At the end of August, TX Group, Ringier and Mobiliar joined forces with growth investor General Atlantic to form the SMG Swiss Marketplace Group joint venture. In this they bundled such well-known online marketplaces as Homegate, Ricardo, tutti.ch and also the Scout24 Group.

According to the information, the closing of the joint venture was completed on November 11, 2021 (Werbewoche.ch reported). This means that the merger of the online platforms of Scout24 Switzerland and TX Markets into the umbrella company SMG Swiss Marketplace Group can begin immediately, the statement continues.

The Board of Directors of Scout24 Switzerland, which includes Marc Walder (VRP), Michèle Rodoni, Daniel Grossen, Andrea Kleiner, Axel Konjack, Roelof Konterman, Robin Lingg and Peter Brawand, will end its activities with the transfer of business operations to SMG Swiss Marketplace Group. At the last board meeting, special recognition was given to departing members Grossen and Konterman, Ringier and Mobiliar said in the joint statement.

Marc Walder and Michèle Rodoni will join Lothar Lanz (Chairman), Jörn Nikolay, Olivier Rihs and Pietro Supino on the Board of Directors of SMG Swiss Marketplace Group. (SDA/swi)

Due to the expansion of the content units at Ringier Advertising and the increasing complexity of cross-divisional projects, Michael Rohner, most recently Head of Sales at the Blick Group, has decided to further expand the "Special Sales Content Marketing" unit, together with Roger Knabenhans, as of January 1, 2022. 

"Our content business has grown very quickly in recent years. We have long since moved beyond implementing classic paid content solutions to offering our customers complex, multimedia communication solutions that require an experienced expert to manage. After many years in sales for the Blick Group, we are delighted to give Michael this responsibility," says Thomas Passen, Managing Director Ringier Advertising. 

Rita Meyer now succeeds Michael Rohner as Head of Blick Sales and will contribute her years of experience in sales management. Most recently, Meyer headed the advertising market at Swiss Regiomedia. Before that, she marketed various radio stations and worked at TeleZüri and Tilllate.com.

The collaboration between Webrepublic and Migros has evolved greatly in the fast-moving industry during a decade defined by digitalization. What began in 2011 with the posting of a few keywords is now a multi-channel mandate, to which around 40 employees of the Zurich-based digital marketing agency are dedicated.

Tobias Zehnder, co-founder and partner Webrepublic, says: "Ten years of Migros and Webrepublic - that's a decade full of reasons to celebrate! In the highly dynamic environment of digitalization, we have developed together in a unique partnership. I would like to thank everyone who has accompanied us on this journey and made this success possible with their daily commitment."

Philipp Marquard, Head of Media Migros-Genossenschafts-Bund, is also enthusiastic about the ten-year partnership: "With great curiosity and interest, Webrepublic permanently invests in new or changing digital topics without neglecting the respective depths of detail. Transparency is not only preached, but lived as a matter of course. The key to success, however, is its employees. The mix of experienced, long-standing colleagues and young talent is exceptional and well balanced. The key to success, however, is its employees. The mix of experienced, long-standing colleagues and young talent is exceptional and well balanced. Our heartfelt thanks and appreciation go to them - in their everyday work as well as on the occasion of this anniversary."

Philipp Marquard and Tobias Zehnder told us more about their ten years of constructive collaboration in a conversation with Werbewoche/m&k Editor-in-Chief Anna Kohler - in the new episode of the podcast "Off the Record," now available on all audio platforms and on Youtube.

Spotify

Apple Podcasts

This completes the management of the new market structure, according to a statement from Switzerland Tourism ST. In September, the tourism organization had announced a further development of the market structure with the aim of achieving greater proximity to potential guests worldwide as well as a stronger presence in the markets.

A key element of the new structure, he said, is its management by two people. Simon Bosshart has now been elected by the ST Board as Head of Markets East, while the previous Director Western Europe, Gilles Dind, will take over as Head of Markets West

Bosshart studied ethnology and sinology - he speaks fluent Chinese - and has been working for ST since 2006. First as Market Manager China, then from 2011 as Director Asia Pacific and since 2013 additionally as Head of Global Accounts.

Both Bosshart and Dind will take up their new positions on January 1, 2022. According to Switzerland Tourism, their successors have not yet been appointed.

Since its launch in October 2017, the news portal Nau.ch has been careful to keep the number of women in management positions at least balanced. The management of the two departments News and People are even entirely in women's hands. With the promotion of 28-year-old Annina Häusli at the beginning of 2022, the quota of women in the eight-member editorial management team of the online news portal is now 50 percent.

