In addition, Marius Hagger will ensure the flow of information and knowledge between Metro Xpress and 24timer and 20 Minuten. This writes 20 Minuten in a statement on Thursday. Marius Hagger has many years of experience in the media industry. After studying at the University of Zurich, he graduated from the Ringier School of Journalism and worked as a journalist for several years before taking on a management role at Tamedia, where he was responsible for various projects. From 2003 to 2008, Marius Hagger was Head of Editorial and Publishing for Migros Media at Limmatdruck. He then moved to Bucharest as General Manager Ringier Romania. Most recently, Marius Hagger was Head of Publishing and a member of the Executive Board at Neue Zürcher Zeitung.

On January 1, 2013, 20 Minuten will take over Metro Xpress SA, which operates the commuter newspapers Metro Xpress and 24timer as well as the associated news portals (Werbewoche.ch reported).
 

The QR-Chlaus will be wandering through the Europaallee Passage of the SBB at Zurich main station until December 20. He carries a heavy sack full of presents on his back. The key to the presents is the QR code on his jute sack. Anyone who scans the code will find out directly whether they have won an instant prize or the consolation prize of the day. The QR-Chlaus will be out and about in Europaallee until December 20. Every Wednesday from 11-13h and Thursday from 17-19h.

In addition, a live shopper challenge will take place on two dates, December 15 and 23, 2012 (11-15h). Visitors choose a gift from a wish list on site and have to find it in one of the Europaallee stores within a given time and bring it back to the starting point. Whoever manages this can keep the gift. The Liveshopper Challenge will be broadcast live on the promotional website using helmet cameras and the latest generation of smartphones via the new, fast 4G (LTE) mobile network. Advent.europaallee.ch and various screens will be streamed on site and accompanied by photos and live chat. Anyone who is ill or looking for a shopping solution at home with a broken leg can send three live shoppers (QR Chlaus, Shopping Panda or Mr. Rail) on the challenge via the website and comment on the hunt and communicate with the live shopper via live chat.

To the promotion microsite

Responsible at SBB: Ruedi Eicher, Christina Schmid. Responsible at Coundco: Garry Bachmann (Strategy & PL), Jaromir Fuoli (Art Direction), Matija Baskarad (Programming), Pascal Howald (Programming), Michele Suter (Administration & SoMe).

 

When Scanlith was founded in 1980 as a litho company specializing in scanning technology, the graphic arts industry in Switzerland employed 85,000 people in well over 30 professions. In the Bern area alone, 15 different companies were active in this heyday. "That's all gone now," says Bernhard Hassler. Today, 25,000 people still make a living in the graphic arts industry and there are still six professions. "But Scanlith is still here," says the patron of seven permanent employees with justifiable pride. This survival was made possible because Scanlith has been open to the latest developments for more than 30 years. And in the printing sector, this didn't exactly extend from the darkroom, but from technologies still years away from the first computer to the present day, where even kindergarten children are served their fairy tales on a tablet.
 
"Full service from idea to print" is the concept of Bernhard Hassler and his team today. From logos and invitation cards to CI manuals: Scanlith's creation "is only satisfied when the message arrives ". In the area of pre-press, the company masters the entire range of services from image processing for all media to data handling of, for example, 1500 packaging details. Scanlith also has a spacious photo studio and specializes in 3D photography. This is particularly useful for websites, which have of course been part of Scanlith's services since the beginning of the World Wide Web. In the area of digital printing, Scanlith can respond to customer requests in-house within a very short time. A poster printer is available for small print runs as well as for entire campaigns. And because the wheel of development is constantly turning, Scanlith is now specializing in tablet publishing as its latest diversification. "My credo has always been: the customer can come, has a need for a graphic product and when he leaves, he has found everything he needs with us," says Bernhard Hassler, summarizing his recipe for success.
 
