A study shows that websites are less interconnected than assumedFor a long time, it was thought that any two websites on the Internet were no more than 19 mouse clicks apart. A study by Compaq, IBM and AltaVista comes to a very different conclusion. The study of 1.5 billion links between 200 million Web sites shows that there is a direct path between two randomly selected sites only 25 percent of the time. 10 percent of websites lie dormant as isolated islands in the sea of data. 90 percent are linked to another. However, these 186 million of the websites covered are networked very differently.The node - Strong Connected Component (SCC) - consists of around 56 million websites that are strongly linked to each other. In addition, there is an in-block as well as an out-block of 44 million web pages each. These sites are linked on one side and lead either into or out of the center.
Another category of also 44 million websites, the so-called tendrils (fringes), are only indirectly accessible from the SCC.
In this way, the Internet can be compared to the shape of a frayed fly: in the center, the strongly connected node (SCC), flanked by the two in and out wings and surrounded by countless fringes.
On the Internet you can find countless cyber corpses
While the center is mostly commercial websites, the sites from the out block are called destination sites. These are Internet presences of companies that suck traffic from the center but do not return it.
The situation is different in the case of sites from the in-block. These so-called origination sites are mostly from private individuals who link to the offer in the center,
without being linked there themselves. Finally, in the case of the tendrils, it is assumed that these are offers from special interest groups that are not dependent on an exchange with the center. Among these weakly networked websites in particular, there are likely to be plenty of cyber corpses that have long since ceased to be updated.
Commercial sites must be in the center or out block
Websites that depend on a lot of traffic for financial reasons, whether as an advertising medium or as an online store, have a chance of survival above all if they are located in the center or in the out block. For e-shops in particular, belonging to the out-block has the advantage that many visitors from the center are led to the virtual store via links and are less tempted to leave the website there before they have clicked through the range on offer.
Website operators can achieve the necessary networking by advertising on well-visited sites. However, companies that cannot afford broad campaigns also have other options for networking more closely with the center:
E-shops can, for example, enter into cooperative ventures with well-visited websites, such as portals or online newspapers.
Another possibility is the entry in shopping malls or networking platforms. Such offers are currently springing up in Switzerland like mushrooms after a rainy night and are aimed primarily at SMEs. Finally, the entry in search engines should not be underestimated. After all, the most beautiful website is for nothing if it doesn't find a mouse (click).
Thomas Brenzikofer

Affinity of ads among supporters in the "middle-class corner "Best of Print AdvertisingThe advertising hits 2000 from the Advertising Index of the market research institute Demoscope
In cooperation with the market research institute Demoscope, Publimedia presents the readers of WerbeWoche with an excerpt of the results from the Advertising Index (AX Print) five times a year. This index (see box) is a module of the Market Radar and measures the popularity of advertising subjects. In the top two rows are those subjects that achieved the greatest acceptance in the relevant psychographic target group (see wind rose). The three subjects that performed best among the entire sample, i.e. among all four target groups in total, in the 1st quarter 2000 are shown under the heading "Top three".
Advertising IndexFor the Advertising Index ad tests, a representative sample of around 800 people is surveyed in eight waves. The respondent first completes a psychological test (50-item test) and then flips through a magazine with 45 ads. As with reading a magazine, the respondent is free to spend as much time as he or she likes on each ad in the test. Before turning the page, she rates the ad on a scale of 5 ("appeals to me a lot") to 1 ("doesn't appeal to me at all"). Supporters are people who are "very" or "fairly" appealed to by an ad. The acceptance of advertising determined in this way correlates strongly with other functions of advertising impact and is therefore suitable for benchmarking.
For the segmentation of the sample according to target groups, Market Radar uses a psychographic test, the so-called 50-item test. With the help of this test, the value orientations of the respondent are determined and assigned to one of the psychogram fields (see wind rose). The value orientations range from South (conservative) to North (progressive) and from West (outward-looking, materialistic) to East (inward-looking, idealistic).
Further information on the Advertising Index and the Market Radar is available from Demoscope. Planning support with the Advertising Index, the Radar and new
with the Print Advertising Monitor (PAM), Publimedia.

