After eleven years with Lowe Lintas GGK, the Ringier publication Cash will now be handled by Seiler DDB in Zollikerberg. Cash had already held a pitch with four participants this past summer. However, the results were not convincing. Subsequently, discussions were held with two additional agencies, and Seiler DDB was awarded the contract. The agency is tasked with communicating Cash’s new direction, which publishing director Thomas Passen described to WerbeWoche as the «Vorwärts to the roots» strategy. Starting January 25, Cash will be published with a new look and the monthly supplement Value. The Cash brand is also set to be more firmly established across the entire media group. Freitag tarpaulin bags. Since 1994, they have been objects of desire—distinctive one-of-a-kind pieces—and have been slung over the shoulders of trendsetters. The bags are recognizable by the label sewn onto the truck tarps: Freitag. Publisher Lars Müller has dedicated a book to this cult item from the Freitag brothers’ workshop, which defies wind and weather. Its design and content are geared toward the visual perception of the users—a flood of images pours over the reader as they flip through the pages quickly, occasionally encountering text elements, such as an interview with Tages-Anzeiger Magazin art director Wendelin Hess (a self-proclaimed non- Freitag bag carrier anymore)—or the story of how the bags were created. Lars Müller had 10,000 copies printed, each book with a distinctive spine: naturally, a piece of truck tarp from the Freitag factory.
Never use a Camel to campaign against smoking. In France, an anti-smoking campaign was scrapped because its design was too reminiscent of the Camel cigarette brand’s logo. A Paris court ruled on Monday that the campaign, commissioned by the Association for the Fight Against Respiratory Diseases, infringed on the rights of Camel’s manufacturer, JT International. The association had intended to feature an image of a emaciated and exhausted dromedary rejecting smoking.
Videcom and Laugh Track are merging. The two production companies, Videcom and Laugh Track, will merge effective January 1. Videcom, based in St. Gallen, has produced sitcoms such as «Fascht e Familie» and «ManneZimmer» for SF DRS, among others. Laugh Track, a subsidiary of Neue Deutsche Filmgesellschaft (NDF) in Munich, produces the DRS sitcom «Fertig lustig.» Through its partner NDF, Videcom’s sole owner, Christian Ledergerber, hopes to tap into new customer segments in Germany as well. The new company is headquartered in St. Gallen. It employs 18 staff members and collaborates with approximately 70 freelancers on a project-by-project basis. Management is led by Videcom Managing Director Susanne Steinbock and Wolfgang Weber, Managing Director of Laugh Track and NDF.
Works from Their Own Ranks. From December 5 through January 18, TBWA/Switzerland will present works from their own ranks in the exhibition «antes de que nos olviden»: Artist Carlos Mejia has been employed as a graphic designer at the Küsnacht-based agency for three years. The exhibition by Mejia, who hails from Costa Rica, is accompanied by poems by Latin American writers. The title of the exhibition is also the title of a poem by the Mexican writer Saúl Hernández.
Using humor to fight red tape. Who didn’t long to visit the Alpenarena (Flims, Laax, Falera) last year? It ran an ad featuring locals who, at the start of the season, ordered—among other things—700 cases of beer, 2,000 packs of condoms, and 600 liters of vodka. While the fog-plagued locals smiled with anticipation at this, it infuriated the Federal Office of Communications. It took the view that the commercial violated the ban on alcohol advertising. Reason enough for the in-house agency AY&R to re-dub last year’s commercial: The same locals have now switched to soft drinks such as mineral water, mint tea, or lady’s mantle tea. The reveal at the end: «Due to the ban on alcohol advertising, you can only see what we really ordered for the winter season in the movie theater.»
From high in the heavens… That’s not exactly where he’s coming from—the angel on Intercoiffeur Dom Pi’s Christmas poster. Instead, he’s from the monastery district in St. Gallen, because the master himself stepped up for the campaign
have his picture taken. With curly hair, a feather boa, and a dreamy look, Peter Wetter reminds existing and potential customers that Christmas is also the time for angel hair—even if it’s usually found hanging on the Christmas tree. Eugster Kommunikation is responsible for this heavenly creation; the agency has previously delivered messages on behalf of Angelus Figaro.
Editorial

