Muse & leisure Hans Wälty
What was the last cultural event you attended?
Hans Wälty: The Zurich Caliente Festival last weekend, because intense tropical rain is always guaranteed here - without having to travel far.
What are you reading right now?
Wälty: Old issues of WerbeWoche to find out what others in the same predicament as me have just said.
Which CD do you currently prefer to listen to?
Wälty: "Golden Hearts" by Mark Knopfler. I listen to it obsessively over and over again, even though it almost annoys me - this uber-coolness that is backed up by a fair amount of melancholy.
Which movie would you most like to see again?
Wälty: "Lawrence of Arabia." I'm fascinated by this inscrutable, inconsistent, peculiar guy with ingenious abilities.
What TV show did you fall asleep during the other night?
Wälty: About every second one. And not because I usually switch on the TV when I'm already pretty tense.
What is your latest discovery on the Internet?
Wälty: The fact that my stock portfolio, which I had painstakingly built up with near-real-time prices at Borsalino, suddenly disappeared without a trace.
What could you never do without?
Wälty: On my bunch of keys, on which all the keys from the last 20 years are hanging.
Love is...?
Wälty: ...a highly emotional and harmonious state of mind. Unfortunately, it is usually rather short-lived.

FCB Leutenegger Krüll lays the advertising table for Theater NeumarktThe 2001/2002 season of Theater Neumarkt has the theme "The ethical and moral questions of society". With this motto, the Zurich stage is reacting to a discussion in the media about genetic manipulation, public executions and euthanasia, says director Crescentia Dünsser, who has the feeling that the question of transgressions is now being raised everywhere.In the coming season, the subsidized public limited company, which is majority-owned by the city of Zurich, is concerned with promoting public discourse, with a non-scientific examination of the immoral aspects of these issues and with reflecting on whether "something like ethics still exists at all". The theater people do not see themselves as a moral authority "that a priori always excludes and forbids something", but rather work with material that allows ethical questions "that private individuals ponder anyway" to be posed in a sensual way.
"We had a great desire to rant and rave about what man is," says the artistic director. This desire is also underlined by an appearance by the agency FCB Leutenegger Krüll, which has implemented the motto of the 2001/2002 season in a humorous and culinary way.
The season visual proposed by the Wallisell advertisers shows a large tablecloth with printed place settings, empty and half-empty plates, each of which is assigned to a production. For example, on a subject announcing a production of Fyodor Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment", remnants of red caviar can be seen.
"You can tell what kind of character a person has by the way they eat," says Creative Director Mike Krüll, explaining the reasons for the implementation.
At the same time, individual motifs were produced from the plates in the form of postcards, which were used separately to advertise each performance or glued together to form a booklet,
can be sent and submitted as a season program.
The second season has been successful in terms of the atmosphere, with performances always sold out at the moment. "Once the people of Zurich start to take you to their hearts, they do it completely. You don't give them that at first. You are surprised that they offer you a home," says the German director, who took over the management of Theater Neumarkt with Otto Kukla two years ago. Ernst Weber

We can hope until Saturday, when the Film Lions have also been distributed, but the reality is that "we" didn't win a predatory kitten in Press & Poster. After all, there were eight places of honor on the shortlist for the Printers, and two nominations for the Cyber Lions. All the details can be found on the daily updated website www.werbewoche.ch

