Migros intends to continue its commitment to sustainability.Migros' new manifesto spot exemplifies the history of sustainability since its founding, emphasizing that new ideas have never had it easy. Additional short spots highlight other current and future sustainability achievements.In addition to classic channels such as print, posters as well as POS communication, this campaign heralds a new approach to moving image series: Migros' commitment to sustainability is being digitally communicated with the relaunch of the Website is presented in a completely new look and offers a new design as well as an improved user experience (UX) on all end devices. With a storytelling approach, sustainability topics are presented in a modern way. In this way, the revamped site creates more relevance and depth among visitors and increases the desire to linger and browse. The new campaign is also accompanied by various digital measures on e-boards, displays and other formats.The campaign was designed in collaboration with the agency Jung von Matt/Limmat.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pFT4U8UL_60Migros shows how it has been committed to sustainability for years.

Reto Baumgartner is the owner and member of the management board of MySign AG and is primarily involved in digital branding.Companies have been managed hierarchically since industrialization. Hierarchical organizations were established at a time when people were still uneducated, cheap and interchangeable workers. Today, employees are highly trained and earn good salaries. Nevertheless, most companies are still managed using yesterday's logic. The boss decides and prioritizes. Things that are considered unimportant from the boss's point of view are left undone. Regardless of how efficient and structured an organization is, the line manager is always the bottleneck in a hierarchical structure. In an increasingly complex, volatile and fast-moving market, this limits the agility of a company enormously, which is why it is no coincidence that small companies are the most innovative today and corporations have to make great efforts to ensure that they do not miss out on developments. In a complex system, hierarchical decision-making structures are too slow and inadequate. In order to seize opportunities immediately and react to changes, a structure is needed that allows more autonomy on the front line. Nature shows us how: Every human cell functions with a high degree of autonomy. If the brain had to focus all its energy on ensuring that every cell fulfilled its function, the body would be far less efficient and the brain would have no capacity to deal with external influences.why shouldn't something that works well in nature also work in an organization? Forms of distributed responsibility and self-organization are much more agile and employees who can work autonomously and on their own responsibility are more motivated and committed. It's time for a rethink.

The new Credit Suisse campaign focuses on the unpredictability of life.Changing careers, having children, building a house, retirement, inheritance - life today is as exciting as it is unpredictable, and Credit Suisse has an offer to match. Whatever happens in life - it has a direct impact on your finances. That's why Credit Suisse's new campaign points out that its financial planning offering is designed to adapt to changing conditions at any time. The print campaign shows precisely those moments when life changes. A man reflects on his standard of living in old age, a woman enjoys professional success, a mother thinks about the next generation and the increasing complexity of finances that comes with it. Always close to life and the reality of people in Switzerland.

The Sales Power Conference will take place on November 8 and 9 at the GDI in Rüschlikon.Sales specialists are living in a time of upheaval: new customer types, new channels - and therefore completely new challenges. How will they achieve their sales targets in the future? And what makes them successful? Sales Power, the first specialist conference for managers and executives in sales and distribution, provides the relevant answers, with speakers including Dr. eoec. Christian Belz, hard-selling expert Martin Linbeck, style expert Simone C. Hensch, exceptional athlete Thomas Geierspichler and digital expert Thomas Bahc. here.

