DriveLock is and protects digital workplaces in government agencies, healthcare systems, defense and industrial companies from cyber attacks.

In an industry where almost all players communicate with technical visuals, Normal has created a unique campaign look for DriveLock: stories in the style of 16-bit games.

The strategic idea behind it: 16-bit indie games are currently experiencing a revival in the gaming scene, to which a large proportion of IT managers, DriveLock's core target group, also belong.

The campaign takes viewers into "the sphere of their IT", a digital space that is symbolic of a company's IT. The films show malware attacks on a system protected by DriveLock, highlighting DriveLock's USPs.

Zurich-based animation director Neil Stubbings is responsible for the realization. Stubbings is a member of the animation and CGI studio "Pulk".

The films are used in various lengths online, on social media and at trade fairs.

Responsible at DriveLock: Thomas Mai (Vice President of Marketing & Growth), Manuel Jimenez (Senior Graphic Designer). Responsible for Normal: Martin Arnold (Creative Director/Script), Sven Loskill (Digital Director). Responsible at Pulk Studio: Neil Stubbings (Animation Director), Uko - The Audio Suite (Sound Studio), Markus Kenel, Jeff Baumann, Danial Mistric (Sound Engineer) Daniel Mangisch (Speaker).

In the cold season, when snow, rain or storms dominate the weather, drying clothes in the garden is not really an option. The company for laundry drying solutions Stewi therefore also offers many indoor products to keep you dry in this changeable weather. Together with the agencies Seesaw and TheGuys, Stewi launched a helpful digital campaign that responds to the current bad weather.

The campaign uses adaptive online banners that respond to the current weather conditions in real time. Whether snowfall, stormy gusts or temperatures in the minus range: the banners provide weather warnings with a pinch of humor and advise consumers to dry their clothes indoors. Naturally with the Stewi indoor products that are at the heart of the campaign.

The algorithm behind the banners automatically recognizes the weather and the campaign adapts its content dynamically. This makes the "Stewi Indoor-Wetter halt" campaign set not only entertaining, but also tailored to the current needs of consumers.

The banners have been on display on digital platforms and social media since the end of December, warning of snow, rain, wind and weather.

Responsible at Stewi: Michael Meier (Managing Director), Felix Reichardt (Owner). Responsible at Seesaw: Daniel Fernandez (Media Direction), Gianni Peng & Johnny Grubenmann (Consulting). Responsible at TheGuys: Noemi Russenberger (Art Direction), Vincent Geller (Text), Johnny Grubenmann & Gaston Filippo (CreaDve Direction), Stefanie Lüthi (Consulting), Gianni Peng (Managing Direction).

In a recent study, UZH computational linguist Eleanor Chodroff and Chloe Patman from Cambridge University investigated how well modern ASR systems cope with challenging listening conditions. The systems tested were "wav2vec 2.0" from Meta and "Whisper large-v3" from OpenAI. The benchmark: the performance of British native speakers.

The tests took place under extreme conditions - from speech-like noise to realistic pub noise, both with and without a cotton face mask. The result: humans performed best overall, but the OpenAI system "Whisper large-v3" outperformed them in almost all scenarios. Only in pub noise was it on a par with human hearing.

Particularly striking was the ability of "Whisper large-v3" to process speech correctly even without contextual support.

The decisive difference

The enormous performance of "Whisper" is based on gigantic amounts of training data. While Meta's "wav2vec 2.0" was trained with 960 hours of speech data, OpenAI drew on over 75 years of speech data for its standard system. The most powerful model even used more than 500 years of speech data. In comparison, humans develop similar skills in just a few years - a remarkable aspect, as study leader Eleanor Chodroff emphasizes. "In addition, automatic speech recognition in almost all other languages remains a major challenge."

Different sources of error

The study also showed that humans and machines fail in different ways. Humans almost always create grammatically correct sentences, but often write sentence fragments. In contrast, "wav2vec 2.0" often generated incomprehensible gibberish under difficult conditions. "Whisper" was able to produce grammatically correct sentences, but filled gaps in the content with completely incorrect information. (pd/swi)

The Study "Speech recognition in adverse conditions by humans and machines" by Chloe Patman and Eleanor Chodroff can be read in detail here.

The Crossmedia Award recognizes innovative campaigns that combine the intelligent use of different media. The award will be presented for the 21st time in 2025. This year's jury is made up of experts from creative and media agencies as well as from the corporate side.