"The proportion of women in management positions at Nau.ch should be at least 50 percent. This is important to us, in keeping with the times, and improves the level of discussion," Nau.ch editor-in-chief Micha Zbinden was quoted as saying in a statement. "The appointment of Annina Häusli to the editorial management also upgrades the area of training and further education. It is our goal to enable as many talents from the Academy as possible to find a permanent position. Every third person makes it because we train him or her on-the-job."

With Antun Boskovic, the editorial management has also been staffed since October 2021. This concludes the start-up phase, writes the online news portal in the release.

The editorial board of Nau.ch now consists of:

• Karin Aebischer (Deputy Head of News)
• Stéphanie Hofer (Deputy Head of News)
• Annina Häusli (Head of Academy)
• Angelika Meier (Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Head of News and People)
• Christof Vuille (Deputy Editor-in-Chief, Head of Politics and Business).
• Christoph Böhlen (Deputy Head of Sports)
• Antun Boskovic (Staff representative)
• Micha Zbinden (Editor-in-Chief)

Many SMEs hope to get a lot of response from a one-off campaign push. They often hire an agency and invest in professional photo and film shoots. Only to abandon the exercise again after a year, because the campaign has then not happened much apart from a few clicks from dedicated places. Maybe you didn't have the courage to come up with a creative concept. Or one wanted to tell too much at once. Maybe no clear media plan was followed. That's a shame for the investment and the lifeblood in equal measure.

Patience and concept consistency are almost always missing from the impact of a campaign. The Naef Group from Freienbach SZ believes not only in creative campaigns, but also in consistency. After the first flight to promote the innovative floor heating pipe interior renovation, the group decided to create new motifs within the basic campaign.

Visualpark from Zurich has realized two films for this purpose, which tie in seamlessly with the 2019 campaign. "The goal was to charge the topic of cold floor heating with new spots with an SME-friendly budget. The first figures show that the films are well seen. The comments are consistently positive. The spots seem to be liked," says Alex Kleinberger from Visualpark.

The two new spots would demonstrate that cinematic conversions also make a difference for SMEs, Kleinberger says of the success of creative consistency. The current films can be seen on local television in German-speaking and French-speaking Switzerland as well as on social channels, where the first campaign flight can also be rediscovered.

Responsible at the Naef Group: Ramon Näf (Managing Director), Moritz Schlanke (Marketing and PR). Responsible at Visualpark: Thomas Ammann (concept/text), Alex Kleinberger (direction), Alex Biondi (production management), Manuel Häfele (camera), Randy Looser (set design), Noemi Bellwald (styling & hair/makeup), Guter Ton (sound studio), Simon Gasser (sound design), Patrischa Freuler (colorist), Marc Partysan (rotoscoping), Luzian Schlatter (VFX).

Since 2019, Gamned has been analyzing the Swiss market with the help of a survey of advertisers and agencies. Every year, the big question arises anew as to how the market has developed and changed. The aim of the 2022 edition is to analyze the development of usage and new trends.

The "Swiss Digital Advertising Study" is conducted in collaboration with advertising associations such as Netcomm Suisse and Handelsverband.swiss as well as two reference specialist media, the Advertising Week in German-speaking Switzerland and Cominmag in the French-speaking part of Switzerland.

The results will be presented in a barometer of the digital marketing strategies used by the market as well as developments in terms of innovations and expectations for the future. The results of the study will be announced on January 20, 2022 at the Swiss Digital Advertising Summit in Geneva and published exclusively on Advertisingweek.ch and Cominmag.ch published.

Help us analyze the development of digital media use in Switzerland. The survey takes two minutes, here to participate.

Parents have wishful thinking about what their children should become one day. A respected doctor, a successful lawyer, a famous astronaut or quite simply and much more importantly: "whatever the child wants, the main thing is happiness". Millions of neglected children worldwide do not have this choice. Nevertheless, there is undreamed-of potential in them that wants to be released. SOS Children's Villages Switzerland fights this neglect and wants to give children the opportunity to dream big and make it happen.

The key visuals of the current campaign feature motifs from Nepal, Ethiopia, Niger and Nicaragua - four of SOS Children's Villages Switzerland's five focus countries. "Too many children in the world are neglected. In the wake of the Corona pandemic, the problem has come to a head worldwide. With real life stories, we show how our donors can help concretely through crowdfunding. With this novelty, it is also possible for private donors to use their donation specifically for larger projects and programs," says Silvia Beyeler, Head of Marketing SOS Children's Villages Switzerland.

The cause of neglect is often the poverty of parents. In order for children to realize their dreams for the future, they need financial help. Donations make school visits and targeted support possible. "With this campaign, we are making it tangible that there are ways out of poverty and that donors have it in their hands to give children a chance," is how Dominique Rutishauser from Agentur am Flughafen describes the campaign's approach.