Where Are the Projects of the Future? A dark day for private television in Switzerland: Tele 24 is closing this Friday, and just one month later, TV 3 will go off the air. The shock runs deep. With these two spectacular failures, the market prospects for national commercial television in Switzerland have been brutally dashed. Programming, the market, and media law—in that order—have delivered this harsh verdict. A nightmare scenario.
But it’s not just Tele 24 and TV 3. The media companies’ other promising ventures are also in the doldrums. As a result, there’s hardly anything left of the start-up fever that gripped the industry on the eve of the turn of the millennium that could serve as a serious revenue driver for the future. Tamedia is not alone in facing these problems. All the other media companies involved in TV and the Internet are faring no better. They’re simply operating on a much smaller scale, which is why their situation appears less dramatic.
Tamedia, a newcomer to the stock market, has been hit particularly hard. Its ambitious multimedia strategy has been scaled back to the greater Zurich area. The offshoots of the New Economy hype—Winner and Moneycab—are causing concern.
It’s understandable that Tamedia wants to shift its focus back toward print in the future. But things are set to get even tougher there next year, as the NZZ am Sonntag is poised to enter the fray as yet another competitor. The Swiss media market is no walk in the park right now. No wonder Hans Heinrich Coninx is now openly talking about expanding abroad—a destination that hasn’t exactly been on Tamedia’s expansion map until now. Read the interview on page 33. Daniel Schifferle

For the first time, the Italian fashion house Stefanel has entrusted an advertising agency with a pan-European budget.News Euro RSCG advertises for Stefanel In the pitch, Euro RSCG Wnek Gosper, London, prevailed against Paradiset DDB from Stockholm and two unnamed Italian agencies. The Euro team is headed by the Swede Joakim Jonason, who previously worked for the Italian jeans group Diesel at Paradiset DDB.
Totalfina elf consolidates with Carat The French oil company TotalFina Elf consolidates its media budget for refined products and marketing activities across Europe with Carat. The consolidated budget, estimated at over 40 million dollars, includes planning and purchasing for TotalFina Elf's service stations, lubricants, tax card system and motorsport sponsorship.
WHO campaign for tobacco-free sport The World Health Organization (WHO) has launched a global campaign for "tobacco-free sport". The campaign is supported by international sports federations. "Smoking is a communicable disease, transmitted through advertising and sponsorship," said WHO Director Gro Harlem Brundtland. The 2002 Football World Cup will be the first to be held without tobacco advertising.
Who owns Jürgen Scholz? The German advertising agency Scholz & Friends came up with a nice PR stunt for its IPO: it brought the 72-year-old agency founder Jürgen Scholz out of retirement and appointed him as an advisor to the Management Board. But the idea was not thought through to the end. Scholz is Chairman of the Supervisory Board at Jung von Matt. There was little joy at the thought of having to share Scholz with one of the biggest competitors in the near future. Jürgen Scholz plays it down: he only found out about his new consultancy work from the press.

