The digital Advent calendar is intended to bring a little joy in the hectic pre-Christmas period, according to a press release. Why animated short films? On the one hand, 3D and 2D animations are part of Axial's portfolio; on the other hand, these little masterpieces are a long-standing passion of owner Axel Streich. All the films come from various animators and animation studios around the world, some of which have won multiple awards and represent a small selection of the world of animated short films. None of the films were made by Axial itself; it is intended more as a tribute to all the talented animators out there. The advent calendar itself, however, was realized by Axial, the individual elements designed and rendered in 3D and brought to life using HTML, Javascript and CSS.

Click here for the advent calendar:  Advent2014.axial-dv.ch

Lavanchy is currently Head of Marketing at Schulverlag. According to a press release issued by the publishing house on Friday, she has a broad background of experience ranging from marketing and communication to sales and sales management functions. Schulverlag has around 35 employees at its two sites in Bern and Buchs AG and generates annual sales of around 20 million Swiss francs. According to the current director, Peter Uhr, it operates at break-even. Depending on business performance, the two shareholders receive a modest dividend. Schulverlag plus emerged from the merger of the two educational publishers of the cantons of Bern and Aargau in 2009. Prior to the merger, Uhr already managed the Berner Schulverlag. From 2015, he will continue to perform individual tasks at Schulverlag plus with a reduced workload.

Meanwhile, Schulverlag plus has abandoned its plans announced in 2010 to expand into the German market. The weakness of the euro has put paid to these plans, Uhr said on request. As a result, Schulverlag plus is currently only active on a small scale in Germany. (SDA)

"You've got to be kidding, right?" ask shocked prospective tenants at an apartment viewing in Zurich. Unfortunately, this is no joke, but bitter reality. In a current viral spot, SOS Children's Villages and BTL agency Streuplan show the reality of millions of children around the world. Every child should grow up in a family - loved, respected and protected. Unfortunately, the reality for millions of children is quite different. The goal of the SOS Children's Villages Foundation is to change this reality. Since 1964, it has been working to give every child a loving home. To draw attention to the emergency situation, Streuplan conceived a viral spot and confronted Zurich residents with the reality of millions of children. The reactions ranged from incredulous to stunned.

"We deliberately take viewers out of their comfort zone and confront them with the desolate living conditions faced by children in need," explains Philipp Scheidiger, Head of Marketing & Communications at the SOS Children's Villages Switzerland Foundation. The video was produced by Futurelite and posted on Youtube on December 10. For seeding, Streuplan worked with the Swiss viral portal Storyfilter.com, which published the video as a native story.

Within 48 hours, the story generated over 12,000 social media interactions, achieved a reach of around 2.5 million, and placed in the top ten in the ranking of the most shared media content in German-speaking countries. The video is currently in fifth place among the most popular YouTube content in Switzerland. It was also placed on the front page by huffingtonpost.de, 20min.ch reported and there have been further media inquiries.

Responsible at SOS Children's Villages Switzerland: Philipp Scheidiger (Head of Marketing & Communications), Christine Weber (Online Marketing). Responsible at Streuplan: Thomas Back (overall responsibility / CD), Ennio Cadau (text / concept), Basil Renz (consulting). Production: Futurelite; directed by Claudio Catrambone. Publisher: Storyfilter.com (Bernhard Brechbühl, David Cappellini, Lorenz Hanselmann).

The 49-year-old reports for Weltwoche and Swiss radio and television SRF, among others. Pelda was also voted Reporter of the Year by his colleagues, according to a press release on Friday. He last reported from the civil war in Syria. Over 1200 people took part in the vote. They voted for the best in several sub-categories: Hansi Voigt from the online portal Watson was voted Editor-in-Chief of the Year. Stefan Schmid from the newspaper network Die Nordwestschweiz won the politics category, while Zoé Baches from the Neue Zürcher Zeitung won the business category. Among the award-winning journalists are also Christof Gertsch from NZZ am Sonntag (sport), Rico Bandle from Weltwoche (culture), Hanna Wick from SRF (science), Kurt Zimmermann from Weltwoche (column) and Christian Brönnimann from Tages-Anzeiger/Bund. Freelance journalist Luzia Tschirky was voted Newcomer of the Year. (SDA)

Image: SRF

The new Head of Human Resources will report directly to Sandro Macciacchini, who as a member of the Executive Board will be responsible for the newly created Finance & Human Resources division, as detailed in a press release. Katrin Volery will take over from Jacqueline Wüthrich, who is leaving the company at the end of March 2015, on April 1, 2015.

Katrin Volery, who speaks German, French and Italian among other languages, has held management positions in human resources since 2000. The 46-year-old has managed HR departments at national and international companies of all sizes. Together with her team, Katrin Volery will increasingly focus on the strategic topics of employee recruitment, management and development in the future. By merging salary and personnel administration with finance and accounting, the HR department will be relieved of administrative HR tasks. Daniel Manser, Deputy Head of Finance & HR and previously responsible for Finance and Accounting, will take over the management of the new Finance & HR Services division. Salary and expense payments as well as other administrative processes will therefore be provided from a single source in future.