He started out in the 1960s with an apprenticeship as a reproduction photographer. "I loved working in the darkroom," he recalls of that era. Bernhard Hassler was also a passionate photographer. "I wanted to follow a creative path." He used his apprenticeship wages to buy a Nikon camera, took a lot of photographs and developed and solarized everything himself. Nevertheless, he didn't stop at being a photographer. After Hassler's apprenticeship, the first scanners appeared in the 1970s. "Repro photography was not yet dying out. But I was already interested in the new technology." The young lithographer attended a course for scanners in London. At the time, scanners were needed to separate the photographers' slide images into the four colors that could then be used for printing. The booming market for the new technology was controlled worldwide by just two companies owned by the two inventors, Crosfield Electronics and Rudolf Hell. And Crosfieldsystem in London was looking for specialists "who could speak languages and were well trained". These were mainly Swiss. Bernhard Hassler was one of them.
 
"We lived in London and installed scanners all over the world," says Hassler, still reminiscing about those days. Part of his job was to adapt the profiles of the scanners to the respective technology of the print shops. At the same time, the people on site also had to be trained. Bernhard Hassler traveled around the world for Crosfieldsystem for several years. Sometimes he was a troubleshooter for just a few days. In Moscow, he spent several months. On "his" scanner, the entire collection of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg was documented for eternity with several million images.
 
As printing technology developed, Bernhard Hassler also kept his eyes open. He was one of the first people at Crosfield to look after the large "page assembly systems". "In the 1980s, they did what a Mac does today - only with rather larger systems." He installed such systems primarily in the centers of the printing industry such as Turin, Nantes and Amsterdam. "My colleagues were allowed to visit the smaller print shops in exotic places like Venezuela or Thailand." The reliable Swiss national was later offered a job in sales at the opening of a new branch in the west of the USA. In a pub in London, Bernhard Hassler discussed the proposal with a colleague from Biel. And that's when life suddenly took a big turn. "Why don't we open our own place in Switzerland?" the two expats asked each other over their second pint. The rest is the story of over 30 years of Scanlith in Bern and later Gümligen. "Without my own company, I would probably never have come back to Switzerland," says Bernhard Hassler today, happy about this development.
 
Scanlith started without customers, but with a lot of confidence in its entrepreneurial potential. "We really wanted to start with a scanner. But one cost around half a million francs." So Hassler looked for a second-hand machine. He found what he was looking for at a job in Paris. There, a specialist in gravure printing needed to replace a halftone scanner. These are "considered to be the best adjusted". Hassler was lucky and was able to acquire the scanner at a reasonable price. After just one year, there were so many customers that Scanlith was able to hire its first employee. Later, the company employed 12 people in Bern Weissenbühl in its heyday. "You always got top quality from us. Word got around," says Hassler when asked how he acquired new customers. "Scanlith became an insider tip." In addition to many advertising agencies and graphic design studios, the most important customers for many years included Jungfrau Bahnen and large companies such as Novartis, Wander and Haco in Gümligen.
 
"We earned good money during this time. But we also had to invest very large sums time and again," Bernhard Hassler rummages through the company's history. After an initial second-hand developing machine, the technology soon demanded a new machine. Then a larger darkroom was needed. The first scanner with laser screening arrived in 1983. In 1986, the first electronic page mounting system. Finally, in 1992, the first Mac "with a link to Crosfieldsystem 9500". When the Macs wanted to take over more and more tasks themselves, "we still laughed about such toys," Hassler recalls. Soon, however, the industry experienced an increasingly rapid upheaval leading to complete integration into the digital world. This also changed customer behavior. Whereas previously only professional prepress specialists could afford the latest equipment with investments of up to 100,000 francs each, later even the smallest advertising agencies bought a graphic system for a few thousand francs. This enabled them to produce their own print documents. How do they react? Bernhard Hassler "scanned" the market once again and realized that with the advent of digital technology, many companies were storing an almost unmanageable amount of print data. Scanlith therefore entered the database business "in a flash" in 2000. Since then, Scanlith has set up a central, web-based database for Novartis, the image archive of Jungfrau Bahnen "with data of 300 gigabits" and Haco in Gümligen with 1500 packaging data. In order to be able to handle such tasks, Bernhard Hassler has not only continuously trained his employees. The boss himself also went back to school several times and completed the company course at Skugra. On the other hand, it was important to Bernhard Hassler that he was able to pass on his knowledge to 16 apprentices.
 
