GGA Maur is characterized by a comprehensive range of Internet, TV and telephony services for private and business customers at attractive conditions. Under the strategy "Exactly with us", the company aggressively and sympathetically cultivates the personal and uncomplicated contact with its customers. ViznerBorel is responsible for the current campaign of GGA Maur. The campaign "Exactly with us" includes online media, posters, mailings and radio spots.

Neon stands out from the established offerings of everyday Swiss finance, with no branches or counters. Instead, Neon is the fastest, cheapest and also the only independent account app in Switzerland. Opening a free account takes less than ten minutes, there is a free card for everything (credit and Maestro card in one) and customers can keep an eye on their finances at all times in the app. What's more, account management doesn't cost a penny more.

After a beta phase, the brand's major campaign launch took place on March 26. Walder,Werber has supported the FinTech start-up since the beginning with strategy, brand development and positioning and is responsible for the entire image communication. Provocative, loud and humorous, the cross-channel campaign aims to make Neon a topic of conversation. The quintessence: Enough! Enough of outdated and overpriced bank offers. Now comes Neon.

The core competence of Jörg Bruppacher (on the right in the picture) is the visual communication of complex contents, especially of sustainability topics. The 42-year-old from Solothurn originally studied at the University of Design in Schwäbisch Gmünd. After an internship at the brand agency KMS Team in Munich, his path led him back to Solothurn to his father's marketing agency, which was founded in 1979. In 2015, he took over the management of Bruppacher & Partner.

His track record includes corporate design and corporate communications for subsidiaries of the Bosch Group, co-founding, brand development and corporate design for the startup SwissShrimp (Marketing Trophy 2016), co-founding and corporate design of Authentica, a trade fair for sustainably active small producers, signaling and multimedia presentations for the energy provider Regio Energie Solothurn, graphics for Mammut Sports and the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW), corporate design and corporate publishing for the Swiss Federal Office of Energy and the Federal Office for Spatial Development.

"Visual communication will continue to gain in importance," Polarstern founder Andreas Renggli is convinced. "Together with our customers, we want to develop their communication in the future in an even more agile and integrated way in the sense of co-creation. That's why we combine our conceptual, editorial and visual know-how." The Lucerne native has already been working with Jörg Bruppacher for several years. The two also initiated the first coworking space in the canton of Solothurn in a former screw factory in 2015. The coworking space networks people who are committed to ecological, social and economic sustainability.

The communication agency Polarstern was founded in 2007 and focuses on sustainability communication. Today, it consists of a team of ten employees who work at the two locations in Lucerne and Solothurn for Migros, Swisscom, the Luzerner Kantonalbank, the FHNW, numerous SMEs and several federal offices.

Philipp Sauber comments: "After a total of 16 years as partner and managing director, it is time for me to tackle new entrepreneurial challenges. At the end of the month, he will hand over his responsibilities to the well-established management team that has taken the company forward over the past two years. Plan.Net Suisse employs around 40 people and offers all disciplines of digital communication.

TV commercials, digital out-of-home and online advertising - for example, programmatic ads - support the appeal for donations in mailboxes in the second year of the campaign. The landing page features the inspiring stories of 50 strong women - 50 because the two aid organizations are celebrating the 50th anniversary of their joint collaboration.

Since 2010, the Swiss Pledge companies have specifically adapted their advertising behavior towards children under the age of twelve: Only products that meet defined and scientifically developed nutritional criteria are advertised in a children's environment. The independent market research company Media Focus has been monitoring compliance with the voluntary commitment since 2010. It examines TV commercials, advertising in children's magazines and on company brand websites, and, for the first time, advertising on social media profiles.

With the changes in media use among children in the past, this is a logical consequence and further development of the voluntary Swiss Pledge. Advertising promises fulfilled in 2018 Media Focus once again gives the Swiss Pledge companies high marks for 2018. Tina Fixle, Head of Research at Media Focus Switzerland: "We have been monitoring compliance with the Swiss Pledge voluntary commitment since the initiative began in 2010. In 2018, the Swiss Pledge companies once again achieved the target agreement with good results."

Results 2018:

• TV commercials: 99 percent correct
• Children's magazines: 100 percent correct
• Brand websites: 100 percent correct
• Social media: 98.2 percent correct

During one quarter in 2018, Media Focus analyzed all TV spots placed by Swiss Pledge companies. The universe included all public stations, advertising windows as well as private stations.

