The result of the redesign of the Sechseläutenplatz at Bellevue in Zurich teaches us how a project that was beautifully presented in the computer as close to reality, but then came out rather disappointing in execution. This phenomenon is also a stumbling block in our profession "advertiser" again and again. From the story board to the shot film, this obstacle must be taken into account.

Using the example of the fake celebrities, incarcerated in the letter/milk box to advertise for Schweizer Illustrierte in this way, we learned that a symbolic image is often not understood or is misunderstood. For example, when UBS wants to prove to me how safe and reputable it is, and as a visual element holds the yellow warning sign "Caution - wet floor" with the falling little man in front of my nose, I immediately understand "Caution! Bank!".

With the criticism of the advertising for the Motor Show, we should have learned that, on the one hand, the graphics used to be much bolder and more original. On the other hand, I have theorized that an institution like this Salon could embark on completely new directions with advertising. I also miss this new approach in organizations like Art Basel, Olma or the Locarno Film Festival. I like the VBZ much better. So more courage, originality, humor and striving for new paths.

What the programs such as InDesign or Photoshop have offered us in terms of helpful solutions has already been described in Issue No. 5. The unskilled and untalented should not bother with these tools, which offer sensational versatility and speed. This is because these programs are also sensationally uncreative. Instead of optimizing advertising, such jekami degrades it to abominations.

Advertising figures, a delicate subject that requires an incredible amount of sensitivity. The scale of excellently animated and optimally synchronized animals from the Disney kitchen or the Blue Sky Studios (Ice Age) shows what emotions can be triggered with such figurines or even advertising figures. With the examples of the Coop savings fox, the unspeakable Thomy mustard and mayo tubes as well as the talking nose for a pharmaceutical product, I have already pointed out that the highest level of professionalism and not too small a budget are prerequisites for a successful creation of such a creature.

These are also important guidelines for all types of advertising. Put an end to amateurism. Boring consumers with bad advertising for high viewing costs is also super-unprofessional. I wish that advertising would not capitulate. Therefore recap my tips and learn the 11 commandments by heart. My standout of the week was Swiss' idea to offer passengers chocolate in the form of footballs at the end of the flight.

Theophil Butz, graphic designer, advertising agency owner, inspirer and, for the last three years, also mothballs for Werbewoche readers. Please send any relevant information to [email protected] 

 

If publishers want to be successful in the digital business, their corporate culture must undergo profound change. Whereas in the "good old days" there was a significant change every quarter of a century or so, when a new printing press was purchased or lead typesetting was adopted, today change can be felt on all fronts and is continuing to accelerate. Good relationships with a system supplier that used to guarantee state-of-the-art technology are no longer enough. This makes it clear that publishers do not have rapid change in their DNA, and must adapt, learn and unlearn. This cannot be accomplished overnight. However, in order not to miss the boat and fall behind, change is bought in. In recent years, the large publishing supertankers have surrounded themselves with a fleet of small and agile start-up speedboats, and this development has accelerated in recent years (see overview "Start-up investments by Swiss publishers").

Advertising space against shares

Publishers have a unique advantage when buying young companies: instead of having to reach into their capital coffers, they can often exchange considerable shares for advertising space. This is known as media for equity and benefits both sides: companies can thus bring the advantages of their products to consumers at low cost and publishers can conserve their capital. Although the term sounds American, it is mainly used in Europe. Unlike in the USA, where venture capitalists have learned to invest in very young companies and grow them, there is often a financing gap here, especially for new companies, in order to boost growth until they become interesting for investors. Because media for equity models are ideally suited for this, but cannot be used by media companies in all cases where there is a need, corresponding funds have now been created. Several media companies provide advertising inventory (preferably residual inventory, of course), which is then invested in start-ups that are also outside the direct interest of the media companies.

The best-known examples in Germany are Seven Ventures, a wholly-owned subsidiary of ProSieben Sat.1 Media AG, whose most striking showpiece is the Zalando TV commercials with the screaming women. In 2011 alone, Zalando commercials worth around EUR 35 million are said to have been played up and down on the three ProSieben Sat.1 channels, which were offset via a participation model. GMPVC German Media Pool and Leverate Media are also active in this area, as is the outdoor advertising entrepreneur Dirk Ströer, who invested in young web companies through his investment company and in return plastered the billboards with posters of these web start-ups. However, this is not without risk: if a start-up does not take off, the shares for which media services have been used become worthless. There are also reports that existing advertising customers have threatened to withdraw their budgets because a media company has boosted a competitor with a media-for-equity investment.

Similar strategies

A survey conducted by Werbewoche among the three major publishers Tamedia, Ringier and NZZ initially reveals many similarities in their approach to start-ups. All of them have been using media-for-equity models for some time. Frank-Rainer Nitschke, Head of New Business at NZZ, emphasizes that this is not just about residual inventory, but "of course also about premium inventory", because they also want to "give the investments the right stirrup to get ahead". According to Thomas Kaiser, Chief Digital Officer at Ringier, the focus is on "media for equity", for which Ringier's entire media portfolio (print, online, radio) can be used. However, it is "of central importance" that the companies have functioning conversion processes and customer experiences, as this is the only way that media services can benefit customers and start-ups. And at Tamedia, Gabriele Ottino, Head of Digital Strategy at Tamedia, confirms: "If we can help start-ups to accelerate their growth, we will use our media services." All three emphasize that they also offer their investments additional services from their own company, such as traditional marketing, e-commerce, finance and online advertising marketing, etc.

It is also important to share experiences within the portfolio companies in order to learn from each other without having defined a formal incubator system. All three are also explicitly not active as financial investors. They decide on startup investments on a case-by-case basis and have not defined a fixed fund or founded any subsidiaries for this purpose. It is also clear that companies in the initial seed phase are not in demand. Tamedia states: "We require a convincing founding team and initial sales or successful pilot projects." Those who are not financial investors, but rather strategic investors, hope to gain a competitive advantage from investments. NZZ-Nitschke, for example, says: "Ideally, we aim for a majority stake as soon as the investment is sustainably profitable." And at Ringier, Thomas Kaiser explains that they initially aim for minority shareholdings in order to promote and focus on the entrepreneurial freedom of start-ups. In the longer term, Ringier is also aiming for majority shareholdings in strategically interesting start-ups.

Tamedia on course abroad

On the question of expansion abroad, namely the D-A-CH region, Ringier says that there are no concrete plans for this. At NZZ, Nitschke acknowledges that this is becoming increasingly important and that the company is also active in this area (for example with the 20 percent stake in Berlin-based Bettermarks GmbH acquired last year), before adding: "However, we are also committed to our Swiss roots." Meanwhile, Tamedia is clearly on an international course: "Tamedia Digital wants to continue to grow, also internationally" and is working on further expanding its international presence. All three Swiss publishers do not have their own representative offices in Silicon Valley or other start-up centers, but emphasize good relationships and partnerships. There are words of appreciation from all sides for the state innovation promotion program CTI (Ringier-Kaiser: "Fundamentally important for the innovative strength of the Swiss economy, this is the only way we have a chance to survive in the dynamic international context.") and other venture capital initiatives, such as Swisscom, are also commented on favorably.

