With the amendment of the Money Gaming Act, licensed Swiss casinos will also be able to offer online money games such as poker, blackjack and roulette from July 1, 2019.

Mediaschneider and Hoy support Grand Casino Baden with the market launch of the online platform Jackpots.ch. The cooperation includes media strategy, consulting and planning as well as consulting tasks for SEA and SEO. 

Marcel Tobler, Chief Financial Officer of Grand Casino Baden is pleased about the cooperation: "We have high ambitions with Jackpots.ch and were looking for a partner who can support us competently and holistically in marketing on the various channels. Mediaschneider and Hoy were able to convince during the evaluation of the media agency with sound answers to our questions."

• Visibility: 6.4 billion Swiss francs (Ø 12.3 million per fire)
  • The total measured visibility of the 523 brands in 2018 is 6.4 billion gross francs.
• Quarterly increase in total visibility
  • The highest visibility was achieved in Q4 - this comprises around 30 percent of the annual total. Q3 comprises a share of 24 percent, Q2 and Q1 each 23 percent.
• 182 brands = 53 percent of brand presences
  • The three largest sectors, Retail & Food, Vehicles and Finance, generate over half of the total visibility.
• Brand visibility: 51 percent not controllable
  • Paid and earned visibility balance each other out in 2018. The ratio between advertising and media presence is 49:51.
• Most visible industries: Retail & Vehicles
  • The Vehicles sector generates the greatest earned visibility at CHF 866 million. Retail & Food generates the most advertising impressions with 848 million Swiss francs.
• Summer flu: pharma slumps
  • The Pharmaceuticals & Healthcare sector records a high decline in brand visibility in Q2 (-18%) and Q3 (-35%) and is only able to recover from this in Q4 (+51%). The driver of this development is paid visibility.
• Christmas boom: increase of 24 percent
  • In Q4, total brand visibility increased by 24 percent compared to Q3. The reason for this, in addition to the advertising campaign for the Christmas season (+28%), is an increased earned presence (+22%).

There are no surprises at the top of the visibility ranking for 2018 as a whole. The two retail giants Migros and Coop dominate the Swiss brand sample. Migros maintains its lead over its big rivals thanks to significantly higher visibility in earned media.

SBB, Swisscom, and Apple follow at a great distance in places 3 to 5, but the differences between these brands in terms of overall visibility are minimal. The Swiss Federal Railways lift themselves onto the podium thanks to the second highest earned visibility. Swisscom and Apple, on the other hand, benefit more from paid brand visibility and have a more balanced paid-earned ratio than SBB.

The top 10 are completed by brands from the automotive and banking sectors. Mercedes is the most visible car manufacturer and UBS the most visible financial institution. The 10 most visible brands account for 22 percent of the visibility of the entire Swiss brand sample.

Over the whole of 2018, UBS, Nestlé and Canon emerge as the three most viral brands. UBS benefited at the beginning of the year from articles in financial media with a high level of circulation. Nestlé, as the most valuable brand in Switzerland, has per se a high potential for dissemination. And Canon - like Sony - is often mentioned in connection with pictures and videos on social networks and benefits from customer usage of its cameras.

The automotive industry experiences a viral high in March with the Geneva Motor Show, which is exemplified by Audi. After that, the popularity of car brands wanes. Tesla is the only exception. Media contributions about the American electric pioneer spread reliably throughout the year.

SBB and MySwitzerland.com, on the other hand, benefit from the distribution strength of travel and tourism images, which are particularly popular with the media in the second half of the year.

In addition to Total Industry Visibility, Media Focus also compares two brands from the same industry segment in the "Battles of the Brands. This time from the "Beverages", "Banks" and "Telecoms" sectors. In the "Twin Analysis", strategic twins are compared with the values of SBB. Irrespective of the industry, brands with similar visibility characteristics are shown.

• Rivella (4th place) is clearly ahead of Emmi (7th place) in terms of beverages.
• Rivella achieves this result with almost twice as much advertising pressure (CHF 13.4 million) as Emmi (CHF 7.4 million). Rivella (CHF 4.7 million) is also superior to its competitor from Lucerne (CHF 1.7 million) in the earned area.
• Despite the lower gross spend, Emmi does particularly well in terms of Internet search: in Internet Ads, which also includes SEA visibility, the company ranks fourth. In organic search, it is even good enough for third place.
• The fact that paid advertising plays a higher role for the beverage industry than earned visibility is illustrated by the paid-earned ratios of both brands.
• Both beverage companies invest mainly in TV and out-of-home advertising and are therefore similar in their paid media mix.