Not all advertising that is appealing also entices consumers to buyBy Wolfgang KoschnickLikeability is the magic word in advertising par excellence. What appeals to consumers is what attracts them and leads them to buy a product. But it doesn't work that simply. Other factors have to be right for advertising to have a lasting effect. For example, the consumer's attitude towards the brand.
The largest advertising effectiveness study ever conducted worldwide has also caused the greatest confusion. The Copy Research Validity Project of the American Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) dragged on for over a decade. And when the findings from over 12,000 interviews were finally available at the beginning of the 1990s, most observers initially found the main result rather banal.
Because it says: the most important thing for the sales success of an advertising spot is that the audience likes it. Likeability is the factor that contributes most to the sales impact of advertising. The product or its quality is not nearly as important. If consumers like the advertisement, they will buy the product.
Well, said the Europeans. That may be the case with Americans. They have nothing more important on their minds than being popular with others. They learn that at school and vote for "the most popular girl" and "the most popular boy". Being liked is part of the American way of life. But in Europe, the clocks run differently.
Likeability also has the greatest impact in Europe
So this was also investigated in Europe. And lo and behold, the result was the same in Europe. This was recently proven by a study carried out last year by Lars Bergkvist from the Stockholm School of Economics on Swedish television and another study carried out by Ben Decock and Patrick De Pelsmacker from the University of Antwerp on Belgian television in 1999 and 2000. They all came to the same conclusion: nothing can predict the sales success of advertising as well as the fact that the audience likes it.
How did the Americans come to this realization in the first place? Actually, they wanted to do something completely different from advertising effectiveness research. The ARF Copy Research Validity Project was launched in the early 1980s to find out whether pretests - or more precisely, copy tests - could actually predict sales success.
The ARF was therefore not at all concerned with researching advertising impact, but solely with determining factors that can be used to predict the sales success of advertising. And the result was that liking or likeability is the factor with the greatest predictive power of all.
If you take a closer look, the findings are not all that exciting. In the test, respondents were each presented with five pairs of commercials. One of the two commercials had achieved very good sales in the real market situation, the other had not. However, the respondents did not know which commercial it was. Using a five-point scale, they had to indicate whether they liked the commercials ("I like the ad very much", "I like the ad", "I neither like nor dislike the ad", "I dislike the ad", "I dislike the ad very much").
The first two statements were seen as an expression of liking. And now it turned out that in 87 percent of all cases, the commercials that people liked were also the ones with the better sales success ("sales winners").
In the great enthusiasm, however, the subsequent public discussion also overlooked the fact that in 87% of cases, people also said that the commercial had told them something new about the product ("It told me something new about the product."). And in another 87 percent of cases, spontaneous ad recall was the reliable predictor of sales success.
So likeability isn't all that great either. And other factors also proved to be very impressive predictors in the ARF project, as the following overview shows: A closer look shows that likability is by no means the only factor with a strong effect. Product information and even good old advertising recall have just as strong an effect. Other factors such as the persuasiveness of the advertising were not even asked about.
But even with a critical eye, if the test subjects in the pre-test say that they like a commercial or an ad, then that's pretty good. However, no one had ever said the opposite before. So basically, not much has been gained.
Studies on the
Pleasantness runs wild
The fundamental role of likeability in advertising was first discovered in the US more than 15 years ago. In 1985, the Ogilvy Center for Research & Development (OCRD), San Francisco, conducted a study on "Likeable TV Advertising". The results showed that the more likeable consumers find an advertisement, the more likely they are to be convinced by its message.
Consumers who liked the TV commercials tested "very much" were almost twice as likely to be convinced of the quality of the advertised product than those who liked the commercials only "quite well" or who did not express an opinion. However, the majority of those who liked the commercials "very much" were still not convinced of the quality of the product. However, if they only liked the commercials "quite well" or had "no opinion" about them, the percentage of those who were not convinced increased significantly.
As early as the 1930s, Horace Schwerin conducted a study among American soldiers: Advertising messages that appeal to those being advertised to have a stronger effect than messages that do not appeal to them.
However, the jubilation about the powerful role of likeability in the effectiveness of advertising soon became mixed with a drop of bitterness. A study conducted by A. R. Kuse in 1991 with seven pairs of successful and less successful commercials found no correlation at all between likeability and "effectiveness in the marketplace". For this reason, the renowned market research institute Gallup & Robinson carried out another study in 1992, which quickly confirmed all the findings of the ARF study.
Nigel S. Hollis, head of research at the San Francisco-based Millward Brown Institute, set about sowing nagging doubts about the meaning of the likeability paradigm in 1995 in an essay entitled "Like it or Not. Likeability is Not Enough." (The Millward Brown researchers had found in their study that likeability exaggerated the sales success of advertising in many cases and understated it in others. According to Hollis, "enjoyability" and "involvement" proved to be much more reliable indicators.
In a meta-analysis, the two advertising researchers Steven P. Brown and Douglas M. Stayman also shook the belief in the success of appealing advertising. Brown and Stayman studied around 60 individual analyses and found that although attitude towards advertising does have an influence on sales success, this influence is often overestimated. Attitude towards advertising directly influences brand cognition. This in turn determines brand attitude ("attitude towards brand"). Thus, via the detour of brand attitude, likeability does play a certain role, but not a particularly large one.