The new generation. This generation has now also joined the management team at Scanlith. Aline Hassler completed her vocational baccalaureate after a banking apprenticeship. During this time, she worked at Valiant. "Banking is very interesting. But I'm not the type of person who checks the stock market prices first thing in the morning." So Aline seized the opportunity when a job in marketing became available at Valiant. She spent two out of three years there focusing on youth marketing. She was in charge of the various platforms for the website launched in 2009 and broke down the communication to the respective target groups of parents, kids, teenagers and students. Her responsibilities also included the production of flyers, sponsorship activities and mailings. With such tasks, Aline Hassler inevitably moved closer and closer to her father's field of business. When she wanted to pursue a new career path, it was a "wonderful coincidence" that her father was looking for a deputy manager a year ago. "It's an opportunity," the daughter is convinced. "It helps us internally," says her father, who has already learned that he no longer has to have the last word in every case. Two years ago, Aline Hassler began further training at the Higher Technical College for Business in order to deepen her skills as Managing Director even further. She plans to complete her studies in March 2014.
 
Nobody can predict today what further developments in printing technology will bring. What is certain is that tablets will become more and more standard over the next few years. Scanlith is equipped for this business. "Tablet publishing, with its interactive and handy presentation options, requires specialized implementation. We have already had our staff comprehensively trained for this," says Bernhard Hassler, looking to the future with curiosity, as he was able to experience during his trip to London for the first scanner.

Andreas Panzeri

Anyone who scans the various codes is linked directly to various selected articles in the WOZ online dossier and can read them on their smartphone or tablet.

Responsible at the weekly newspaper: The collective of the Woz. Responsible at SFLB: Pablo Schencke, Marco Donada, Johannes Raggio (creation), Peter Brönnimann (ECD), Nino Zuberbühler (consulting).

Despite a slight decline at the start of winter, the use of electronic media compared with the survey during the 2012 Summer Olympics remains consistently above the level at that time. Compared to the survey period in the fall, overall use of e-media declined by a total of 3.7 percentage points. This is shown by the results of the Goldbach Group's fifth comparative survey. The decline in TV consumption in the target group of 18 to 39-year-olds was particularly striking. By contrast, the target group of 40 to 65-year-olds was the only one to lead the continuous upward trend within the survey with a further increase.

Activities on the network continue

Online activities are on the rise again, increasing by 1.3 percentage points overall. Only social media loses 3 percentage points in the upward trend, but is still up slightly by around one percentage point compared with the Summer Olympics. Online games account for the biggest increase, with a rise of 5.5 percentage points, followed by online shopping, which benefits strongly from the Christmas trade.

The Goldbach Group provides detailed results of the Electronic Footprint study and the latest data in the areas of TV, radio, teletext, adscreen, Internet TV, performance marketing, in-game advertising and mobile marketing at goldbachguide.ch.

 

WW: What has been your biggest surprise in your hundred days at the helm of PubliGroupe?
Arndt Groth: (reflecting) That was with the Publicitas team, where the average age was much younger than I had expected. And the willingness to change was also much more pronounced than I would have expected.

That's positive - because from the outside, Publicitas is actually a restructuring case - not in the sense of bankruptcy law, but in terms of the depth of the measures that need to be taken...
...I wouldn't call it a restructuring case, but in any case Publicitas is still facing drastic changes because we still can't say that the turnaround has been achieved.

In your presentation for the Investors' Day, there is a slide that says Publicitas, or Media Sales, is only a quarter ready for 2020. Since the traditional advertising markets are declining, does that mean that Publicitas will be three quarters smaller?
Our share of the traditional newspaper business will continue to fall. However, this quarter was due to the fact that we had not yet positioned ourselves properly and lacked a clear strategy. In recent years, we have mainly acted reactively and reduced costs in order to stem this loss. We need to become more proactive...

They will certainly reduce the number of branches in the country. From how many today?
...that's still well over thirty. The aim is to centralize. And then it depends on the individual negotiations with the publishers as to which physical presence on site we will continue to maintain.

In your documents you also refer to the "portfolio sales approach". What exactly do you mean by that?
In future, we will not only be able to operate monothematically with each individual title. Customers expect to be able to book at least a portfolio of newspaper titles or, even more broadly, magazines, cinemas, out-of-home or even digital or, ideally, mobile solutions.

