In the final quarter, however, UPC has grown compared to the third quarter. Sales increased there by 1.8 percent to 312.7 million francs, as the company belonging to the British telecom group Liberty Global announced on Friday.

UPC succeeded in significantly slowing the decline in subscriber numbers, it said. After losing around 153,000 subscriptions in 2018, the figure was 68,000 last year. In addition, the company achieved its best customer satisfaction figures since 2009.

On track with growth plan

Baptiest Coopmans, who has been at the helm of UPC Switzerland since the beginning of February, believes the company is on track with its growth plan. He wants to further establish the TV platform and the gigabit offering on the market and gain customers in the mobile and fixed-network offerings.

More than a year ago, UPC launched a program to stem the loss of customers with special promotions. UPC doubled the maximum Internet speed and launched new mobile communications offerings following Salt's switch to Swisscom's mobile network. Work was also carried out on service quality.

UPC is making gains in mobile communications: Last year, UPC Mobile gained 54,000 new subscribers, bringing the total number to over 200,000. The company suffered a bloodletting in the TV business. More than 90,000 subscribers were lost. UPC reported a slight decline in subscriber numbers in the Internet and fixed-network segments.

In the business customer segment, however, UPC in Switzerland is growing. Sales were up 5.2 percent last year. UPC invested in product quality and the availability of gigabit Internet speeds throughout Switzerland, it said. UPC signed new or expanded contracts with Migros, SV Hotel and Schaffhauser Kantonalbank.

Failed acquisition

However, 2019 at UPC was dominated by the failed takeover by competitor Sunrise (Werbewoche.ch reported). The CHF 6.3 billion deal was called off in October. It failed due to opposition from Sunrise's major shareholders, led by Germany's Freenet, who criticized the high purchase price.

Thus, another attempt to create a stronger challenger to the industry leader Swisscom in the Swiss telecommunications market failed. Nine years ago, the Swiss Federal Competition Commission (Comco) had banned the planned merger of Sunrise and Orange on competition grounds. However, the antitrust watchdogs had no objections to Sunrise's purchase of UPC.

Following the collapse of the merger, there was a change of management at UPC Switzerland at the beginning of February: Severina Pascu handed over the reins to Baptiest Coopmans. (Werbewoche.ch reported). Pascu, 46, joined Virgin Media, which is the largest subsidiary of Liberty Global. There she serves as Deputy CEO and Chief Financial Officer. (SDA)

It all started with a couple of elephants at San Diego Zoo. "The cool thing about these guys is that they have this really long trunk," says YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim, two pachyderms in the background. The first video on the online platform was banal and unspectacular - in stark contrast to the rise of YouTube that was to follow.

The website quickly became the epitome of entertaining Internet TV and is now a superpower in the entertainment world. But as great as its success has been, so too has the criticism. On its 15th birthday on Saturday, YouTube is more controversial than ever.

Advertising revenues of 15 billion

Cute little animal films like the elephant clip still exist, but the days of innocence are long gone. The takeover by Google, the commercialization, the billions in advertising - the former "Broadcast Yourself" playground for private videos has long since become just big business for Google's parent company Alphabet. However, with the rapid growth of bandwidth, influence and responsibility have also increased massively. In the era of fake news, hate speech and filter bubbles on the internet, YouTube is a constant source of controversy.

Youtube boss Susan Wojcicki knows this too: "Everyone is angry with you all the time," she said to the New York Times in an interview last year about YouTube's controversial approach to extreme content. According to its own figures, the platform now has around two billion active monthly users. Five years ago, there were half as many.

What YouTube contributes to Alphabet's revenue has long been one of the financial markets' best-kept secrets - the company recently provided insight for the first time. In 2019, the platform already generated advertising revenue of a good 15 billion dollars.

Several scandals

The fact that YouTube boss Wojcicki has her hands full is therefore not down to finances. The main problems are offensive content and how to deal with it. Social media is coming under increasing pressure to take action against the spread of propaganda and extremism, and YouTube is no exception.