• PostFinance (CHF 52.7 million) and Raiffeisen (CHF 48.2 million) have an almost equally high overall visibility in Switzerland. PostFinance is the third most visible bank, followed by Raiffeisen in fourth place.
• Raiffeisen achieves this visibility mainly through earned mentions (CHF 42 million), but these are strongly negatively driven in the light of the Vincenz affair. The cooperative bank is therefore unlikely to be pleased about the lively coverage in the earned media.
• PostFinance, on the other hand, has a balanced paid-earned ratio. Its advertising print of 26.3 million Swiss francs is the top value among the 20 most visible banks. This advertising pressure is heavily concentrated on TV media, through which the bank plays out its commitment to sports sponsorship, among other things.

• In the telecommunications sector, UPC (2nd place / CHF 33 million), Sunrise (3rd place / CHF 32 million) and Salt (4th place / CHF 26 million) are engaged in a fierce battle for the second-highest visibility behind primus Swisscom (1st place / CHF 125 million). With the acquisition of UPC at the end of 2019, Sunrise is likely to decide this battle in its favor for the time being.
• Salt therefore needs a smart brand strategy to maintain its visibility in 2019 despite the concentration of the market environment and despite the lower advertising pressure (CHF 16 million at Salt vs. CHF 22 million each at UPC and Sunrise).
• Salt keeps pace with Sunrise in TV and out-of-home advertising, but loses out decisively in paid brand visibility in print and Internet advertising.
• In terms of earned presence, Salt (CHF 9.8 million) and Sunrise (CHF 9.7 million) are evenly matched.

The CKW Solar Bar is a mobile pop-up bar that produces all its own electricity from solar panels. The panels are attached to the bar itself and also to tables. The Solar Bar serves as a meeting place for people from the region and also functions as an information point, providing information about the self-sufficient bar and CKW's products and services.

The tour through Central Switzerland will take place in August and September and will be advertised via various channels. The Zurich agency Notch Interactive is responsible for the communication and concept of the Solar Bar - the technical and structural implementation was realized by Konform.

The "Sea Happy" promotion features three underwater stuffed animals as well as sustainable socks for children, teens and adults from "Star Sock," which are made from salvaged fishing nets.

Valencia is responsible for the communications package as well as naming and visual development. The package includes classic channels such as print, mailings and POS advertising materials as well as moving images and a variety of online measures. For online use, Instagram ads, animated banners and a brand day for various news platforms were designed.

For communication in the moving image, Valencia has developed a concept that can be applied individually from the TV spot to the e-board to the bumper ad. The Coop checkout conveyor belt becomes a stage on which the collectible items can be presented and staged by customers in swimwear. Depending on the medium and target group, the individual products can thus be given more or less weight. The promotion runs from August 16 to September 28, 2019 in Coop supermarkets and Coop City.

Slogans such as "Immediate freedom for democracy in Hong Kong" or "Hong Kong is not China" are written on them, as the tabloid Global Times, which is published by the ruling Communist Party, reported on Thursday.

Numerous users reacted indignantly on internet forums and accused Amazon of treating people in China insensitively. One user of the domestic short message service Weibo wrote: "Amazon has already left China, right? We need to teach this company a lesson."

The group closed its shopping service in the People's Republic in July, but continues to deliver foreign goods to the country. Foreign fashion brands such as Versace, Calvin Klein and others have recently come under fire in China for T-shirts that refer to Hong Kong as a separate state. (SDA)

Zürcher Kantonalbank sponsors the night network of the Zürcher Verkehrsverbund at the weekend. For the young target group, it has been offering the "Nachtschwärmer" ticket for several years. This saves ZKB customers the ZVV night surcharge.

The Cash Cow Farmers team had the task of making the Nachtschwärmer offer even better known and using it more as an incentive for new customers than in previous years. Night owl tickets are booked via the mobile account app. 

The core idea is a typo: The agency sends young people app through the night, so that they can really apptanzen and have appsolut fun. To save money, all they need is a ZKB account. And with a little luck, 200 night owls will get to app properly at the exclusive train concert with Pegasus, Loco Escrito and Marius Bear on September 28, 2019.

The cross-media campaign runs long-term online, mobile, out-of-home and in print. For Cash Cow Farmers, it's the first job for the new client, and for Zürcher Kantonalbank it's the first new cross-media appearance in the new corporate design.

The videos were realized with Plan B, the photo shoot with photographer Oliver Franke. The Cash Cow Farmers agency with headquarters in Hamburg and an office in Zurich was founded in 2011.

The separation was for personal reasons. "I have to find myself individually and creatively anew. The Cavalcade adventure was great, a complete success," says de Preux. "I think I have managed to create an agency with David von Ritter, Nina Hugentobler and the whole hard-working team. to createthat is in no way inferior to others in French-speaking Switzerland. I wish everyone all the best for the future!"