Image: ZVG

Jörg Buckmann, HR Manager at VBZ, says of the success: "Heinz Vögeli, Head of VBZ Corporate Communications, and I consistently try to create a uniform image in the minds of all target groups. That's why the boundaries between corporate and HR communications are becoming increasingly blurred. This starts with the common brand promise: It pays to switch." Creative Director Markus Ruf of Ruf Lanz adds, "Depending on how you charge it, it means: switching from car to streetcar and bus. Or changing from another employer to VBZ. The creative spirit behind it is the same."

According to Hannes Maier, organizer of the European Change Communications Awards, the freshness and cheekiness of the VBZ campaign made the jury laugh and smile. But the proof of the campaign's success was also convincing.

Some highlights of VBZ personnel communications:

The cinema spot "Born to ride the bus":
 

Example of a pointed ad for a current occasion:

A job ad in a new dress: In order to recruit female streetcar pilots, the VBZ service dress was advertised like a fashion trend.In the editorial style section in the Friday magazine of 20 Minuten. The clothing presented the VBZ tramp pilot Melanie Mos (Werbewoche.ch reported).

Example of the merging of corporate and HR communications:

He will drive the digitization of media offerings in Hungary, Serbia and Slovakia, the company announced Friday. Previously, Grau was responsible for the digitization strategy of Macmillan Education in London, a publisher in the language and education sector. Ringier Axel Springer was founded in 2010 by Swiss publisher Ringier and German publisher Axel Springer. The joint venture combines the activities of the two publishers in Central and Eastern Europe. The company is headquartered in Zurich. (SDA)

The strategy of the association shows how the sponsorship can perform its tasks even more effectively, the SRG announced on Thursday. Among other things, this is to be achieved through better interregional cooperation and broader participation of the more than 23'000 members. Other measures include a more mixed membership structure, targeted training measures and increased public visibility. The idea of setting up a national forum for media policy is also being examined.

Last year, the Board of Directors commissioned a working group with representatives from all regional companies to develop an association strategy. The paper was approved by a clear majority at the Assembly of Delegates at the beginning of December.

As an organization, SRG is an association with four regional companies: SRG.D in German-speaking Switzerland, RTSR in French-speaking Switzerland, Corsi in Italian-speaking Switzerland and SRG.R in the Rhaeto-Romanic part of the country. The association operates the SRG media company with its five enterprise units SRF, RTS, RSI, RTR and SWI. (SDA)

According to the company, 284 million users had exchanged short messages limited to 140 characters on Twitter at the end of September.

Every day, the Instagram community shares more than 70 million photos and videos, company CEO Kevin Systrom shared in a blog post. The social network offers a home to "creativity in all forms," he said. Instagram is owned by industry leader Facebook, which bought the photo service in 2012 for $1 billion. (SDA)
 

As part of the "Wake up Love" campaign, BBDO subsidiary Instinct equipped the large hall in the Kinostar Deluxe Mega Khimki in Moscow with 16 beds and additional seating areas for Ikea, as Wuv.de writes on Thursday. Other components of a typical Ikea salesroom, such as lamps and curtains, were of course also included.
Ikea has guaranteed a Christmassy atmosphere and "lots of great gift ideas". (uma)
 

Google is taking its news website offline in Spain in response to a legal fee imposed by publishers. As Google News does not contain any advertising and therefore does not generate any money for the company, the new fee is not sustainable, it said in a blog post late on Wednesday (local time).

The legal reform passed at the end of October stipulates that operators of news aggregators, which collect and process news from the web, must generally pay a fee to publishers and authors if they display excerpts from their texts. The so-called "Google fee" comes into force on January 1. The Internet company will close Google News in Spain on December 16 and will no longer collect content from Spanish media companies for other Spanish-language Google News sites, for example for the Latin American market.

A Google spokesperson told the news agency DPA that publishing content from Spain would continue to be displayed in Google's general search. The law in Spain explicitly refers to news aggregators such as Google News, not to general search engines such as Google.es.

Spain intends to stick to the controversial copyright reform despite Google's announcement. This was announced by the Ministry of Education and Culture on Thursday. The reform, which provides for the collection of a "Google levy", will be implemented as planned. The announced discontinuation of the Google News service in Spain is a business decision.

Similar conflict in Germany

In Germany, several media companies had tried in vain to persuade Google to negotiate licenses for the use of publishers' content on the basis of the ancillary copyright law. They initially agreed to free exploitation after Google announced that it would only display headlines in future. However, the dispute continues. In Germany, it is also about the display of text fragments and preview images. In this country, the company also does not display advertising in Google News.

The publishers emphasized that Google News is an important channel for them to bring Internet users to their websites. At the same time, their camp accused Google of abusing its dominant market position after the company announced the restriction to headlines. (SDA)