Freelancers need efficiency. Image: 99designs1. work in a more structured way / separate work and private lifeMany freelancers reject the typical "9 to 5" working model. They want to benefit from the flexibility and freedom that self-employment brings. However, this also means that freelancers work longer hours on average than employees. However, more hours do not automatically make you more efficient. In order to invest the time spent in the best possible way, a strict separation of work and private life is unavoidable. This is best achieved by structuring the working day with fixed times and breaks around your own commitments, needs and preferences.2. benefit from the right productivity toolsThe best way to eliminate the chaos in your head is to use project management tools such as Asana and Wunderlist. They help you keep track of projects and tasks and always know what needs to be done and when. You should also use Toogl to monitor how much time it takes to complete individual tasks. This not only allows you to measure working hours, but also to demand an appropriate hourly wage.3. fast and smooth communicationEven if you sometimes think that the quickest way between two people is by email, you should still avoid writing a digital message for every little thing. This not only annoys the recipient, but is also very time-consuming. Tools such as Slack, for example, help to communicate with customers and partners more easily and quickly. This is particularly helpful when it comes to small changes or quick questions. Alternatively, you can also pick up the phone and clarify important questions over the phone.4. maintenance and development of a networkWorking independently at home does not mean having to work alone. Quite the opposite: building and maintaining a network is important - no matter what field you work in. If you are in contact with other freelancers, you can benefit from their expertise in different areas and exchange information. To make contacts, you should go to relevant conferences and events or work in a coworking space.5. set prioritiesIt sounds easier than it is to distinguish between the important and the unimportant. And that alone is not enough, because you also have to weigh up the urgency. Tasks can be very important, but not necessarily urgent. To maintain an overview, you should list the tasks and then prioritize them using a numbering system. This way, you don't lose track of your work and know exactly what needs to be done and when. "Those who work more efficiently are more motivated. An inefficient way of working means, for example, that you have to start a task again and again because you are distracted. Having to deal with the same thing over and over again sooner or later annoys everyone," says Marcos Gutiérrez, Managing Director at 99designs. He continues: "Those who complete their tasks in less time have more fun at work and can devote more time to customer care - the clients will be delighted!"

More and more Swiss cantons are present on social mediaSocial networks are an integral part of the cantons' communication strategies. If a canton is not officially represented on Twitter or Facebook, it is at least present with individual offices. Some cantons have deliberately chosen a decentralized communication concept. Some cantons are still cautious when it comes to social media or are still in a test phase. Cantons for which social media is the norm appreciate the advantages of citizen-oriented communication. 16 cantons have a Twitter account, 15 cantons have an official Facebook page and 13 cantons have a YouTube channel. The business network LinkedIn is more popular than Xing for the cantons in Switzerland. Google+ has become insignificant, while Instagram is gaining in value for the cantons. And in the canton of Vaud, the police are venturing onto Snapchat.The networksTwitter and Facebook almost on a par 16 Swiss cantons are active on Twitter, the cantons of Basel-Stadt and Uri have been since 2009. 13 cantons also announced the voting results via Twitter this weekend. As a rule, the cantons tweeted regularly, responded to inquiries, retweeted little and the interaction remained meagre. The cantons of Fribourg, Graubünden and Vaud, which have verified their Twitter accounts, have done their homework. The blue verification symbol on Twitter shows users that an account of public interest is authentic, and if a cantonal administration communicates spontaneously and entertainingly - which is rarely the case - these tweets lead to a relatively high interaction rate. Twitter is often used as an additional distribution channel for media releases. This is usually automated (e.g. via Buffer or Hootsuite). Automation offers advantages, especially time savings, but also has its risks. Not surprisingly, the most populous canton, Zurich, has the most followers. If you calculate the number of followers in relation to the number of inhabitants, the canton of Basel-Stadt tops this ranking, ahead of the cantons of Uri, Nidwalden and Glarus.15 cantons manage an official Facebook page. Visual communication also seems to have reached the administration. Many Facebook posts impress with attractive and appropriate images. Facebook is used more for "soft topics". The aim is to appeal to as large a section of the population as possible. The canton of Aargau has the most fans, ahead of Lucerne and St. Gallen. Interesting fact: The total number of fans of the cantons' Facebook pages and the total number of followers of the cantons' Twitter accounts are practically the same (around 45,000 people).YouTube has more potential, Google+ to forget aboutYouTube is still neglected by many cantons. Although 13 cantons have their own YouTube channel, the number of uploaded videos is low. There also seems to be room for improvement in the marketing of the videos, as the number of views, ratings and comments is low. The number of subscribers is also modest. They range from 24 (canton of Nidwalden) to 239 (canton of Graubünden). The social network Google+ has become insignificant for the cantons. Eight cantonal pages can be found on Google+. However, some of them have never posted, while others have been discontinued. The canton of Bern, for example, said goodbye to Google+ last year because the circle of interested parties remained modest.Business networks vary regionally, sluggish start with InstagramThe cantons of Glarus and Zurich maintain a free profile on Xing, while the cantons of Aargau and Lucerne have opted for a paid employer branding profile. In French-speaking Switzerland, the cantons rely on the international business network LinkedIn. The cantons of Geneva and Vaud surprise with a high number of followers (over 11,000), although hardly any news is published on LinkedIn, and many cantons are considering a start on the photo and video platform Instagram. The cantons of Jura, Lucerne and Solothurn have taken the plunge so far. Solothurn was only able to gain 7 subscribers with 32 posts.author: Jürg Kobel, Social Media Consultant, www.sozialemedien.ch

