The Basler Versus Werbeagentur GmbH has moved into larger premises near the Basler Theater.At the same time, the agency is expanding its range of services in the field of new media. To this end, it is working in partnership with the Internet company Normdis AG, which is located in the same building. Versus offers classic communications "Communications", new media "Virtualzone" and children and youth marketing "Youngzone". "Our core business is clearly in classic communications. We consider new media and children and youth marketing as trend directions in which we have and offer expertise," says Filippo Muscara, creative and client director of Versus. Muscara, previously advertising, PR and media director at Manor, leads the five-person team in Basel together with art director Stefan Degen. The agency also has a small branch office in Zurich. Its portfolio includes Beyeler Optik, Messe Basel, Neue Aargauer Bank and the Swiss Cancer League. (dz)

Telesuisse is "astonished" by the fee proposal of the three big playersBy Markus KnöpfliThe proposal by Tele 24, Tele Züri, Tele Bärn, Tele M1 and Tele Tell to fork out fees to SRG in favor of private TVs once again threatens to split the private TV scene.
What Roger Schawinski, Albert P. Stäheli and Peter Wanner cooked up last week, accompanied by self-orchestrated media bluster, went down the wrong way with Claude-Alain Stettler, president of the 18-member private TV association Telesuisse. In any case, he finds it "astonishing that we all supported the position on the revision of the Radio and Television Act (RTVA) and now three members are single-handedly taking a different stance."
However, he does not want to say more about this circumstance, because the association, which has not yet commented on the initiative of the three TV broadcasters, will discuss the topic at next week's board meeting. In any case, Stettler says, he has not been pre-informed by the three initiators.
He also denies a statement by Stäheli, delegate to the board of Berner Tagblatt Medien. He had told WerbeWoche that an internal distribution proposal had already been agreed with other broadcasters for the hoped-for fee share of CHF 100 million. "We have never discussed a distribution key. If there is a model, it is only with the three initiators," says Stettler.
Even the private radio association shakes its head
The Association of Swiss Private Radio Stations (VSP), which is chaired by Günter Heuberger, Managing Director of the St.Gallen-based Top Group, is also astonished. "By announcing that they would suspend the existing RTVG and the applicable licenses, the three private broadcasters have done a disservice to the concerns of private broadcasters in the media policy debates," writes Heuberger. If, in addition, the demands of Tele 24/Tele Züri, Tele Bärn and Tele M1/Tele Tell for fee money were considered, all television broadcasters and also the 45 radio broadcasters would have to receive fee money, he further points out.
Small organizers fear being put at a disadvantage
The fact that the demand for fee-splitting can lead to a dispute at Telesuisse is not new. Back in 1997, when Roger Schawinski called for fees for the first time, the association almost broke up because Schawinski wanted to give the money to the big broadcasters first. This fear that the small stations could be disadvantaged again is also addressed by Heuberger in his statement.
The three initiators should be less cheeky, since they are anyway "active in the large conurbations favored by the advertising industry," he writes. Moreover, they have achieved a near monopoly in the electronic media in recent years.

