At least that's what the latest Mediapulse press release says. You can tell from my wording that I have slight doubts, because what happened behind and in front of the scenes during these 170 days is unbelievable and actually unimaginable. In the eyes of foreign observers, Switzerland has now mutated into a laughing stock in TV research. This after many years of successful and forward-looking television research. 

How could this happen? The point here is not to analyze the research details in order to discover any methodological inconsistencies or errors. This must be done. But our media researchers - also with the involvement of foreign experts - must take this into their own hands. For me, it's more about fundamentally scrutinizing the whole story in order to find out why this debacle could happen in the first place. For me, there are four points that led to the chaos.

Firstly, it's the Swiss urge for perfection that keeps preventing us from finding practical and pragmatic solutions. We always want everything and everything at once. And then, of course, it should also be perfect. But this is often an impossibility. Less would often be more, because there is definitely no such thing as the egg-laying woolly milk sow, even if we often hope that this species will be discovered somewhere.

Secondly, the limitations of a joint industry committee, an entity in which all relevant market partners (media, intermediaries and customers) are embedded, become apparent. This usually works well as long as everything runs smoothly. When things start to go wrong, the limits of such a structure are reached - the individual interests are too different.

A lack of experts. Such a giant box would have to be accompanied by a high-level committee of proven and uninvolved (!) experts. And if there are no such experts in Switzerland, you have to look for them abroad. A user commission, however optimally composed, cannot fulfill such a task. Its well-understood important role is a different one. It must ensure that it is possible to work with the results and the necessary tools in a simple and practical manner.

Fourthly, there are two missing Cs: control and communication. These two are crucially linked. The Uvek and Bakom seem to have fulfilled their supervisory duties very late. However, it is quite possible and even probable that they were already active earlier, but nobody knew this. Just as many other things were not known. Communication means proactively disseminating information and not passively administering it like a federal office.

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

On February 7, Weltwoche had accused Strehle in its cover story of having cultivated contacts "with bombers and left-wing extremists" in his younger years. The magazine's front page showed a police photo of Strehle for identification purposes and was subtitled "Der Tagi-Chefredaktor und die Terroristen" ("The Tagi Editor-in-Chief and the Terrorists"). Strehle then appealed to the Press Council (Werbewoche.ch reported). He wanted to have clarified "whether this kind of campaign journalism, as practiced by Weltwoche, is permissible," as he told the news agency SDA at the time.
 
"The publication of the police photos on the front page is completely disproportionate," Dominique von Burg, president of the Press Council, told the media in Zurich on Thursday. Weltwoche thus violated Strehle's personality as well as his privacy. "Here Weltwoche has failed," Vice President Max Trossmann also said.

Principle of proportionality

The Press Council emphasizes that there is a public interest in critically examining the professional career and political past of the editor-in-chief of an important newspaper. "But even in the case of public figures, careful consideration must be given to the protection of personality rights and the public's right to information," said Trossmann, adding that the principle of proportionality in particular must be taken into account.
 
The public interest in the political biography of an editor-in-chief does not justify publishing nearly 30-year-old police photos, Trossmann said. The Press Council also criticized the combination of the article with photos of convicted violent criminals and terrorists. The public interest also does not entitle Weltwoche to make the thesis, which is not supported by facts and distorts the facts, that Strehle, as a possible accomplice and ideal supporter of political violence, had an "irritating proximity to bombers and left-wing extremists."

Serious accusations

The Press Council describes the accusations as "serious". In the case of such accusations, a person affected would have to be heard, Trossmann emphasized. The weekly newspaper had indeed done this, but "insufficiently and at too short notice." "You can't submit such serious accusations about events that happened decades ago only a few hours before the editorial deadline." According to the Press Council, however, the magazine did nothing wrong in its research. "We have not seen that Weltwoche used unfair methods in obtaining the police photos or incited third parties to violate official secrecy," Trossmann said.
 