Those who are already preparing for the Christmas business can keep the tills ringing during the festive season.1. open wide the door: ensure full hosting powerTwo critical situations come together at Christmas: There are a lot more visitors in the online store - who also have a lot less time because they need to buy lots of presents quickly. This means that store operators should upgrade their system so that even sudden increases in visitor numbers do not lead to agonizingly long waiting times. In these hourglass seconds, the more impatient customers jump ship. Needs should therefore be determined in advance. The provider can also provide an estimate in terms of traffic and visitor numbers. Store operators should also ask about scalable servers whose performance can be adjusted on a monthly basis, and about caching and CDN (Content Delivery Networks).2 Tomorrow, children, there's to be something: Send parcels quicklyAlways underestimated: the additional logistics effort. Many more parcels have to be packed (really many more!) and many more parcels have to be sent. Is there enough material (boxes, filling material, adhesive tape, labels) available? Are there enough hands (temporary staff, employees) available to help out? And: It's not just your own store that has to deliver significantly more parcels to the recipient before Christmas - all other stores have to do the same. That's why you should clarify now what capacities your logistics partner can offer. Every minute counts before Christmas, nobody wants to receive their gift on the 27th. Clear information about the delivery time is important - which can then be adhered to.3 Let's be happy and trendy: Serving current trendsWhat are this year's top sellers? What are perennial favorites? Which products in the range have what it takes to be a popular gift - or which products need to be temporarily added to the range? These products can be bundled into separate "gift idea categories" to create attractive bundles. The gift categories also include adapting the tags and keywords of the products (see tip 4).4 . Descriptions never sound sweeter: Customizing SEM and textsThe search for a gift is far more complicated than the search for a specific product. Keywords such as "beautiful", "creative", "fun", "remote-controlled" or "under 25 euros" form the categories in which customers think before Christmas. Store operators should ensure that customers land on the store with these search terms and then also find what they are looking for there. The red tie is no longer just "business", "red" and "quality", but also "gift", "father-in-law" and "under 25 euros". Offering an advice function or customer segmentation is worth considering: "For parents", "For boys", "For sports freaks". The most important keywords in recent years have included: "unusual/special gifts", "cool gift", "find a gift", "make someone happy", "exclusive", "unusual", "offers" and "gift ideas".5. oh my goodness: Small gifts keep the customers comingA greeting from Santa as a parcel enclosure makes for a positive experience. Whether it's a little relaxing bath for after the stressful search for presents, a small Christmas tree decoration or a festive greetings card - the effect is always the same: everyone is happy to receive small gifts.6. up from the shelf, here I come: maximizing the warehouseA sold-out item always creates a bad mood before Christmas. Full of anticipation, the customer clicks through the store - and then can't order the item after all. What remains is disappointment. A negative feeling. This should not happen. Store operators should prevent this - ideally by always being able to deliver directly without any problems. The information that the desired item will be available again on January 7 is of no interest when looking for a gift.7. socks every year: What about returns management?This is also part of the Christmas business: customers buy a product with conviction - but the recipient still wants to exchange or return it immediately after Christmas. One conceivable solution: offer special return/exchange conditions at Christmas - deadline extensions, exchange campaigns until the end of December, free shipping for repeat orders or similar.8. ring, hotline, ring, ring: service, service and more serviceGift hunters rarely have the time to wait indefinite hours or days for a response. All inquiries should be answered as promptly as possible and always within a clearly communicated deadline. On the one hand, the service team must offer the appropriate resources - on the other hand, it is also worth answering the most frequently asked questions clearly in the store in order to keep the effort as low as possible. Unclear statements on the Internet lead to customers dropping out and higher service costs.9 Come, come all ye customers: beat the advertising drum vigorouslyEven if hardly any customers need to be encouraged to shop at Christmas, it is still essential to advertise your own store. After all, customers should buy here and not from the competition. Shop operators should be visible to their target groups before Christmas - both on social media and on all other communication channels, show products in beautiful pictures on Instagram or Pinterest - and use the viral effects. Advent calendars or pre-Christmas discount campaigns can also be publicized well on social media.10. ... and: think about your own Christmas!What about your own gifts? A salesperson who doesn't know where their head is and how to get all the presents before Christmas will hardly be able to give their customers a good feeling. A satisfied and confident salesperson, on the other hand, always makes for satisfied customers, and wishing them a Merry Christmas now would admittedly be premature - but store operators should still slowly but surely prepare for the Christmas business to ensure a happy and successful festive season.