ADC President Jean Etienne Aebi on the "added value of surprising advertising "Creative advertising is not "l'art pour l'art. It actually has a more successful effect on the market than non-creative ones. An image study also shows that more and more responsible marketing people believe in the real added value of campaigns that have won awards from the Art Directors Club (ADC) (see also pages 12 and 18). Jean Etienne Aebi analyzes the background to this.Are you satisfied with the results of the study conducted by the IHA.GfM survey institute among 200 top advertisers and 50 heads of leading advertising agencies?
Jean Etienne Aebi: One could almost be euphoric. The comparison with a similar study from 1996 shows: ADC's external image has changed enormously in a positive way. We can see a very
decisive increase in the opinion that ADC is considered to be competent. People think ADC is important. More and more responsible marketing people are even convinced that ADC significantly improves the image of the industry.
So are creatively excellent campaigns more successful in the market?
Aebi: The study clearly shows that not only the CDs and ADs in the advertising agencies, but also the vast majority of the responsible marketing executives in Switzerland are clearly of this opinion.
How do you experience this in practice? Do advertisers and creatives like the same ideas right away, or do they still need a lot of convincing?
Aebi: The vast majority are convinced that the more creative advertising is the more efficient. But when I look at the newspaper this morning and maybe watch TV this evening, I naturally get a question mark: What is considered creative by a majority here? Of course, there are different opinions about the criteria for what is creative in the sense that a campaign achieves its effect in the market.
In figure skating, a distinction is made between compulsory and free skating. Does this separation also exist in advertising?
Aebi: In the successful freestyle, too, all the jumps and steps meet the compulsory requirements - only it attracts much more attention and interest from the audience, i.e. the target group. This is exactly what creative implementation in advertising achieves.
How can the mechanisms that come into play here be theoretically analyzed?
Aebi: When the commercial break comes on, I already know what a commercial wants to tell me before the first picture: I am the best! You have to buy me! I'm exactly what you need! All advertising comes down to this. A priori, that just bores me. The how-it-is-told-becomes the only decisive criterion. Those who irritate me stop me and make me curious about the punch line, the offer and its benefits. Advertising achieves this when something comes off that I haven't seen before. I primarily honor the fact that someone tells me what they have to tell me in a slightly different way. Whoever communicates in a more interesting way is more interesting.
There are all kinds of studies on the effect of humor in advertising. How do you personally deal with this topic?
Aebi: Humor is one of the fixed recipes - for the simple reason that after a busy day, no one sits at home in front of the TV and is incredibly interested in hearing any lectures about insurance or talks about pea soup. People want to get a little stimulation and be entertained at the same time. And as an advertiser, I respond to these psychological expectations. Humor is known to be one of the best recipes - but certainly not the only one.
Advertisers come from an intellectually demanding environment, know the latest trends and live in a world with a lot of media consumption. Is there a danger that advertisers apply different standards when judging creative advertising than the average population?
Aebi: Specifically, you can't deny that advertisers sometimes find ideas funny because they come precisely from the humus in which they personally live. But the study now available shows that the ideas advertisers think are so great are precisely those that also achieve their effect in the market. The vast majority of campaigns that win awards at Cannes and other competitions are also campaigns that work in the marketplace. This is also shown by the fact that ten out of eleven Effie awards in the last round are identical to works that have won awards from ADC. That we as creative advertisers are doing "l'art pour l'art" is a prejudice that should slowly but surely be buried.
Are there industries that are predestined to be considered the gravediggers of creative advertising?
Aebi: Not at all from an advertising creative's point of view. In the eighties, people still believed that it was impossible to design advertising for detergents creatively. In the meantime, the opposite has been proven several times. Creative communication works according to the same rules for all products. But there are customers who actually believe that we could not advertise insurance or a car just as imaginatively as we do for chocolate or a travel agency. In order to attract attention, the same mechanisms apply everywhere. That's why it's also dangerous to multiply within one industry and say, "We've always advertised this certain way." Rather, one would have to realize that in all industries it is always the outbreak, always the exception to the rule that yields the most successful creative solutions.
You yourself have often been on various juries and have been highly decorated yourself. Do you have a few established criteria that you can use to ask: "What is good advertising?"
Aebi: Idea, idea, idea and once again idea. And that means: It must surprise me. Then this surprise has to make me appreciate the offer, make it compelling for me. Being funny alone brings just as little as soberly saying all the right things. In addition my personal feeling comes. Would I like to see more advertising of this nature? Am I slapping myself for not having come up with an idea of this kind long ago? Interview: Andreas Panzeri