And finally - as the two meta-researchers found out - the product category, existing attitudes towards brands and the advertising media are also important factors that influence the sales success of advertising. Thus, likeability as a guarantor for the sales success of advertising is gradually crumbling amidst the rollercoaster of contradictory research findings...
The Superbowl ad did not deliver what it promised
In his highly acclaimed book "Getting it Right The First Time", the most respected advertising researcher of our time, John Philip Jones from Syracuse University, presented completely different figures: Only 41 percent of the time are liking and brand recall likely to predict advertising sales success. This also means that in the vast majority of cases (59 percent) they do not. Even advertising recall is a much more reliable predictor at 54%. The unrivaled best predictor, however, according to Jones, is "brain processed advertising": Prediction rate: 91 percent.
Recently, doubts have been growing in the USA as to whether likeability is really such a unique predictor of advertising sales success. The Americans have taken on one of their national treasures and took a closer look at the effectiveness of advertising during the Super Bowl last year.
To their astonishment, they found masses of advertising that all respondents rated as extremely "likeable". But the sales figures for the corresponding products were downright paltry. There was a considerable number of commercials that people said were highly likeable, but when asked if they wanted to buy the advertised products, they said no. There was a large gap between likeability and purchase intent for many, but not all, products.
This means nothing other than the fact that likeability can only sometimes predict the sales success of advertising. But a statement that says: "Sometimes it works, but sometimes it doesn't" may be enough to describe the suitability of a Russian airplane. But it is useless as a scientific statement.
The motivational thrust leads consumers to buy
In Germany, the General Association of Advertising Agencies (GWA) and the Second German Television (ZDF) soon investigated the same subject area and came to similar findings as the ARF mentioned above: advertising that appeals to most consumers is also the most effective advertising. The liking, in turn, depends primarily on the entertainment value and less on the information value of an advertisement. Conversely, this also means that viewers also like commercials with an above-average sales impact.
This thesis was tested in a basic study conducted by GfK market research in Nuremberg in 1991, which focused on the appeal of commercials and their economic success. The study examined 985 commercials from all product categories in realistic viewing situations.
A commercial is effective if it stands out from the competition and also has the motivational power to draw viewers to the advertised brand. This is particularly important for long-term advertising impact. Under the pressure of the ever-increasing flood of advertising, consumers are increasingly willing to "zap away" program and advertising content that they do not like. Conversely, a commercial that appeals to consumers increases their willingness to watch it and therefore has a greater chance of getting its message across.
The clear analysis of likeability and assertiveness showed a relatively weak correlation. The analysis of the overall result by subgroup showed that the correlation between likeability and assertiveness is greater for men than for women and stronger for older people than for younger people. Broken down by product category, there were strong correlations between the two criteria in the areas of food, beverages, household goods and OTC products.
When using motivational thrust as an indicator for the sales effectiveness of an advertising spot, there was also only a very weak correlation between likeability and sales effectiveness.
In the second step, the study analyzed all commercials that have both a very high assertiveness and a very high motivational thrust, but also those commercials that have only a very low assertiveness and low motivational thrust.
Result: The average rating of these two groups differs fundamentally. Commercials that are particularly effective are liked more than average, and commercials that are not effective are not liked. Accordingly, commercials that are extremely well received are also much more effective than commercials that are extremely poorly received - the ten percent of commercials with the best or worst rating were analyzed in each case.
Likeability must never be used as an end in itself
A certain minimum level of acceptance is therefore necessary in order to have any chance of being effective. If this is not achieved, the consumer switches off, at least mentally. On the other hand, there are commercials that are so well received that they work on their own and, in extreme cases, lead to brand selection and brand switching.
While the factors responsible for liking a commercial are widely known, there is little evidence to distinguish commercials that are liked and effective from those that are liked but not effective.
To find this out, all commercials with high likeability were divided into two clusters: firstly, commercials with high likeability, high assertiveness and high "motivational thrust", and secondly, commercials with high likeability but low assertiveness and low "motivational thrust". These commercials were statistically examined using the database and subjected to a qualitative analysis.
Effective spots with high likeability are therefore characterized by the following features compared to ineffective spots with high likeability:
? In effective commercials, likeability is not an end in itself, but a means to an end. Conversely, ineffective commercials very often use beautiful images, especially children, animals, attractive actors or chic environments that are appealing but have no connection to the brand or brand personality. To a certain extent, the beautiful images replace the missing advertising idea. These commercials are often "creative". But this creativity is unproductive. It does not arise from the brand. To a certain extent, the commercials are "bathed in beauty" - but they are definitely bathed.
? With effective commercials, on the other hand, what consumers like dramatizes the specific characteristics of the advertised brand.
Whether a commercial is liked or not is therefore less important than what people like about it. In more scholarly terms: only the likeability that is productive for a brand is relevant. However, this finding is in stark contrast to the findings of the ARF study mentioned at the beginning, which are as follows: No matter what is liked, if it is liked, it works.
