The 69th Berlin International Film Festival will take place from February 7-17, 2019. Berlinale time is always also the time of the bears. They roam the city, ride the subway, stand at Chinese takeaways and nestle against pillars in underpasses.

Velvet has been responsible for the festival appearance since 2016 and has enriched the capital in an animalistic way with the bear posters. With the 69th edition of the festival, Dieter Kosslik says goodbye after 18 years as director of the Berlinale. To mark his departure, the current advertising campaign reveals the secret of the Bears. The subjects show who has been hiding under the costumes in recent years: Berliners and their fascination with the world's largest public festival.

Responsible at the BerlinaleDieter Kosslick (Festival Director), Anne Marburger (Head of Communications). Responsible at Velvet Creative OfficeWolfgang Möhrle, Julia Krummenacher (consulting), Peter Moser (AD), Jürg Schaffhuser (CD), Eva Wolf (graphics, typography), Oliver Zwimpfer (image montage and editing). PhotographyOlaf Heine Studio.

The Ski pass offer "Snow-Deal" with dynamic prices has been generally well received by guests in Engadin St. Moritz, as the Upper Engadin mountain railroads and Engadin St. Moritz Tourism announced on the occasion of an initial assessment: more than a third of all guests who have purchased day or multi-day tickets have benefited from the Snow Deal with a corresponding early booking discount.

Ski passes can still be booked at advantageous prices for the sports weeks and the spring vacation until Easter. Families in particular benefit from interesting discounts. The tourism organization has also presented the Allegra campaign for spring skiing. 

Buyers of day tickets, on the other hand, are less keen to commit to a fixed day and are booking far less in advance. Markus Meili, Managing Director of Engadin St. Moritz Mountains: "The online share of day, half-day and afternoon tickets has so far amounted to 11% and the average price is slightly higher than in the previous year."

After these initial experiences, Markus Meili concludes that "the majority of guests have responded positively to the Snow Deal, but you can't please everyone. Negative guest feedback was within the expected range". In addition to technical questions, particularly regarding the online store, there was also feedback regarding price and weather. It should be noted that the price is determined by demand (i.e. the number of purchases by guests) and that the early booking discount decreases between the 15th and the last day before redemption.

The Snow Deal offer is not a weather-dependent price model, so there are no corresponding discounts due to bad weather. 

TV streaming provider Zattoo has acquired the B2C business of Magine TV Germany as of January 28, 2019. The company will discontinue its TV streaming service in Germany at the end of February. 150,000 active Magine users will receive a welcome offer from European market leader Zattoo: They can test Zattoo PREMIUM for two months free of charge.

Nick Brambring, CEO of Zattoo International: "Zattoo has always believed in the combination of strong TV content and modern distribution through streaming, enabling multi-screen and timeshift usage. Our mission is to build an excellent TV streaming platform to bring live and on-demand TV to more and more users. This both under our own brand and in partnerships. We regret that we are losing Magine as a partner in the development of a market for modern TV distribution in Germany. In return, we gain more users and can therefore invest even more in our product."

The cloud-based over-the-top service Magine TV was founded in Sweden in March 2013. It has been available to users in Germany since April 2014 and offers a high-quality range of all relevant free TV and many pay TV channels in HD in Germany. Magine TV has now decided to withdraw from the German TV streaming market with its retail business. 

"Magine started as a provider of web TV for end customers, but for some time has been pursuing a strategy of being primarily a business-to-business provider," said Kamal Bherwani, Chairman of Magine. "Accordingly, we have now decided to stop focusing on multiple business models and instead focus on our B2B strategy. As a result, we are selling our B2C business to our renowned competitor and current partner Zattoo. We sincerely thank all Magine TV users for their loyalty. With Zattoo, our users are in good hands and will be able to stream high-quality TV with a variety of TV channels as usual." Magine will focus on the global B2B business with the video streaming platform provider MaginePro and offer comprehensive video streaming solutions for web platforms and content providers.