The advertising agency Traber Werbung from Gümligen, which has been in existence for 30 years, merged with the Bern-based communications consulting and PR agency Stoll & Partner to form Stoll Traber & Partner AG on May 1, 2001. The company resides on Museumsstrasse in the Kirchenfeld district of Bern. "We were already successfully serving joint clients before the merger," says Martin Stoll, managing director of the new agency. The company currently employs 14 people and is led by Stoll, Peter Matthys as deputy managing director and Eugen Traber as a member of the executive board.The main reason for the merger is the desire to be able to offer clients all communications services from a single location. The joint customer portfolio includes the Swiss Bread Information, the Federal Office of Public Health and a number of SMEs. (dz)

International labels are changing the cityscapes of Estonia, Latvia and LithuaniaBy Werner CatrinaOn the edge of Tallinn's Old Town, three streetcars wait in front of a construction site. All are bright red and decorated with the McDonald's logo. Where the red of the Soviet flag once dominated, the aggressive house colors of Western consumer goods now rule. Instead of hollow communist slogans on the house walls, Avis now proclaims "We try harder.
The Baltic states, Estonia (45000 square kilometers; 1.5 million inhabitants), Latvia (65000; 2.5 million) and Lithuania (65000; 3.7 million), look back on an extremely complex and always painful history. German, Danish, Polish and Swedish influences shaped the metropolises of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius for centuries. And time and again, Russia invaded the three countries, mainly because of their access to the ice-free ports on the Baltic Sea.
After a brief period of autonomy, the Red Army occupied the three states in 1940, then Hitler's Wehrmacht invaded. After the end of the Second World War, the Iron Curtain came down for almost fifty years, cutting off the Baltic states from the West.
"Divide and rule" was the Soviet motto; no wonder, then, that the Russian planned economy led to lopsided developments in industry. Latvia, for example, supplied almost the entire Soviet Union with light bulbs. The country also became one of the most important manufacturers of military communications technology and supplied almost the entire USSR with refrigeration units. Much had to be imported into the Baltic regions because of the unilaterally distributed production; a deliberate dependence on the colonial power.
Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania were completely dependent on Russia for their energy supply in particular. Yet despite these undesirable developments, the three countries were at the top of the prosperity pyramid of the entire USSR; compared to neighboring Finland, however, they were far behind.
Cities that still have
Franz Kafka's Prague remember
The road from the red star to the widespread presence of Coca-Cola was long and marked by frustration and suffering. The liberation process began with Mikhail Gorbachev, who was given an expectant reception by 300,000 people in Vilnius in 1990.
The Baltic states, with their Hanseatic cities by the sea that have been dominated by trade for centuries, have always felt that they belong to the West, which is probably why the Western consumer economy so quickly put its varnish over the population centers. The Coca-Cola red is much more widespread today than the hammer and sickle on a red background was during the Soviet terror.
For visitors from Central Europe, the three metropolises may not exactly be shoppers' paradises, but it's still amazing what you can buy here, from Gillette to Black & Decker to Benetton. Local products, on the other hand, enjoy a lower status.
The cities, still in ruins in the 1980s and reminiscent of Kafka's Prague, have spruced themselves up. In the shadow of Vilnius' 33 Gothic and Baroque churches, Hugo Boss and IBM are flying the flag, as are Renault and Nescafé.
At Doma laukums in Riga, smart young businessmen withdraw lats, the Latvian currency with twice the value of the dollar (a beer costs 0.40 lats), from the ATM. The gross national product per inhabitant and year is, however, considerably less than 3,000 dollars in Lithuania, and somewhat higher in Estonia.
Wealth seems to be anything but evenly distributed in the three newborn states, as evidenced by the numerous Volvos and Mercedes in the cities. Privatization after the end of Soviet rule has produced losers and winners, as elsewhere in the sunken Eastern Bloc.
In Riga's bars, called "Amsterdama" or "Jautras Masas," tourists mingle with locals, Western and Russian businessmen of every stripe; prostitution is unmistakable in styled as well as dim establishments.
Riga has something of a gold-mining town, where some shady characters hang around alongside a hard-working majority. Although the Latvian metropolis is the most expensive city in the Baltic States, average prices here are still quite a bit lower than in Central Europe. For people who earn the equivalent of a few hundred francs a month, the brand-name products remain a mirage - they are out of reach.
The three states are still an insider tip for tourists
Finnair's advertising in the travel agency near the "Riga" hotel shows Helsinki as a star with beams in all directions, including Zurich, Riga, Tallinn and Vilnius. The hub in the Finnish capital is the fastest and most convenient way to travel from Central Europe to the Baltic States. All three countries are a real insider tip and are about to be discovered by tourists. Soon, the crowds of Japanese, Germans or Swiss on Tallinn's Town Hall Square could be as big as on the Charles Bridge in Prague.
Cell phones are ringing on every corner in the city centers. Young, self-confident people promenade over the cobblestones in the old towns of Tallinn, Riga and Vilnius as if it were a catwalk in Paris.
But in the streets on the outskirts of the city, where the international corporate labels are thinning out, it suddenly becomes shabby, one feels transported to another world. Desolate prefabricated buildings from a time that really existed in a different form rise up into the sky, run-down houses, sallow faces in the streets and, time and again, begging old people, the losers of the upheaval.
In the countryside, time seems to have turned far back. Old houses, some of them covered with straw, and horse-drawn carriages dominate the landscape. Here and there, a rusting combine harvester from the collective farming era still makes its rounds.
The sparse traffic on the few highways and major interurban roads is also striking. This shows that the picture in the cities is deceptive and that full motorization is still a long way off.
"I hope my daughter doesn't marry a farmer," our Latvian guide Maja Strode declares, putting a deep sigh behind the statement, because "if you want to earn money, you go to the city."
The main thing for the Balts remains freedom
Young people move about confidently; what older people have suffered, some know only from hearsay. The young woman at the reception of the City Park Hotel in Vilnius drives to work in her own car; the Renault-Occasion cost 6000 dollars, she tells us frankly, probably two years' wages. How she does it, with the price of gasoline the equivalent of a little more than one franc per liter, remains her secret. "We are free," she says, "and we are happy!"
APG in Eastern Europe

