 10 4. Blindenheim Mühlehalde (Ruf Lanz, Zurich)
 5. the butter (By Heart, Zurich)
 6. foundation against racism and violence (Wirz, Zurich)
 7. yellow pages (Publicis, Zurich)
 8 Sat 1 Switzerland/WM 2002 (DDB, Zurich)
 9th Panasonic (Jung von Matt/Limmat, Zurich)
10. facts (Euro RSCG, Zurich)
A talking point: Runner-up campaign by Pro Infirmis.

Came in 3rd place: Migros campaign for Igros presence at Expo.02.

Andreas Panzeri

Consumerism First money replaced God, now it is supposed to bring peace. Norbert Bolz's apology of capitalism is thought-provoking. The slogan "Non cogito ergo konsum" was once emblazoned on the toilet door of the philosophy department of a renowned Swiss university - framed by post-pubertal piss prose. That was in the early nineties. At a time when criticism of capitalism and German-style cultural pessimism were long outdated. The parody of the Cartesian rationalist credo was of course scrawled in flaming red, the signal color of proletarian protest, and the fact that the cover of Norbert Bolz's latest essay also features this hue is more than a mere wink in the direction of Karl Marx and his creed "The Communist Manifesto", published over 150 years ago. In fact, "The Consumerist Manifesto" by the media and trend analyst, who teaches in Berlin, is also a protest pamphlet that is somewhat cool in tone but passionate in gesture. Unsurprisingly for Bolz readers, it is directed against sentimental educated citizens, anti-American old leftists and other doubters who not only privately detest brand gods and lifestyle religions, but also try to publicly denigrate them to the capitalist cult community.
Shopping makes you immuneIn view of the fundamentalist challenge that "Nine-eleven" posed as a threat to the Western consensus of values, such spoilsports feminizing the public and society are, so to speak, a force for resistance. Although this is not stated anywhere in the "Manifesto", it always resonates when the pop philosopher sings the praises of what he sees as the civilizing, even pacifying effect of consumerism. The core political message of the apology of meaningful shopping inspired by September 11 is therefore: "Consumerism is the immune system of secular world society against the virus of fanatical religions." This controversial blurb thesis is then justified inside the book as follows: "Those who moan about a loss of values fail to recognize the specific renunciation of values in modern society. The fact that it has nothing more to offer than formal democracy, liberalism and a social market economy is precisely the secret of its strength."
Bolz's plea for a global consumer citizenry, divided into six chapters (from "Terror" to "Love"), is made even more explosive by the assertion that there is "no dialogical bridge between the religions that we can build". That is why it is now more important than ever to banish the fundamentalist danger by recognizing and exporting our own achievements. The last ideological critics of postmodernism denounced this strategy of self-preservation through market expansion as neo-colonialism. You don't have to share Bolz's functional view of the world and humanity to see that his aphoristically condensed arguments have gained weight. That is why this diabolical work of enlightenment is especially recommended for those skeptical of modernity. Because it is certainly entertaining.
Oliver Classen

A new draft text for an international anti-tobacco convention calls for restrictions on advertising, but no longer a ban, and serves as the basis for the sixth and final round of negotiations from February 17 to 28. The new proposal can be downloaded from the WHO website (www.who.int/tobacco).