The three publishing houses also attach importance to promoting internal innovation and Tamedia in particular is also active externally. Last year, for example, a hackathon was held as part of the Open Development Project, and this will be followed next October by Hack Zurich in collaboration with ETH Zurich. Since this spring, there has been a company-wide innovation fund to which more than 80 proposals for new projects and process innovations have already been submitted. According to Frank-Rainer Nitschke, a culture has developed at NZZ that allows for innovation, so that "employees from all possible areas feel called upon and enjoy bringing ideas to management". Ringier also wants to "promote an open and, above all, entrepreneurial culture and cultivate internal and external networks". When it comes to concrete goals in the digital sector, Tamedia in particular is very specific: "Our medium-term goal is to generate around 50 percent of Tamedia's total earnings with the digital sector." This goal is to be achieved through organic growth and acquisitions.

Axel Springer has already made purchases from Switzerland

This goal has already been achieved at Axel Springer Verlag, which is regarded by many in the German-speaking world as a role model in dealing with the digital media business. This is primarily due to the work of CEO Matthias Döpfner, who has consistently focused the Group on digital over the past twelve years. The (temporary) highlight of this strategy was probably the sale of the regional titles to the Funke Group (previously WAZ-Verlag) last summer on the grounds that it would not be able to achieve a leading market position in this regional business. Döpfner is continuing to drive forward the digital transformation and has launched a clear challenge with the new company motto: "The leading digital publisher". He emphasizes that the entire company must be digitally oriented, which is why there is no special representative for the digital sector on the management board, for example. Last year, the share of digital media in Group EBITDA rose from 49.4 percent (in 2012) to 61.8 percent and 70 percent of advertising revenue came from the digital business, which accounted for 47 percent of total revenue. Growth is achieved both organically, by expanding print to digital, and through the acquisition of investments. On the one hand, there is Axel Springer Venture GmbH, which prefers to invest in more mature new companies in the media sector. On the other hand, Axel Springer has entered into a joint venture in Berlin with Plug and Play, a well-known accelerator from Silicon Valley. The aim is to identify and connect entrepreneurial talent and successful business concepts at a very early stage.

At the annual press conference at the beginning of March this year, Döpfner said: "If digitalization is so essential for us, we must also be successful as founders or early investors in earlier phases of the business. We cannot leave this to others. As the core DNA of the company, we must also succeed." This makes it clear that in the race for digital business, Swiss publishers will also have to further expand their start-up commitments and become increasingly active as early investors in the future in order to defend their home market: Axel Springer already went on the start-up hunt in Switzerland in 2008, when the two projects Partyguide. ch and Usgang.ch were taken over.

Christoph J. Walther

No Silicon Valley in Switzerland

Silicon Valley is the epitome of a lively start-up scene. From a purely external perspective, however, the area south of San Francisco hardly differs from the suburbs of other major American cities. There are three main characteristics that distinguish the Valley from Switzerland:

Talent: Because Silicon Valley has long been considered the Mecca for software developers, there are a particularly large number of them here. This makes it easier to find talented specialists for new projects. Meanwhile, there are notoriously too few IT specialists here and those who want to recruit them globally fail due to rigid labor market regulations, which often severely hinders small companies in particular, such as start-ups.

Money: If you invest in the right start-up early on, you can make a lot of money. And where there are many start-ups, there are many venture capital firms that try to invest the money entrusted to them in the companies of tomorrow as early as possible. In order to specifically promote these companies and breed their success, start-up centers are operated (so-called incubators or, in later phases, accelerators). If you want to play a part here (from Switzerland, for example), you not only need capital, you also need to invest at least one to two years in building up networks of contacts in order to receive early indications of future opportunities through various informal channels. In our country, as examples from the media industry show, investors prefer to wait until new companies have established themselves and proven themselves for the time being and the rearing of start-ups is left to the incubators (co-)supported by the public sector.

Culture: Compared to Switzerland in particular, the attitude to life is more optimistic and risk-taking. If it doesn't work out there, it will work out with the next attempt - no bad luck. The mindset is emphatically market-oriented. The saying goes: if you give a Swiss start-up two million, it will optimize the product over the next few years. In Western America, the same amount of money would have been spent within three months and market share would have been gained.

This mixture of success factors is difficult to copy and yet there is no shortage of attempts (including in Switzerland), as a new Silicon Valley is being proclaimed: None of these copies has yet succeeded in eclipsing the original. Nevertheless, from a media perspective, Silicon Alley in New York City is remarkable. While Silicon Valley's origins lie in chips, computers and hardware, New York is all about media and marketing, for which the Big Apple has long been known. In Europe, start-ups thrive primarily in the tech city of East London and in the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, as well as increasingly in Berlin. cjw

 

Experts already take different approaches to the question of whether and when firm guidelines are needed. Nor do they agree on when and how the public should be informed. This much has emerged in the previous part on concept and media presence in the crisis: Concepts and guidelines could indeed be helpful, especially in preventing a crisis, as long as they are handled flexibly. However, crisis communication can also be understood as a staff work process that follows the management rhythm and is also visible to the outside in this form. Another attitude goes in the direction that a quick reaction, authenticity and all-embracing information are more important than absolutely secure and error-free communication. But who should ultimately manage the crisis? Here, too, opinions differ among experts.