The sheer volume of videos alone - over 300 hours of material are uploaded by users every minute - makes cleaning them out a Herculean task. But can a large corporation with an annual profit of over 34 billion dollars make excuses like this?

One thing is certain: illegal clips can spread so rapidly on the platform due to constant re-uploading that YouTube can barely keep up with deleting them, despite its sophisticated algorithms. However, critics doubt that the company is doing everything in its power.

There have been a number of scandals in recent years - from suicide footage in the "trending" recommendations to paedophile clips and sex videos in the children's section to videos with Holocaust denial and other propaganda. Ex-employees accused YouTube of subordinating the control of controversial content to business benefits - i.e. advertising revenue.

Weaknesses with uploads

Of course, the company would never admit such a thing. But vis-à-vis the New York Times Wojcicki did admit to weaknesses in dealing with problematic uploads. "I know we can do better, but we're getting there," said the 51-year-old. "We are reaching a point where we have solved many of these problems and I feel that we have already made significant progress." That was in April 2019. Since then, the platform has actually become much quieter, even if there is still a lot of controversy - for example about political advertising and manipulative content.

However, it would also be unfair to reduce YouTube's 15th anniversary to discussions about controversial videos. Much of its history to date has been characterized by harmless viral phenomena - the platform is an almost inexhaustible treasure trove of clips of all kinds, with everything from music videos and recipes to historical sports broadcasts or beauty and lifestyle guides. The portal is a kind of huge archive that keeps users interested thanks to its clever recommendation system.

YouTube has permanently changed the entertainment industry and even left its mark on the professional world - hobby entertainers have become "Youtubers" who receive a share of advertising revenue and sometimes earn a lot of money with their videos. Some of them are stars that millions of fans follow. The platform has played a key role in paving the way for influencer culture. However, commercialization continues: YouTube is now also trying to gain a foothold in the streaming market dominated by Netflix with self-produced content and paid subscriptions. (SDA)

Accordingly, the average order value for travel in the period from February 3 to February 13 was 479.82 euros. For the same period in 2019, the value was still at 367.58 euros. In terms of gross merchandise volume, i.e. the value of all goods sold during the two weeks, travel even came out on top in Germany with 15.32% in 2020.

Health and beauty products have also increased. In the last two weeks, they reached an average order value of around 74 euros and accounted for 8.02% of the gross volume of goods. Last year, the figure was 49.30 euros and 4.47 percent.

By contrast, the real "classic gifts" for the day of love, jewelry (0.78 percent) and flowers (0.73 percent), only account for a small proportion of the gross volume of goods.

To put this into perspective: Overall, the average order value of EUR 116.87 in the two weeks leading up to this year's Valentine's Day was significantly higher than the 12-month average from 2019 (EUR 98.74).

What is also interesting: In the USA, women's fashion accounted for the largest share of gross merchandise value at 16.91 percent, while travel performed significantly worse than in Germany with 9.55 percent of gross merchandise volume and an average order value of 192.78 US dollars.

ETH Zurich is not only one of the best universities in the world, it is also a complex organization with 16 departments and several hundred institutes, laboratories, collections and chairs. The new image should be contemporary, maintain continuity and practicality and at the same time convey the fascination and virtuosity of science. ETH is to be established internationally as a strong umbrella brand that gives the organization the freedom and dynamism it needs.

Scholtysik & Partner came out on top in a two-stage agency evaluation for university communications. The assignment includes brand architecture and co-branding as well as the complete corporate design with the development of concepts for web, print and spatial applications. With extensive template libraries, the new design is to be made easily and efficiently accessible to the large and heterogeneous user group.

Cats are extremely willful creatures. In a short TV spot created by Publicis for the dog biscuit brand, a cat shows off the groom to the entire bridal party. She doesn't feel like sitting there with the rings - especially when there are so many interesting trees around the altar.