Universal McCann creates deeper insights into media usage with Media in MindBy Daniel Schifferle Absence of stress and current feelings of happiness are prerequisites for the successful reception of advertising messages. Universal McCann has created the Media in Mind tool so that their ups and downs during the course of the day can be taken into account by media planning to increase efficiency.
Continuously growing media offerings and increasingly differentiated usage behavior pose problems for media planning that the usual planning tools such as Mach Basic or private radio studies alone are no longer able to solve.
Increasingly, questions are coming to the fore that provide answers to the varying receptiveness to advertising messages in the course of the day: When is the most opportune time to address, what is the right tonality, what is the right medium? With its single-source Media in Mind study, Universal McCann has created a tool that provides specific answers for each European country. One of the study's main findings is that people behave very differently from region to region when it comes to their consumption of media and advertising messages.
This is shown, for example, by a comparison of approval or disapproval of TV and print advertising. In Portugal and Ireland, people have a consistently positive attitude toward both print and TV advertising. This also applies somewhat less pointedly to Finland, Israel, Great Britain and France.
Lucky are those who advertise in these countries, where there is great openness toward both media. In Sweden and Germany, however, TV advertising is met with predominantly negative feelings among consumers, while print advertising is held in relatively high esteem there, on the other hand.
The study does not paint a very encouraging picture for Switzerland: Neither print nor TV advertising is really appealing to the Swiss public. But in an international comparison, the fundamental rejection in our country is limited and much less intense than in Norway, Poland or the Netherlands, for example, where print advertising in particular performs even worse.
The degree of relaxation or happiness of the media consumer also has a central influence on the reception of the advertising message. One result of the study was that over lunchtime, the personal feeling of happiness rises to a peak, while stress drops to a daily low. This is an ideal time for consumers to be receptive and sympathetic to advertising messages. "You can't use such results one-to-one for daily planning," says Thomas Koller of Universal McCann, "but it does give you valuable additional information."
Input for the creation - but their outcry failed to materialize
However, Media in Mind is not only intended to provide additional knowledge for optimizing media planning. Creation should also be able to benefit from it. "How do people want to be addressed, what tone of voice do they respond to most, and when? These are questions that Media in Mind helps answer," says Koller. How the new tool will be received in the work of creatives is still up in the air. Just this much: "The first reactions were relatively neutral, there was no big outcry."

How tracking studies can measure the qualities of campaigns and turn existing ones aroundWolfgang J. Koschnick There is a remedy for all advertising ills. It works wonders when campaigns start to flounder, and even during the course of a campaign, it can still be used to turn the tide. At least, that's what market researchers promise when they praise their advertising tracking services. But do tracking studies really deliver what they promise?
In the Anglo-Saxon world, tracking or advertising tracking are nowadays forms of continuous observation of advertising effects in the course of a campaign. These are attempts to overcome the major dilemma of classic behaviorist advertising research. As is well known, the latter regards the advertising event as a black box. What goes on inside can only be deduced from the stimulus-response scheme. A triggering stimulus (advertising) in front of the black box leads to a reaction (advertising effect) afterwards.
Classical advertising research uses pretests and posttests: If something that had been measured before changed afterwards, the change must have occurred by means of advertising. As long as there was no doubt that this is how advertising works, doubts about this scheme did not arise in the first place.
In the meantime, however, we know that advertising does not work this way, and that is why this measurement method is highly inadequate. In practice, advertising tracking means that similar samples of target persons are questioned about a specific advertising campaign in several survey waves in order to find out whether anything has changed with the respondents since the campaign began, i.e. whether it has triggered any effects.
Market researchers promise to solve all problems with their tracking studies. This instrument can be used to constantly monitor the success of an advertising campaign as a whole and make ongoing corrections to the campaign.
In a way, this is like repairing the race car while the engine is still running, and without a pit stop either. Even if a campaign started off on the wrong foot, tracking could be used to correct mistakes in the ongoing campaign, and a boring advertising campaign would ultimately become a masterpiece of high-impact communications art.