Europlakat specializes in billposting in the Eastern European economic area. Six years ago, the Swiss company APG acquired a stake in Vienna-based Europlakat International, which was owned by the Austrian Gewista. As Christian Kauter of APG explains, Europlakat is mainly active in Croatia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Hungary and the former Yugoslavia; but not yet in the Baltic states. With annual sales of around 57 million Swiss francs, profits are not yet high, but Kauter says that this is a market of the future with annual growth rates of around twenty percent. The Bosnian metropolis of Sarajevo, for example, is experiencing a considerable economic upswing with foreign investment, which is greatly increasing the need for advertising. Posters of Western corporations such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's or Nokia are displayed as well as advertisements for local products. In cooperation with the authorities, Europlakat coordinates the display of posters in the cities, paying particular attention to historical sites. Kauter describes house walls painted with obtrusive advertising in old Eastern European cities as "sins of the past," and Europlakat strives to ensure that the advertising fits in well in the city centers.

Muse & MusseMartin Stulz
What was the last cultural event you attended?
Martin Stulz: Max Goldt. A friend still had a ticket left. Luckily.
What are you reading right now?
Stulz: Roy P. Mackal: "Searching for hidden animals", Dmitri Bayanov: "In the tracks of the russian snowman", Henry Rollins: "Get in the van".
Which CD do you currently prefer to listen to?
Stulz: The mixtape that I recorded half a year ago and that has been lying around in my car ever since.
Which movie would you most like to see again?
Stulz: "Moby Dick". A childhood memory.
What TV show did you fall asleep during the other night?
Stulz: "The Simpsons." Unbelievable, but true. I was just too tired.
What is your latest discovery on the Internet?
Stulz: www.lochness.scotland.net /camera.cfm
What could you never do without?
Stulz: Fortunately, I haven't found out yet.
What do you do in a free minute?
Stulz: Try not to think about work.
Love is ...?
Stulz: ... worth the effort.