Smartphones are increasingly turning young people in particular into smombies.The smombies are here. The smombie apocalypse has long since reached Switzerland. More and more people are wandering around completely disoriented and staring at their smartphones. "Smombie" is a portmanteau word made up of the terms "smartphone" and "zombie". According to Langenscheidt, it refers to people who are so distracted by constantly looking at their smartphone that they are barely aware of their surroundings. Thanks to booming augmented reality games such as Pokemon Go, the number of smombies has increased significantly once again.smombies may not be targeting our brains, but they do bring danger with them. One Study from Germany concludes that almost 17 percent of pedestrians use their smartphone in traffic. This means that younger people in particular are putting their lives at risk. sw

Every child in this world has the right to be a child."When I grow up, I want to be an astronaut" - every child in the world dreams of their future in one way or another. And simple objects, such as kitchen utensils or cardboard boxes, make the dream come true for a short time, letting you fly into space or discover foreign worlds. It is important for every child to live out their imagination and travel to a world full of laughter and adventure. It lets them forget their worries for a moment and escape from everyday life, regardless of whether they are growing up in Switzerland or in a refugee camp. This right of children to simply be children is emphasized by the new campaign of the leading Swiss children's aid organization Terre des hommes (Tdh), which is currently flickering across the screen and adorning posters in the larger Swiss cities. The focus is on the happiness of children at play, while the suffering that many children experience every day fades into the background for once. "Children want nothing more than to grow up protected and be able to develop. This is not only a completely natural need, it is an internationally recognized right," says Jessica Schweizer, Director of Communications and Fundraising at the aid organization, and mother. This fundamental right is illustrated by the slogan of the Tdh campaign: "Every child in the world has the right to be a child. If the voice at the end of the TV commercial sounds familiar, you will have recognized the Solothurn accent of SRF weather presenter Sandra Boner. The Tdh ambassador supports the campaign because it "focuses on the ability of all children to believe in a positive future, even under difficult circumstances. We adults must help them to make their dreams come true." The campaign was developed by the Bern-based creative agency Numero 10: "We are convinced that children have an extraordinary talent that must be protected: their imagination. The power of their dreams can turn any small piece of cardboard into an impregnable fortress! We decided to focus on these moments of carefreeness, freshness and lightness because it seemed to us the best way to emphasize that, whatever the situation, all children have the right to be children. Quite simply."

Six billion emojis are used worldwide every day.Over the next few years, Boost Group will create customized 'Collectibles' ideas for retailers and implement them based on the Emoji Company's trademarks and copyrights in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, Southern Europe and Russia.Boost will focus on the implementation of classic campaigns and collectibles' promotions, citing the resounding impact of the Minions campaign for Carrefour in Spain and France, which was successfully launched in 2015 and won this year's International Loyalty Award in London.Emoji's portfolio includes nearly 4,000 icons developed specifically for the licensing business. The official Emoji wordmark is known around the world and its icons are used by the most prestigious licensing partners in various industries for merchandising, promotions, loyalty programs and advertising purposes. "At Boost Group, we are very proud of this new license. There's no better way to express yourself than with icons, and they just put you in a good mood. Our marketing and creative team is already working on the exciting challenge of developing fun concepts, games and digital solutions," says Mario Schwegler, CEO Boost Group and adds: "We now offer our customers in Europe 360° brand promotions to activate shoppers and increase sales and average basket size. "We are delighted to be working with the Boost Group, which has a track record of delivering fantastic loyalty programs. Together we will establish the official emoji wordmark for various digital and physical collection promotions over the next few years. What our partners are looking for is consistency, and the official emoji wordmark ticks all the boxes for lasting fun and success. We are looking forward to the first launch," explains Marco Hüsges, CEO emoji Company.