After the publication of the police pictures, the Zurich cantonal police had filed a criminal complaint with the chief public prosecutor's office for violation of official secrets. However, it is still unclear how Weltwoche got hold of the pictures. "The proceedings are suspended," Corinne Bouvard, spokeswoman for the chief public prosecutor's office, told sda on Thursday. The perpetrators could not be identified.
 
Strehle notes the decision with satisfaction, as he said in response to an inquiry from SDA. The Press Council had confirmed his view that Weltwoche had made technical errors.

"Press Council Stalls Reappraisal Process".

Weltwoche editor Roger Köppel took note of the Press Council's statement "with great astonishment," he told SDA. It is "more than ironic that this body is stifling the process of coming to terms with Strehle's past," Köppel said. After all, the Press Council is committed to clarification and transparency.

More on the subject:

Weltwoche-Pranger: Aggrieved parties fight back

The new website is consistently geared towards targeted searches in the company's four product pillars - images, videos, features and recipes, as detailed in a press release. Numerous new options and possibilities now allow professional image users from the media, advertising and industry to find their motifs even faster and more accurately. All it takes is the intuitive entry of a general search term to find the perfect image using a variety of interactive filters. The visual search options, which enable similarity and color searches, are also innovative. They can be used to display visually related motifs within a freely definable topic or to adjust the search results offered using a large color scale. The search functions are particularly ideal for advertising customers and graphic designers who want to take their customers' visual specifications into account or move within certain color worlds.

The new Stock Food website also offers image series and features. In the series, Stock Food presents over ten thousand image series that are thematically and visually linked. This is particularly interesting for image users who want to use entire themed series from a single source without having to commission an elaborate photo production. In addition, there are almost one thousand features from all over the world, i.e. complete image and text sections from renowned publications, which can be licensed in one go. In response to many customer requests, Stock Food now also offers users so-called "drag-and-drop" lightboxes. Thanks to this function, users can drag and drop the desired images into their lightboxes without any annoying clicks in order to create their own selections and find them again on their next visit.

Further filter options are being planned to offer professional customers a wide range of perspectives on the stock food collection. The versions for Germany and Austria will go online at the same time as the Swiss website. Current website versions in all other markets will follow. Pete A. Eising, Stock Food founder and CEO of Culinarts, is proud of the website launch: "Our business customers in advertising and editorial departments know exactly what they want. We asked them in detail and implemented all their wishes. We know that time is also money. That's why quality and innovation are so important in the media business. Our new website meets these requirements."

A recent study by Grand Valley State University (USA) addressed this question, focusing on the contextual factor "repetition" - with exciting results.

In theory, an ideal commercial would already bring high recall values after the first viewing and would already achieve a significant positive influence on the consumer's attitude at the first contact ("wear in" effect). The ideal commercial would gain in impact with each subsequent contact and never reach the point where a certain fatigue effect sets in with the consumer, which manifests itself in the fact that additional contacts have no further positive or even negative influence on the attitude ("wear out" effect). So much for the theory. In corporate practice, however, far from theory, the goal of those responsible for advertising is usually to minimize the number of contacts needed to achieve the desired advertising effect (= achieving the wear-in quickly) and to delay the wear-out as long as possible. The influence of creativity on wear-in and wear-out effects is shown by a recent study by Lehnert et. al.

In an experimental design, 90 subjects in three groups were shown a 30-minute TV program. Included: TV commercials that were either "creatively" or "conventionally" designed. Only the context factor "repetition" was varied between the three groups: The first group was presented with the different spots only once each, the second group saw the spots twice in total, and the third group four times. The dependent variables measured were: Advertising and brand recall (both aided and unaided, once immediately and once with a one-week time interval) as well as attitude toward the commercial.

Unsurprisingly, the study initially confirmed a well-known correlation: the more frequently the test subjects saw the individual commercial, the better their recall of the commercial and the brand. However, it could also be shown that the creative spots were consistently better remembered than the conventional spots (ad recall). The same applies to the recall of the brands advertised in the commercials (brand recall).

This advantage of creative advertising over conventionally designed advertising in terms of recall apparently comes into play especially when only a few repetitions are planned.

