Epica is celebrating its birthday: the 2016 awards will be presented for the 30th time and will return to Amsterdam, the venue of 2014, to mark this anniversary. The awards will be presented on November 17. At past year the awards were held in Berlin.

Native Advertising Category

The categories Events (previously part of PR) and Brand Identity are new. In addition, the Branded Content & Entertainment category has been split into four categories: Films & Series, Branded Games, Native Advertising and Product & Brand Integration. After Epica was the first creative award to introduce the category Virtual Reality last year, category trends will be set this year as well. It will be interesting to see what will be submitted in categories such as Native Advertising or Branded Games.

While the award is constantly evolving in many ways, the basic principle has remained the same over the years: The jury consists of media professionals and not members of the creative industry. This concept is unique among international awards and thus a unique selling point in the increasingly dense award jungle. It ensures Epica a basic level of media interest and thus greater coverage than comparable, medium-sized awards. In addition, the Epica jury judges through a different lens. With all the advantages and disadvantages that this view from the outside brings with it.

Competitive advantage objectivity

One main advantage was provocatively picked up by Paris-based agency Altmann+Pacreau in this year's campaign: the objectivity of the jury. Co-founder Olivier Altmann - former global CCO of Publicis - says: "The fact that the Epica jury is made up of journalists and not creatives could be seen as a lack of credibility - for us, however, this point is a competitive advantage. Because the jury can judge totally objectively. No one in the room is involved in the work at hand or has to promote their own agency. When you sit on a jury as a creative, you get a lot of "friendly" messages that want to apply gentle pressure. We used this circumstance to promote Epica - one of the few awards in the world that most agencies support because of its uniqueness."

The Epica jury now consists of senior media representatives from 61 trade magazines from 47 countries - including Werbewoche as always. New entries this year include Horizont from Germany, but also magazines from the Netherlands, the United Arab Emirates, New Zealand, South Africa, Ukraine, the Czech Republic and Romania. (hae)

As a result of the digital transformation, many companies are facing major challenges not only with their products and services, but also with their entire business model. They are overwhelmed by the new opportunities and requirements, as the familiar coordinates are shifting at high speed. Swiss TXT is an experienced and well-connected competence center in this digital shift. As an inspiring partner and trailblazer, it helps to identify opportunities, realize innovative ideas and thus sustainably assert itself in the digital world.

However, the previous appearance could not keep this promise. As a first step, Erdmannpeisker therefore positioned Swiss TXT as a "digital navigator". It offers orientation and security in the digital transformation, develops new, highly beneficial offers together with customers and implements digital products and services for all media and channels. In a second phase, a new image was created that visually showcases Swiss TXT's innovative and future-oriented promise. The name and claim were adopted, the logo slightly revised visually and implemented as a moving brand. The entire corporate design was consistently developed in motion design in order to meet the requirements of the moving image in a modern visual language. The reduced flat design directs the focus to the content and function.

Swiss TXT speaks to an exclusive B2B target group that wants efficient communication. That is why the focus is on a few media and channels in which precise and inspiring films play the main role. The website at Swisstxt.ch offers dual access to the topics: on the one hand, the topics can be accessed quickly via the navigation, on the other hand, we show the core competencies in inspiring films and cases.

Responsible at Swiss TXT: Julien Kurt (Head of Communication & PR). Responsible at Erdmannpeisker: Gabriel Peisker (overall responsibility), Patrick Fawer (AD), Rainer Neusius (consulting).

Maike Juchler will take over as Head of Magazine Publishing at AZ Medien on September 1, 2016, and in this role will report directly to Roland Kühne, Managing Director Media Switzerland and member of the Executive Board. AZ Zeitschriftenverlag includes special-interest titles such as Wir Eltern, Kochen, Fit for Life, and Natürlich, as well as various trade magazines.

Maike Juchler was previously Deputy Publishing Director Business Media and a member of the Extended Executive Board of Ringier Axel Springer Switzerland. Her responsibilities include managing the business titles Bilanz, Bilanz Homes, ICON, Handelszeitung, Schweizer Versicherung, Schweizer Bank, PME-Magazine and the associated websites. Previously, she was managing director of Weltwoche at Weltwoche Verlag and managing director of m&m Mediaagentur. From 1997 to 2001, Juchler was also responsible for the magazine Wir Eltern as product manager and, most recently, as publishing director at Vogt-Schild/Habegger Medien, Zurich.

Ratna Irzan has been Head of Magazines AZ Medien since March 2010 and will leave the company at her own request on August 31, 2016.

As part of the process of filling key positions, the sales management teams for trade magazines and special interest magazines will be merged to form the newly created function of Head of Advertising Market Magazines. Jean-Orphée Reuter will take on the new role on August 1, 2016, and will thus in future complement the management team under the leadership of Maike Juchler, together with the Head of Reader Market, Christine Ziegler, the Head of Production, Renate Gadola, and the Editors-in-Chief. Jean-Orphée Reuter has been with AZ Medien for six years, previously as advertising manager of Wir Eltern and team leader of the special interest titles.
 

The 34-year-old comes from Goldbach Audience, where he has been responsible since 2012 first for the acquisition and support of key partners and most recently as Senior Manager for Partner Management. In his new position at AZ Medien, Benjamin Textor is exclusively responsible for the further development and marketing of Swissmom.ch.

Swissmom.ch and the associated forum are the largest Internet platforms in Switzerland for questions about pregnancy, birth, baby and child. The core target groups are expectant mothers, new fathers, couples who want to have children and young families. The associated Swissmomforum.ch is the most active community on these topics in Switzerland. Both portals together have seen a large increase in users in recent years and currently have around three million page impressions per month.