Before the Annual General Meeting on May 5, NZZ is still looking for a new Chairman of the Board of DirectorsThe NZZ Group can look back on a successful year 2000, generating a profit of CHF 50.282 million. The main reason is an increase in advertising sales at all newspapers of the NZZ Group. The NZZ will be able to use this money, because major investments in the printing area are imminent at the Neue Zürcher Zeitung. The current rotary presses at the Schlieren printing center have been written off until 2003, are approaching the limits of their capacity and will have to be replaced. A renewal of the printing center is therefore imminent.
NZZ-Online is still in the investment phase. The service currently generates revenues only from advertising banners, which, according to the NZZ Annual Report 2000, account for 5 to 7 percent of the Swiss online advertising market. Nevertheless, the Internet is now to be transformed from a by-product into a core business.
The structures of the NZZ Group underwent significant changes last year. The regional newspapers Der Bund,
St.Galler Tagblatt and Zürich- Express have now been combined in a subholding company, Freie Presse Holding AG. A new addition to the Group is a 50 percent stake in MDD AG, Schlieren. Markus Knöpfli
Eric Honegger resigns from the NZZ Board of Directors

Eric Honegger is stepping down as Chairman of the NZZ Board of Directors at the Annual General Meeting on May 5 and will not stand for re-election to the NZZ Board of Directors, "in order to keep the NZZ company out of the public discussion about myself," as Honegger writes in a letter to shareholders. The dispute about the Swissair Group posed the danger that "the journalistic credibility and ability to act of the NZZ would also be affected," the letter continued.
For its part, the Board of Directors of the AG for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung accepted this "with regret and understanding" and announced that it would discuss the reconstitution before the AGM.
NZZ Group in figures

2000 1999 1998
in 1000 Fr. in % in 1000 Fr. in % in 1000 Fr.
Total operating income 531,862 11.0 479,208 6.2 451,036
(Change from previous year)
Operating expenses 480,495 11.0 432,944 3.4 418,766
(Change from previous year)
Corporate cash flow 90,435 9.9 82,259 7.3 76,804
(Change from previous year)
Group profit 50,282 11.2 45,196 6.8 42,308
(after deduction of minority shareholders)
Number of employees NZZ Group 1995 1864 1647
Source: Annual Report 2000 of the AG for the Neue Zürcher Zeitung