Externally managed

It is often said that good crisis communication does not exist without the appropriate expertise. After all, economics, law and corporate structure restrict what can be communicated and how. And yet an external consultant can provide an outside perspective that can be very valuable. Hans Klaus is of the opinion that in most cases, operational management should not be used in crisis management, because the distance to the substantive problem solving is usually lacking: He again cites the University of Zurich as an example. Even though its problems could not necessarily have been described as a crisis at the beginning, but simply as an unusual and sensitive situation. Basically, it was just a "politicization" of a management problem, Klaus assesses the situation and explains: "When so many players are involved, as well as the authorities and the government, transparency must first be created. According to his assessment, the problem in the Uni Zurich case also lay in the fact that individual interest groups began to communicate themselves, unguided and without coordination. "I don't know who is responsible for this communication, but the situation has been very damaging to all stakeholders," Klaus emphasizes. The loss of reputation of the institution, the people involved and the authorities is considerable, he says. The whole thing paints a desolate picture of crisis management in this case. Experiences in comparable cases would clearly show that crisis management should not be done by the people involved themselves. In addition, communication experts also have to be guided in crisis situations. According to Klaus' analysis of the example of the University of Zurich, spin doctors and attempts at manipulation are definitely partly responsible for the fact that an initially delicate situation could develop into a real crisis. As a result, Zurich lacked speed and straightforwardness in communication. If Hans Klaus had his way, crisis managers would have to be free of operational constraints whenever possible. It is their task to maintain an overview, to lead the crisis team and, where necessary, to make unpopular decisions in the interests of transparency. Successful crisis teams consist of many disciplines. Lawyers, technicians, care people, HR, communication specialists, specific experts, and most importantly: trusted external specialists to maintain an independent view from the outside. In the course of crisis management, new aspects, possibly even new facts with negative connotations, would be brought to light again and again. One has the feeling that the crisis is simply never-ending. This is where Klaus sees an important role for crisis communication: "Disciplined, competent and straightforward crisis communication is part of meaningful and team-oriented crisis management. The crisis must be worked through according to the three criteria of root cause analysis, care considerations and communication. All three criteria are equally important and they are interdependent." Klaus, himself a member of the Swissair crisis team at the time, cites the handling of the Swissair SR 111 airplane accident at Halifax as a still excellent example of successful crisis management. It was not the then CEO Bruggisser who led the "emergency team," but Beat Schär, an experienced manager, who guided a dozen specialists from the Group through this mega-crisis with clear leadership and the necessary calm and overview. The key to success lay in the perfect composition of the crisis team. There was no room for loners, according to Klaus. Even today, more than ten years later, the management of this tragic accident is still regarded as an important textbook example of what successful crisis management should look like.

Crisis communication is always an integral part of crisis management, confirms Oliver Schroeder. You can't have one without the other. "This means that if you screw up in crisis management, you can't pull the number with crisis communication," he elaborates. To that end, you can quickly make any crisis worse with poor communication. By the same token, however, it is also possible to master crises very well with good crisis management and adequate crisis communication and even come out of such a crisis with an image boost, adds Schroeder. These two elements are directly related. An external consultant can provide a very good outside perspective. In crisis communication, one of the greatest dangers is that the outside perspective is lost to some extent. At the moment when you are involved, emotions play an influential role, explains Schroeder.

Of course, you have to take responsibility. But that's not so easy. "For example, if something has happened that has not yet been fully clarified and is to be communicated, that is an emotional threshold that has to be crossed," says Schroeder. That, in addition to the processes and attempts at clarification, is also a big challenge emotionally and not so easy, he says. "I understand that the first reaction of those in charge is often, 'As long as this isn't public, we'll hold off on it for now,'" Schroeder says. In crisis situations, people tend to remain in their internal view, which they believe is the right one, Roland Binz also believes. In crisis and scandal situations in particular, however, the internal view is often in blatant contradiction to the public perception or the perception conveyed by the media. This circumstance is an enormous psychological burden for those affected, he explains.

That's why he always recommends considering an unbiased, external perspective in the event of a crisis. This does not necessarily have to be a consultant. However, it should be a truly unbiased, critical personality who points out sore points with a sure instinct. In the event of a crisis, this external perspective makes it possible to shift the focus of communication away from the internal viewpoint and toward the target audience - and thus to take pressure off the crisis in the long term or to break the cycle of scandalization. Christian Pieter Hoffmann vehemently disagrees with the recommendation to call in a consultant, at least on one point: as far as public appearance is concerned. Particularly in a crisis, the company must have a credible face, a recognizable contact person, he is convinced. Experts are more or less unanimous in calling in an external consultant or crisis manager - but not when it comes to appearing before the press. Who represents the company to the public and when, who takes responsibility and when - and when is talking out of place?

The silent contact

For Christian Pieter Hoffmann, it's pretty clear when not to keep quiet in a crisis - and who should go public: If the company is at fault, i.e. if an apology is necessary, it must be made by the company's management, says Hoffmann. After all, only they represent the company to the public - and are also held personally responsible. However, possible responsibilities should not be hastily denied before the situation has been thoroughly examined, he adds. But one should also not be hasty with excuses when the facts of the case are still unclear. "Lack of knowledge about the state of affairs is no disgrace in times of crisis and should be openly admitted - combined with transparent information about ongoing efforts to clarify the situation as quickly as possible." The crisis issue itself should be dealt with sustainably and transparently, Hoffmann says. "The rule here is: better too much information than too little. That way, too, media criticism ebbs away more quickly."

In stressful situations, silence is one of the natural human reactions, says Roland Binz. The only advantage is that at least you don't say anything wrong. But silence always smacks of not facing up to a problem or even hiding something. "That fundamentally stirs up mistrust and offers potential for probing and follow-up stories." So in crisis communications, he said, silence is definitely silver and talk is gold - if you put the right words to the right people. But when silence is used, it is often simply a matter of avoiding legal risks, says Christian Pieter Hoffmann. And the difficulty of assessing the explosive nature of a situation leads to a wait-and-see attitude. The hope prevails that the crisis will not escalate further. "In some cases, this is actually the case, such as various social media shitstorms," he cites. Oliver Schroeder calls this attitude a "displacement mechanism". In this context, he mentions the example of the mayor of Duisburg, who entrenched himself as if paralyzed after the terrible events surrounding the Love Parade in 2010 and was not even able to immediately communicate what was indispensable: his deep human regret in the face of the tragedy with 21 dead. The communicative failure had many faces, all of which were concerned only with putting the blame on others. "A particularly sad tragedy," Schroeder said. At the same time, he said, public appearances are essential, especially at the beginning of a crisis. This is where the role in which the company is seen by the public is decided. It doesn't take much for a company's role as a victim to be transformed into that of a (co-)perpetrator in the media. This is precisely the point where responsibility must be assumed and silence must be avoided under all circumstances. As can be seen, discussions on behavior before and in crisis situations reveal only a few uniform attitudes. Experts agree only to a limited extent. One thing can be said for sure: There are no fixed guidelines for crisis communication, unless crisis communication is understood as a staff work process that follows the management rhythm. For this, there are clear structures for preparing for the crisis, but possibly these should then be handled flexibly. The responsibility should be assumed by the management - or an external consultant - but going before the media too early would be fatal. Nevertheless, it is precisely at the beginning of a crisis that it is decisive how the public classifies the company in the crisis: Perpetrator or victim. Mistakes are easy to make with quick and authentic crisis communication. It should be possible to avoid these for the most part with clear staff work processes, but this would in turn make it more difficult to react quickly. One thing is clear: there is no such thing as THE crisis communication. There is only a more or less unpredictable crisis, which can be tackled either with clear structures or with good preparation. The rest is experience - and common sense.

Ursina mason

In a nutshell

Not everything is a crisis that attracts media attention or requires communications advice. "It is very important to distinguish a crisis situation from an exceptional and difficult situation in a company," emphasizes Hans Klaus. A crisis situation, he says, is when a company or part of a company is threatened existentially by the situation. Or, for example, when a company gets into financial or legal trouble because of it, such as various Swiss financial institutions in the USA. Accidents or other sensitive events do not always lead to crisis situations for the company. However, Klaus adds, difficult situations in companies often develop into veritable crises because a calm and experienced outside perspective is lacking in dealing with the situation. A surprise resignation of a board president or CEO, for example, is far from being a crisis. If good management and transparent information are provided in such "normal" situations, crises can almost always be avoided. Crisis management and crisis communication belong together; you cannot separate one from the other.