Stanley the turtle must be similarly reluctant in another TV commercial. When his mistress waves a stick around and throws it away so that Stanley can fetch it, the turtle shuffles away very slowly. I wonder what the reason for that is.

Milk Bone concludes both commercials with the statement that life with dogs - and Milk Bone dog biscuits - is simply more fun. And although cats and turtles do have their merits, and dogs can be just as unpredictable, we'll disregard the greater (time) effort and the many dog hairs and agree with the advertiser with reservations.

Martin Fritsche, founder and owner of Positionings, will bring his expertise in the development and implementation of positioning strategies to Hilda design matters at the beginning of February 2020. The doctor of communication science and certified ECA leadership coach will expand the areas of dynamic branding and brand positioning. His specialty is the conception and implementation of co-creation and brand thinking workshops for strategic communication planning.

In 2018, the Press Council had drafted and published 62 opinions. The number of settled cases - including merged or withdrawn cases and decisions to dismiss without an opinion - reached an all-time high of 125 in 2019, the Press Council announced in a communiqué on Friday.

The need to turn to the Press Council with complaints is great, according to the data. 126 complaints were filed with the Press Council in 2019. In the previous year, there were 115 and in 2017 127. In that year, there was a jump upwards, executive director Ursina Wey told the Keystone-SDA news agency.

One reason for the increase is that the Press Council has become better known to the general public. According to Wey, other factors for the increase cannot be clearly identified. What is clear to her, however, is that the increase cannot be managed with the resources that the Press Council has at its disposal today.

Hoping for indirect media funding

At the end of 2019, the Press Council's Board of Trustees therefore adopted reforms to speed up procedures. The body also wants to be able to play a greater role in debates on media and professional ethics. Among other things, the office is to be slightly increased, as the Press Council announced in December.

To get the money it needs, the foundation is hoping for funds from the indirect media subsidy from the federal government. Here, parliament has the final say. But more money from this source can be expected in 2022 or 2023 at the earliest, Wey said.

The Press Council is the self-regulatory body of the media industry in Switzerland. Currently, the Swiss Press Council Foundation is supported by journalistic professional associations and trade unions, employer organizations and individual media companies. (SDA)

There, they are particularly looking forward to the updated CV of the 30-year-old Zurich native and the bureaucratic challenge: With an expiring permanent position that included every percentage from 40 to 100, a now official partial self-employment and ongoing commitments as a freelancer, she is an administrative exception.

"We are as convinced as we are happy that Ms. Bär will soon find a new job as a concept designer and copywriter," says M. B.*, Daniela Bär's RAV supervisor in charge. After all, her skills are versatile and outstanding: At Melt, she was responsible for concepts of all live communication formats and took on a lot of responsibility within a very short time as a junior project manager. In addition to design thinking and brainstorming, she uses her head just as skilfully as efficiently in all other thinking disciplines. As content manager, she has researched, designed and written for clients such as Zweifel Chips, UBS and the Canton of Zurich. Her writing has also won awards from the Solothurn Literature Festival and been sponsored by Migros Kulturprozent.

Daniela Bär likes to be book, for example, on March 12 from their RAV counselor and as of now already for briefings and job interviews.

*Name known to the editors

In the representative survey conducted in mid-January, 1,000 people from German- and French-speaking Switzerland between the ages of 14 and 65 provided information on how much trust they have in the management of Swiss companies and which sectors and company leaders have the best image in this respect.

Confidence has declined - retail trade best

Overall, the survey shows disillusionment with top managers. Of those aged 30 and older, 55% said their trust in top managers had declined over the past ten years. Only 6% still have a "very great deal of trust" in the leaders of Swiss companies; by contrast, this trust is "very low" among 10%.

The image of the retail trade is the best. On a scale of 10, its management crews achieved a mean score of 6.5. The machinery industry and the energy sector came second and third with 6.3 and 6.5 respectively. The banks and the pharmaceuticals sector were the weakest with 5.1 each.