The US fashion label advertises with denim on semi-celebrities and subtle commercialsBy Thérèse Balduzzi After years of showing upstanding young people dancing rock 'n' roll in khakis, the fashion label is turning its attention to simple denim in its new campaign - and to all the more artistic commercials.
Last winter, the Gap advertising by the new Gap agency Modernista from Boston was given a more minimalist, cool touch. The new campaign, launched for the start of school in the fall, features rising movie and music stars. The commercials celebrate emotion, spontaneity and individuality. They appear improvised, but are carefully choreographed and multi-layered.
In one of the 30-second commercials, actress Juliette Lewis appears with two robots who are recognized by infected members of the club scene as the French duo Daft Punk. The song "Digital Love" played in the commercial comes from the duo's latest CD, in whose music video the couple also appear as robots. Lewis dances really badly at the beginning. But she catches herself and dances with the robots. At the end, the logos "Gap Denim" and "Gap.com" appear. In another spot, actress Shannyn Sossamon ("A Knight's Tale") stands behind one of three DJ stations and scratches along with DJs ShortKut and Rob Swift. The music shreds, she dances. At the end she says: "My first love? Boys who scratch."
The spots are impressively choreographed, and in each one the huge white room with parquet flooring is used to create a different effect. In one, R&B star Cherokee plays electric guitar in front of a wall of Marshall amps. Her question-and-answer phrase is: "My first love? Angus Young" - the lead guitarist of AC/DC. All alone in the room and filmed from far above, red-haired Nikka Costa appears, performing a song by soul singer Sarah Vaughan. Her first love is "The old school".
Semi-celebrities also adorn advertisements and posters
In another sentimental spot, the camera moves past a white grand piano to a young woman singing the song "So far away" by Carol King. A little later, we see that Carol King herself is sitting at the piano and the imitator is her daughter Louise Goffen. Her first love? "My mom." In addition to these sentimental spots, another one provides subtle humor: Will Ferrell, a comedian from the show "Saturday Night Live" and specializing in impersonations of President Bush, sings the Neil Diamond song "Forever in Blue Jeans". He begins with a songwriting cliché: "I wrote this song on the back of a dixie cup." Only those who know Will Ferrell from "Saturday Night Live" and Neil Diamond will understand the humor. The commercials were directed by Paul Hunter.
Posters and advertisements show other semi-celebrities such as film actor Giovanni Ribisi, and the star of "Saturday Night Live", Tina Fey, and DJ Spooky were also photographed by Christian Witkin.

Aim: To motivate teachers to take part with their classes in the national school project "Expedition Dorfbach" by Rivella AG and the environmental education center of Naturama Aargau.Rivella AG Advertising material: Full banner and button. Use: mid-November to the end of December.
Client: Rivella AG, responsibility: Monika Christener. Creative agency: Aseantic, responsibility: Corinne Teutsch. Placement agency: Publimedia Webadvertising AG, responsibility: Tobias Fehrlin.

Last part of a server address (after the last dot). The domains stand for country names, "ch" for Switzerland, but also for specific areas, such as "com" for commercial or "org" for organization.Online ABC Domain Name The part of a URL that follows "http://www." or "http://" and is terminated by a period. In the URL "http://www.horizont.net", "horizont" is the domain name and "net" is the domain.
Domain Name Server A server that converts domain names into addresses and vice versa.
DOS Denial of Service. Denial of service due to a hacker attack in which web servers are flooded with such large amounts of data that they go down. As yet unsolved security problem that first made headlines in early 2000 when several major US online companies were paralyzed for hours.
Dot Some like English: A dot is a point in a web address.
Dotcom Term for a company that conducts its business mainly via the Internet. Amazon, for example, is a dotcom company. See also Dot and Com.
Drag and drop Intuitive working technique on the computer originally developed by Apple, where elements can be edited by moving them around on the screen.
E-business Electronic business is the digitalization of business processes.
E-commerce Electronic commerce is a subset of e-business and refers to trading with commercial or private customers via the Internet. In principle, all goods can be traded via the Internet. Online auctions are particularly popular with surfers.

The October figures from Media Focus are similar to those of the previous monthThe gross advertising expenditure for commercial advertising in October 2001 as surveyed by Media Focus presents a similar picture to that of September. Television stations were able to increase their advertising income by an impressive 14.3 percent compared to the same month last year, while at the lower end of the spectrum banner advertising lost a striking 66.2 percent. Apart from TV, posters were the only medium to deliver positive figures: gross advertising expenditure here exceeded that of the same month last year by 1.2 percent, while the losses for the other media were lower than in September 2001. Radio stations in particular reported relatively good figures: They curbed their losses to minus 0.9 percent. Daily newspapers also posted the lowest losses of the last three months measured, with a minus of 11.7 percent.
Trade journals fared worse in October than in September, suffering the biggest losses of the current year at minus 14.6 percent, as did teletext, which fell by 4.8 percent in October after a positive figure in September. Bruno Amstutz
Gross advertising expenditure by media

