The small chamber on Thursday approved the Federal Council's proposed tightening of the Tobacco Products Act in a key point. Specifically, advertising in press products is to be banned - unless they are intended mainly for the foreign market or exclusively for people working in the tobacco industry.

This was decided by the Council by 22 votes to 17 with 3 abstentions. A center-left majority prevailed. The previous committee had wanted to weaken the ban. Advertising in publications that are mainly sold to adults via subscriptions should remain permitted.

Different interpretation of the Constitution

The debate on this key point of the bill was heated at times. According to commission spokesman Damian Müller (FDP/LU), a strict interpretation of the constitutional article would make any advertisement that young people could see unconstitutional. However, the initiators had not interpreted the ban absolutely, but relatively. Therefore, there is room for maneuver.

Esther Friedli (SVP/SG) recalled that other popular initiatives had also not been implemented and referred to the discussions surrounding the SVP immigration initiative. Andrea Gmür-Schönenberger (center/LU) countered: Even if the parliament had made mistakes then, it was important not to make the same mistake again.

"If the constitution is changed, then we have to implement it," said Pirmin Bischof (center/SO). The wording of the initiative was absolutely unambiguous: "The federal government shall prohibit any kind of advertising for tobacco products that reaches children and adolescents.

Initiators for strict implementation

Hans Stöckli (SP/BE), one of the initiators of the tobacco advertising ban initiative, criticized the lax tobacco advertising regulations in Switzerland. If the initiative was implemented consistently, hundreds of thousands of people would soon smoke less. This would save billions of francs.

"Most of them start smoking as teenagers," said Maya Graf (Grüne/BL). Therefore, she said, tobacco advertising to young people should be banned. Health Minister Alain Berset also promoted strict implementation of the initiative.

Various exceptions

The Council of States did not follow the Federal Council in all points and partially weakened the bill. For example, the sale of tobacco products and electronic cigarettes by mobile sales staff in public places that can be visited by minors should not be banned. Here, a center-right majority prevailed by 22 votes to 18.

Direct, personally executed sales promotion for cigars and cigarillos by means of tastings and customer promotions should also remain possible - even in places to which minors have access. This decision was made by the Council of States with 23 to 17 votes.

In addition, tobacco advertising is to continue to be permitted in places open to the public, provided that it is neither visible nor accessible to minors. The Council of States also regulated the sponsoring of events in the same way. It decided this by 25 votes to 14 with 2 abstentions.

No obligation to report expenses

There was no opposition in the small chamber to further amendments to the Federal Council's draft. For example, the requirements for the age verification system for online sales and advertising are to be defined more precisely. In addition, the obligation to report expenditure on advertising, sales promotion and sponsorship for tobacco product manufacturers was deleted, as this was not a concern of the initiative.

In the overall vote, the Council of States adopted the partial revision of the Tobacco Products Act by 37 votes to 3 with 2 abstentions. The bill goes to the National Council.

The plan is to bring the new regulations into force from 2026. In February 2022, the people and the cantons approved the popular initiative "Yes to protecting children and young people from tobacco advertising. (SDA)

Founded by Johann Peter Jelmoli in 1833, the traditional Jelmoli department store is one of the oldest department stores in the world. During this time, Jelmoli has shaped the shopping behavior and the cityscape of Zurich.

With its anniversary campaign "Full of Stories", the agency Mona und Mateo shows how much Jelmoli identifies with the personal stories of its customers. The eye-catching shopping bags in "Jelmoli green" become the central element. Not only their contents, but also their owners contribute to the legend of the department store. The campaign therefore shows people in their everyday lives who were shopping at Jelmoli just a short time before - and are now experiencing their very own stories with them.

In addition to the awareness campaign, Mona and Mateo also designed and created the anniversary key visual. The green mythical creature is reminiscent of the "Züri-Leu" and thus expresses its attachment to the city and its inhabitants. At the same time, the key visual is intended to stand for the exciting grandeur with which Jelmoli has always inspired its clientele.

Mona and Mateo's work for Jelmoli includes posters, window and retail space design, as well as online measures and in-store advertising media, and will be in use for the entire duration of the anniversary.

Responsible at Jelmoli: Cécile Moser (Head of Marketing & Communications), Carmen Hirzel (Content Lead), Martina Piechocinski (Digital Marketing & Campaign Management). Responsible with Mona and Mateo (concept and implementation): Lesley Ryffel, Boris Stoll, Nicolas Peter, Nicole Waldis, Luc Sohm, Tabea Ott, Hannah Mey, Mona Fluri, Mateo Sacchetti. Photography: Marc Asekhame.