The ultimate royal road to brand personality
In order to answer the question of what characterizes commercials that are not liked but still effective, GfK divided the effective commercials (high assertiveness and high motivational thrust) into those with very high likeability and those with very low likeability.
According to the findings of this study, commercials that are not appealing but are nevertheless effective are characterized above all by the fact that they communicate a specific USP. The best recipe for success for an effective commercial is therefore a clear, relevant product benefit for consumers.
However, a genuinely independent product benefit of a product that is strikingly different from that of all comparable products is rarer than the blue Mauritius. As the products offer little room for differentiation due to their objective nature, advertising communication is in principle the ideal way to create independent brand personalities from interchangeable products.
To achieve this, however, the advertising must also be of original quality. Advertising that unimaginatively falls back on hackneyed clichés such as beautiful women or that worn-out lifestyle atmosphere for confectionery, cosmetics, food and almost everything that is aimed at young target groups can only backfire.
When analysing likeability, it is therefore advisable to ask: Does what is liked effectively dramatize a specific brand value or a specific brand world? Or are they largely executive elements such as beautiful music, nice actors, cute dogs, cute children or a generic lifestyle? The mere jingling of words and stylish images alone are useless, even if they appeal to consumers.
The compulsion for subjective selection is essential for survival
Against what theoretical background has the appeal of advertising attained the status it still has in the current debate? One of the environmental conditions under which market communication operates today is the information overload of the audience. In American advertising research, this is referred to as "information overload". Very little of the abundance of advertising that pours down on consumers is retained.
Perceptual psychology assumes that the total amount of environmental stimuli available to a person to absorb and process information is significantly greater than their needs or processing capacity. The oversupply of information forces subjective selection.
In the growing competition for information, only advertising messages that can prevail against the highly selective perception of consumers survive, because consumers almost always break off contact with an advertising message as soon as they dislike something about it. It makes relatively little difference whether they zap the advertisement away with the remote control or simply switch it off internally.
Advertising is therefore faced with the task of surviving in the flood of information and becoming effective even if it is received fleetingly and in fragments. It depends very much on how much inner involvement, how much interest a consumer shows in advertising. Advertising researchers speak of "involvement".
Two steps lead to advertising success
Consumers have little or no involvement in most everyday consumer goods and their advertising. If you buy a new car, you pay close attention to all the details. But someone who buys margarine only reaches into the shelf in passing.
Only a few involved consumers engage with the content of an advertising spot. They take in the information and emotional "value propositions" presented only fleetingly, carelessly and fragmentarily. The content of an advertising message can hardly give them any clues to form preferences for a brand.
They derive their preferences
The success of an advertisement depends above all on the external impression it makes on them. The appealing and entertaining design of the advertising material then determines the success of the advertisement much more than the comprehension of the message.
of the advertising message. In American advertising research, this is referred to as a "two-stage impact model":
Stage 1: The external design of the advertising appeals to the target audience; this leads to acceptance of the advertising medium.
Stage 2: This acceptance is transferred to the brand and the advertiser.
A brief digression into advertising psychology
In order to achieve preferences for a brand, it hardly matters what is said under the condition of "low involvement". Much more important is how something is said. The two American advertising psychologists Richard E. Petty and John T. Cacioppo refer to this style of advertising as the "peripheral way of influencing". Here, "liking" is of central importance.
According to this theory, there are two ways of influencing, one central and one peripheral. The central way of influencing leads to lasting and stable changes in attitude, while the peripheral way leads to an unstable change in attitude at best - and only if the influencing message is still mentally and actually present. The first prerequisite for the central way of influencing is the ability and motivation to actively and intensively process information.
Consumers with high involvement therefore do not base their judgment on secondary impressions, but on information that relates to essential characteristics of the product or service and is therefore central.
In contrast, when influencing recipients with low involvement, the peripheral way of influencing is chosen: Since the consumer is not sufficiently activated to think about the product at all and only takes in and processes information about it fleetingly, they have few points of reference for a rational product assessment.
He then allows himself to be impressed by trivialities such as the product's attractive appearance, appealing advertising or recommendations from people he likes (movie actors), even if these people are not factually competent. His attitude towards the product therefore depends largely on peripheral and more emotional impressions.
The late Werner Kroeber-Riel wrote: "The realization of the different effects of low-involvement and high-involvement advertising is almost a revolution in the views on advertising; it leads to the abandonment of a uniform model of effectiveness. Nevertheless, the practice still largely adheres to a uniform impact model. It also leads to a reversal of previous ideas about advertising impact. Ultimately, these have always been oriented towards advertising for highly involved recipients. According to these ideas, it is primarily the content of the advertising message, i.e. what is said, that is important. In advertising for less involved recipients, on the other hand, the external design, the emotional presentation, the how of the advertising is decisive for advertising success.
Predictors Correlation