But your typical local contract partner is a single publisher, and they want to sell their product above all else...
...yes, but even regional customers, where the downturn is not as severe as in the national press, are increasingly expecting a different offer than we used to have. Even a local garage knows that it can no longer reach its customers with a newspaper ad alone.

Your local contract partners hardly ever offer this variety of products themselves. Why should they be interested?
In a product development from Publicitas, Ad4MaxGeo, we bundle the reach of local and regional newspapers with the regional reach of Google and Facebook. This product has been very successful and proves that such solutions lead to higher overall sales for publishers than "print standalone solutions". And it enables sales staff in the regions to approach customers with a different product approach.

In your documents, you also talk about a new IT solution. What is that about?
On the one hand, this involves our infrastructure in terms of the normal order processing of print ads in the back office area. This is the replacement of our old Pub2000 system in order to become faster and more efficient. And then we want to go beyond the actual print infrastructure and add automated trading options for digital media. This will enable us to offer all our partners, not only publishing and portal partners, but also agencies and customers, an end-to-end solution.

Does this also mean that there will be automated trading opportunities, so-called programmatic buying, for print products?
Yes, it's not just about digital winning, but also about digital business models finding their way into the handling of traditional media. Of course, the processes for advertising orders are not yet perfectly digitalized at the moment. But the planning approach is very similar, and that's why I see the whole thing happening in exactly the same way for other types of media, including newspapers and print. We hear from our Publimedia and AdMarket customers, a processing system, that print booking, processing and monitoring is now almost better and more efficient than online.

How specifically are you already moving in this direction? Is it just about the back office or about bringing programmatic buying to the front?
We are taking one step at a time. The first is now the launch of the premium supply-side platform from Publicitas, "The Mark". We then want to systematically expand this into other areas. That is the goal.

Is programmatic buying the same as Real Time Advertising (RTA)?
No, that is a very important point. And many people haven't understood that yet. Programmatic buying or automated action is the basis, and real time advertising is the finishing touch. The first is linking supply and demand via a platform, which works for all types of media. Meanwhile, RTA, i.e. real-time processing, is only possible online. In many markets, this is not yet available in this form because data is a mandatory prerequisite. And if this is not available, I can still do programmatic buying, i.e. automated trading, but real-time advertising is not yet possible. In most cases, we should therefore not be talking about real-time advertising, but rather enabling our partners to get started with programmatic buying.

And do you see this as an important future aspect for media sales? When? In three or five years?
This should be the case in a maximum of three years. However, the proportion of automated trading will never reach 100 percent. My guess is that we will reach 60 or 70 percent relatively quickly in the online sector. In addition, there will continue to be a premium segment with significantly higher CPMs, and this will continue to require personal sales in the long term.

Can you then handle the business centrally, or do you still need regional branches?
It is true that we are striving for automation and centralization in certain areas, especially in back office functions, but also in many cases in sales, in order to make this portfolio approach possible. However, this does not mean that we will no longer operate regionally in the future. We already have very, very profitable marketing partnerships in the regions today. And if a contractual partner says they are prepared to continue to provide us with this exclusivity in marketing, but we still have the entrepreneurial freedom I mentioned, then there is nothing to stop us continuing to operate in the regions. It is undoubtedly clear that in a declining market we will always be more efficient with the organization of a Publicitas than a publisher in its region, in its canton. I therefore assume that we will continue to have a very, very close relationship with publishers in the future.

What does the development towards comprehensive automated trading processes mean for media agencies?
Our idea is to provide agencies in particular with tools so that they can book not only digital advertising but also various other channels through us. In many cases, these tools serve to simplify booking and planning and also to reduce costs on the planning side.

Let's switch to the online sector, which is closer to you. The keyword here is currently RTA. How do you see this developing in the long term? Will only two or three big players remain and divide up this business?
There will certainly be several providers. Competition stimulates business, and so all market participants welcome the fact that there are several providers and not just one monopolist that dictates prices and technology. There are now three big ones from the US, and then there is a leading provider in Europe, and that is Improve Digital. One of the reasons why we chose Improve Digital [note: PubliGroupe completed the acquisition of 85 percent of the Dutch company Improve Digital in mid-December] is the realization from the last few years, especially from the development of Digital, that we have a different view of things in Europe. Be it the issue of data protection, be it the consideration of customer interests. European providers have increasingly reflected these wishes and have not necessarily rolled out a uniform technology for the sake of optimization and efficiency. And having a provider here that is in the same time zone and has its development team in Europe is a huge advantage.