Allegra Passugger is the only independent and owner-managed spring in Graubünden and, according to its own claims, the oldest mineral water brand in Switzerland. The mineral water has been bubbling from the spring in the Rabiosa Gorge near Passugg for over 400 years.

The Zurich agency MetaDesign has now been commissioned to lead the Allegra Passugger brand into the future. The first results of the collaboration are to be seen from the beginning of 2024.

On Monday, the 53-member jury of experts reviewed a total of 169 project entries in the ten categories as part of the Jury Day evaluated. 45 projects made it onto the shortlist in at least one category. These submissions are among the best app projects of the year and can hope for further awards at the Award Night: Gold, Silver or Bronze. The shortlist has been available since Thursday on the Website of Best of Swiss Apps viewable.

Election starts end of September

Which projects are nominated for the Master of Swiss Apps 2023 will be announced on Tuesday. The readers' vote for the Master of Swiss Apps starts on Thursday. Subscribers to the Netzwochen newsletter are eligible to participate. Net tickerwho have registered by Wednesday.

Who will win the title of Master of Swiss Apps 2023 will be revealed at the Award Night on October 26 in Zurich's Kongresshaus.

The Best of Swiss Apps" Award annually honors outstanding apps - mobile applications and web apps - that have been commissioned by Swiss companies or developed for Swiss companies. In doing so, the sponsor Netzmedien aims to set quality standards and shine the spotlight on the Swiss app, software and mobile industry.

Nico Müller has been employed by the Acino Group as Head of Group Finance since 2021. Previously, he held various management positions at KPMG and the Daetwyler Group. Müller will take up his new position at APG|SGA at the beginning of March 2024. He succeeds Beat Hermann, who will leave the company at the end of March 2024 - after a short joint familiarization phase. (Werbewoche.ch reported).

Müller, 43, studied economics at the University of Bern. He is a Swiss certified public accountant and completed further training at the CFA Institute as a Chartered Financial Analyst.

The BTC is a nearly 40-year-old dance school with modern, minimalist décor - concrete walls, black ceilings and furniture. The rooms were designed specifically for dance. In terms of advertising, the BTC has long relied on humorous texts with a characteristic red background, as well as a classic, simple look. Over time, this became part of the institution's design THEN.

Stand out in black and white

To stand out from other dance schools and reflect the modern facilities, BTC worked with Kunde & Co to opt for a black and white imagery - which contrasts with the otherwise colorful images. This is to ensure a distinctive and consistent brand image.

The design DNA of the dance school formed the basis for the new look and update of the logo, keeping the red and white color scheme, but with a more modern touch. The red circle represents the center itself, and the line represents the dance floor. By placing the three words of the name vertically, more space could be used to emphasize the dance.

Dance in focus

In addition to a photo shoot featuring all BTC teachers, photos were also taken of various dance classes. All these visualizations now form the image base of the school and have been used in outdoor advertising, social media, the website and flyers.

In addition, the campaign includes 17 short dance films that were implemented for social media and the Internet. Filming took place in a Green Studio at NEP Switzerland. The footage was subsequently applied in the form of animations on background images showing BTC's facilities.

According to the agency, the new logo and design have been very well received by customers. In addition, the campaign has already attracted new - and younger - customers.

The anniversary campaign of Lowa in cooperation with Gore-Tex calls with the song "Beggin" to keep nature and the mountains clean. To this end, Nature Clean Up bags are distributed. The bags are intended to encourage consumers to collect their own or other people's trash in nature and dispose of it correctly later.

The campaign, conceived by Zimmermann Communications, is based on the song "Beggin'" by Madcon. The agency turns it into a play on words: on the one hand, "beg" translates both as "to ask" or "to plead," and on the other hand, the term is almost identical in writing and sound to the word "bag," meaning "pouch" or "pocket." Thus, people are called upon not to abuse the mountain world and nature, which is essential for all outdoor adventures, as a trash can.

The campaign is based on a main film and three cut-downs for various online applications. Three additional clips were prepared specifically for social media and are intended to inform viewers about how long the decomposition process of various materials in nature actually takes. While plastic hardly decomposes by itself in nature, this time can be reduced to zero immediately with a little help from people.

Various measures such as POS posters, window stickers and cardboard hangers were also implemented for advertising at the POS.

The campaign has been running since the beginning of September online and via the Lowa and Gore-Tex social media channels. The trade extension starts in Switzerland at the end of September and in Germany in October. Then retail partners supported the campaign at the POS. All advertising measures lead to the landing pages of the three countries Lowa.ch, Lowa.de and Lowa.at.