But in reality, the grapes hang much higher. The all-important question is also the fundamental problem of advertising effectiveness research: How do you define and operationalize advertising effectiveness? Most of the commercial tracking offers on the market fail to answer this question.
No matter how many waves of surveys are passed over a target group: If the crucial questions about advertising impact are wrongly posed, poorly operationalized, and also misleadingly interpreted and analyzed, even a large number of survey waves at short intervals and even a large variety of questions will not help. This always produces only "findings": data without meat, numbers
without meaning, results without insight value.
Even the stroke of luck throws
many questions
The limits of the advertising tracking instrument are much narrower than its providers promise. One has to be very careful when interpreting the findings. However, this approach and a subtle restraint in evaluating survey data are not exactly among the outstanding characteristics of the advertising industry.
As a continuation of the not-so-good old black box models with more modern means, all tracking studies are posttests. They assume that the use of stimuli (the advertising) leads to reactions on the market (the advertising effect). And they measure these reactions sequentially.
You would only know what an advertising campaign does if you could find out what is really going on in the black box. However, indicators are available for this at best. And at best, they indicate how advertising might work. They are not the effect itself. Even the simplest conceivable case is more complicated than it appears at first glance: If sales of a product increase significantly following a campaign, that's heaven on earth for the advertisers. But even this stroke of luck raises many questions that the advertising industry should seriously address:
- Was it really the advertising campaign that triggered the market success? Would it have happened even without it? Every advertiser has the spontaneous answer to this: "Only an unworldly academic could ask such a question."
- Couldn't an even greater market success have been achieved with a slightly different campaign or a slightly stronger advertising pressure? Conversely, wasn't one's own advertising success impaired by a competitor's much higher advertising pressure?
- What is the long-term impact of the campaign, which usually matters more than short-term sales success?
These are all - incidental - questions that need to be asked if one is serious about accountability in advertising. WerbeWoche has dealt with this in detail in two previous issues. At least some aspects of these fundamental questions can be answered not too badly with the help of tracking studies. The goal is to go beyond the effects on sales and also to determine the psychological effects of an advertising campaign on consumers.
Investigation objectives must be operationalized
For this purpose, consumers are surveyed in campaigns accompanying surveys in several waves. Tracking studies are therefore continuous wave surveys conducted at regular intervals as posttests. The survey is carried out on a representative sample of mostly 200 to 500 changing persons by personal or telephone interviews.
As a rule, tracking tests are designed to answer the following questions: What absolute effect is achieved with the given advertising effort? How do the values examined react to changes in advertising expenditure? How do the values change over time? Are the observed changes one-off events or are they clear trends?
Advertising tracking is usually directed at the "relevant target group" of market communication. Normally, these are the users of the product category under investigation. If the campaign is for a candy bar, a sample of candy bar buyers is chosen. In saturated markets where market share is at stake, this is reasonable. But of course, in new, growing markets, it can also make sense to include in the sample people who are not yet using the new product.
Advertising objectives are unsuitable for a standardized survey
The all-important question now is: How are the research objectives operationalized in advertising tracking in order to identify the impact of specific campaigns? This is where, as a rule and in individual cases, the rabbit is in the hay. Because what is measured in the studies is not the advertising impact itself, but a series of indicators of advertising impact. This is quite unavoidable in standardized surveys, but not exactly mandatory either.
It would also be possible to measure only the advertising impact as such. However, this would require crystallizing the exact advertising objectives. And these vary from case to case and from campaign to campaign, so they are often not suitable for a standardized survey.
Each tracking model has its own peculiarities. But in general, the following indicators of advertising impact are measured as standard in advertising tracking studies:
- the recognition of a brand (brand awareness)
- the memory of brand advertising (Advertising Recall)
- the recollection of certain contents of brand advertising (copy recall)
- the recognition of the message of an advertising message (Advertising Awareness)
- the attitude toward the brand, or toward advertising a brand (Attitude toward Brand)
- the image of a brand (brand image)
- the liking of a brand
(Liking of Brand)
- the brand preference (Brand Preference)
- Purchase Intention
Which and how many of these and similar indicators are included in the study varies from institute to institute and also depends on the purpose of the study. It is also a question of money, because advertising tracking is expensive. With less than 250000 francs useful results are hardly to be won in a campaign. And which medium-sized or even somewhat larger company has this amount at its disposal for nothing more than the finding that its own campaign is not working or is working quite well?