For Oliver Schroeder, crisis communication has long since become part of everyday life. Because the time of peace, as he calls it, already contains the issues that can become a crisis. "We live in a permanent, crisis-ridden time," he defines more precisely. There is, of course, also the acute crisis, in which case action must be taken immediately along the crisis. But in this day and age - especially with social media, where everyone can communicate and exchange information instantly - Schroeder believes that you are permanently in a potential crisis. Sometimes it breaks out and you have to prepare for it. Whether a crisis develops depends not only on the actions of the company, but also on the environment. There are self-inflicted crises, for example, but also unpredictable crisis situations, such as a rampage. For Schroeder, this means: "Before the crisis is after the crisis. Oliver Schroeder collects communicatively critical situations in "passing" that he discovers in everyday media life and that inspire amazement, head-shaking and reflection (mediencoach.ch). However, these are rather marginal remarks and less analyses. They are therefore not intended to meet any scientific standards or professional advice. They are intended merely as food for thought.

 

Tweets, Christ, popes and an idol - the final match of the 2014 FIFA World Cup in Brazil offered creative excitement and divine suspense - but the decision was made on the ground of football facts: the round was in the square and Germany were world champions. The final and other great games in four stories about numbers, tweets and strategies - to cheer about, pray about and think about.

#ITALURU - Bite in the sunset. At the beginning, the World Cup in Brazil offered meagre football fare and hardly any material for stories. That came to an end on the evening of June 24. Luis Suárez brought the culinary turnaround in the Italy-Uruguay game. One bite, one shout and the World Cup was also launched on the social web. Snickers and McDonald's responded immediately, earning 68,000 and over 100,000 retweets and favorites respectively with their event-related tweets. Social media is responsive media. What counts is the favor of the hour, minute, second. Yesterday's news is tomorrow's reaction.

#BRAGER - Night of Records. 9 goals, 35.6 million tweets, an infinite number of tears and a social web community that came up with creative ideas every second: everything was posted in record numbers after Germany swept Brazil off the pitch.

The tournament as such also broke user records by the meter. The total of 670 million views achieved by the 97 campaign videos of the 45 largest World Cup advertisers is significant. Never before has there been so many for an event. It is significant because the high figure proves that commercials are now making the leap from the big TV screen to the small mobile screen on social media platforms and are spreading rapidly from there. The Nike commercials Risk Everything and The Last Game delivered the best performance with 80 and 65 million views respectively on YouTube alone. Nike is the video world champion with a total of 240.6 million views across 8 commercials. It is followed by Samsung with 124.4, Adidas with 90.3, Kia with 27.8 and Beats by Der with 24.5 million views.

#NEDARG - The Matrix Game. Holland's tactics are difficult for any opponent to play.

General Van Gaal's system demands everything from the players: discipline, anticipation, intelligence and stamina.

It wasn't quite enough for the final. But the system provides approaches for increasingly complex social media work. There has already been brief talk of cross-device and cross-media user paths. FIFA President Joseph S. Blatter: "This was the first World Cup to take place fully on mobile devices and in social networks. " The resulting content, which was spontaneously created and distributed by fans (users) and brands in real time, was an enormous enrichment for the World Cup. But the real-time boom is now facing trouble. Twitter is planning to add a complicating additional function for commenting on retweets, the most important and simplest viral amplifier of all. In addition, the reach of non-paid Facebook posts from company sites (organic reach) has fallen from 16 % to 6.5 % since 2012. At the same time, the cost of Facebook ads is rising. Both of these factors mean that the organic distribution of content via social media platforms is becoming increasingly difficult for companies to predict.

Social media hub: For this reason, World Cup sponsors with a strong marketing commitment in particular have set up their own social media hubs. FIFA itself provides the blueprint model for the social hub. The starting point is the FIFA Global Stadium as the central point of contact from which FIFA's official social networks obtain their content. Over 1 billion users have visited the Global Stadium to date. In addition, there is the actual social hub as a platform for "global conversations". It contains rankings - probably intended more for business partners - as well as content aggregated from Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. There is FIFA's own content as well as content from users. Aggregation takes place via various # hashtags. Users can add their own hashtags to the content directly from the HUB and share it in their networks. The HUB is available in a browser version and as a mobile app. With the concept of its own hub, FIFA has more influence on its own social media activities. The performance of the hub: 451 million Facebook users were provided with official FIFA content. FIFA now has more than 16 million followers on Twitter. During the opening match, there were 10 new users per second. The number of subscribers to the World Cup Instagram app grew from 42,000 to 800,000 within 31 days! Sony (One Stadium), Nike, Adidas and Coca-Cola have similar concepts. The idea of the hub is still in its infancy, but somehow seems to point the way forward because it can counteract the dependence on Facebook, Facebook & Co. The FIFA President again: "All of our social offerings have experienced enormous growth rates. The billion-strong audience at the Global Stadium created the sense of global togetherness that only the World Cup can create and gave fans the opportunity to share the excitement on this digital platform." The concept of the big FIFA can also be adopted for the scale of an SME. Bet that ...?

#GERARG - The holy finale at the end. "Why the hell are they always showing this statue of Jesus?" they asked in a visibly annoyed Facebook post on Spiegel Online. The answer is this: Nothing has a stronger impact and spreads faster and more frequently on the social web than images with a high symbolic content. During the final, I followed various Twitter #Hashtags via Tweetdeck, a monitoring tool. The picture of Christ in front of the setting sun found its way onto social networks within seconds. At the end, the organizers set off a magnificent firework display in the evening sky above the Maracanã. Before and after, however, it was the fans with spontaneous creations, the brands with staged brand messages and the footballers with selfies from the catacombs that ensured the fireworks were visible worldwide on the social web. More fireworks in our social media feeds, please - even after the World Cup. I would be delighted...

Beat Hürlimann

I look forward to your participation in the discussion on my blog www.huerlimanncc.com.

 

Working on the roof is one of the most dangerous professional activities. DSoba Inter, as a provider of fall protection systems of the highest quality, does not tolerate any compromises when it comes to safety. For the new brochure, the Aarau-based communications agency Renzen was able to engage Stephan Siegrist, one of the most active and professional mountaineers in the world, as a brand ambassador. With his skill, precision and passion, he embodies the values of Soba Inter and gives the often abstract term "safety" a face. As part of an integrated communication solution, Siegrist will also be present in person at several customer events to talk about his experiences.