Responsible for Lowa sports shoes: Matthias Wanner (CSO); Michael Frank (Head of Marketing); Romina Stöcker, Angelika Schwindl (Marketing Manager). Responsible for W. L. Gore & Associates: Daniel Strukamp (Retail Marketing Gore-Tex Footwear). Responsible for Zimmermann Communications:  Christoff Strukamp (Creative Direction); Julia Hofmann (Art Direction); Sonja Zimmerli (Digital Art Direction); Lara Cavelti (Project Management); Rolf Zimmermann (Overall Responsibility). Production: Brand film.

As Chief Client Officer Media, Robin Jansen will support Dentsu's growth strategy and look after the expansion of media consulting services and the further professionalization of the media network's service quality, according to a statement.

In his new role, he works closely with the agencies and local client teams and reports to Georg Berzbach, Chief Executive Officer of Media Dentsu Germany & DACH.

Previously, Robin Jansen worked for the Publicis Group for almost ten years - most recently as Managing Director of Spark Foundry Germany. In the course of his career, he was also responsible for a large part of Zenith's existing and new client business and also gained extensive and international network experience at Group M (MEC - now Wavemaker) and on the client side for T-Mobile International.

"In an increasingly complex marketing world, clients require more specific and integrated agency solutions - based on relevant content, audience targeting, efficient technology and data usage," Jansen said of his new position. "The breadth and depth of the service offering at Dentsu is impressive, and especially the integrated approach to solutions for clients made possible by unique competencies in media, creative and CXM."

Pascal Mourier is an accomplished digital communications professional bringing more than 15 years of experience. Previously, he was managing partner of Swat, an agency belonging to the Gardeners Group, where he developed the business by expanding the service and client base throughout the Lake Geneva region.

For Pascal Mourier, the move is "a new and exciting challenge to make Miind a reference player in the Lake Geneva region and beyond when it comes to corporate digital strategy and the implementation of high-performance ecosystems."

Miind CEO François-Louis Noël is excited about the new addition: "We share the same business vision and way of working as Pascal: simplicity and efficiency first, with the goal of helping our clients to drive their business forward."

The cooperation between Audienzz and Ringier Advertising will create the widest-reach digital native offering in Switzerland, according to a joint statement on Tuesday. The network, on which the native ad campaigns of "Yaleo" are played out, now includes over 170 premium websites and apps in all Swiss language regions. This includes all titles of the media houses NZZ, Ringier and CH Media, as well as other partners such as Nau.ch and Comparis. All subject areas are covered, from news, finance and lifestyle to family and leisure. The strategic cooperation between Audienzz and Ringier Advertising would give advertisers access to Swiss quality publishers where they can place their campaigns in a targeted manner, according to the statement.

The advantage with Yaleo: Native ads are embedded directly in the editorial content or in the "Yaleo" feed that starts below an article and consists of article teasers and ad slots. In addition, they seamlessly adapt to the content and appearance of the website on which they are displayed. On the one hand, this guarantees optimal user experience and visibility and, on the other, offers advertisers maximum brand safety.

Automated creation and distribution with "Yaleo" Collect

Campaigns can either be booked classically via Audienzz and Ringier Advertising, entered independently with the programmatic Native Ad Manager from "Yaleo" or created completely automatically with "Yaleo"-Collect. Based on crawler technology, "Yaleo"-Collect reads images, text and links from predefined websites or web stores and creates fully automated image/text or video/text ads in over 1000 different designs. In particular, companies with a targeted content marketing or e-commerce strategy that want to use ads to generate traffic, but want to keep the operational effort of ad production low, would benefit from this option.

Pricing strategy based on CPC

Yaleo campaigns are billed using a pay-per-click model with a flexible pricing strategy. Direct access to the real-time dashboard of the Audienzz Adconsole allows the performance of the campaigns to be viewed at any time. This makes it possible to continuously adjust them to the desired KPIs such as click-through rate, generated leads or conversions.

Product & service, innovation, profitability, sustainability, management and employer: these factors shape the good reputation of companies. And this good reputation ensures new and loyal customers, attracts the best talents, increases social acceptance and brings support from all stakeholders.

Media-mediated information and communication play a key role in shaping opinions. For the benchmark study "Reputation of Management Consultancies and Auditing Firms in Switzerland 2023", all reputation-relevant mentions of the selected companies from Swiss media, social media and other online sources were evaluated with the aid of AI over a period of 12 months.

BCG at the top of management consultancies

The top 5 ranking of management consultancies shows The Boston Consulting Group at the top. The company is particularly convincing in the areas of product & service, profitability, management and as an employer, and also scores well in terms of sustainability.