with sales success
I like the ad (very much) 87%Told me something new
about the product 87%
Spontaneous advertising
recall 87%
Overall brand rating 84%
This ad is enjoyable 80%
Top-of-mind awareness 73%
Tells me a lot about how
the product works 73%
I learned a lot from this ad 73%
I find this advertising artistic 60%
Main point communication 60%
Source: Advertising Research Foundation (ARF)
How advertising really works

With this article by Allensbach journalist Wolfgang J. Koschnick, WerbeWoche continues its series of articles on advertising effectiveness research. Part 6 of this series of articles deals with the influence of the likeability of advertising on sales success.
Anyone with questions about aspects of advertising effectiveness research is welcome to send them to us ([email protected]). We will answer them to the best of our knowledge.
In selecting the topics for this series, Wolfgang J. Koschnick can draw on several hundred scientific studies on advertising impact that have been published in Germany and abroad over the past 50 years.
Further reading

Anyone interested in a literature list on the subject of likeability and advertising impact can obtain it free of charge from the editorial team of WerbeWoche (info@werbewoche). The list will be sent by
E-mail delivered.
Previous articles

Sex in advertising, (WW 38/ 00), How does humor work in advertising? (42/00), How does the environment influence the impact of advertising? (1/01), How does placement influence advertising impact? (14/01), Creativity and efficiency in advertising (18/01); Fear appeals in advertising (21/01).

Eclat focuses on brand management and expands its networkBy Carole KochOne thing is certain: Eclat remains Eclat. Nevertheless, everything will be different. Because the AG for corporate identity and media design specializes in the development and management of brands, of naming as well as of multimedia design and is establishing new agencies in Basel as well as in Munich.
"The name Eclat symbolizes an explosion of ideas, colors and shapes - for the benefit of customers, of course," says Daniel Zehntner, father and owner of the Erlenbach-based branding company. He says this idea was born out of the mission to solve specific tasks in an amazing way, while neither authoring nor cultivating a particular style. "This principle has not changed to this day," he elaborates.
Nevertheless, a lot has happened at Eclat since it was founded twelve years ago. Originally a pure design agency, the small company gradually became a renowned address for corporate identity (CI) and media design. Exceptional CI solutions not only helped Eclat gain a renowned client portfolio, but also fame and glory: For example, the agency won an American Graphic Design Award for the corporate design program for Eurex.
In recent years, according to Zehntner, the focus has increasingly been on brand development and management, naming and multimedia design. "Practice taught us that only the combination of innovative, strategic consulting as well as outstanding design can create sustainable brand value and thus lead to the success of a communicative measure."
A concept to maximize customer happiness
Thus, Zehntner positions Eclat as a branding company that has more to offer its clients than corporate identity and corporate design, "namely profiled design and stunning communication that matches the brand strategy." Also newly launched is the "Employer Branding" product, a specific service package designed to profile employers in the markets.
The flagship of Eclat's approach is the freshly produced information brochure with the lead claim "brand matters": "In it, we have very straightforwardly implemented the concept of the customer happiness maximizer - a hard-selling story on profit, safety, comfort, prestige and fun that is sure to interest our target audience," comments senior designer Kim Kueng.
Already established a representative office in New York
That all sounds well and good. But has the direction taken so far proved successful? "In 2000, sales exceeded 5 million Swiss francs," says Zehntner, adding that this corresponds to growth of around 50 percent. In order to be able to cope with the demand in the future, Eclat is expanding its capacities even further: In addition to the headquarters in Erlenbach ZH, the agency has a representative office in New York, which currently employs two people.
The branch office in Basel, which was launched in January, is still being set up. In addition, Eclat has relocated its branch office in Frankfurt am Main to Munich in order to establish a cooperation with the German ET alliance and the Pape Consulting Group.
In the future, Zehntner wants to continue to steer the ship Eclat to where customers can derive the greatest benefit from his team's services. "And to where it's fun, because creativity and rationality dance together."