Tracking has many pitfalls and traps that you need to know about
Even then, tracking is an adventure in which one can stumble from pitfall to pitfall. If indicators such as recall or awareness are surveyed, memory distortions occur: The majority of respondents claim they saw a certain ad on TV, even though they actually heard it on the radio or read it in an ad. No wonder advertising tracking is so popular with TV advertising marketers.
Another source of error arises from the usually narrow time frame. Even if it covers the entire duration of a campaign, it still neglects longer-term advertising effects that are important for building a brand. Long-term advertising effects are swept under the rug in tracking studies. This leads to a distortion: Transitory media systematically perform better than statuesque advertising media, which can still be busy building up contacts weeks and months after the conclusion of a campaign, even though no tracking study notices this yet.
This means that tracking studies are stabbing advertising in the back. Everything that is important about advertising and distinguishes it from sales and sales promotion, i.e., the long-term communication of a message and the lasting creation of a brand image, can no longer be measured by tracking studies because they are long since finished when these effects occur. Tracking studies are generally too short-winded to be able to measure what advertising is supposed to achieve overall.
The result of any tracking study is a comparison of the progress curves of the surveyed indicators, such as advertising recall, with those of advertising expenditure. But the implied causality of the relationship between advertising expenditure (equal to advertising spending) and advertising impact is highly problematic. This is because, of course, the impact of advertising is not solely dependent on advertising expenditure, but also on the use of all the other instruments in the marketing mix.
And quite naturally, qualitative components such as the creative implementation of an advertising concept often play a greater role than the amount of money invested. All in all, then, even the immediate findings from a tracking study are of limited value at best.
By contrast, the intensive experience of an institute, built up over many years of practical advertising tracking, is virtually invaluable. Year after year, they accumulate data and facts about advertising campaigns for different products, product categories, brands and advertisers. And from year to year the treasure of practical marketing experience grows. And the cumulative knowledge that is literally hidden in databases is often more valuable than any individual insight from a tracking study.

Best of Print AdvertisingThe Advertising Hits 2000 from the Advertising Index of the market research institute Demoscope
In cooperation with the market research institute Demoscope, Publimedia presents the readers of WerbeWoche with an excerpt of the results from the Advertising Index (AX Print) five times a year. This index (see box) is a module of the Market Radar and measures the popularity of advertising subjects. In the top two rows are those subjects that achieved the greatest acceptance in the relevant psychographic target group (see wind rose). The three subjects that performed best among the entire sample, i.e. among all four target groups in total, in the 1st quarter 2000 are shown under the heading "Top three".
Advertising IndexFor the Advertising Index ad tests, a representative sample of around 800 people is surveyed in eight waves. The respondent first completes a psychological test (50-item test) and then flips through a magazine with 45 ads. As with reading a magazine, the respondent is free to spend as much time as he or she likes on each ad in the test. Before turning the page, she rates the ad on a scale of 5 ("appeals to me a lot") to 1 ("doesn't appeal to me at all"). Supporters are people who are "very" or "fairly" appealed to by an ad. The acceptance of advertising determined in this way correlates strongly with other functions of advertising impact and is therefore suitable for benchmarking.
For the segmentation of the sample according to target groups, Market Radar uses a psychographic test, the so-called 50-item test. With the help of this test, the value orientations of the respondent are determined and assigned to one of the psychogram fields (see wind rose). The value orientations range from South (conservative) to North (progressive) and from West (outward-looking, materialistic) to East (inward-looking, idealistic).
Further information on the Advertising Index and the Market Radar is available from Demoscope. Planning support with the Advertising Index, the Radar and new
with the Print Advertising Monitor (PAM), Publimedia.