Especially after the first presentation, the "creative" spots achieved significantly higher brand recall than the "conventional" spots. The effect remained with the second repetition, but already weakened somewhat. From the fourth repetition on, both types of spots achieved similarly high values in Brand Recall.

In addition, consumers' attitudes to the spots shown were investigated. The result: even after the first presentation, the creative spots were rated significantly better than the conventional spots (5.52 vs. 4.61 on a 7-point scale). The researchers see this as a sign of a faster wear in creative advertising.

Now, one might assume that the surprise effect of particularly creative advertising wears off quickly and leads to all the more rapid consumer fatigue, a faster wear-out. But the study shows that this is not the case: even after four presentations, the test subjects rated the creative ads only minimally worse than after two presentations. With the conventional spots, on the other hand, consumers' attitudes toward the advertising they had seen deteriorated considerably from the second presentation onward.

Creatively designed spots therefore not only score in terms of advertising recall, but also reach consumers particularly quickly and particularly permanently.

Clemens Koob

Key Facts

• Creative spots and the brand advertised in them are better remembered than conventional spots. The recall advantage remains even after several repetitions, but weakens.
• Creative advertising leads to attitude changes more quickly than conventional advertising (= faster "wear-in" effect).
• With conventionally designed TV commercials, a wearout effect sets in after just a few presentations.
• In the case of creative TV commercials, this effect only occurs with a delay.

The decisive question 39 horizontally was: "Lead story in tomorrow's newspaper (!)". The fact that both the headline "Bob Dole elected!" and "Clinton elected!" matched may not seem like a masterstroke at first glance. However, the fact that the name of the future president changed six vertical answers in such a way that a different word resulted, but the answers were still correct - not bad. It was developed by mathematics professor Jeremiah Farrell.

Today's New York Times crossword author Will Shortz calls the November 5, 1996 presidential puzzle the best of all time. He will know, after all, he has written over 100 crossword puzzle books and has a collection of 20,000 puzzle books spanning five centuries. (hae)

Across:
17. forecast
39 Lead story of tomorrow's newspaper (!), with 43-Across
68th Title for 39-Across next year

Down:
23rd Sewing store purchase
27 Short writings
35th Trumpet
39th Black Halloween animal
40. french 101 word
41. provider of support, for short
42 Much-debated political inits
 

In order to establish Caffè Lattesso as the star among coffee drinks, the Zurich-based communications agency let lovers of the cold coffee have their say at the start of the campaign. With facts, likeable statements and a wink, they explain why Caffè Lattesso is their very personal star. Since the end of March, Caffè Lattesso has been available at over 2,700 points of sale throughout Switzerland and others in Germany and Belgium, and the advertising can be seen in the daily press, on posters, and on eBoards and ePannels.

Responsible at Innoprax: Erich Kienle (Managing Director), Sacha Borzatta (Managing Partner). Responsible at Vizner Borel: Lajos Vizner, Guillaume Borel (overall responsibility), Gian Maurizio, John Leuppi (creation), Fabian von Rechenberg (consulting), Markus Binggeli (strategy), André Sobott (photography). Responsible JBW Media: Julien Witt.

Never before has the Press Council published so many statements as in 2012, according to the annual report published on Thursday. Press Council President Dominique von Burg attributes this to the greater visibility and transparency of his body, as he told the media.

Last year, media reports most frequently intruded into the private lives of those affected. In addition, persons were often misidentified and or a person's privacy was violated with a report, according to the annual report. "It is also not new that media often fail to hear out those affected before publishing a serious allegation," von Burg said. Time and again, important information is also suppressed or false facts are spread, he added.

Comply with reprint obligation

In the future, the Press Council wants to pay attention to the obligation to print. Since, unfortunately, not all editorial offices comply with this obligation, they will in future list in their annual report the cases in which this obligation has been violated, said von Burg. "We consider this a duty". In 2012, media failed seven times to report on an opinion in which they were reprimanded by the Press Council. In eight other complaints, media did not report on the Press Council's decision, which was positive for them. "In these cases, too, a brief summary would be desirable," von Burg said. (SDA)
 

We wanted to know from the media agencies what this release of data meant for them. Unfortunately, only two of the media agencies we contacted responded to our request in time. So should the missing TV ratings not be such a big problem? For agencies with a large TV share, it is indeed a serious problem.
 