Responsible at Soba Inter: Adrian Schoop. Responsible at Renzen: Hanno Lietz (CD), Achim Kaufmann (AD), Roland Marti (text), Marc Tabeling (consulting). Photos: Cover: Thomas Senf (Visualimpact.ch), content: André Scheidegger (Wolf-fotografie.ch).

1. you could swap your smartphone with someone else's for a day. Would you? And if so, with whom?
I would have loved to have done that with Steve Jobs.

2. what comes to you in no case to the office?
A PC, we work only with Macs 😉

3. what would you most like to promote?
For products that I like, wear, eat, read or consume myself. Our customers mean particularly well with us in this regard.

4. what advertising should be banned?
Telephone solicitation after 8:00 p.m.

5. was there a moment in your life when you thought: Wow. This is awesome. And it's from me!
Again and again, my son ...

6. the best self-promotion?
Being recommended by existing customers.

7. the best testimonial ever?
The Matterhorn for Switzerland.

8. what do you personally think about the effect of advertising?
Advertising has an effect - unfortunately not only positive.

9. Do you fall for advertising? When?
Again and again and very gladly.

10. what is impossible for you to do without?
Health, music, family and friends.

Have you ever thought about leaving the advertising industry?
No, the industry is and will remain exciting.

12. a buzz word that gets on your nerves?
"Quick and dirty," which turns out to be a phrase in most cases.

13. why would you advise or discourage your children to seek a career in advertising/communication?
I would never influence my son in his career choice. He works in the advertising industry and is very happy with it.

The federally certified photographer Kurt Wettstein founded the agency in 1989 in western Switzerland. Since 1992, the agency has offered its services from Bubikon, was called Wettstein Visual Communications AG and later WVC Communications AG. WVC's strength lies in its holistic approach. The interlocking of the competence areas of advertising, online communication and photography are ensured "in-house" by specialists with many years of experience and a high performance record. Clients include Geberit, Bico, Axel Springer, Koenig and the Clientis banks.

The "13 Questions" appear both online and in the print edition of Werbewoche.

January. Bankruptcy: Radio 105 ceases operations. Squabble: Colette Gradwohl resigns as editor-in-chief of the Landbote due to differing ideas about its future development. Innovation: The news portal Watson goes live.

February. Victory: Schawinski wins bidding war for Radio 105. Future: Veit Dengler, CEO of the NZZ Media Group, invests in journalism and evaluates expansion into German-speaking countries.

April. Reanimation: PubliGroupe sells Publicitas to the German company Aurelius. The company intends to focus on digital business in the future and is divesting itself of traditional advertising sales. What lasts a long time ...: Tamedia pulls up the paywall. Cosmetics: Markus Somm now also acts as publisher of the Basler Zeitung. As expected: Ringier secures a majority stake in Le Temps.

May. Rounding off: The St. Galler Tagblatt and the Neue Luzerner Zeitung become wholly owned by NZZ. The Zurich media group takes over the shares of PubliGroupe, which had announced its intention to sell its shares in newspaper publishers some time ago. Plans: Tamedia and Swisscom to buy PubliGroupe

June. Quality: Veit Dengler backs up his words with action: The NZZ strengthens its editorial team with several weighty new additions: Colette Gradwohl, Peer Teuwsen, Balz Bruppacher and Peter Sennhauser move to Zurich. Jeroen van Rooijen returned to the NZZ a few weeks ago. Michael Fleischhacker, former editor-in-chief of Die Presse in Austria and one of the most prominent journalists in the neighboring country, has also been working for the NZZ for a few weeks. He is overseeing the project to expand the language-regional offering in Austria.

Flop: Rolf Bollmann's move to the Funke Media Group falls through. Bollmann cites family reasons. Iron Foot Bollmann also causes a stir in Switzerland: Together with Markus Somm and Christoph Blocher, he acquires one third each of the Basler Zeitung from Medienvielfalt Holding. Reorganization: The Zurich media company Ringier reduces its management board to four members. Florian Fels, CEO Publishing, leaves the company. The former Ringier COO Michael Voss additionally takes over the Publishing division.

I wish all Werbewoche readers a wonderful vacation season. Enjoy a few carefree days!

Pierre C. Meier, Editor-in-Chief
[email protected]
 

In many places, Swiss municipal councillors are regarded as the voice of the population. They work tirelessly and mostly on a voluntary basis. Unfortunately, their leadership skills are hardly recognized in the business world, according to a press release issued on Thursday. As a competence center for managers, the SKO validates this leadership experience at the appropriate level and confirms it with the recognized Swiss Leadership Certificate.

In order to publicize this novelty to the municipal councillors, they were sent a mailing that can be folded into a mouthpiece so that the representatives can make themselves heard. The QR code leads to a self-speaking microsite in "Parliamentary High German and French", where municipal councillors can upload the documents required for their validation.

Responsible at Schweizer Kader Organization SKO: Marcel Weibel (Head of Marketing and Communication). Responsible at agency at the airport: René Eugstair (Creative Direction), Dominique Rutishauser (Art Direction), Valeria Hörler (Graphics) Patrick Lindner (Text),
Miriam Egli (Consulting). Microsite programming: With the mouse.

 

What an exciting scientific experiment and what a storm of indignation: Media researchers Jeff Hancock and Jamie Guillory from Cornell University's Social Media Lab, together with Facebook employee Adam D.I. Kramer, manipulated the feeds of 700,000 unsuspecting users. One portion of the Facebook users received a week's worth of mostly positive news from their "circle of friends," while the other portion was confronted with a selection of bad news. As expected, the researchers found that the presumed "emotional contagion effect " worked both ways - for those users who were bombarded with negative news, this depressed their mood and was reflected in correspondingly negative statements of their own. "If, on the other hand, the negative news was reduced, the opposite picture emerged: people also expressed themselves positively in their own status updates," Hancock reported.

The project turned out to be a time bomb that only burst after two years at the beginning of July 2014, when the researchers announced their findings and inflicted serious reputational damage on Facebook. The media around the world were outraged that "users were being milked as data donors," as the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung put it. And quite rightly, the paper went on to gripe: "Facebook thus showed once again what the term 'user' or 'users' actually means: they are being used." On the other hand, how naive are we that something like this still outrages us? After all, we've known for a long time that both search engines like Google and operators of social networks like Facebook manipulate their algorithms at whim. Zurich media researcher Natascha Just calls the Silicon Valley giants "teenage giants" - probably also to emphasize that one can hardly expect a highly developed sense of social responsibility from adolescents, regardless of whether they are just individuals or youthful companies that have grown so rapidly thanks to their immeasurable success that they have hardly had a chance to steer this growth process into halfway "orderly" channels.

For a long time, far too long, digital natives and older, net-savvy contemporaries have believed that companies like Facebook and Google could actually take the Google founders' motto "Don't be evil" seriously and make it the guiding principle of their actions - until Google's Chairman Eric Schmidt himself made it clear, with refreshing openness, that he considers this motto to be gross nonsense. In any case, the last few years have shown time and again that Google, Facebook, Amazon & Co. behave like monopolists wherever they have a monopoly - namely in a shirt-sleeved and self-interested manner, as described in any sensible introduction to economics.