- During the period under review, 41,219 TV commercials were checked, of which 99.0 percent complied with Swiss Pledge specifications. 418 spots were not placed correctly. TV advertising accounted for 70 percent of Swiss Pledge companies' media mix in 2018. Measured against the total gross TV advertising spend of the food and beverage industry in Switzerland, this corresponds to 25 percent.

- All 63 print editions of children's magazines met the Swiss Pledge specifications. Children's magazines marketed in Switzerland such as: Junior, Kläx, Maky, Rataplan, Spick and Hey Volg.

- All the brand websites of the Swiss Pledge companies audited also met the Swiss Pledge criteria. There were 25 websites in the monitoring.

- In the period under review, 55 social media channels were audited. With 98.2 percent compliant channels, a very good value was achieved. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Snapchat and Flickr were examined. This is despite the fact that the age limit for Facebook, YouTube, Instagram & Co. of 13 years is fundamentally outside Swiss Pledge's age limit for children under twelve.

The most important facts in brief:

• You can cast your vote until Sunday, March 31 at 23:59.
• Your vote will only be counted if your e-mail address is in the dispatch database of our newsletter.
• If the same valid e-mail address is used for multiple votes, only one vote will be counted in the evaluation.
• The e-mail addresses are only needed for the election procedure and will be deleted afterwards.

Voting can be done at this link.

The vote of the readership counts for 50 percent. The other 50 percent will be determined by the votes of the expert jury members. The winner will be announced at the Best of Swiss Web Award Night on April 17, 2019. 

You can find out everything about the election and the jury at this link.

You can learn all about the three nominees at the following links:

Petra Dreyfus

Roman Geiser

David Schärer

The list of all previous award winners can be found at here.

With the campaign around the website Codex-hund.ch, the office wants to increasingly address not only children but also young people and adults. In this way, the knowledge of correct behavior towards dogs is to be promoted among the entire population of the canton in order to prevent incidents with dogs sustainably and on a broad level. The first measures of the campaign will be seen from mid-April.

For years, In Flagranti Communication's activities have been dominated by orders with a digital focus, according to a statement. For example, the team has been supporting Hotelcard since this year and realized the digital presence of the Solothurn hospitals together with the partners in the Inspiratio.net network. The Maatoo marketing automation suite is used to generate leads for PostBus in the Bernese Oberland and to acquire students for the FHNW School of Life Sciences. This is based on the open source software Mautic and was developed by the network partner 55 Weeks.

It is therefore no coincidence that In Flagranti Communication was entrusted by PostFinance with the marketing management for the mortgage brokerage platform "Valuu". This mandate includes not only the management of marketing measures, but also the evaluation and partial implementation of the AdTech stack.

Matthias Graf joins the team to strengthen these competencies. The 35-year-old graduate of the Berne University of Applied Sciences in media business and management was most recently head of online marketing at the Biel agency Business4you.

If you want to lead your company successfully through the digital transformation, you need new skills and leadership approaches. This includes a sound understanding of digital technologies and business models on the one hand, and the ability to inspire and empower employees for a digital vision on the other. In the new EMBA Digital Leadership, managers deal with topics such as data-based decision-making, platform economics, intrapreneurship and learn to operate in innovation ecosystems and work collaboratively with new stakeholders across industries. According to the press release, program directors Sunnie J. Groeneveld and Manuel P. Nappo have designed this EMBA program from the ground up in the same way they would like to attend it themselves.

Three pillars to becoming a digital leader

The EMBA Digital Leadership is based on the three pillars "Digital Business and Technology", "Digital Culture and Leadership" and "Digital Vision". In addition to imparting a sound understanding of digital technology, it focuses on the personal development and entrepreneurial and communication skills of participants. Innovative elements make this course a program that sets new standards in Switzerland:

• A conference organized at the HWZ in TEDx format. The students are accompanied by a rhetoric coach for several months and coached in their presentation skills. 
• A Digital Startup Challenge. In this challenge, students develop a concrete idea for a digital product or service, a business plan and a prototype. They pitch their idea to a jury consisting of business angels and start-up experts with the chance of receiving start-up funding.
• To promote personal leadership skills and career planning, students can take advantage of personal career coaching throughout the program.
• During three study trips to Switzerland (ETH, EPFL and CERN), the USA (Harvard, Yale, MIT and selected technology companies in New York) and China (leading tech companies in Beijing and Shanghai), students visit leading innovation ecosystems.
• Graduates of the program have in-depth digital technology and business expertise. They also have the necessary methodological skills to implement a start-up idea in the digital sector as well as a comprehensive digital transformation in an existing organization.