You can read the answers from Manfred Strobl, CEO Omnicom Media Group, and Cosima Giannachi, Managing Director Mindshare, in the PDF. 

WW: You just spoke to a distinguished audience at the Swiss Economic Forum in Interlaken. talked. How has your message been received?
Kevin Roberts: I enjoyed it. The response was very uplifting, very spontaneous and emotional. I felt very motivated during the presentation. You have to imagine: When you speak in front of 1,200 people, you need an audience that "feeds" you. And they fed me. After the presentation, I was able to experience very positive feedback. They wanted to change certain things and were now "stimulated". With their program, the organizers of the Swiss Economic Forum deliberately wanted to provoke a juxtaposition between my views from the world of creation and those of Larry Fink, the CEO & Chairman of Black Rock, with his observations from the world of finance. This was a very cleverly orchestrated speech and counter-speech.

What did you explain to people?
That I have a very high regard from Switzerland. My daughter was born here and a son is studying in Neuchâtel. I have lived in Switzerland and Switzerland is a success story. But: there is a future. And it is taking place in a world that is changing from a scientific and technological system to a world of creative ideas. Ideas are the currency of today. Advertising, marketing, branding, management: these are all disciplines of the past decade. The future "is about" ideas and creativity. So I asked the audience if Switzerland is equipped enough "to move into this brave new world"?

What is the role of advertising in this society?
Advertising is a reflection of popular culture, it is a mixture of communication, information transfer and stimulation. Today, advertising has somehow been replaced by - "let's call it content". We live in a world where power has been shifted. Media has no power anymore. Me or the advertising agency: "no power ". Brands: "no power". All power comes from the people. The consumer is the boss. And so advertising has to change its role - away from information and towards inspiration. We have to become part of the consumer's everyday life. Wherever that takes place.

Do you know the series "Mad Men"? What has changed about the image of the advertiser since the era in which this series is set?

Read the rest of the interview subscribers online or in the print edition.

Interview: Andreas Panzeri

When the terrible news of 24 April spread like wildfire through the networks of global non-governmental organizations (NGOs), the major news agencies were still silent. Listservers such as that of the Clean Clothes Campaign initially spoke of "a fallen factory ceiling with several dozen fatalities". But when the dust slowly settled after the building collapsed in a suburb of Bangladesh's capital, we knew: Referring to the Rana Plaza disaster as the "Bhopal of the textile industry" in our media release was not only legitimate, but necessary. Primarily to highlight the monstrous dimensions of this tragedy, which had been heralded by many previous factory fires. But also to provide editors with a quotable historical benchmark. 

The actual "fashion victims"

When the rescue workers stopped their work three weeks later, the toll was 1129 dead and 2438 injured, many of them paralyzed or maimed for life. The almost 3,000 people who died in the World Trade Center in 2001 are rightly commemorated every year and "WTC One" is a symbolic memorial of a special kind. But that was in New York, in the heart of the globalized financial world. And the victims were a handful of religious warriors running amok. In Dhaka, the corrugated iron metropolis of one of the poorest and most densely populated countries in the world, human lives count for far less than the next construction or production contract. And the seamstresses were only victims of the systematic exploitation of dirt-cheap labor on which our (in)prosperity is based. They are the real "fashion victims".

Theory of the "themed career"

So much for the facts. I should have gotten used to another fact by now. After all, the theory of "issue careers" was already drummed into me during my journalism studies. And now my current work practice consists to a large extent of tracking and influencing "issue developments", as the new German term is now called. The latency phase of the topic of "working conditions in sweatshops" was heralded in the mid-90s by outraged ghetto kids chanting "Nike, we made you, Nike, we can break you" in front of the flagship store in New York. It took almost 20 years (and countless smaller disasters) for this issue to really enter the public consciousness for the first time with Rana Plaza. But after two weeks (and countless conversations with more or less haphazard and clueless journalists), this peak phase was over much quicker than the horrific images from Dhaka had left their mark on me.