Since the beginning of the year, the Tamedia printing center has been running the new Production Services department, which, in contrast to the existing Publishing Services, is limited to the production of extensive and high-circulation advertising material. For Hanspeter Wöhrle, Head of Production Services, this means not only the acquisition of print jobs but also a faster and more efficient organization of work processes. He also wants to "achieve digitization as consistently as possible". The department offers individual modules of the production process as a service, from concept and workflow development to digital photography and cost and quality control.Production Services' target customers are advertising departments of large corporations that rely on extensive advertising media. One of its main customers is Jumbo-Markt AG, for which Tamedia produces the advertising newspaper for the Jumbo DIY stores (ba).

schweizerbauer.ch presents an alternative beauty pageantBy Clemens HörlerMirror, mirror on the wall: Who is the most beautiful in the whole country? At www.schwei zerbauer.ch, the most beautiful ladies of all dairy breeds are currently presenting themselves from their best side. The big online cattle show came about because practically all major cattle shows of national and international importance had to be canceled due to the foot-and-mouth epidemic.
Almost 300 beauties from all over Switzerland (and some from Canada) took part in the online cattle show. The dairy cow breeds Holstein, Red Holstein, Brown Swiss, Fleckvieh, Simmental, Original Braunvieh, Jersey and Montbeliarde were each divided into three sections (younger, middle-aged, older animals), similar to the big shows, and ranked by a professional jury. Until June 30, visitors can
on the website to decide which cow will be the Online Grande Champion. At the time of going to press, the smart pied Red Holstein "Pergola" was in the lead.
Little interest in online advertising
Robert Stark, Editorial Director of schweizerbauer.ch, the agricultural portal of Bern Online (BTM Group), speaks of the large number of visitors to the online livestock exhibition. Within the website, this section has recorded the most page views. Overall, schweizerbauer.ch records 1000 to 1500 visits per day, and the trend is increasing. However, according to Stark, advertisers from the sector are not yet showing too much commitment.
Ueli Aeschbacher, responsible for content and partnerships at schweizerbauer.ch, notes that there is still little interest in e-commerce in the agricultural sector. This also applies to livestock farmers. Although functional food can already be ordered via the online marketplace to make livestock strong and vigorous, it is obviously not so easy to get live cows to the farmer or butcher via the Internet.
This does not always have to be the case: This spring, around 25 cows were offered for auction in a test run in collaboration with Züchter Service AG in Chur. Two thirds of them were sold through internet contacts. This gives the website creators of schweizerbauer.ch courage for the future. Aeschbacher: "In order to be able to include online cattle auctions in the program, however, the technical possibilities must still be improved, especially in the presentation of the object."
The best of the breeding bull and embryos from "Jetway Jacky"
Aeschbacher believes that e-commerce with products from the genetics sector also has great potential. Embryos and semen doses from breeding bulls can already be ordered on schweizerbauer.ch. Semen doses cost between 10 and 60 francs.
Cow embryos are already more expensive: "Patrick Rind" (promising genetics from a super cow family) costs around 1000 francs. "Jupiter Veronika" (donor cow, division winner Buchloe, dream udder) is available for 1500 francs. Even more expensive is "Jetway Jacky". After all, "two top cow families are united in the embryos". Top family, dream udder, dream figure - that sounds somehow familiar to a city dweller...

Objective: Interaction of the campaign benefit.Coca-Cola AG Advertising media: Internet. Use: Weeks 24/25.
Client: Coca-Cola AG; Responsibility: Michael Cluzel, Katja Kronenberg. Agency: Frame Eleven; Design: Mischa Plocek; Media: Universal McCann/Euromedia; Online agency: Banner.ch AG.