Design on the commercial Internet is increasingly in the service of user guidanceBy Clemens HörlerA website that is as funky as possible has long since ceased to be enough for commercial success on the Internet. If you confuse visitors more than you inform them, you risk losing them. Web designers face the challenge of being creative and original without overwhelming the user.
When scrawny models in Milan walk down the runway in dresses reminiscent of tattered umbrellas, the fashion czars are celebrated for their ingenuity. But their works of art are hardly suitable for everyday use; for that, they would have to be a touch more comfortable and, for example, allow the use of a streetcar.
It's a similar story with web design: the winners of design competitions are usually colorful, trendy sites that are often designed for the sake of sexy design and to show what can be done with today's technology. Websites that stand out for their particularly clear design and efficient user guidance rarely win design competitions, not least because no one would ever think of entering Amazon.com, for example, in such a competition.
For commercial websites, it's not the beauty prices that count, but the profitability of the web presence. Studies show that many consumers, if they do not immediately reach the desired goal, leave the website and try the competition. With every (unnecessary) click, the chance that the consumer will leave the website prematurely increases. Click and goodbye.
The balancing act between design and user-friendliness
"Design for people, not for yourself." This is what web guru Jakob Nielsen has been preaching for years, calling for more usability on the web. Somewhat provocatively, he lifts the extremely spartan search site Google.com onto the design pedestal and sends blinkblitzpopup.com to the penalty box.
More and more website operators are realizing that the unmistakability they always strive for must no longer be achieved at the expense of user guidance: Wild West design, navigation menus based on the miracle bag principle, inappropriate and time-consuming Flash films are already proliferating more sparsely on the major Internet sites. Especially on e-commerce sites, in portals, search services, on news pages and many corporate sites, simplicity and user-friendliness are trumps, at least more than ever before. "Our customers often no longer want the craziest design, but rather the tried-and-true; to achieve this, they also do their own research on the web and even come up with their own suggestions," says Markus Hasler, Art Director
at the Zurich-based Internet service provider Update AG.
Customers have thus become more mature and no longer allow themselves to be pulled over the coals by certain web agencies that primarily have cool design in mind that primarily satisfies the designers. Perhaps this is also due to the fact that many decision-makers are now Internet users themselves and have already been annoyed by long loading times or navigation mazes.
Nevertheless, there are still relatively few companies that take the usability of their site so seriously that they have elaborate usability tests carried out. Many are content with heuristic tests: specialists who were not directly involved in the project check a website according to proven standards and look for the most obvious errors.
Don't reinvent everything - the tried and tested also pays off
Laboratory tests are too expensive or too time-consuming for many clients. In such tests, a group of test subjects from the target group of the respective site must perform certain tasks, such as ordering a specific product, under the observation of a test leader (and a video camera). For the more sophisticated, special eyeglasses (eyemark recorders) can be used to record the exact eye movements of the test subjects as they use the website.
Large e-commerce companies like Amazon take user research very seriously, and others benefit from it: Navigation and design elements that have proven themselves with the industry leaders are copied. After all, the wheel doesn't have to be reinvented for every website. People, who are creatures of habit, may appreciate it if they feel at home right away on a website they are visiting for the first time, i.e., if they can operate with familiar navigation elements and don't have to learn new rules of the road first.
New challenges
for web designer
The fact that web design tends to be more strongly and more frequently in the service of user-friendliness than in the past does not mean, however, that web designers can no longer develop creatively and must inevitably suffocate in commercial uniformity. After all, user-friendliness and beautiful design are not mutually exclusive. After all, even clothes suitable for streetcars can be beautifully designed.
In addition, new technologies are constantly providing new impetus. Flash, for example, offers completely new possibilities for integrating dynamic processes with interfaces to databases into websites. Personalizable sites, growing bandwidths and new, smaller end devices have also constantly presented designers with new challenges in the past.
For web designers with high artistic standards, it may also be a consolation that there will still be websites in the future that amaze and confuse or even lead people by the nose with unconventional design. This is especially true for the Internet presences of art institutions and other companies with artistic aspirations, but also for brand websites and trendy stores, where fun and customer loyalty rather than factual information or the quick conclusion of a sale are in the foreground. Especially since the play instinct of fun users on the web also wants to be satisfied.