The emotional downside

They still do today. But apparently only in me. My professional privilege of having an information advantage and direct contacts therefore has an emotional flip side, which has caused me the odd nightmare this time, even without seeing it on site. While my partner is happy "that the misery of others at your job still affects you at all", I am alienated by feelings of consternation - especially in myself. Wow, now I've written it myself: Consternation, this unword from the fund of peace activists and fundraisers! But okay, there must be a reason for the survival of this sentimental, spitfire key term of the 70s and 80s.

Oliver Classen is media spokesman for the development policy organization Berne Declaration. He previously worked as a media journalist.
 

Evoq Labs emerged from the agency Fetzer&Weibel, founded in 2009, and is based at Evoq Communications' headquarters in Zurich. Claudia Fetzer and Oliver Weibel form the management team and are fully dedicated to the potential and requirements of digital media. Evoq Labs' range of services covers such diverse areas as web design, web applications and web templates, as well as apps and mobile applications, PowerPoint presentations, online advertising and social media campaigns.

"We are delighted to have been able to recruit the renowned social media expert and lawyer David Schäfer from the Somexcloud Social Media Academy to the Board of Directors," says Adrian Schaffner, Chairman of the Board of Directors of Evoq Labs. With the new founding of Evoq Labs, Fetzer&Weibel and Evoq Communications are bridging the gap between print and online presence. "In this way, we cover all contact points with a brand and combine the entire know-how of integrated communication under one roof," explains Claudia Fetzer, co-owner of Evoq Labs.

The door hangers in hotels are usually so unspectacular that you only give them a cursory glance. Mostly red-green, plasticized - just "do not disturb". Just another prop in a standardized scheme through which visitors glide in hotel (chains). 

The game begins with reaching into the bowl of sweets placed in the lobby, continues with the sound system known as "elevator music" on the way to the room, the unadorned keycard with which you open the door, the miniature toiletries, thanks to which many hotel guests smell the same when they storm the breakfast buffet in the morning. The hotel atmosphere is standardized and predictable. What is good is what is not conspicuous, what does not attract attention, what does not give rise to complaints.

It may be functional and pleasant, but it is certainly boring - and certainly not worth mentioning. The standard is delivered with the guarantee that the guest who is asked about his last trip will talk about many things - but certainly not about the hotel. A friendly welcome? Sure, but you don't want to bore anyone with that. A clean room? Who cares about that? From a marketing point of view, this is a wasted opportunity, as people like to rely on the recommendation of a friend, especially when it comes to choosing a hotel.

To get the communication machinery moving, however, the host would need more courage, more creativity. Something that amazes guests, something that surprises them. For example, wildly painted walls, a pillow that invites the guest to "spend the night with him", a "sleeping elephant" that lies on the bed instead of a dubious throw and wants to cuddle. Why not?

Instead of "Please do not disturb" or "Please tidy up", a ring binder with which the guest, depending on their mood, warns the service that a monster is waiting behind the door ("There's a monster behind this door"), justifies themselves ("I'm normally a clean person") or admits that they would be lost without service ("No clue what I would do without you"). And why not?

All little things that the stressed visitor ignores. Things that don't have to be noticed - but can be. And when they have caught the guest's attention, elicit a smile, trigger a shake of the head or even raise concerns that the fair beauty above the bed (choose one below) may break free at night and haunt the sleeping person's dreams.

Ingredients that catapult the stay out of the ordinary. Details that stay in your memory, that you tell others about, that you perhaps even photograph and share. Starting points for communication. Something that many hotels - even if they do everything right to satisfy their guests - usually fail to do.

More of this please.

Mail us: Has your agency designed something unusual for a hotel? Or have you made a discovery yourself? We look forward to receiving your examples by e-mail to [email protected].