"With her digital know-how, entrepreneurial experience and strong network with the innovation hotspots of Switzerland and the USA, Sunnie J. Groeneveld is the ideal co-director of the program," says Manuel P. Nappo, Head of the Institute for Digital Business at the HWZ. 

Groeneveld founded the consulting firm Inspire 925, was the first managing director of the digitalswitzerland location initiative and now sits on the board of directors of three medium-sized Swiss companies in the IT, engineering and media sectors. She is also the author of the book "Inspired at Work" (Versus Verlag), was named one of the "Top 100 Women in Business" and was included in Forbes business magazine's "30 under 30" list for German-speaking countries. She has lived in the USA for several years, worked in Silicon Valley and New York and has a degree in economics from Yale University.
 

For individual projects, Apple attracted well-known filmmakers such as Steven Spielberg and J. J. Abrams, as well as Hollywood stars such as Jennifer Aniston and Resse Witherspoon. Spielberg himself came to Cupertino to present the service.

The TV app on Apple devices is also being expanded. Users will be able to subscribe to and use individual pay channels directly there. In the US, for example, HBO, Showtime and Hulu are included. Internationally, channels from the respective countries will be available, it said without further details.

The app is also said to make personalized suggestions based on what shows have been watched so far. The app will be available for the first time not only on Apple devices, but also on TVs from Samsung, LG and Sony, as well as on streaming boxes from Roku and Amazon's Fire TV. In addition, the app, which is currently available in ten countries, will soon be usable worldwide.

Another subscription service called "Apple Arcade" will offer more than 100 paid games from the App Store for a monthly fee starting in the fall. There will be no advertising or additional fees. Initially, there were no details about the subscription price or the available game titles.

In the U.S., there will also be an Apple credit card, which the company will issue together with the bank Goldman Sachs. Among other things, the company promises strict data protection: "Apple doesn't know what and where they bought, and what they paid for it."

In addition to the virtual version of the card in Apple devices, there is also to be a physical card made of titanium, on which only the user's name is written next to the chip - no numbers or signature, so that this data cannot be stolen. However, this data can be accessed via the app on the iPhone.

New news subscription

Apple is also expanding its product offering with a news subscription service that provides access to content from various media for a monthly fee. The "Apple News Plus" service will make content from around 300 magazines available in the USA and Canada.

Of the major daily newspapers, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and the Canadian The Star in the process. It had already leaked out that the New York Times and the Washington Post did not want to join the service, preferring to rely on selling their subscriptions themselves.

The offer costs $9.99 per month - family members can read along for that price. All individual subscriptions together would cost $8,000 a year, Apple explained.

An important function of the app could be personalized suggestions for new magazine issues and individual articles. The layout of the articles is specially adapted to the screen size of the iPhone and iPad.

Apple had already bought the app "Texture" some time ago, which had deals with various magazine publishers in the US. No details were initially given about availability in Germany. The app is due to come to Australia and the UK in the fall. Whether and when the service will come to Germany, Austria or Switzerland was not said. (SDA)

Since March 1, 2019, Andrea Meier and Julia Fehlbaum have taken over the management of Swisscom Sponsorship in co-lead. The long-standing Swisscom employees know the portfolio as well as the existing partners very well. Both have a Master of Science in Business Administration from the University of Bern and were part of the Swisscom Talent Program.

Achill Prakash, Head of Marketing & Image Communications: "With Andrea and Julia, we were able to win two proven sponsorship experts for the task. As a modern client, it is central for us that team leadership can also be taken on in a co-sharing approach." 

Andrea Meier and Julia Fehlbaum take over the position from Tom Rieder, who from now on invests his energy in the startup he co-founded, Dloop, provider of Noow.art.

Swisscom has been the main sponsor of Swiss-Ski for many years, is the presenting partner of the Energy concert series, and is involved with all Super League clubs as a partner of the Swiss Football League. Since the end of 2018, Swisscom has also been active in eSports with the Swisscom Hero League. In the B2B area, the focus is on own formats, platforms of the NZZ Media Group and the participation in the Digital Festival company.