Just as naively, many of us have assumed that Google and Facebook "only" manipulate their algorithms to improve their balance sheets, but not to steer public communication in one direction or another. The experiment of the Cornell scientists now impressively proves that the control of the data flow can also serve completely different purposes - and without anyone finding out about it, unless the company or the university involved voluntarily disclosed it or there was a whistleblower like Edward Snowden in their own ranks.

However, improving the balance sheet should also have its limits. Just as Google pays for search results to be reported at the top, Facebook has been asking its institutional users to pay for some time now if they want to achieve more reach. At least for non-profit organizations that have little cash but previously invested time and energy in their Facebook accounts in the confidence that they could expand their own network, this was another resounding slap in the face.

In the old media world, the media industry's fat advertising revenues financed a public communication space in which there were professional journalists as gatekeepers who made sure that advertisers did not dominate this space. With Facebook and Google and their methods of profit maximization, we are well on the way to stifling this public discourse space - and we are all watching rather inactively so far. All it would really take is a little effort (switching to other search engines and social networks, encrypted e-mail communication, a little more willingness to pay for "independent" journalism) to take a little wind out of the sails of the "teenage giants," to complicate their hitherto carefree lives a little and thus better prepare them for adult life in our free societies - mind you, in societies in which "market" and "democracy" are not just empty words and the "newspeak" of spin doctors, but continue to function at least halfway because regulatory policy, but also the citizens themselves, succeed time and again in defending the freedom principle of the market and the equality principle of democracy against the power claims of monopolists and autocrats.

Stephan Russ-Mohl heads the European Journalism Observatory at the University of Lugano.
 

 
WW: You have been present on the Swiss market since the beginning of 2014. Have your expectations been fulfilled?
Lars Hasselbach: Overachieved, in fact! We have been looking at the Swiss market from afar for years. For various reasons, we waited to enter the market. It is a relatively small market that was firmly occupied by competitors for a long time, especially Adcloud or PPN as a merger of Ringier, Tamedia and NZZ. There was also the issue of foreign currency, which was a technological challenge for us for a long time. The trigger for us to move to Switzerland after all was the end of Adcloud's business activities at the end of 2013 on the one hand and the break-up of PPN on the other. To this day, we are extremely happy with this decision because the results are really outstanding.
 
How does the Swiss market differ from the German and Austrian markets?
The unique selling point of the Swiss market is above all the attractiveness of the users that can be found there. We are involved in performance marketing here, which means that our advertising customers commission us to run campaigns with the aim of generating transactions for the advertisers. The quality of the transactions we generate on the Swiss market is simply much better than in other markets due to the creditworthiness of Swiss users. For example, we are very strong in the financial sector. The investments that are made there - as we know from our customers - are much higher in Switzerland than in other markets. This is also a very clear unique selling point compared to Germany, where this is not the case. So far, Swiss publishers have managed very well to keep CPMs high for IAB formats. This makes it fundamentally difficult for performance networks to obtain sufficient inventory. This makes it all the more important that we are able to generate very good sales for our publishers thanks to our international sales structure and algorithm.
 
In Switzerland, there is often a feeling that the digital sector is still not important enough compared to other countries. Do you agree with this?
Our expectations were exceeded. So I wouldn't say across the board that the digital sector is underdeveloped compared to other countries - although of course I don't have years of experience in assessing the Swiss market. In Austria, for example, I think the focus on the traditional media of print and TV is much stronger than it is online in Switzerland.
 
At the moment, there is a big problem in the digital sector: the shift in traffic towards mobile and the associated difficulties in monetization. How do you see this - especially in the performance sector?
I would answer that very directly: it seems to me that the pain caused by this trend is not yet too great in Switzerland. We have a very attractive mobile performance product. We have offered our publishers, with whom we are already working very successfully in the desktop area, to implement this for the mobile area as well, but to date this has failed with all publishers for various reasons. Mobile seems to me to be primarily a prioritization issue. It is obviously not yet a high priority for publishers internally or they are simply not yet strategically clear about how they want to deal with this challenge. We always get the feedback - yes, we think it's exciting - we absolutely have to do something about mobile - but when it gets more concrete, people shy away from it. Other markets are already further ahead.
 
You took over Veeseo on April 21. What does Veeseo do?
Both Ligatus and Veeseo focus on the end of articles on the major news portals. While Ligatus is primarily concerned with monetizing this placement, Veeseo's job is to keep the user on the website for longer and generate additional page impressions for the publisher by providing suitable content. How does this work? The content of an article or video is analyzed by Veeseo's speech recognition system, so the topics are known. The user is then offered other matching content from the same publisher. The system would theoretically also be able to link to external pages and offer suitable content from other websites. In Europe, however, we have not yet reached the point where this is done. In the USA, this is quite common, so that even competing websites send users back and forth to each other. This is not yet the case in Europe. We do the same with videos, which is particularly exciting because this additional video reach is extremely lucrative for publishers thanks to the excellent monetization opportunities.
 
How do you see future developments in this area?
We think that this is an area that is becoming increasingly important and will therefore be more and more competitive. And it is precisely in this area of tension between marketers such as Ligatus, content players such as Veeseo and publishers' own developments. More and more providers will push for this end-of-article placement. In my view, this is to the benefit of the customer, because competition stimulates business. We personally are now extremely well positioned thanks to the Veeseo takeover because we can now combine content offerings for editorial teams with monetization.
 
You are very optimistic about the whole area of content recommendation. In which direction will this area develop? What is being considered? What will become reality in five years' time?
For us, the focus is on using our tools to help editorial teams even more to create a better product. On the one hand, we use these recommendations to help them keep users on the site for longer. However, we also receive a lot of information about the user via these integrations. We feed this back to the editorial teams, who can then use it to improve their product. Here is a concrete example to illustrate this: as a "by-product" of this process, we tag every video and every article. We feed the keywords back to the editorial team, which are entered into the content management system and can then be used, for example, to efficiently create topic pages within the website. That is our focus for the future. That we don't just think about monetization, but want to help the publisher to build better websites. The publisher receives an additional benefit. They can control the flow of users to their website and do something good for their search engine optimization. Google loves internal links.
 
If you had one wish for your Swiss business, what would it be?
There is one major Swiss publishing house with which we have not yet worked intensively: Tamedia. But maybe that will come! The interview was conducted by telephone.
 