What is "The Mark", which we have already mentioned briefly? Is this your private exchange solution for RTA?
Publicitas developed this product within the p-Digital department. "The Mark", based on the SSP technology from Improve Digital. With "The Mark", Publicitas will in future market the digital inventory of media providers using the real-time process and give advertisers the opportunity to buy digital inventory in an automated and data-driven way. Our subsidiary Local.ch is one of the first companies in Switzerland to use Publicitas' real-time advertising solution, enabling it to monetize and manage its digital advertising inventory even better. But of course it is up to each individual publisher to decide for themselves whether they are big enough and want to do this themselves.

To what extent are you aiming to become possibly the only private exchange in Switzerland in which all publishers participate?
Of course, that is where we are heading. And it would certainly be good for the market in Switzerland if that were the case. We'll have to see whether that actually happens, and I don't want to make this claim to be the only one. But it would certainly be good for the market. And "The Mark" would be suitable for it.

How do you see prices developing? In Switzerland, we have a special situation with cheap cross-border traffic, which is increasingly undermining the high prices in Switzerland.
You're absolutely right, this should drive the speed with which Swiss content providers open up to the topic of real-time advertising and programmatic buying. I would like to initiate a study from our company, but also together with the IAB, to really test campaigns with market research that run with German publishers and on Swiss sites. The assumption is that conversions are higher and branding effects are better on Swiss content compared to others. If we can prove this, then the higher price is justified.

However, this does not answer the question of price trends... As long as this is not proven, prices will continue to fall over the next few years because customers will tend to book cheaper content. Prices in Switzerland will come under pressure due to bookability and comparability with other countries.

Publishers are generally very cautious about RTAs, especially in Switzerland, because they fear that prices will come under pressure if they participate. Isn't it much more the case that if they don't participate, prices will come down all the more? Is that how you see it?
Absolutely yes. We see in all tests that CPMs soar with real-time advertising...

...because of the "B"the bidding... ...because of the "B" and because of the added value of the data. Then the only question is whether there is enough volume, otherwise you have a high CPM but few impressions, and then of course that doesn't help either. But the mechanics work in any case.

Now you have mentioned an important keyword: data - in America it is on a par with providers and consumers in the entire RTA structure. In Europe and Switzerland in particular, there are still interesting development opportunities, and you are very well positioned to become a data provider thanks to your market position.
Yes, I think we are very well positioned. In Europe, we actually have the situation that there is almost no provider that makes data available for campaigns. It's completely different in the USA, where there are companies like BlueKai and others. We have an enormous amount of data available within our Group. And we see this competitive advantage not only through our companies like Local.ch, but also through a company like Zanox, which has access to a wealth of information every day through billions of anonymous data points. Because Zanox, as a performance provider, is heavily involved with merchants, we know what users are interested in and what they buy. And we will continue to refine this data in the future. However, we still need to do our homework. Simply having access to data is not enough; we also need to build a data management platform.

And this is where you want to focus your activities - also as a data exchange?
Absolutely. Data exchange would then mean that we sell data to third parties. However, there are so few providers in this market because there is not yet a functioning business model for it. This is secondary for us because we want to use the information within the Group. Making it available to agencies or end customers is a key advantage in order to develop a USP and make campaigns successful with this data.

How far along are you? I'm sure you'll be buying in and not developing it yourself.
We are currently licensing a tool. This is Visual DNA, an English company that we work with and that helps us to use this data. It is very important and essential for the future to have such a data management platform in-house. That is the linchpin for success.

How do you rate social media when it comes to communication and advertising?
Social media is a major challenge in the digital sector. This is due to the three-way split: paid media, earned media and owned media. There is a tendency among advertisers to develop owned and earned as much as possible. Earned and owned come very close to us as a company that is close to content. With Denon, for example, we have an offering in our portfolio that comes from the corporate publishing sector and therefore also creates content that is relevant. This will definitely be an important building block in our medium-term digital strategy to offer such editorial services to customers and advertisers.