Zattoo is a Swiss company that offers a contemporary alternative to cable TV. Users consume TV on smart TVs or via streaming devices, for example Amazon Fire and Apple TV. They can also use Zattoo on mobile Internet-enabled devices such as smartphones or tablets and watch time-shifted TV. Zattoo operates under its own brand in Germany and Switzerland. The company also offers its solution to partners such as 1&1 and TV Spielfilm in Germany, Europe and the USA, whose customers use the Zattoo service under the partner brand.

The centerpiece is the Audi e-Hub (www.e-hub.swiss), the information platform on the subject of e-mobility, which links the term e-mobility with Audi. With the aim of positioning Audi as an opinion leader and as a technology leader in the automotive industry.

"The concept we developed is based on staging: Communication was not only dependent on interests and behavior, but also on the level of interaction in the entire customer journey," says Andreas J. Bartneck, MediaCom project manager. 

"Many elements of the Audi e-tron campaign are digital and innovative to match the product. The heart of the e-tron communication is the e-Hub." says Annunziata Passarello, Digital Lead MediaCom Switzerland." "Various digital measures such as content, social media ads, programmatic customized display ads behind which the most diverse strategies are controlled, native ads as well as progressive and surprisingly designed search ads arouse interest and direct the interested party to the e-Hub."

"The aim of the e-Hub is to provide comprehensive information on the topic of electromobility," says Olivier Pasche, Team Leader Marketing Communication Audi. "Here, we don't limit ourselves to the topic of cars, but continuously publish relevant articles about e-mobility, range and sustainability. We have derived the topics 100% from the needs of consumers." 

Extensive research was conducted to analyze what content consumers are interested in around the topic of e-mobility. And, of course, everything about the benefits and development of the Audi e-tron, as well as the results of the Audi Formula E team.

After signing up for the newsletter, the user receives personalized updates on the e-tron and the e-Hub. The content (interviews, reports, images, infographics, videos, event coverage) is designed and journalistically implemented by the Ringier Brand Studio. 

For this purpose, Y&R Group Switzerland has developed a communication campaign that directs traffic to the e-Hub via both online and offline media.

"With the e-Hub, content is consistently placed at the center. This narrative approach creates added value and entertainment for users, creates awareness for the Audi e-tron and raises awareness for the entire complex of e-mobility topics," says Fabian Zürcher, Head of Brand Studio. "The extraordinarily high dwell time shows that content and implementation work."

Responsible at Audi: 

Livio Piatti (Head of Marketing), Olivier Pasche (Team Leader Marketing Communication), Corinne Grollmuss (Marketing Communication Manager), Franziska Schmidt (Digital Marketing Manager)

Responsible at MediaCom: 

Andreas J. Bartneck (Project Manager) Annunziata Passarello (Digital Lead), Dominik Mönnighoff (Senior Digital Communication Planner), David Burow (Senior Communication Planner), Tobias Kober (Chief Digital Officer), Ahmad Hoteit (Client Service Director), Minh Vuong (Communications Planning Manager)

Responsible at Ringier Brand Studio: 

Fabian Zürcher (Head of Brand Studio), Adrian Schulthess (Content Engineer), Benjamin Rüegg (Web Development), Mathieu Gilliand (Head of Creative Video), Christof Kalt (Photo Editor),

Responsible at Swiss Online Publishing:

Myriam Blal (Consulting & Project Management), Nicoletta Wartmann, Heike Gross (Social Media Content Creation), Elena Fiorenza (Content Publishing), Adrian Schedle (Nurturing Execution), Julian Schweizer (Social Media & Nurturing Strategy)

Responsible at Y&R Wunderman: 

Swen Morath (Chief Creative Officer), Valeska Kraus, Sandro Tschuor, Mark Soukup, Sonja Bernardi, Pirmin Wyss (Strategy), Andrei Vid (AD), Diana Zberg (Graphics), Winfried Schneider (Text), Rafael Tucev, Marlon Perini (Programming)