Image: Xing.com

Zurich makes an important contribution to the promotion of Zurich as a tourist destination and offers services for tourists, but also for the tourism industry, according to a statement by the city council on Wednesday. The city has supported the marketing organization with financial contributions since it was founded in 1885. Last year, the Zurich tourism region recorded more than 5.6 million overnight stays, including 2.95 million in the city of Zurich. According to the city council, tourism in the city of Zurich generates demand for services and products amounting to 2.4 billion Swiss francs per year. The gross value chain, he said, is 1.475 billion francs. The tourism industry thus secures around 19'000 jobs and makes an important contribution to local economic development, the city council writes. (SDA

The Bern agency supports the innovative fundraising project - with the smiling sun logo - and is responsible for the launch of the brand. "Sunraising" a play on words composed of "Sunrise" and "Fundraising" - is the Bernese crowdfunding and citizens' initiative, which enables with its Solar Roof Challenge to produce solar power even without own roof.

Goal: Within the Bernese neighborhoods, as many square meters as possible on the roofs of municipal property are to be purchased in order to build solar installations and replace their own share of nuclear power in the electricity mix with Bernese solar power.

The responsive website for the Challenge Sunraising.ch contains facts and figures about solar power, details about the idea, and information about the initiating team. The core of the website is the visualized instructions on how to participate in the challenge - via an interactive form, one can purchase solar power with a one-time payment for one square meter of a Sunraising neighborhood installation. This is credited directly to the electricity bill by ewb for 20 years. Over the next three years, 10'000 square meters of solar installations are to be built in the neighborhoods. The Challenge is open.

Sunraising is a startup, develops new ideas and is committed to social entrepreneurship. In addition, the initiative shows how neighborhood spirit, political commitment and sustainable consumption can interact.

Bernese rapper and sustainability activist Greis is also a Sunraiser from the very beginning and has secured the very first four square meters of the first roof.

Responsible at Sunraising: Melanie Mettler, Matthias Egli (client). Responsible at Kargo: Christoph Balsiger (creative director), Nicole Gerber (consulting/project management), Raïssa Lara Fasel (design), Chérine Gurtner (PR), Manja Koschker (project collaboration); technical development: Roger Burkhard.

In step with digitalization and media change, Farner Consulting has steadily evolved in recent years. In Zurich and at its offices in Bern, Lausanne and Geneva, the agency has developed 360° communications: Farner consistently brought together consulting and content from long-standing PR disciplines such as corporate communications, financial communications, change communications and public affairs with digital expertise, creative services and research. Commenting on this development, Roman Geiser, CEO & Managing Partner of Farner, says: "In the agency's 65-year history, we've been able to repeatedly reshape the communications discipline and maintain and expand our market-leading position thanks to our willingness to change and our innovative strength. The change of location after 42 years symbolizes the reorientation and digital transformation of the agency in recent years."

Room for employee growth and new forms of collaboration

Due to additional client projects, the sharp rise in the number of employees and increased collaboration in multidisciplinary teams, the existing offices in Zurich's old town were increasingly reaching their capacity limits. Now Farner has found the ideal location in Zurich to follow up this development of the past years also spatially. After 42 years at Oberdorfstrasse in Zurich's old town, Farner has moved to a new, central location in Schmidhof at Löwenstrasse 2 in Zurich.

Farner goes 540°

The new location offers the agency the space and infrastructure to go one step further: Farner has set up shop on one and a half floors - to 360° plus 180° - pushing the boundaries of communication even further. The worlds of online and offline communication merge at Schmidhof right from the start. Farner's specialists and industry experts can work even more closely together. For discerning clients, they develop formative communication ideas that can be implemented across all channels and focus on dialogic and user-oriented content.

Virtual tour of the new site

Get an idea of the new agency already today with the virtual tour through the still unfinished premises.

Note: Watch the video on a mobile device (smartphone, tablet, etc.). This gives you a 360° all-round view and you can control the camera perspective using your hand movement. In order to use this function, the latest version of the Youtube app for Android or iOS must be installed on your mobile device. If you want to watch the video on a PC, you need the latest version of Chrome, Opera, Firefox or Internet Explorer. The perspective is controlled with the mouse.

 

At the beginning of March, Peter Hogenkamp announced the acquisition of a majority stake in Newscron, which he joined as an investor and member of the Board of Directors in 2014 (Werbewoche.ch reported). According to the press release, various other milestones have since been reached in the planned relaunch of the company. Immediately after the buyout, a financing round was concluded with five new shareholders, and the company's headquarters were relocated to Zurich, where it has since moved into offices in Kreis 6.

The next step is to rename the product and company. The main product "Niuws", the news platform curated by experts, will now be called "Scope" and will operate under the domain Thescope.com will occur. The rebranding on all platforms will take place over the next few weeks. At the same time, the upcoming Annual General Meeting will also change the company name of the AG accordingly.

The new CTO and successor to founder Elia Palme is Reto Kleeb, who has held positions at Namics and Elca, among others. Following his arrival in August, a newly developed responsive web app will be launched, which will also present all curated content on the web and thus complement the existing apps; in addition, the dialogs for users will be translated from English into German.

Other well-known companies and organizations have been acquired as customers and will be launching new sponsored channels ("boxes") on Scope in the coming days, such as Moneyhouse on the topic of "Attracting and retaining customers", the Touring Club Switzerland TCS on "Mobility" and Zurich Tourism under the title "Tourism Next". At the same time, Xpreneurs from Basel is taking over the existing box on the topic of "Leadership".

Peter Hogenkamp is very optimistic about the outlook: "The area of content marketing continues to grow very dynamically, and curation creates great added value for organizations to communicate with their various stakeholders such as customers, employees or members. I am delighted that with a new team and a new name, things are now moving forward quickly on all fronts, for users, curators and especially with exciting new corporate clients."