It's a fact that Princess Stéphanie is not only into Franco Knie's elephant act, but that what goes on behind the closed caravan door also offers enough reason for wild speculation. Recently, the love life of the controversial couple has also served as a source of inspiration for creative people. Especially the team of the Zurich crossover agency Angelink flirted with the ambiguous circus romance of the Monegasque princess: For the launch, their subject advertises with a not by chance blurred caravan for Blick Online. The claim "Stéphanie, pregnant already?" rules out any confusion. VBZ extends cooperation with 20 Minuten. The commuter newspaper 20 Minuten will continue to be available in the streetcars and buses of Verkehrsbetriebe Zürich (VBZ). The VBZ have decided to extend the contract until the end of 2004 and thus against the offer of competitor Metropol. According to VBZ Director Thomas Portmann, 20 Minuten made a financially more attractive offer. The third Zurich commuter newspaper, ZürichExpress, had not submitted an offer. However, discussions had been held with it, Portmann said. Of the 150000 copies of 20 Minuten, around 30000 are distributed in the VBZ vehicles.
LOVELY RITA, meter maid. With stickers against too high fines! That's it! The eponymous Markus and the other Markus have once again remained true to their reputation. After their recent advertising stunt for Sportplausch Wider with a free cell phone in the shape of a dishwashing liquid, the two creatives are now surprising us with a rather quirky series of stickers. "I love city police" or "I love Rita Fuhrer" are supposed to be stuck to the new bike from Sportplausch, so that the police will turn a blind eye when a fine is threatening once again. The "official police appeasement stickers" are available in four versions. They are supposed to "work wonders," they promise.
KNORR GOES TO FILM. Wolfram Knorr, the longtime film critic and, at the end, surprisingly abruptly deposed cultural editor of Weltwoche since 1974, will become the new editor-in-chief of Film magazine in August. Knorr, who with his competent writing is one of the stars of the cinéphile, is to help the German and French cinema magazine to an editorial relaunch.
Did Schawinski let himself get ripped off by Tamedia? Since January, Tamedia, owner of TV 3, had been negotiating with Roger Schawinski to take over his Belcom Group (Tele 24, Tele Züri and Radio 24). After an initial Tamedia offer, which the pioneer apparently considered trustworthy, Schawinski disclosed books and budget plans. After that, Tamedia called it off. CFO Patrick Eberle justified this to WerbeWoche with a lack of synergies between Tele 24/Tele Züri and TV 3. On the other hand, Tamedia was still interested in Radio 24, if it was ever sold. Rumors that Tamedia's Board of Directors had decided to sell Radio 24 because of Tele 24's relatively meager figures and because of the imminent departures of two of its own Board members (CEO Michel M. Favre and TV 3 head Kurt
W. Zimmermann) got cold feet, Eberle described as an "absolute Märli".
WIN IS PERVERSE. The Forum for Photography in Hedingen is showing an exhibition of text posters by Jean-Marc Seiler from May 11 to June 10. In his latest affiches, the Zurich author and designer amazes with a short form of texts that can hardly be undercut and, in part, sharp diagnoses against the unreflected acceptance of existing power structures. "Siegen ist pervers" is therefore the title of the exhibition. A catalog has been published in an edition of 129 copies.
Record year for Publisuisse. Publisuisse, which markets SRG programs, generated net revenues of CHF 321.4 million last year, 4.5 percent more than in 1999. It was able to transfer a total of CHF 304.4 million to SRG, 11.4 percent more than in the previous year. Publisuisse made gains in pre- and post-primetime.

FABulous Lovely. At the International Food And Beverage Creative Excellence Awards (FAB Awards) in London, AY&R won the "FABulous Award" for print ads. The jury liked the dairy cow Lovely in a sleeping bag (motif: "Open Air Festivals, client: Swiss Milk Producers). Other finalists were Guye & Partner (Skyy, Crodino) and JWT&H&F (Heineken).
Editorial

An uninhibited
View into the laboratory
Politics also has to do with selling. This is shown by the latest figures from Great Britain: In February, Tony Blair's Labor government spent more money on advertising than the advertising giants Procter & Gamble and Unilever. According to ACNielsen, the British government spent no less than 16.4 million pounds on its own advertising. Unilever invested 12.2 and competitor Procter & Gamble 10.1 million pounds in advertising in the comparable month. With this strong presence in terms of political advertising, the British are completely out of the ordinary. And there is another way in which the Kingdom ticks differently: While the PR of many Swiss universities is dull, British scientific associations founded a "Public Understanding of Science" committee as early as the 1980s. This committee works to gain the necessary public acceptance for progress in science and technology. In Switzerland, it was not until the genetic protection initiative that scientists came out of their shell. The initiative triggered a salutary shock among researchers in 1998. In the aftermath, the Science et Cité Foundation was set up with the aim of initiating a dialogue between science and society. From May 4 to 11, it is organizing a research festival of unprecedented proportions: in public squares, museums, train stations and theaters in ten Swiss university towns, scientists will present their research projects.
It is quite possible that the uninhibited laboratory show would have stolen the show from the Expo if it had been held as planned in 2001. And the advertising presence of Science et Cité (see page 14) is also impressive. Samuel Helbling