Julien de Preux trained as an art director at the Geneva School of Applied Arts and has gained international experience in Quebec, France and England. He is one of the most awarded creatives in Switzerland and has already won 50 national and international awards in his career, including Cannes Lions, D&AD and ADC. Since 2015, de Preux has been a member of the Art Director Club Switzerland.

De Preux is thus returning to self-employment as a freelance art director and graphic designer and is now available to direct clients or agencies that are spontaneously short of resources. (hae)

The founding team of Cavalcade: Julien de Preux, Nina Hugentobler and David von Ritter (from left).

This week, the song "Salsa Me" entered the UK at number 27. Salsa Me" has been at number 8 in the German DJ charts for over 15 weeks and the Latina dance-pop number has been played by world-famous DJ stars such as David Guetta and Paul Oakenfold. 

"Salsa Me" was released worldwide on April 5, 2019 and conquered countless foreign radio charts. Under their label Spacetrain Music Productions, the two composers have also made a name for themselves with many well-known compositions for advertising campaigns at home and abroad.

According to the report, 83 percent of respondents can imagine communicating with artificial intelligence. This corresponds to an increase of 25 percentage points within one year. In 2018, 58 percent of Germans could still imagine such communication in principle.

The respondents could conceivably consume automatically generated short messages such as weather reports (63 percent) and traffic news (51 percent). Listening to AI-generated music is an option for 34 percent, and reading an AI-generated book is conceivable for 30 percent. By contrast, respondents are more skeptical about political reports generated automatically. Only 13 percent would want to consume such news.

The labeling of AI texts is also controversial: Although 29 percent of Germans are not at all interested in whether an AI was involved in the creation process of media, 77 percent would like AI applications to remain recognizable as such. Only ten percent of respondents, on the other hand, are in favor of humanizing AIs.

It is also becoming increasingly difficult to distinguish between texts written automatically and those written by humans, as many AI texts can already be read as if they had been written by humans. For example, only 24 percent of respondents believe they can tell the difference between a text written by an AI and one written by a human. Another 50 percent don't know if they could tell the difference. And indeed, only 39 percent were able to identify the correct AI text in the test.

The credibility of automatically generated texts also leads to uncertainty among German citizens: While 43 percent consider AI news to be credible, 57 percent have doubts. The respondents seem to be less afraid of the AI itself than of the programmers behind it: 54 percent fear that developers could misuse AI for their own agenda. A further 62 percent do not like the fact that an artificial intelligence cannot be held responsible for content.

In summary, the study shows that the acceptance of artificial intelligence has increased significantly within a year. Here, short messages such as weather reports or traffic information turn out to be popular, imaginable AI formats. At the same time, most Germans would like to see clear guidelines for dealing with artificial intelligence and appropriate guidance when it is used. Because although they would like automatically generated articles to remain identifiable as such, AI texts are no longer so easily recognized.

"We have to postpone our Swiss launch, which we had planned for 2019," says Harald Gutschi, Managing Director of Otto's Austrian subsidiary Unito, which is responsible for Otto's business in Austria and Switzerland. "We will be able to launch in Switzerland in 2020 at the earliest, but more likely in 2021." 

The reason for the delay is the name dispute that the Germans are having with the local discounter Otto's. Gutschi says that "we've been pawing at the Swiss online entry under the Otto brand for two years. But before we can start, the legal situation has to be clarified."

On the subject:

Otto's loses the name dispute against Otto

Legal dispute over use of name in Switzerland: Otto's and Otto fail to reach agreement

Trademark dispute: Otto's defends itself against the German Otto Group

Gio, as his friends call him, not only shares his knowledge in the show, he also reveals his tricks, all of which are published online in the "Cooking" section on Consumo.ch and in the print magazine Consumo.

The now 44-year-old grew up on a farm in Sardinia: he is also familiar with animal welfare and the cultivation of fruit and vegetables. That's why Gio's cooking show also focuses on regional Swiss suppliers and their products.

The first online season contains twelve contributions of four to five minutes each.

Travelers can use their smartphones, tablets and laptops to read books in German, French and Italian if they have signed up for the free "SwissPass Smile" public transport family and youth program and are on a train. Selected titles can be read in full, others in such large portions that they provide enough reading material for several train rides. If a book is liked, it can be purchased directly as an e-book, reserved for pickup at a branch, or ordered home by mail.

With the Digital Library on Rails, Switzerland's largest bookstore is offering further access to its online offering, which consists of e-books, the Tolino e-reader, the Tolino Cloud and Reading App, and provides access to over eleven million titles. The central location of the 35 bookstores and the reservation system should make it effortless to pick up a book directly after getting off the train at an Orell Füssli branch near the train station, according to the statement.