KPI, Noun, masculineIt is as dangerous and effective as it sounds, the KPI. It haunts management presentations like a ghost, down to the marketing departments and over to the agencies. It spreads fear and terror like the KGB, the Committee for State Security in Russia. However, KPI does not stand for committee, but for key, P for performance and I for indicator. In German: Leistungskennzahl. We live in an age of quantifiability, our ideology is comparability, and data collection is the church that even atheists get into. No wonder, then, that there are not only business performance indicators for companies, but also a key performance indicator for projects, processes or developments. The Key Performance Indicator is used for planning security. Those who demand it want to hedge their bets, those who have to meet them tremble. It doesn't matter whether it's for productivity enhancement projects, business-relevant strategy changes or campaign performance measurements: Only the KPI proves success! And since every department, every agency, every person in charge has his or her own KPI, it can happen that a division manager optimizes project KPIs to the detriment of other corporate goals and thus harms the company. This in turn can lead to a knee-jerk reaction or denunciation, which brings us back to the secret service. Unlike the KGB, however, which usually works covertly, the KPI is currently the center of attention everywhere and mercilessly cleans up everything that does not perform measurably.Anecdotal Evidence, Adjective and noun, feminineWhich do you believe more - a clear number or a good story? Probably the number. But which do you prefer to hear? It's one of the great disputes in the creative industry: numbers are more compelling, but more boring - stories more inaccurate, but more entertaining.An evidence is an empirical proof. An anecdotal evidence is evidence based on observations (or just: anecdotes). The problem with anecdotal evidence is that you draw conclusions that may be based on false assumptions. The most famous example is the "black swan": Due to the fact that we observe only white swans at a lake, we cannot exclude that there are not also black swans. Anecdotes are not always provable, but nevertheless (or exactly therefore?) have great persuasive power. In surveys, we are nowadays again doing more qualitative individual interviews, which produce a kind of sum of anecdotal evidence, than quantitative mass surveys. In presentations, it is becoming increasingly important to provide stories and case studies (best cases, best practice) in addition to data. These make it credible that a project or concept is justified, especially when little or no data is available because it is a new idea. It is a paradox, because a belief in numbers can lead to rigidity of thought, and a belief in anecdotes can lead to illusions. The higher up in management, the fewer women, but the more anecdotal evidence. Because the greater the empirically provable trust in a person, the better the anecdotal evidence works.

According to Hubspot's model, the customer goes through three different stages in the purchasing process.Distribution makes content relevant. The right distribution technique brings the right content to the right target group at the right time, and today's customers have several touchpoints. For the key to success and a better understanding of these touchpoints, a sound analysis or measurement is necessary. The Buyer's Journey designed by Hubspot illustrates the different stages in the buying process that customers go through in their search for a solution to their problem: The Awareness stage, the Consideration stage and the Decision stage:

The Buyer's Journey from HubspotIn the awareness stage, the consumer becomes aware of the problem and tries to give it a name. In the Consideration stage, a solution is sought and the search for a possible provider is continued. As soon as possible providers are available, they are evaluated in the decision stage and a decision is made. The duration of this buying process can be longer depending on the product/service and the number of decision-makers, especially in B2B.qualitative individual interviews or focus groups are suitable for recording the buyer's journey in order to confirm the contact points of the journey. The use of focus groups makes it possible to record the frequency and relevance of contact points in order to optimize the buyer's journey. Cell phones are used in practice as a survey tool. During the survey phase, respondents can rate the contact points they come into contact with on their smartphone. The following presentation "different stages of Buyer's Journey" by Hubspot looks a little deeper into the appropriate use of content:

Different Stages of Buyer's Journey from HubspotThis shows which content formats and content types are suitable for the corresponding stage of the purchasing process. The relevant conditions are also taken into account depending on the stage. At the awareness stage, analyses and informative content are suitable for taking the user one step further. Solution-oriented content should be created and published for the Consideration stage and comparative content is useful for the Decision stage. Benchmarks, reviews and tests also help consumers in their decision-making process. In my last article on the impact of content formats, I described a few formats such as infographics and whitepapers: https://mk-marketing-und-kommunikation.hamster.ch/mediabros-content-august. There are, of course, a few more, as can be seen in the Hubspot illustration. The target group-oriented preparation and the distribution of the content adapted to the various stages of the purchasing process are decisive for the relevance of the content, and the inbound marketing method is ideally suited as a distribution method. What use is the best content if it is not found or shared by users? Finding the places where the target group is located is another very exciting challenge in content marketing. This includes knowing which communication channel to use in order to place the content there most efficiently.