The campaign is played out cross-medially in the company's own media - SOS Zoom, newsletter, social media, website and mailings - as well as via paid media such as advertisements in print and digital media, public reports and YouTube ads. A landing page was also created for the campaign, where donations can be made using the crowdfunding approach. "With the approach that individual donors can directly co-finance larger plans and projects, we want to involve them more. They can choose from various projects that prevent or combat neglect," explains Thomas Roth of Marketing Monkeys, who is responsible for the overall project management as well as the digital campaign.

With this campaign, SOS Children's Villages also wants to reach out to donors in the French-speaking part of Switzerland. "The mailings, advertisements and public reports were not only translated into French, but adapted to the needs and motifs of the French-speaking Swiss. In this way, we are making SOS Children's Villages better known in this region as well," explains Maxime Chabloz of Agence Trio.

Responsible at SOS Children's Villages Switzerland: Silvia Beyeler (Head of Marketing and Communications), David Becker (Content, Website). Responsible at agency at the airport: Dominique Rutishauser (Creative Direction), Miriam Egli (Account Director). Responsible at Agence Trio: Maxime Chabloz (Account Manager). Responsible at Marketing Monkeys: Thomas Roth (overall concept, digital), Alain Habegger (software development crowdfunding platform).

"With our new name, we show what our strength is: the technical implementation of good websites that are convincing in handling and usability," the four partners of "Klub der guten Seiten" are quoted as saying in a press release. Mirjam Durot, Bruno Gisler, Florian Bentele and Melanie Widmer took over the small company from its founder a long time ago and developed it further within the Alea-Iacta Group. "With the renaming, we express our development into a small company managed on an equal footing and according to the sociocracy model, with a high level of identification among those involved."

Despite the new name, the agency remains part of the Alea-Iacta Group. The location at Rosenbergstrasse 85 in St.Gallen also remains unchanged.

The "Club of Good Pages" offers its services to companies, organizations and personalities who want to create or renew websites. An important customer segment is also communication and advertising agencies that do not do any programming themselves.

To ensure that the individually programmed websites are also well found and receive many visitors, the agency also offers supporting online marketing measures.

This was decided by the Board of Directors at its meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday, SRG announced on Thursday. Bieler complements the management with strategically important competencies in the dialogue with the audience in an international environment.

The decision confirms the importance the Board of Directors attaches to the dissemination of Swiss topics in an international context, it added. SWI Swissinfo.ch emerged from Swiss Radio International SRI and is now a purely digital Internet platform in ten languages.

Bieler is currently also SWI's editor-in-chief. She will relinquish this function as of July 2022. The succession is still open. (SDA)

The event kicked off with words of welcome from Stefan Wagner, Managing Director of Goldbach Audience, followed by Alexander Horrolt, Managing Director of Goldbach Next, who acted as moderator throughout the evening.

The series of presentations was opened by Uli Hegge, Head of Privacy and SVP, CE of InfoSum, a company offering identity management and data clean room solutions throughout Europe. Hegge took the audience on a time travel through the cookie universe and highlighted the diverse history of Internet advertising in his remarks. He also shared his personal experiences on the topics of cookies and behavioral targeting.

With his presentation "OneLog: What there is to know about the single sign-on software solution", Silvano Oeschger, CEO of OneLog and Senior Product Manager Technology at TX Group, gave an in-depth insight into the joint venture between TX Group and Ringier. OneLog is to establish a common log-in technology for media companies in Switzerland. OneLog will provide users with a common, cross-site login for all news areas, but activities will not be tracked across sites. This technical solution is intended to support the participating media companies in improving the framework conditions of first party data in the context of product development and advertising purposes and to make the Swiss advertising market more attractive.

Ralf Hammerath, Managing Director of Virtual Minds, also focused on the cookie issue in his presentation "Best practices for cookieless targeting in the post-cookie era". The programmatic expert gave an outlook on the digital market in 2023, the challenges that go along with it and showed solution approaches in the cross-device area for the time after the 3rd party cookie, for example in the form of new channels, for the programmatic set-up.

Anyone who would like to review the day of online advertising again can access the recording of the livestream here.

YouTube had the problem that the button was sometimes misused for campaigns against individual users. This could be painful for the video authors, because with a high "Dislike" count, the distribution of the clips could also be restricted.

YouTube explained in a blog entry that their personal "dislikes" can still have an influence on the video selection that is suggested to individual users. The display of "likes" is not affected by the change.

The video platform is thus choosing a different path than Instagram and Facebook, where users have been able to do without the display of "Like" numbers for around half a year. Facebook and Instagram do not have a "Dislike" button anyway. (SDA)