Tobie Witzig will join the management of Nemuk AG in February 2019. His appointment follows his work as CEO of AZ Direct AG Switzerland. As a founding member and member of the Board of Directors of Nemuk AG, Tobie Witzig has been closely associated with Nemuk since 2001. He now complements the existing partners in terms of strategic orientation and day-to-day business. With Tobie Witzig, Nemuk is focusing more consistently on data-based dialog marketing services. As a permission marketing pioneer, Nemuk has many years of experience in lead management and e-mail marketing as well as in storytelling, online video and managed services. These areas are continuously being expanded and developed. This includes multi-channel marketing and marketing automation as well as consulting on all aspects of data, processes and dialog.

About Tobie Witzig: Tobie Witzig has been fascinated by data, processes and customer dialog for over 20 years. First as Head of Direct Marketing at major Swiss companies, later as owner of Worx Solutions (now Witzig Solutions), then for 13 years as CEO of the former contact management specialist rbc Solutions (now MS Direct), and most recently as CEO of AZ Direct AG Switzerland, which is part of Bertelsmann's Digital Marketing division. The business economist FH with a Master's degree in Business Information Management is a specialist lecturer in the field of customer relationship management and is a member of the advisory board of the Institute for Marketing Management at the ZHAW.

Nemuk offers solutions and services for digital dialog marketing along the customer journey. The focus is on acquiring new customers and maintaining existing customers. Nemuk relies on tools such as e-mail marketing, marketing automation and multi-channel marketing and has realized over 500 projects for mainly national clients from all sectors. The agency was founded on February 1, 2001 and is owner-managed. The core team is supported by freelancers and partners. Nemuk is the only certified emarsys partner in Switzerland.

Here, however, we are dealing with something else: conflicts that burn with emotion, in which feelings, values and world views cannot simply be faded out. So it's not primarily about professional conflicts. Instead, the book provides a healthy dose of psychologically sound, guidebook-style life advice. Daniel Shapiro has already brought emotion to the negotiating table in his earlier books.

This is also the case here. It all sounds logical and plausible, also because he uses the theme of identity as a collective term for our values and ideas, but it's not really new. After all, once you've let his advice sink in, you sometimes get the feeling that you're rediscovering familiar wisdom. Common sense, such as "always look at your own nose first" or "the wiser gives in. Shapiro's book aims to resolve conflicts as quickly as possible or to avoid them altogether. A recommendation from getAbstract for all those who want to minimize and overcome their private and professional conflicts.

Negotiating. The new success method from Harvard.

Author: Daniel Shapiro

Publisher: Campus, 2018

Pages: 352

ISBN: 9783593509327

This article was written in collaboration with getAbstract, Lucerne.

For 70 years, the 5-star Hotel Arlberg in Lech has been run by the Schneider family. Its guests have included Lady Di, among others. In 2017, the third generation, Patrick Krummenacher and Benjamin Schofer, joined the hotel management and with it some new and innovative ideas for the traditional house. Both graduated from the renowned "Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne" and subsequently gained their experience in Zurich, Vienna, Gstaad and Los Angeles.

The takeover of the couple created the task of attracting new and younger guests to the house. For example, the hotel is focusing on consistent communication on various digital channels and has developed a new visual identity for the hotel. On Tripadvisor, the hotel is now one of the top 5 hotels in the region and was recently voted one of the best luxury hotels in Austria with the "Travelers' Choice Award".

"The soul of the hotel should already be felt at home." says Patrick Krummenacher. He keeps his customers up to date on the daily goings-on via Instagram and Facebook. The posts often have several hundred likes. But the company also wanted to do justice to the customer experience on its own website. After all, a website is the shop window of any company on the Internet.