The main reasons for a lack of credibility among managers are "poor treatment of employees": 43% of respondents said this had a "very great" impact. Also having a very negative impact are "internal scandals" such as the one at the major bank Credit Suisse CS (42%) and personal misconduct by top managers (41%).

Accordingly, it is not surprising that CS CEO Tidjane Thiam came in the worst of all top managers with a mean score of 4.1 (on a scale of 10). His boss, CS Chairman of the Board Urs Rohner, came in second with a score of 4.4.

The credibility ranking of Swiss top managers is headed by Swatch Group CEO Nick Hayek with a mean score of 6.6, followed by Peter Spuhler, Chairman of the Board of Stadler Rail, with 6.4 and Thomas Jordan, Chairman of the Board of the Swiss National Bank, with 6.0. Only the results of those respondents who knew the respective top manager were evaluated.

Monika Ribar and Suzanne Thoma top among female top managers

Of the top managers surveyed, SBB Board of Directors President Monika Ribar and Suzanne Thoma, CEO of the energy group BKW, scored best with a mean score of 5.4 each. They are followed by EMS boss Magdalena Martullo-Blocher with 5.1 and Muriel Lienau, CEO of Nestlé Switzerland, with 5.0 points.

Overall, significantly more of those surveyed by Marketagent.com Switzerland believe that women in top positions deserve more trust than men. It is true that the gender of the executives does not play a role for the majority of respondents (75%). But of the remaining quarter, three times as many (19%) believe that female top managers are more trustworthy than their male colleagues (6%).

Kürschner worked in agency management at Visuelt for ten years. After the merger with A4, the agency for brand management, design and communication, she worked there as a Strategic Brand Consultant. In 2019, Kürschner founded ifam, an institute for applied brand management that focuses on ensuring the future viability of companies, and has been the institute's director ever since.

Colinda Kürschner joined Internezzo's strategic committee at the beginning of this year. Kürschner sees a lot of potential in the new collaboration: "It is important to me to strengthen companies for their growth and position them for the future. This fits in well with Internezzo's goal of making its customers successful with a well thought-out online strategy and high-quality solutions."

In view of the CEO change and SBB's next strategy phase, the right time has come for Amacker to take the next step in his career, SBB's communications department announced on Thursday. Amacker had joined the railroad group from Swisscom in mid-2013. Previously, she was in the service of Novartis.

As Head of Communications, Amacker played a key role in the opening celebrations for the new Gotthard Base Tunnel, the statement added. In addition, she had long ago positioned SBB as a pioneer with a sustainability strategy and had recently concretized the ambition of a climate-neutral SBB by 2030.

Until a definitive successor is found, Amacker's deputy Bernhard Meier will lead the Communications, Policy and Sustainability unit on an interim basis from April 1.

Creative Consultancy, which specializes in omnichannel experiences, has appointed Walter Tagliaferri to the position of Director Advertising. The 55-year-old takes over the management of the communication team with the aim of providing targeted support to branders in the development and communication of holistic brand experiences.

"As a creative consultancy, we aim to develop ideas that translate strategies into emotions and thus unlock new potential. This requires a broad and versatile range of competencies that distinguish us as a team and which we are constantly developing," said Branders CEO René Allemann in a statement. "I am convinced that Walter's many years of advertising experience, his professionalism and his specific knowledge around integrated brand communication will decisively strengthen our competencies," Allemann added.

Walter Tagliaferri looks back on a long career in the Swiss communications industry - after several positions at advertising agencies and as Head of Marketing Communications at Manor, he was Client Service Director and Member of the Executive Board at Havas Worldwide in Zurich between 2008 and 2016. Before joining Branders, he gained experience as Managing Director at Alpha 245, Ruf Lanz and Lesch + Frei, among others. Most recently, he worked at Foundry Zurich. Tagliaferri takes over the leadership of the Communication Team from Thea Ferretti, who will in future focus on Branders' clients in Southeast Asia.