October 2000/October 2001 in comparison
in 1000 Fr. 2000 in 1000 Fr. 2001 +/- in %
Daily newspapers 171 927 151 821 - 11.7
Publ. journals 75 124 71 163 - 5.3
Trade journals 28 667 24 487 - 14.6
TV 69 244 79 172 14.3
Radio 11 938 11 833 - 0.9
Cinema 4457 4349 - 2.4
Teletext 1783 1698 - 4.8
Poster 35 665 36 093 1.2
Internet Banner 4063 1374 - 66.2
Total 402 868 381 990 - 5.2
Source: Media Focus Hergiswil NW

October data from the AC Nielsen and MMXI internet panelsAccording to MMXI, 2.5 million people surfed the internet from home for an average of 320 minutes in October, visiting 259 sites. According to AC Nielsen data, on the other hand, 1.96 million people surfed for 340 minutes and visited 539 sites. Compared to September, MMXI shows an increase of 50,000 surfers, while AC Nielsen notes a decrease of 2.35 percent, with contrasting movements elsewhere: Microsoft.com has moved up from 3rd to 2nd place in the AC Nielsen ranking - at the expense of MSN.com. The opposite happened with MMXI. Things like this always point to the fact that the differences between the two Internet panels are to be found in the respective systems and are not limited to panel size.
The fact that TVSpielfilm.de appears in 19th place for the first time, at least in MMXI, is exciting. The publishers of the Swiss TV program guides Tele and TR7 are certainly not happy about this (see also WW 41/01). It is also worth noting that Blick.ch, which appeared in the top 20 for the first time in September, has been able to maintain its position. It seems that in difficult times (Zug attack, Swissair debacle) this site is seen by many people as fast and reliable in terms of news. However, the temporary appearance of Comparis.ch is no great surprise - apparently many Internet users wanted to know where they could take out new health insurance at the best price. Markus Knöpfli
Top 20 domains October 2001

Nielsen/Netratings MMXI
Rank Domain Number Reach Domain Visitors Reach
Visitors in % in 1000 in %
 1 bluewin.ch 905 259 46.13 bluewin.ch 1 315 52.5
 2 microsoft.com 701 176 35.73 msn.com 682 27.2
 3 msn.com 697 631 35.55 microsoft.com 659 26.3
 4 passport.com 480 182 24.47 msn.ch 633 25.3
 5 search.ch 428 880 21.85 passport.com 596 23.8
 6 yahoo.com 398 188 20.29 yahoo.com 538 21.5
 7 google.ch 355627 18.12 search.ch 463 18.5
 8 sunrise.ch 330 152 16.82 sbb.ch 459 18.3
 9 sbb.ch 320 171 16.31 google.ch 446 17.8
10 msn.ch 275 957 14.06 sunrise.ch 443 17.7
11 yahoo.de 224 572 11.44 yahoo.de 319 12.8
12 netscape.com 199 669 10.17 msn.de 316 12.6
13 ubs.com 191 615 9.76 gmx.de 308 12.3
14 gmx.net 184 601 9.41 google.com 296 11.8
15 comparis.ch 177 567 9.05 ubs.com 272 10.9
16 google.com 175 103 8.92 microsoft.de 225 9.0
17 blick.ch 165 520 8.43 comparis.ch 217 8.7
18 altavista.com 158 826 8.09 blick.ch 204 8.2
19 bluewindow.ch 150 476 7.67 tvspielfilm.de 204 8.1
20 geocities.com 149 868 7.64 swissonline.ch 193 7.7
Source: AC Nielsen/MMXI

Glamour Engineering also hits the Mittelland Zeitung from the midfieldFrom the regional journalistic league, the Aargauer Zeitung and its Mittelland newspaper partners Solothurner Zeitung, Zofinger Tagblatt and Oltner Tagblatt are catapulting themselves into the top league. At least quantitatively. From 2002, the new number 3 of the Swiss-German daily press wants to delight its readers with added value, media planners and advertising managers with the joint bundle structure. In order to communicate the high accuracy of future and existing advertising customers in the Mittelland region, the parties involved chose the young Zurich agency Glamour Engineering. The focal point of the MZ advertising campaign is the term "center", which the creatives implemented with a simple ready-made aesthetic, thus opening up the view for higher-level contexts. Page 11