Many agencies were considered for the implementation. Despite the lack of reference projects in the hotel industry, the digital agency Y7K was able to convince. In a first step, it was central for Y7K to get to know the hotel and its history. In doing so, its uniqueness was to flow into the storytelling of the website. At the same time, the challenge was to keep the interface clear despite the exciting stories. Since the beginning of this winter season, the website is now online.

Initial successes, such as the strong increase in booking inquiries and an above-average visit time of 120 seconds - which is far above the industry-wide average - have already been recorded.

Responsible at Y7K: Ruben Feurer, Timo Staub, Vedran Žgela.

Responsible at Hotel Arlberg: Patrick Krummenacher, Benjamin Schofer.

"Luzi Bürkli led the Bündner Tagblatt with a wealth of ideas and great commitment," says a recent Somedia press release. Together with his team, he succeeded in giving the oldest daily newspaper in Graubünden a modern and unmistakable face. Among other things, he also launched the popular series "BT in der Beiz" in front of a live audience, which was recorded and broadcast by TV.

Commenting on his time at the Bündner Tagblatt, Bürkli himself says: "It was a great pleasure for me to take on the exciting and at the same time challenging task". Although the Bündner Tagblatt is very close to his heart, he wants to take on another professional challenge. After many years of working as a journalist and as head of the media office at the Canton of Graubünden, Luzi Bürki joined the Bündner Tagblatt team in 2015, initially as editor and member of the chief editorial team. In November of the same year, he took over as editor-in-chief from Larissa Bieler.

Luzi Bürkli leaves the Bündner Tagblatt. 

Annabelle magazine is adapting its editorial model by summer 2019. In the future, the magazine and the online portal will be managed by a joint editorial team that will also look after the traditional brand's strong community. This has developed very positively in the course of the anniversary campaign, in which 80 outstanding Swiss women doers were portrayed. The successful "Schweizer Macherinnen" (Swiss Women Doers) section will remain a fixed feature even after the anniversary year 2018. The magazine with a focus on Swiss women will continue to be published 18 times a year.

Since 2013, according to Media Focus, gross circulation in the women's and people magazine segment has declined by more than 50 percent, including 21 percent in 2018 alone. In addition, revenues from the reader market have also declined. In response to this and to ensure the continued existence of the title, Annabelle has implemented various measures in recent years. Now, the way the editorial team functions is being completely transformed. In the future, Annabelle will increasingly procure services from external suppliers and freelance journalists and focus more on partnerships with other titles.

The economically necessary adjustment of the editorial model will result in 14 terminations - subject to the employees' legal rights of participation. The restructuring will take place in stages and is expected to last until July 2019. Tamedia will support the affected employees with professional reorientation. In addition, a social plan will be applied.

Editor-in-chief Silvia Binggeli has decided to step down from her current role in summer 2019 following the successful transition to the new editorial model: "Working for this unique title has been a huge privilege for me. I am very grateful for this time; and glad that the title will continue in this economically challenging environment. At the same time, after 20 years, I see the transition as the right time for me to move on and tackle new things."

According to various surveys, around 40% of all employed people are definitely open to new professional challenges. However, these so-called "latent jobseekers" generally do not have up-to-date application documents. In occupational groups with a pronounced shortage of skilled workers, these people are in demand but difficult to reach. Thanks to the strong presence of the two specialized job platforms in specialist media, social media or via the in-house QualiProfil CV database, the job platforms are also able to address people who are not actively looking for a job with their job advertisements.

With the new "Apply via profile link" function, the two specialist platforms give these latent jobseekers a simple and low-threshold way to respond and express their interest in a position to the advertising company. In such a case, the company receives an e-mail with the contact details and the QualiProfile, Xing or Linkedin profile of the interested person.

The advertiser can activate this new and free application option when placing an advertisement and also deactivate it again at any time. If the application option is activated, the job advertisement then contains a button "Apply now spontaneously", which contains this additional application option. Further information is available online at here and here.