Interview: Pierre C. Meier 

About the person
- born 1975 in Cologne, married, 3 children
- Studied business administration in Paderborn and Cologne, graduated with a degree in business administration.
Merchant in 2001
- 2001-2005: various positions for Lycos Europe in Gütersloh,
Paris and Starnberg
- 2005-2007: Key Account Manager at T-Online AG, Darmstadt
- 2007-2009: Head of Performance Marketing at Interactive
Media CCSP GmbH, Darmstadt
- 2009-2010: Head of Online Marketing at E-Plus GmbH & Co. KG,
Düsseldorf
- since the beginning of 2011: GF Ligatus GmbH Cologne

A relaxed mood strikes the visitor upon entering. Large windows and glass walls give the agency in the old industrial rooms directly at the train station an open, modern look. The managing director's realm lies in the farthest corner. It is not clear whether this is where he can best indulge his love of detail with passion and leisure, or whether he would rather have the employees work unobserved and out of voluntary motivation. Or both. In any case, one thing is clear: Sandro Walder is not an easy boss, for him "good enough" is not good enough and he is only satisfied when everything fits perfectly. If it's not convincing, it doesn't go out. Sandro Walder took over the agency seven years ago as a family business and runs it in the second generation without an additional partner. And he wants to keep it that way, he says. "Of course, we also have stress and pressure, but the quality of the ideas and implementations must not suffer under any circumstances," Walder says as he continues to stroll through the thoroughly styled rooms. The fluctuation in his agency is small. Despite a few changes, some of his employees have been with him for years. "Which is rather untypical for an agency, especially when you work with rather young people," Sandro Walder says of his "luck," as he calls it. Compared to Zurich agencies of the same size, he says, this area is a little more rural, a little more loyal. Is that why the employees are more willing to work the usual overtime? Walder certainly does - regularly and consciously, but also with pleasure.

Modern - traditional at its core

"The agency has always been a part of my life from diapers to now," Walder says. So why not visit a gravel pit on the weekend? Or a concrete company, a few wallpaper stores or design fairs at home and abroad. With his wife and child, of course - after all, it's the weekend. Even if Sandro Walder and his family don't always organize their free time in this way, it is often the case. "But at the same time, that's the exciting thing," Walder finds. Because free time and work are one for him, his job is his calling. "And if nothing is going on, then I get antsy," he interjects. He can't sit around. So on weekends there are often customer events, which are often organized and staged by walder,werber. Even apart from his leisure time planning, Sandro Walder, as a Zurich Oberland employer, relies on his own values. A modern implementation of orders as well as a good portion of radical reorientation go hand in hand with a flat hierarchy and a lot of independence, slam poetry and positive honesty. Although he took over a family business, at the same time he always fought against being the "Oberland agency from Uster," Walder confirms this impression.

You're no less creative just because the office isn't in Zurich. "Uster is the third-largest city in the canton of Zurich, and you can be at Stadelhofen in 13 minutes by S-Bahn from the agency door." So it was Walder's goal to move away from the "country and meadow" image to become a serious medium-sized communications agency. Today, Sandro Walder also no longer looks after many clients that his father still represented. That changed quickly, he says. More and more clients have come from his environment or from his past. The tall young man with the beaming smile is generally a good salesman.

It is not for nothing that he praises the 44th anniversary of walder,werber with terms like "puffery". And that's exactly what he means. But it doesn't just take big and loud words. He is also actually the friendly type who greets everyone on the street and prefers personal contact to an exchange via Facebook, Twitter or WhatsApp. The human touch is extremely important, he says. Sandro Walder also consciously points this out in the agency philosophy: "walder,werber doesn't have a single client." Because the agency sees its customers as partners for whom one gives one's best every day. And these customers should preferably not be particularly numerous, but above all extremely satisfied. Does that sound a bit like blatant marketing? And too easily flattered to be true? But that is indeed the case, says Sandro Walder, convincingly pragmatic. It's also how his agency would rarely have participated in awards ceremonies. After all, his agency doesn't boast about creative awards and "see-and-be-seen apéros." Of course, it is important for agencies to be appreciated. But according to Sandro Walder, it's not in the awards on the shelf. Appreciation is gained in a close personal client relationship that goes far beyond traditional communications tasks, he says. "We respond to customers' needs individually because we know our customers. In every respect," Walder emphasizes. And the client thus also knows the agency. "We want to know the story of the company and the people behind it. And tell it."

The storyteller

He prefers to work anywhere but in his office in the far corner of the agency, says Sandro Walder. That's why he built a relatively large and inviting modern café on the agency's second floor and decorated it with various objects and exhibits. There are, for example, three white dwarfs standing on a column in the meeting room, in reference to the three monkeys - hear nothing, see nothing, say nothing. "The environment plays an important role, especially in the brainstorming process," he says. You have to be able to feel comfortable and be inspired by various little things, he says. Otherwise, Walder likes to sit in a small restaurant or somewhere outside. He gets the best inspiration from watching people pass by or reading books on subjects that don't have much to do with the customer. Ideas can't be forced, and certainly not in front of a flickering screen. On the other hand, Sandro Walder is inspired by customer visits. He is particularly interested in the background - and the entire history of the company: "Every industry is interesting, and I'm lucky enough to get to know some of them in their entire range and historical development." Once Sandro Walder knows the company, he and his team tell their story. But in a way that is neither historically dusty nor chummily emotional. Instead of presenting dry incidents or making exaggerated promises, Walder wants to "offer a brand experience" with his agency. And not just in an image campaign or any other medium. "Selling in advertising means inspiring. In all dimensions. From 2-D to 3-D, from physical to digital," he says. Sometimes clients' topics are dry, technical and somewhat sober. But then you simply have to emotionalize them. Tell emotional stories. Stories that life writes.

Ursina mason

A family business

Reini Walder founded a small advertising studio 44 years ago. After Sandro Walder joined the company, it not only rebranded as walder,werber werbeagentur ag, but also grew into a medium-sized agency. But still with a boutique character. "The agency thinks like a big one, but acts like a small one," says managing director Sandro Walder. In concrete terms, he says, this means that "if you can't - and don't want to - repeat your message out loud ten thousand times, it's best to resort to surprising advertising." In addition, according to Sandro Walder, walder, werber has a fairly flat hierarchy. There are no assistants, junior or senior, and everyone gets a say in brainstorming. That was very important to him, says Walder. After all, as a family agency, they don't want to treat employees as "servants," but as independent professionals. From 6 employees in 2005, the agency has grown to 18 employees already. "A continuous, good growth," Walder says about it. Today, the agency could be described as "mid-sized," with many nationally active clients. "The client diversity is large - deliberately large - which makes the work all the more exciting and allows many insights into different industries." The portfolio ranges, for example, from Amplifon (Swiss market leader for hearing aid acoustics) to nationally and internationally active banks such as Liechtensteinische Landesbank (LLB), Bank Linth and Bank BSU, to many clients from the design and architecture/interior design sector such as Neuco AG (Swiss market leader for architectural lighting design). Especially the latter shows up as another focus of the agency. Because Sandro Walder is an enthusiastic design lover. In all disciplines. The fascination for extraordinary architecture, design and spatial design has been an integral part of his life since childhood. Which is also impressively shown in many creative realizations for "communication in space". The enthusiasm for exciting projects is also clearly noticeable in the agency. At walder, werber, they have never paid attention to the size of the client, Walder emphasizes, the focus is always on the client's need - that is the heart of the idea and Walder's task. It doesn't matter whether it's a showroom design, an image campaign or a small mailing. "I'd rather do it continuously and maybe bake slightly smaller rolls for it, but do it with joy."