Belcom COO Martin Spieler believes in the success of the planned Money 24 financial portalMister "Money" Martin Spieler believes that his own model holds better cards than the existing financial portals. A ray of hope for the planned channel: despite the depressed stock market, the viewing figures for "Money" have grown significantly.Martin Spieler, there are commercials for Moneycab on Tele24, immediately before the trailer for the "Money" show. Will Moneycab become the financial portal for your stock market channel Money24?
Martin Spieler: That's pure coincidence. Moneycab - like other financial companies - appreciates the attractive advertising environment surrounding the "Money" program.
But now that Cablecom and its subsidiary SwissOnline have become fickle as a preferred partner for the planned financial portal, this would be an alternative.
Spieler: We are in intensive talks with several partners from the financial, Internet and telecommunications sectors. We are open to various conceivable possibilities. I can't say any more at the moment.
When will you announce the partnerships?
Player: We want to find the best possible solution, and that just takes time.
However, we heard months ago that you had already reached an agreement with some partners.
Player: That's the case, several contracts have already been signed.
Who is there?
Player: Out of consideration for the ongoing negotiations, I'm not able to name names right now. We don't want to communicate bit by bit, but when everything is finalized.
Money24 was announced for this fall. When will you get started?
Player: We have never set a fixed date. We have not yet made a definitive decision regarding the launch date. It's like an IPO: you have to get the timing right, the framework conditions have to be right. We will launch when we are sure that it will be a success.
By the right framework conditions, you also mean: when the stock market goes up again.
Player: This is definitely a consideration, but not the most important one.
Once again on the finance portal: there is no finance portal that has made it into the black so far. Why do you still believe that things will be different with your planned portal?
Spieler: We have a completely different model. As far as most other financial portals are concerned, I have to agree with you. On the revenue side, they don't look great at all.
What sets you apart from the others?
Spieler: Our core business is television. We have had great success with "Money". We said from the outset that we would not build the portal ourselves. We also said that we would not rely on online advertising or commissions. Many financial portals have done both. And that's why they have very, very big problems today.
How do you earn money with the portal?
Player: We sell our content to the portal. The banks that sign contracts with us have an interest in acquiring customers for their own trading platforms via our portal. It is two different things whether you operate a portal that is also your main business or whether you are a bank for which a portal is merely a secondary business with the aim of acquiring trading clients.
As far as I know, the combination of TV station and financial portal does not yet exist anywhere else in the form you are planning. Do you know of a successful model?
Player: There are aspects of this. For example, you can also download individual stock market broadcasts from the major portals. The vision of our portal is that it will be possible to do this much more consistently and, above all, in real time. However, the technology required for this is not quite ready yet. But we are working on it. It's all just a question of time, and we have it.
Like many other new launches in German-speaking countries, which have shot out of the ground in the past stock market boom years, Money24 also focused on expanding the stock market audience. However, the bear market has probably already reversed this expansion of the audience. The bottom line is that more people may have been driven away from the stock market than were added during the boom years. Doesn't that give you a stomach ache?
Player: At the beginning of the year, I also wondered how the "Money" ratings would react to the weakness on the stock markets. But we were totally surprised: From January to May, we had audience growth rates of between 25 and 35 percent, more than ever before. That encourages us. If you can record such growth in such turbulent times, that's a great signal. Interview: Daniel Schifferle

It is still unclear whether radio and posters are effective team players as advertising mediaBy Markus KnöpfliThe combination of radio and posters is part of the strategy of Clear Channel (CC), the world's largest provider of out-of-home media. What is already bearing fruit in the USA is now to be brought to full bloom in Europe - among other things with various studies.
This spring, the Swiss outdoor advertiser Plakanda, which belongs to the American CC Group, placed advertisements in the German trade press praising the advantages of a mixed poster/radio spot campaign to the skies. Literally, it said: "The two advertising media radio and poster are successful team players ... Thus, the effect of the two media is not only additive, but multiplicative."
Plakanda bases this statement on a study that the company conducted together with the local radio stations One FM (Geneva) and Lausanne FM. Both radios had to communicate new frequencies last November. For 14 days, therefore, in addition to the broadcasting of corresponding radio jingles, a poster campaign was placed in both Geneva and Lausanne.
Before and after the campaigns, the Link Institute surveyed around 800 people between the ages of 15 and 74 twice per radio station by telephone. "We wanted to show qualitatively how the Media Multiplier Effect (MME) works," says Beat Roeschlin, general manager Switzerland at Plakanda. Adding, "The study yielded a 'smashing result'."
Indeed, the figures are impressive at first glance: The number of people who listen to Lausanne FM daily or several times a week grew by 10.5 percent. One FM even gained 19.6 percent regular listeners. The level of awareness of Lausanne FM among 15 to 29 year-olds rose unsupported from 39.9 to 50.5 percent, One FM came in at 59.6 percent. In addition, 20.5 percent of respondents remembered the billboard for Lausanne FM, and as many as 20.9 percent remembered the jingle content.
A study for a third-party product will follow in the fall
However, the study has a catch: its design does not allow any conclusions to be drawn regarding a possible interaction between posters and radio. It only proves one thing with certainty: posters have an effect.
The reason lies in the advertised product: the new frequencies. Even in the very best case, a radio station can use jingles to attract at most 100 percent of its existing listeners to its new frequency. Consequently, the two radio stations owe the increases in listenership and awareness solely to the poster medium. Whether the posters also helped the radios to retain their existing listeners can be assumed, but it is unclear.
Roeschlin, asked about this by WerbeWoche, pauses. Then he says: "That's right, we spoke too early of an MME. This can only be hypothetically derived here from the memory of the subject and jingle." After all, he is already planning another study in which the effects of radio and posters will be surveyed individually and then jointly. It is to be carried out this year in German-speaking Switzerland and, above all, with advertising for a third-party product.