The newly implemented system represents a milestone for Swisscard and sets the course for the future in the Customer Care Center. The innovative technology ensures reduced call duration and significantly improves the chance of a customer's request being dealt with at the very first contact. The result is a greatly improved customer experience. The Swisscard-specific AI logic was developed in collaboration with the startup Spitch and implemented at Swisscard. It is the first professional speech recognition solution that understands Swiss German. Swisscard was recently awarded the "Golden Headset Award 2018" in the Innovation category for this.

The system, which is based on Swisscard-specific AI logic, answers the customer call after the first ringtone and asks the reason for the call. The speech recognition solution understands the spoken text and processes it semantically. The voiced customer concern is transcribed into High German in real time, interpreted, prioritized and assigned to the best qualified customer service employee available for the specific concern.

The customer receives the transcript together with the reason for the call as a pop-up on his screen. This means that the customer's concerns are already known to him or her before the actual call begins. The transcripts serve customer service employees as an optimal introduction to an effective and professional conversation. As a result, call times are noticeably shortened and customers can be offered solutions to their problems much more quickly.

The transcripts are also a valuable input for big data analytics applications. In the medium term, the solution also has the potential to handle simple customer issues such as card blocking fully automatically. With this award-winning speech recognition solution, Swisscard is able to further expand its customer service in terms of quality.

Gregorio Uglioni, Head of Transformation Operation Services at Swisscard, says: "Digitalization represents a fundamental change in the way we work at Swisscard. It opens up new possibilities to greatly improve the customer experience and enables new ways of working. The implementation of the speech recognition solution by Spitch based on Swisscard-specific AI logic has led to an exchange of know-how and has left a lasting mark on Swisscard as a company. The experience we have gained shows us that, with strong business partners, we are ideally prepared for changes in the future. Our customers are at the center of this and benefit directly from this innovative spirit."

Jürg Schleier, Country Manager DACH at Spitch, comments on the realized project as follows: "The Swisscard project realized on the basis of our solution is further striking proof that the future belongs to mature AI-based voice solutions such as those offered by Spitch. Companies are not only increasingly recognizing that these scalable solutions enable substantial efficiency gains and have significant cost reduction potential. There is also a growing recognition that customers value the speed, simplicity, and rapid problem resolution that such systems offer. We are very proud that Swisscard has been awarded the Golden Headset Award 2018 for this outstanding solution."

Swiss managers initially rate the automation of processes (78 percent) as the most important investment goals for the use of artificial intelligence. Equally relevant, albeit with a lower proportion of "very important" votes, managers find the goal of making employees more productive through AI. In addition, the majority of companies intend to use smart technology to improve predictive maintenance (76 percent) and to better evaluate and use customer data (76 percent).

"AI is becoming an increasingly important production tool in many business areas," says Dr. Bruno Messmer, head of digital strategy consulting at DXC in Switzerland. "Thanks to advances in pattern recognition, which is of great importance for the automatic analysis of texts and images, the technology is increasingly being used to take over work that relieves people."

Here's an example: A medium-sized lighting manufacturer receives around 50,000 requests for quotation per year - around two and a half to three million documents are submitted by customers for review. Most of these are complete construction specifications, the majority of which are not relevant for the lighting technology offer. In the past, 80 employees had to sift through the documents. Today, an AI-based software takes over this monotonous process. The AI system frees the sales force from time-consuming routine tasks. This allows salespeople to focus on what they do best - qualified human-to-human communication. In this interaction between the sales representative and the customer, for example, challenges from the field are discussed that cannot be found in any machine-readable document and from which upselling options can arise.

"The capabilities of AI systems already exceed those of humans in certain areas, so employees can be relieved of routine work and their time, energy and talents can be used for more meaningful tasks," says Bruno Messmer.

DXC Technology conducted the "Artificial Intelligence" study in September 2018 via a market research institute. In Switzerland, N=100 executives with decision-making authority in digital transformation were surveyed. Industry focus areas of the study are: Industry, Financial Services, Retail & Consumer Goods.