Second-placed Accenture is the only company in the top group to be present in all reputation dimensions, albeit with cutbacks in the areas of management and employer. AlixPartners, Bain & Company and Egon Zehnder follow in the other ranks. These three consulting firms already have several gaps in their reputation profiles and are not present in all topics that are important for reputation.

The detailed results show that the reputation scores of the top 5 companies are relatively close overall, but their strengths and weaknesses are quite different.

Other management consultancies evaluated in the study include Helbling, McKinsey, Oliver Wyman, Roland Berger, Simon-Kucher and Zühlke.

PwC with clear top position in auditor ranking

The ranking of auditing firms shows PwC in first place. The company shows a balanced reputation profile with only one weakness in the area of management.

PwC is followed by Deloitte - which also has a strong profile - and then by Mazars, which is not quite as prominent, and the two industry giants KPMG and EY. The "Big Four" are thus fully represented in the top 5. The gaps in reputation performance within the top five companies are significantly larger than among the management consultants.

Other auditors evaluated in the study include Balmer-Etienne, BDO, Grant Thornton and OBT.

Big Four dominate media presence

Visibility is an essential prerequisite for a strong media-based reputation. The Big Four - Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC - have by a huge margin the greatest presence in the media and together account for over 90% of all contributions by the auditing firms surveyed. Among the management consultants, Accenture and McKinsey stand out in this respect, being responsible for more than half of the media contributions of the consulting firms. BCG, Bain and the other consultants are clearly behind them in terms of visibility.

Studies as the main pillar of media relations - and reputation

According to the Swissreputation.group, studies and research results are the most important part of media relations, especially for the large consulting and auditing firms. The content reflects the major topics of the economy and society and ranges from market topics such as e-mobility, banks, food, retail, luxury goods or real estate to factual topics such as digitalization, sustainability, climate change, artificial intelligence, shortage of skilled workers, energy costs or cybercrime to economic topics on the economy, inflation, taxes or healthcare.

Expressed in figures, the analyses showed that more than 55 percent of all media reports on the consulting companies had study results as their content, or that a study was quoted. For the auditors, this figure was over 65 percent, with individual companies even achieving a share approaching 75 percent.

Reputation important in employer branding

Highly qualified employees are the most important resource, both for consulting firms and for auditors. A positive media perception is therefore an important factor in the competition for the best talent. Most of the companies analyzed do a good job of this and succeed in placing the employer brand successfully in the media.

The reputation factor "management", in which some of the top 5 perform below average, gets in their way. In many cases, this relates to incidents at foreign subsidiaries, which also resonated in the Swiss media.

For example, the Wirecard scandal (EY Germany), suspicion of involvement in Cum-Ex transactions and house searches (KPMG Germany), disclosure of confidential documents (PwC Australia), search of offices in Shanghai by Chinese authorities (Bain China) or a rabble-rousing, drunken Deloitte manager (UK).

These cases shake confidence in corporate leadership and pose significant reputational risks.

Reputation measurement using AI

For the current benchmark study, an AI-supported text analysis was used. This specially trained algorithm evaluates - after pre-filtering all media contributions of the selected companies - the statements semantically and assigns them to the thematic reputation dimensions. Furthermore, the tonality of the statements (positive/neutral/negative) is evaluated. To calculate the reputation values, the visibility (number of statements) and the tonality are taken into account for each dimension. Finally, these results are statistically weighted and the overall rank is calculated.

The full results of the study are available in fee-based study reports, in each case for the category "Management consultancies" and for the category "Auditing firms" respectively. The reputation scores are presented in detail, as are the visibility, tonality and media sources of the individual companies. The study results are commented throughout. An individual summary and coordinated recommendations for action are provided for each client. Complete information on the study reports is available from Swissreputation.group.

With a focus on the construction industry, AAA Digital offers customized printing solutions for investors, builders, architects and professional planners.

Schläfle Trittibach was commissioned to develop an introductory campaign for this target group. For this purpose, passionate and imaginative renderings of fictitious building projects were created. They are intended to show that AAA Digital can fulfill all the print and plot requests of architects and planners, even the most unusual ones.

The campaign will be seen on posters and at POS. In addition, a multi-stage mailing will be sent to architects and planners.

Responsible at AAA Digital: Remo Vetsch (Managing Director), Remo Schällibaum (Co-owner). Responsible at Schläfle Trittibach: Marcel Schläfle, Christoph Trittibach (Creative Direction), Nicolas Braga (Text), Kevin Irving (CGI/Retouching).