Following the provisional certification of circulation (26996 copies sold at the end of March), AG für Werbemedienforschung also collected readership figures for the first time for Stocks, the investor magazine launched in November.News 61000 read Stocks
According to this special study, Stocks had an average readership of 61000 people (readers per issue) in the first quarter of 2001. In the widest readership, Stocks reached 123,000 people in German-speaking Switzerland. In the current second quarter, the magazine has reported further growth in subscription sales. At present, the paid circulation is around 30000 copies.
Animan sold The magazine Animan is changing hands: Edipresse, the publisher in western Switzerland, is selling the magazine to a small group of Swiss investors as of July 1. Edipresse has decided to part with Animan in order to concentrate on its main publications in the future, a statement said. Among the investors is Edipresse's deputy general manager, Marcel A. Pasche.
Sat 1 Switzerland combats the summer slumpSat 1 is launching a competition to combat the summer slump in TV viewing. Every day, three short clips are shown in different commercial breaks in which "colored balls play the leading role. Once they have seen the clip, viewers can call a corresponding phone number and are automatically entered into a prize draw. The concept for the contest, which is supported by spots on Sat 1, advertisements in Blick and customer mailings, comes from the Seiler DDB advertising agency. Sat 1 marketer RMB Switzerland is offering special advertising time packages around the contest.
Comedia warns BMGThe Comedia trade union has invited the employees of the Winterthur and Colorserv printing plant, which belongs to the Basel Media Group (BMG), to a meeting. The declared aim is to "build up resistance against the closure of the Winterthur printing plant, which is steeped in tradition". The background to this is the ongoing sales negotiations that BMG is conducting with Ringier. Comedia fears that Ringier will buy and close the print shop, as the group has already ordered two similar presses for Zofingen. Comedia further relies on statements by Hans J. Strickler, Managing Director of Ringier Print-Holding, according to which Ringier wants to create 100 to 150 new jobs in the printing sector in Zofingen, but will not invest in Winterthur. Ringier Communications Manager Myrta Bugini confirmed Strickler's statement to WerbeWoche, but would not comment in detail on Ringier's strategy following a possible purchase of the Winterthur printing plant. However, she said that the aim was "to retain as many jobs as possible in Winterthur". She also referred to an information meeting that BMG has scheduled for July 3, at which Ringier will also provide information.
Beyoo with SunriseBeyoo, Swissair's online travel agency, and Sunrise parent TDC Schweiz AG have agreed to cooperate. The first step is the integration of Beyoo's travel offer into Sunrise's portal. According to a statement, the appearance will be "characterized by co-branded elements". Cooperations are also planned in the areas of advertising and promotion. On the Sunrise site, Beyoo's offer will be next to that of competitor Ebookers, which also cooperates with Sunrise.
Adcore gets new parent companyThe Swedish web services provider Adcore is divesting its international subsidiaries. They are being sold for 30 million kronor (5 million Swiss francs) to a newly formed company, the majority of which is owned by Adcore Denmark CEO Martin S. Hauge. The deal also affects Swiss Adcore, which was formed last fall from Biel-based Aseantic. Swiss Managing Director Gian-Franco Salvato stressed to Netzticker that Adcore Switzerland is profitable and wants to continue as before. There will also be no changes for Swiss customers.

On June 15, the Federal Council signed off on two new principles recommended by the Federal Office of Communications (OFCOM) for policy toward private radio stations:On the one hand, programs broadcast via VHF which are not already provided for in the 1996 transmitter network planning will definitely not receive a license because of the frequency shortage. Consequently, the Federal Council rejected a VHF-distributed youth radio station from Radio ExtraBern. At the same time, it also makes it clear to Virus and Radio 105 that they have no chance with their FM petitions and "Fights for Frequency".The Federal Council also turns away from the philosophy according to which private radio areas outside Zurich should not overlap if possible. Based on applications from several broadcasters who wanted this, it concludes that a moderate adjustment of existing coverage areas makes sense and that a certain area size is necessary for a broadcaster to be attractive to the advertising market.
As a result, Central Switzerland's Sunshine and Central radios were the first to receive approval for expansion. Radio Sunshine will be extended to the Sursee and Schwyz districts. Radio Central is now allowed to broadcast its program in the city of Zug and in the Aegeri valley. Further applications from the Zurich area, central and eastern Switzerland are still pending (mk).