Affinity of advertisements among supporters in "Yuppieland "Best of Print AdvertisingThe advertising hits 2000 from the Advertising Index of the market research institute Demoscope
In cooperation with the market research institute Demoscope, Publimedia presents the readers of WerbeWoche with an excerpt of the results from the Advertising Index (AX Print) five times a year. This index (see box) is a module of the Market Radar and measures the popularity of advertising subjects. In the top two rows are those subjects that achieved the greatest acceptance in the relevant psychographic target group (see wind rose). The three subjects that performed best among the entire sample, i.e. among all four target groups in total, in the 1st quarter 2000 are shown under the heading "Top three".
Advertising IndexFor the Advertising Index ad tests, a representative sample of around 800 people is surveyed in eight waves. The respondent first completes a psychological test (50-item test) and then flips through a magazine with 45 ads. As with reading a magazine, the respondent is free to spend as much time as he or she likes on each ad in the test. Before turning the page, she rates the ad on a scale of 5 ("appeals to me a lot") to 1 ("doesn't appeal to me at all"). Supporters are people who are "very" or "fairly" appealed to by an ad. The acceptance of advertising determined in this way correlates strongly with other functions of advertising impact and is therefore suitable for benchmarking.
For the segmentation of the sample according to target groups, Market Radar uses a psychographic test, the so-called 50-item test. With the help of this test, the value orientations of the respondent are determined and assigned to one of the psychogram fields (see wind rose). The value orientations range from South (conservative) to North (progressive) and from West (outward-looking, materialistic) to East (inward-looking, idealistic).
Further information on the Advertising Index and the Market Radar is available from Demoscope. Planning support with the Advertising Index, the Radar and new
with the Print Advertising Monitor (PAM), Publimedia.

In a full thunderstorm and downpour, party hopping was once again the order of the day.Station for creative peopleBy Beat Fritsch
First the sponsors of the Young Creatives invited to the ADC offices for the handover of the Cannestickets, afterwards the Prix Bolero took place in Zurich's main station.
"Finally I have visitors," ADC Managing Director Helen Müller was pleased to say. BSW Managing Director Walter Merz hoped the youngsters would take first prize and thanked the sponsors for their commitment. The initiative came from Cinecom CEO Mathias Luchsinger. He said that when he first visited Cannes three years ago, he had the feeling that the festival was a kind of "Jurassic Park" for advertising dinosaurs. "There was a need to offer something to the next generation as well," he commented on his involvement. The idea resonated with Publimedia advertising manager Sabina Cadalbert. She refrained from a long speech, but was pleased that Sebastian Hugelshofer was among the award-winning young creatives, because his daddy had designed the Publimedia logo as a Publicis AD. Andy Wild was unfortunately unable to attend, but as Swissair advertising manager he donated the airline tickets. And last but not least, WerbeWoche also contributed some cash to enable the best of the annual Young Creatives competition to stay at the advertising film festival.
This year they are Grischa Rubinick and Marc Rinderknecht. Marc is a copywriter/conceptual designer at Netvertising, Grischa is an AD at JWT + Hostettler + Fabrikant. The two got to know each other on the slopes while snowboarding. The name Rubinick is not unknown to connoisseurs of the advertising scene. Grischa's sister Vanessa is a consultant at WHS, father Walter a well-known AD. It's no wonder that Grischa also became an AD after completing an apprenticeship as a lithographer. Paolo Tonti, in particular, but also his godfather Luigi Grendene pushed him along.
A juicy side note: The WerbeWoche shortlist is increasingly turning into traffic coverage. There was a happy reunion between Claudia Linsi and Stefan Vetsch. The two met for the first time on advertising day, when our speeding photographer caused fender-benders on the Lowe|GG-AD's car on the way home.
From the creative designers we went on to the creative clothing designers. Because it was still raining cats and dogs outside, we made a short stop at the "Terrasse" bar. There we saw Manuel Nappo from Rialto Film and Philip Hofmann and Sandro Proietto from Cinecom, who met for a well-deserved after-work beer.