Speaking of content: Are you a newspaper reader? What do you read?
I am a newspaper reader. I'm still a fan of my regional newspaper, the Hamburger Abendblatt, as I only moved at the beginning of the year. And I read the NZZ, but on the iPad. I am a passionate Financial Times Germany reader and very much regret the end of the FTD [note: the interview took place on December 7, 2012, the last day the FTD was published] and will now get used to the Handelszeitung.

Interview: Christoph J. Walther
 
In a nutshell
Arndt Groth has been CEO of PubliGroupe since September 1, 2012. Born in Hamburg, he previously held various management positions, initially mainly on the publishing side at the Georg von Holtzbrink and Handelsblatt publishing groups. Since 1998, he has worked for leading Internet companies and marketing organizations with a digital focus, such as DoubleClick in Germany, InteractiveMedia, a marketer for digital media, and the globally active marketing network Adconion. In addition to his operational tasks, Groth has been President of the BVDW (Bundesverband Digitale Wirtschaft), one of the strongest industry associations in Europe for interactive marketing, digital content and interactive value creation, since 2003.

The launch of an orange Neo Citran health wave is intended to create a positive counter-movement and at the same time symbolize the rapid and efficient mode of action of the flu remedy. According to the agency, the Neo Citran health wave is to spread across the whole of Switzerland via print subjects, TV commercials and an online campaign and simply wash away symptoms such as colds, fever and headaches. And anyone who is also interested in the flu, colds and preventive measures can visit the newly designed website Neocitran.ch in good hands.

The campaign will be on air in three languages throughout Switzerland throughout the flu season until the end of March 2013.

Responsible at Novartis Consumer Health Switzerland: Britt Zimmermann (Category Marketing Manager), Miriam Ludwig (Brand Manager). Responsible at Wunderman: Thomas Engeli (Creative Director), Silke Heinzelmann (Art Director), Manuel Meier (Web Publisher), Paolo Brocco (Software Engineer), Rea Rageth (Consulting).

British jokes, grotesque everyday situations and a best-of Monty Python songs will be performed at 6.00 pm and 9.30 pm. The following rules had to be observed for the play: Rule No. 1: There are no rules. Rule no. 2: All rules are broken. So you can expect real Monty Python entertainment.

Responsible at Theater Rigiblick: Daniel Rohr (theater manager), Brigitta Stahel (deputy theater manager). Responsible at Draftfcb/Lowe Zurich: Dennis Lück (ECD), Tizian Walti (text/concept), Javier Santillan, Ranja Issa (graphics).

With the pigskin tattoo poster, the agency at the airport won gold in the Out-ofhome category at the John Caples International Awards, making it the first Swiss agency to win the coveted precious metal at this competition in New York. The same work was awarded Silver in the Ambient/Guerilla category by the top-class jury of 50 ECDs from all over the world. In addition, the airport agency achieved seven other final placements. Along with the Cannes Lions, the John Caples Awards are among the most prestigious international dialog marketing competitions in the world. This year, 726 entries were submitted in 26 categories.
 
WW: How does René Eugster explain this success of his agency?
René Eugster: The discipline of dialog marketing requires specialists, even if some representatives of the classic like to downplay this. On the one hand, it requires the skillful handling of processes and, on the other hand, the targeted striving for - mostly sustainable - responses. In addition to this know-how, what we at the agency at the airport try to differentiate ourselves from day to day is the surprisingly creative stories we tell. Stories with which we regularly amaze our clients and not-yet-clients and thereby captivate them. We seem to have been doing this extraordinarily well for almost two decades now.
 
This is the fourth time you have served on the jury. What were your observations?
More than ever, dialog marketing demands true creativity. Regardless of whether it's online or offline. Very often, it's small campaigns that are backed by big ideas with just as big an impact.
 
What did you learn at the competition this year?
The super contacts with more than 50 creative dialogue ECDs from more than 20 countries, their views, objections and reflections during the judging process as well as in the conversations on the sidelines of the competition are hard to beat. Unlike some other juries, politics plays a secondary role in the John Caples International Award. The successful, creative dialog marketers are nominated for the jury and not classicists who "now it's their turn". The international networks lobby in NYC as well, of course. The country phalanxes are obvious. Which sometimes, however, has more to do with the cultural background, which, when it comes to communication - and especially the call for dialog - cannot be denied.
 