Objective: Promotion of X-mas SMS Value Added Services.Sunrise advertising media: Banner. Use: December.
Client: Sunrise; responsibility: Guido Trevisan, PM Mobile Entertainment. Design: Sunrise, Adrian Merz, Web Editor.

Objective: To increase awareness of Roosens-Knöpfe.www.roosens-shop.ch Advertising media: Website, banner. Use: Since November until further notice.
Client: Roosens-Knöpfe, Basel and Zurich; Responsibility: Christine Roosens. Agency: Baseline, Basel; Design/Programming: Enrico Luisoni; Text: Hannes Bertschi, Basel and Boracay.

This week sees the publication of another golden balance sheet listing the 300 richest working people in Switzerland. The Ringier family is still at the top of the partly listed gold bag hop. The number three among the Swiss media companies behind PubliGroupe and SRG is worth between 800 and 900 million francs. The Coninx family, which received a special dividend of 250 million francs before the IPO of the media company Tamedia on October 2, 2000, is still holding on to 900 to 1000 million, after the share package is now valued at around 700 million francs, compared to the hypothetical maximum profit of 2100 "millionaire shows" on TV 3 - still at the time of going public.
Charles von Graffenried in Berne, with his 20 percent stake in the former Tagblatt Medien, weighs in at 300 to 400 million, putting him in the same category as Pierre and the Lamunière family, who own 42.5 percent of Edipresse and have "virtually" shrunk by 100 million in the space of a year until they were worth just 300 to 400 million to Le Matin.
The Soldati family, which controls Corriere del Ticino, owns 200 to 300 million. Franchi Svizzeri, nota bene. Beat Curti, who lives near the Goldbach, can now call 200 to 300 million his own, as can Peter Gmür, who channeled his money into liquid channels when he sold his last 18 percent stake in Plakanda to Clear Channel in the spring. Jürg Marquard is jetting internationally in the 100 to 200 million category, while the Hagemann family can also boast the same amount - even before the sale of their golden balance sheet in this issue of Weltwoche.
Also spotted on the fringes of the golden shortlist from the media cake: Ursula Wirz, Chairman of the Board of Directors of newspaper printing presses Wifag, has between 200 and 300 million in her piggy bank. Michèle Belustein-Blanchet, the youngest daughter of the founder of the French advertising agency Publicis, who lives in the canton of Geneva, held a 20 percent stake in this global advertising network until recently and now publishes 100 to 200 million after selling all but a minority stake due to disputes with her sister. Andreas Panzeri

When two are fighting, a third tries to take over the market—that’s what you might think when you see the new Virgin Air ad. Who could possibly beat a price like that? 74 francs for a flight to Brussels! That’s how much it costs to rent three videos, order three pizzas, or get a simple haircut. I wonder how Swissair employees feel when they read the copy in the Virgin ad: «We do away with all unnecessary extras and focus on what really matters: outstanding service with a consistently high standard.» An approach that Swissair employees put into practice every day. The fact that this costs a little more than 74 francs doesn’t bother anyone. Just as quickly as Virgin Air appears on the market, it will vanish over the horizon if the numbers don’t add up. It will never be able to put down roots as deep as Swissair’s. And in times like these, nothing counts more than genuine—and, why not?—even sentimental values. Chandra Kurt, who flies Swissair on principle Column