For the ninth time, the Prix Bolero of the lifestyle and fashion magazine of the same name was awarded for the best up-and-coming Swiss designers. Presenter Kurt Aeschbacher praised the award as unique in Europe's fashion scene. And because advertisers want to be well-dressed, you also meet people from the communications scene everywhere. Even among the Prix Bolero finalists: freelance AD/CD Peter Heuss, together with his partner Sara Kriesi, is considered a hot tip for good fashion. Even the Tagi devoted a whole page to the two young talents.
Also in attendance was party animal Simon Flatt with media director Isabelle Vetter and her girlfriend Malin Bretscher. In the presence of Mad hairdresser Marc Menden and fashion designer Francesco Rossi, Pascal Schaub, who has moved up from copywriter/conceptual designer to strategic planner at Publicis, also enjoyed himself.
Beat Fritsch met this week at ADC with the Young Creatives traveling to Cannes, and then with Prix Bolero finalist Rosanna Gates.

Those who usually enjoy themselves at the parties of the communications industry will be located at the most diverse events of the scene. However, the editorial team will decide who makes the final leap onto the coveted shortlist. Do you actually already have something to report? Then you seize times fast to the listener (01 296 97 98) or mailen you to [email protected]. Online, there are event tips at www.werbewoche.ch.

»Independence Has Its Place, or How the Telephone Network Breaks Down Virtual Boundaries"—that could be the caption for this ad. Spotted in Alitalia’s in-flight magazine during a flight to our spirited neighboring country. What caught my eye was Switzerland’s presence—after all, this is more or less a European campaign. It also stood out because the publication date points to a time before the vote on the bilateral agreements with the European Union. So it is indeed possible to act in unison, even if we aren’t in the same club—provided, of course, that we’re aiming for the same goals. In this case, making calls nationwide. And since there’s a lively exchange of people between European countries—and since without a cell phone we’d soon be more exposed than if we were wearing nothing but a loincloth—that little cell phone is simply a must-have—and so we’re pictured with it.
On the other hand, it’s also nice to join forces with the neighborhood, especially since clear boundaries have been drawn between the individual parties—the only thing left to wonder about is the selection criteria for the faces. And the fact that, in our case, the Alpöhi wasn’t painted is another relief.
Chandra Kurt
Language Observers: Incorrect Hyphenation
71 to 80
False Separation 71
at
game
go
Incorrect separation 72komm
eat
ions
Wrong Separation 73schrein
heritage
drive
Incorrect Separation 74all
in
guilt
Incorrect separation 75miss
b
smoke
Wrong Breakup 76
person
narrow
amount
Incorrect Separation 77braue
mature
ster
Wrong Separation 78nie
crude
eugen
Incorrect Separation 79di
miserable
corner
Incorrect separation 80o
star
eight
Beat Gloor, www.textcontrol.ch
Column: The Copy Test
By Simon Freiburghaus
Did you vote in the last election? You remember, it was about Europe (no, not the EEA—that was eight years ago!). Most of us thought voters had finally swung in the other direction—forward-thinking and optimistic about progress, as we advertisers tend to be. But watch out: Now that the free movement of people is set to become freer and freer (warning: pun on cross-border sex tourism), Swiss advertisers are also coming under pressure. As a copywriter, you’re constantly confronted with statements like these and others: «Why don’t you mention in the headline that the product is new?» «Just write about how good our products are.» «Do you really think anyone will read all of this?» (And I’m convinced there are even more copywriters in Germany who are better at this than here.)
«Why am I a copywriter, anyway?» I ask myself. "And why not, say, a management consultant? After all, I could reinvent everything. And no one would ever doubt my corporate vision." Why would they? After all, I’d be much more expensive than a copywriter—who’d never even think of a phrase like “Total Customer Care Center” anyway.
Well, since we’re on the subject: Who actually reads *WerbeWoche*? And if so, what exactly? Do people read the columns, for example? Mine, for example? Did you like the last one—the one about the mother of all sneakers (you remember, the one with the three stretch marks)? Or the one before that—about the ADC with all those famous faces (who more or less win every year)?
Please send any criticism, praise, or other feedback to [email protected]. (And even if I don't receive a single email, I'll keep writing anyway—including my columns.)