From decorator to advertiser

Sandro Walder (33) joined his father's agency ten years ago and took over seven years ago. He originally learned to be a 3-D polydesigner (former decorator) at the Dübendorf design company Hauser & Partner. After graduating from high school, he worked for Jung von Matt as a graphic designer for two years and, quite untypically for a graphic designer, completed a further training course in marketing communications at SAWI. From there, he went back to Hauser & Partner - after a completely unexpected job offer - where he built up the event area together with the owner Andi Hauser as a member of the management team. "As a cadre member, I had a great job and, despite being only 23 years old, I was able to make a lot of new things happen and manage up to 60 people at corporate events for major clients," Walder says. But then one day, in September 2004, there was a rapid change. His father, who until then had been running his own agency, became ill overnight and had to take about 6 months off. Thereupon Sandro Walder decided to run the then 6-man agency until his father returned. He ran the agency "on the side" and continued to work at Hauser & Partner, "a 24/7 job," says Walder, "great, but at the same time, of course, an extreme strain ". But he realized during this time that the agency excited him, and in early 2005 he made the decision to join walder,werber. Only three years later - in 2008 - he took over the agency completely.
 

Feature films are a means of expression of their time. What was meant by "Switzerland" at a certain time? How do the Swiss live and think? The exhibition "Great Cinema" at the National Museum has sought answers to these questions in Swiss feature films. Walter Keller and his team analyzed around 300 films. "This was not about cinematic art or film-scientific criteria. We were interested in the question: could it smell like Switzerland in this film?" the curator explained at the opening. Out of 900 sequences of the "Helvetia" scent mark, 115 finally made it into the final selection from 111 films.

These moving moments of 1 to 3 minutes brevity have been assembled into 10 new thematic strips. The editing plan for these statements on the "soul image of the country" was not chronology, but creative association. In the questioning clips, films from all epochs and genres mix to form a new dialogue. This is to be perceived by the audience as a matter of course. In the exhibition, which is intended to stimulate reflection, any commentary was deliberately dispensed with. Keller only made a brief comment at the opening: "Old Swiss film is far from being conservative, and today's color films are not automatically critical either."

The exhibition organizers have unearthed their puzzle pieces of the national soul "in a thankful way" from Swiss film distributors and to a large extent also from the archives of Swiss television. Nathalie Wappler, head of the culture department at SRF, said in her introduction that many of these films "contrast life with stories " and thus also explore the boundary between fiction and reality. Switzerland between dream and reality. Refugees also experienced this separation in several films. It is striking that works from this genre seem to be among the most impressive that Swiss film artists know how to tell. The refugee drama "The Last Chance" by Leopold Lindtberg was honored with the Golden Globe in 1946 as well as the main prize in Cannes. "Das Boot ist voll" by Markus Imhoof was nominated for an Oscar in 1982. "The Voyage of Hope" by Xavier Koller won one in 1991. These three works support the memory of Switzerland in the "Great Cinema". Others also engage in intellectual national defense. Or they unmask our character in comedies like "Taxi Driver Bänz", "Uli the Servant" or "Les petites fugues" to "Grounding". The films shown date from 1920 to the present. In the individual cinemas they are arranged according to 10 themes.

Curator Walter Keller and his team have scoured over 300 films for the "scent of Switzerland. Today's Du editor-in-chief has made a name for himself in the culture industry as a Scalo publisher, as the initiator of the Winterthur Photo Museum, and as the publisher of various bestsellers such as "Dumm und dick.

Freedom and neutrality: Freedom means being able to choose and decide between different options. Citizens should participate in the decisions of the general public. Democracy against the inside and armed neutrality against the outside are to secure freedom. To defend this good, every Swiss is obliged to serve in the militia army.

Lifetime - Season: Rituals of the course of life and the year are popular in feature films. They foster a sense of community in independent regions and communities. Life events - birth, baptism, wedding, folk festivals, processions, death - are occasions to consolidate the community or to set oneself apart from it.

You and us: For centuries, Switzerland is a barren and poor country. Then it recognizes the opportunities offered by the mountains, valleys and lakes. Their industrial and touristic use becomes possible with increasing mobility and contributes to the prosperity of Switzerland since then. But are the strangers who want to visit or live in the country lucky or unlucky for Switzerland?

In need: Abortion, moonlighting, child abuse, hunger, theft, rape, disruption, loneliness, suicide: tension arises when people and their loved ones are in distress. Through their own fault or the fault of others. Power and money are popular elements of film scripts. They are leitmotifs that drive stirring narratives of distress and strife. Love: Physical lust and desire are a rather rare commodity in Swiss feature films. Intentional or coincidence? Cupid's arrows buzz briskly through the air, but they rarely hit the right ones. Thus, love is not always completely voluntary, entirely befitting one's status or happy. And not always legally.

Generations: Films rarely tell stories of intact families. Rather, they find material in endangered, tragic or unhappy life circumstances. Films about tensions between parents, children and relatives - in rural-traditional or urban-modern settings - search for a sense of cohesion. Or they tell of the coldness of contemporary society.

Work - departure: Classic depictions of industrial work are rare in Swiss feature films. Scenes of farm work and glimpses of everyday office life are the rule. The financial center, livestock and agriculture seem more suitable as film material. The historical change in the world of work takes place without crises of modernization, such as can be found in English films.

Faith: Christian rituals such as baptism, marriage and burial or table, evening and intercessory prayer are deeply rooted in the lives of people in early films. Conquering the mountains to use them for water and pasture, to open up the peaks for tourism, and to bore through the Alps require daring construction and engineering skills.

Origin - Myth: Feature films have a hard time with complexity. They need heroes and antagonists. The figure of the crossbowman William Tell plays an important role in Swiss feature films. How he shoots the apple off his son's head on the orders of the authorities is first portrayed full of pathos and - in later films - ironically or satirically. The same happens to historical loyalty oaths and battles.

Nature - Culture: Nature is the only resource of our country. Its existential significance finds its counterpart in a rich tradition of moving productions. For modern man, nature serves as a counter-world to the "city" and stands for health, freedom and ecology - or for backwardness. There are numerous depictions of destructive natural forces: rockfalls, avalanches, glacial fractures, floods.

Those who wish can also rediscover 29 films in their entire length in parallel events. There is also a DVD store and a lunch cinema at the Landesmuseum.

Andreas Panzeri

The entrance to the exhibition in the State Museum leads through a path made of popcorn under glass.