Showdown by Anna Esposito
I’ll admit it: A few years ago, I toyed with the idea of taking a job as a junior television editor. There was a real gold rush atmosphere: A well-known media company wanted to give the state-run broadcaster a run for its money with a private Swiss television station, and they were on the hunt for new, creative, and original Swiss television formats. Approached by two television professionals and inspired by their enthusiasm, I found myself head over heels in a field that was entirely new to me. Much like in advertising, the two power women had self-funded an opinion poll and presented their idea with a sense of purpose, competing against others. Their format was selected, and the first task was to cast the most charismatic host possible. A sensational ad was placed, laundry baskets full of applications had to be evaluated, and so the big day arrived when six candidates had to prove their on-camera presence. Unfortunately, opinions on the favorite were diametrically opposed, and the ensuing discussions about content, quality, and collaboration were divisive. And so the paths of the media company and the would-be TV production team abruptly diverged. The format was taken over in-house, and all that was left for the stranded editorial team to do was to glue themselves to the screen on the show’s premiere night and drown the result they saw in plenty of champagne. What we saw was a pale reflection of our ideas. Zero wit or passion flickered at us from the screen. An opportunity had been squandered. Yet, as we bitterly realized, the TV executives must have known better what they wanted to bet on. The qualities we had to offer were obviously not it. As last week showed, however, neither were their visions.
[email protected]
Anna Esposito is a copywriter and co-owner of Brot und Spiele, Zurich.
Language Observer

The Suspenders of Knowledge When a Muslim was converted in the 15th century, he would say, «I put on the pants of faith.» And when evening falls in Persia, the blue curl of twilight begins to cast a shadow over the day’s hot brow, until the next day the headscarf of dawn pushes through the door curtain of night.
The language of flowery metaphors has its roots in the Land of the Rising Sun. Listen to the story of Aziz, the merchant: The cup of his life overflowed with the sweet nectar of wealth.
In the bedchamber of his beloved, the bride of his desire nestled against the soul of his longings, which shone in the candlelight of fulfillment. The flowers of his heart bloomed, far from any shadow of mistrust, and on the path of happiness through the park of his joy, the god of delights had the angels of bliss smile upon the rosebuds of his heart. Yet in the end, Aziz hangs dead from the rope—suffocated by the noose of the genitive case.
Here, too, the sap root runs rampant beneath the German cases and keeps sprouting new blossoms. From Hegel’s “sandbank of temporality” to Nietzsche’s “frost of solitude” and Spengler’s “Decline of the West,” all the way to Sloterdijk’s “icy breath of early modernity” and Cioran’s “peaks of despair,” the genitive’s “home story” reveals that the dreamlike-eternal, the dramatically inevitable, and the fatally ambiguous are among its favorite themes.
Ever since the representatives of the new introspection set out from the courts of nothingness toward the thresholds of being, the genitive has operated on the precipice of the banal (Karl Kraus). Yet it appears that even literary heavyweights have fallen prey to the eerily alluring surf of utter hopelessness (Böll), lost themselves in the immeasurable edifice of memory (Proust), or plunged into the abyss of childhood (Adorno).
Botho Strauss theorizes about the ruined city of the narrative and revels in the steppe-brown hues of our expectations; Peter Handke responds with the gate of the narrative and explores the universe of pain. From the Tree of Knowledge, the crown of creation has journeyed through the storm of life, on the wings of imagination, all the way to the blessings of civilization —only to realize that the power of fate now seems antiquated even in pop songs, and that the object of desire isn’t even fit for stocking or car commercials anymore.
The genitive case is an interesting one because it indicates possession (the tenant’s dog) and power dynamics: under the terms of the lease, owning a dog is permitted. Ownership of a dog—but that also includes Fido’s food bowl and bone: his possessions. Here, the genitive reveals its subversive side—by leaving the relationship between subject and object up in the air: Who owns whom?
The ownership of human beings is illegal. Is this a ban on slavery (people must not be treated as property) or a Marxist slogan (ownership is immoral)? Does “Night of Culture” refer to a cultural event or a low point in culture, such as book burnings? Does “the fish eating” refer to fish food, the act of fish eating, or the act of us eating fish? And when Oskar Pastior describes hearing the genitive case as the “suspenders of knowledge” (Poems, Hanser), does the genitive case hear us—or do we hear it? Beat Gloor, www.textcontrol.ch