French network Euro RSCG Worldwide acquires American PR agency Middleberg+Associates.Fax Euro RSCG buys web PR firm
It specializes in dot-coms and other companies involved in e-business. In 1999, it reported the largest growth of any U.S. PR agency: from $11.3 million to more than $22 million in billings. Middleberg employs a total of 150 people.
octagon pushes eintracht The sports marketing agency Octagon (an Interpublic subsidiary) is taking a stake in the traditional German soccer club Eintracht Frankfurt. According to Octagon's CEO Frank Lowe, it will bring the club commercial know-how as well as money. Eintracht is to become a "giant of German soccer" again, he said. Octagon has already entered into similar partnerships with two Brazilian and one US team.
Sony: Advertiser of the YearNobuyuki Idei has reason to be pleased: The jury at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes has named the President and CEO of Sony Advertiser of the Year. Idei receives the award both on behalf of the Group and its "creative advertising and marketing activities" and for the personal merits of his innovative business strategies.
Havas leads in direct marketingIn the latest ranking by the Direct Marketing Association, French advertising holding company Havas Advertising takes the top two spots by sales. Number one is Brann Worldwide with $479.9 million in sales. Brann is owned by Snyder Communications, which Havas acquired in February. In second place: The Sales Machine, part of Euro RSCG, with $367.5 million.

JWT + Hostettler + Fabrikant strings new advertising strings for HeinekenA third Swiss appearance for the international beer brand Heineken continues the "musical" advertising tradition of the Dutch noble barley juice. Because the previous positioning in the jazz segment proved to be too specific, the Zurich advertising agency JWT + Hostettler + Fabrikant created a campaign with new tones. The implementation is based on a strategically developed brand vision, called "Experience of Authenticity". This phrase results from a brand analysis carried out in the run-up to the new concept. According to this, the five main characteristics of the brand - internationality, music, presence, tradition and quality - do not appear as an overall image. They are only effective as individual voices. On the new poster motifs and advertising subjects, the chorus of brand values therefore "sings", so to speak, the entire product personality. The client, the Calanda Haldengut Breweries in Winterthur, praises the appearance in the highest terms and as a unique, flexible communication channel that also meets international guidelines. Page 16

People are the center of attention" has been preached for a long time by every company philosophy that presents itself as socially responsible to a certain extent. However, as people, they first of all only place themselves at the center of this philosophy. Those born after 1977 see themselves more than ever as "I AG". The egoists of the future, which is taking place in the present, want to squeeze more out of life for themselves than the earlier "warmists," as today's "coldists" called their old-idealist predecessor generation of spiesser and softies. Various presentations at the 5th German Trend Day in Hamburg showed how such youthful language creations can be seen as seismographs of changing social values. Page 16

The German Internet music platform Youwant.com has chosen Weber Hodel Schmid, Berlin, as agency for its launch.Fax WHS Berlin brings music to the web
Youwant.com is a kind of personalizable web radio whose users can compile their own program from numerous styles. The offering is still under construction. In addition to print and banners, the launch campaign will primarily use radio advertising.
VW threatens Stern with boycottThe German magazine Stern is threatened with advertising losses: Volkswagen is considering no longer running ads. The reason is an article critical of VW in the May 18 issue. It claimed that VW would have to revise its profit expectations for the current year downward by DM 1.9 billion. The car company describes this as "sheer nonsense." If an advertising boycott takes place, Stern will lose DM 12.5 million.
15 Uhr aktuell finally bankruptNegotiations between the German free newspaper 15 Uhr aktuell and potential investors have failed - the publisher has to declare bankruptcy and lay off its staff. As recently as March, publisher Robert Sidor had declared that he had found backers from the Internet industry who wanted to expand 15 Uhr aktuell into a print and online advertising platform.
Interpublic forms Opel unitThe Interpublic Group (IPG) is setting up its own consulting unit for Opel. The Opel Brand Communications Group, based in Frankfurt, will start work on September 1. It consists of auto advertising experts from IPG's McCann-Erickson and Lowe Lintas networks, who serve the client in various markets, as well as specialists from other IPG firms. The unit will develop integrated communications solutions for the Opel brand worldwide. It will also handle media planning and buying.