People are quick to say that a country wins more awards if it can delegate a member to the jury. Does this prejudice also play a role in the Caples Award?
Well, Switzerland was represented for the first time with only one juror and has never before brought in this medal count. How is that possible? What makes dialog marketing competitions so unique is the proof of results. In addition to exceptional creative achievements, the internationally experienced jurors at the Caples are able to compare, critically scrutinize and assess the results given. Because ultimately, success is the relevant metric for sustainable dialog. pan

The smartphone becomes the control unit. This creates an interactive experience in which various devices are orchestrated. The aim of the game is to balance the Santafant on a ball. Anyone holding the elephant in the air is doing good: Serranetga donates one centime per second to Zurich Zoo's new elephant park.

Anyone who would also like to support the Zurich elephants can do so until Christmas at Santafant.ch play.

Responsible at Serranetga: Remo Prinz, Tino Elsener (Project Coordination), Pascal Deville, Samuel Textor, (Creative Direction), Thomas Blumer, Simon Kümin (Text), Philippe Lehmann (Design), Erwan Eydt (Programming).

Coca-Cola or Pepsi. McDonald's or Burger King. Apple or Microsoft. Questions that divide the consumerist world. Even the issue of Santa Claus or the Christ Child seems to be more of a commercial-ideological than a religious one these days. Although Santa Claus - at least in German-speaking Switzerland - has, strictly speaking, lost nothing, the bearded man from Lapland appears everywhere. The culprits are quickly found. The film producers from Hollywood, for example. Or, of course, Coca-Cola with the Coke Santa, who shines fat, smiling and with red cheeks in the middle of the kitschy Christmas world. "Ho ho ho!" Only rarely do the Christkind fans rebel. For example, when Migros introduced the "Wiehnachtsmaa" two years ago. A journalist from the Tages-Anzeiger newspaper even called for the stranger to be deported. In the meantime, the critical voices seem to have fallen silent. A free field for the creatives.

It is obvious why Santa Claus is particularly attractive for advertising. Every child knows the man in the red costume - thanks to Walt Disney and co. Apart from his international applicability, perhaps more importantly: with Santa, anything goes. You can make fun of him, you can portray him as a clumsy, clumsy fool. He remains likeable. Even if he loses out in a duel with the Zalando courier because the parcel delivery man flies down the chimney faster, or when the Melectronics courier steals the show. Santa is even appealing in the role of the brazen thief. His appearance in the Ikea advertisement, in which he delivers parcels but cleans out the apartment instead, didn't lose him any sympathy points.

Advertisers are more likely to get their fingers burnt by the Christ Child. Telering got into trouble last year with a commercial in which the Christ Child - trained in martial arts - knocks his rival out of the way. What the Austrian telecommunications subsidiary classified as "exaggerated advertising irony" did not go down well with all consumers. Some declared the ad to be glorifying violence, others felt their religious feelings had been hurt. The search for current Christkind advertisements was rather unsuccessful. SFLB has Santa Claus climb down the chimney for Sihlcity. The Migros Felix family is decorating the Christmas tree this year - without Santa Claus. Erdmannpeisker and Rivella elegantly circumvented the problem and opted for Santa Claus, complete with Schmutzli and donkey.
Tracking down the Christ Child is not only time-consuming, but also tricky. Because: What does it even look like? A child in an angel costume? A young lady with blonde curls and a halo? Coop tries it with Christmas tree figures, one of which could be the Christ Child. But it's not entirely convincing. The ambassador of the online travel agency Weekend4two fits the bill, but is declared to be a "Christmas angel" rather than the Christ Child. And watch out: Not every blonde in an angel costume is the Christmas child. For some ambassadors who meet the criteria of "young, attractive and angel wings", the halo is a bit tight. And even when it comes to erotic advertising, Santa Claus has the edge. A somewhat reduced Santa Claus costume is just as good as a spicy one. Conclusion: Still looking for the Christ Child. Please send any useful tips to: [email protected].

Isabel Imper