In addition to a blood refreshment for the agency, he wants to "finally have a little more time for new ideas and also for life," says Jörg Rindlisbacher, CEO and CCO of Impiric, who is therefore stepping down as operational manager of his marketing agency at the end of 2001 and handing over the reins of Impiric Switzerland to the previous Managing Director Thomas Biedermann after 15 years. The change had been planned for some time at Hardturmstrasse 105. Rindlisbacher founded today's Impiric in 1987 under the name Promovico and later traded as Wunderman Cato Johnson. Today, Impiric is the Swiss branch of the world's largest provider of integrated marketing communications and customer relationship management services. Biedermann, as the new Managing Director, forms Impiric's new management team with Andi Albonico, Creative Director, and Eugen Brunner, Director Operations.
Rindlisbacher remains chairman of both Impiric and FutureCom. Together, the two companies employ more than 130 people and generate annual revenues of over CHF 20 million. (pan)

Permission marketing is challenging traditional advertisingThe Internet has opened up new worlds for marketing. One of these is called Permission Marketing, and Seth Godin has written a successful book about it. Seth Godin has written a successful book about it, which has now been translated.For CDs and ADs, the U.S. author Godin has some pretty hefty mail ready. The co-founder of the Internet direct marketing company Yoyodyne assumes that e-mail has become a way of life, the pivot of permission marketing par excellence. He says goodbye to traditional forms of advertising because marketers "have relied almost exclusively on a single form of advertising for ninety years," which he calls interruptive advertising, "because the key to every single one of these messages is to interrupt the viewer's current activity so that they can be made to think of something else."
To continue to get the consumer's attention, he said, advertisers "responded with the worst possible method: To cope with the overcrowding and reduced effectiveness of advertising, they interrupt us even more!"
According to Godin, there are four rules to follow: Permission is not transferable, is self-serving, is a process, and can be withdrawn at any time. The low cost of email as a factor in permission marketing on the Internet allows marketers to invest significantly more time in the process. Godin compares this effort to the fairy tale of Sheherezade, who had "the natural instinct of permission marketers" because she was able to convince her king 1001 nights not to behead her....
Needless to say, Godin's book contains a large number of case studies. And, of course, he doesn't ignore the Internet retailer Amazon.com. He is convinced that Amazon's permission marketing will one day make it possible, on the basis of highly segmented data, to ask customers whether they would like a new book by that author and then to order the book from the author - without the need for a publisher or an intermediary. Carlo Bernasconi
Seth Godin, Permission Marketing - Customers want to be able to choose, ISBN 3-932114-52-3, Finanzbuchverlag, 53.50 francs

The private TV stations Tele 24, Tele Züri, Tele Bärn, Tele M1 and Tele Tell are apparently at the end of their tether. They no longer want to wait until the end of the negotiations on a new radio and TV law and are calling on the Federal Council to bring Swiss advertising regulations into line with those of foreign TV stations with advertising windows in Switzerland within a year. Furthermore, the Federal Council should oblige the SRG to cede at least 10 percent of the fees to Swiss private TV stations - currently this would be an amount of around 100 million francs annually. Otherwise, says initiator Roger Schawinski (Tele Züri, Tele 24), the five broadcasters are planning the "unilateral introduction of European advertising guidelines." Schawinski: "In addition, we are considering stopping all traffic with the Federal Office of Communications. "To limit the damage, Tele 24 will discontinue the magazines "Inside," "24Minuten" and "Gesucht wird..." in mid-August. Last year, Tele 24 and Tele Züri recorded a loss of around CHF 7 million on costs of CHF 34 million. Tele Bärn suffered a loss of
5 million costs a loss of 1.6 million francs and Tele M1 at costs of 6 million francs a loss of
2 million francs. "If I have to, I'll just become a pirate in Zurich again," Schawinski told WerbeWoche defiantly. (af/mk)