This year's participants are Patrick Bossart (Mercedes-Benz), Matthias Bütler (SBB), Jonas Eliassen (Havas Switzerland), Caspar Heuss (Wirz Group), Lara Jelinski (Dentsu Media Switzerland & Austria), Matthew Katumba (Hochspannung Kommunikation), Swen Morath (Ingo Zurich), Gordon Nemitz (Thjnk Zurich), Christian Omlin (Jung von Matt Limmat), Nannette Passberg (OMG), Dierk Schehrer (Touring Club Switzerland), Moritz Schneider (Mediaschneider), Philipp Skrabal (Farner) and Claudia Suter (Axa).

Extended submission deadline

The submission deadline has been extended to January 30, 2025. Swiss campaigns that impress with their creative and cross-media approaches can be submitted via the Submission tool on Goldbach.com be registered. The winning teams will receive their awards on April 3, 2025 at the Best of Swiss Web Award Night at The Hall in Zurich.

With "Our Little Embassy", SRF is producing a Swiss sitcom for the first time in two decades. The series focuses on ambassador Bea (Susanne Kunz), who masters the turbulent everyday life at the embassy together with her team. The series takes a humorous look at the intersection of professional and private challenges in a diplomatic environment.

Versatile cast with experienced and new talent

The cast includes well-known names such as Susanne Kunz and Birgit Steinegger as well as up-and-coming talent. Anaïs Decasper, Sandra Zellweger, Jonas Gygax, Matthias Schoch and Danny Exnar complete the ensemble, while there are also guest appearances by Andrea Zogg and Samuel Streiff.

Behind the camera: Experienced minds and creative impulses

The series is being realized by the production company Fidelio Films under the direction of Björn Hering and Mauro Mueller. The scripts come from the Writer's Room, headed by Pascal Glatz and Christian Wehrlin, who have already worked as co-authors on the SRF series "Tschugger". The series is directed by Johannes Bachmann and Johannes Schröder.

Filming will continue in the greater Zurich area until mid-February 2025. The series is scheduled to air in fall 2025.

The two track and field athletes have represented the company as brand ambassadors since January 2025. Both sisters stand for power and sporting excellence as well as for down-to-earthness, authenticity and naturalness. The two athletes share these values with the family business, which can look back on 135 years of tradition.

According to information, both Mujinga and Ditaji Kambundji have been using Rausch products for years. "We are proud to work with a brand that, like us, focuses on natural strength and sustainable development," says Mujinga Kambundji.

With the Kambundji sisters as brand ambassadors, Rausch wants to "inspire people to develop their inner and outer strength", as the company writes in a press release. "The Kambundji sisters perfectly embody what our brand stands for: Naturalness, performance and well-being," says Rausch CEO Sandra Banholzer. The company is also pursuing its goal of rejuvenating the brand image with this partnership.

Evoq was founded 18 years ago on a mountain tour and has since reached countless peaks with its clients. The full-service agency has a broad portfolio that includes names such as SBB, Swissmem, Swiss Post and Sozialwerk Pfarrer Sieber.

With an interdisciplinary approach and a 20-strong team, Evoq realizes sustainable communication solutions. The comprehensive range of services extends from branding, advertising and digital media to orientation design.

"We are delighted to be included in the LSA," says Christian Sutter, Managing Partner and co-founder. "Evoq has not only grown in size in recent years, but has also become more diverse and creative. Joining the LSA is an important strategic step for us to further develop our agency and expand our network."

In his career to date, Karim Weber has worked in various industries such as telecommunications, insurance, e-commerce, fashion and luxury. Most recently, he was Partner and Experience Director at Addvanto, where he helped shape the strategic direction as a member of the Board of Directors. Prior to that, he headed the "Future Marketing Lab" at Swisscom.

With the appointment of Weber, Elaboratum Suisse is focusing on expanding its consulting services. Meanwhile, as the new Managing Partner of the Elaboratum Group, Marco Schulz will drive forward the strategic development of the entire group while continuing to be responsible for the management of Elaboratum Suisse.

The tool, developed in cooperation with Markteffect, addresses current challenges such as the switch to Google Analytics 4 and the decline in third-party cookies, which make it difficult to measure the success of digital campaigns in the traditional way.

The focus is initially on Fire uplift studieswhich analyze the influence of campaigns on brand awareness, preference and purchase intention. Both the short-term effect and the long-term influence on brand development are analyzed.

Answers to questions such as: Which messages reach the target group? Where is there potential for optimization? And how can the return on investment be maximized?

By using panel-based surveys and combining qualitative and quantitative approaches, campaign effects can be analyzed even more granularly. These approaches ensure precise and data protection-compliant recording of relevant KPIs and deeper insights into the reach and resonance of advertising measures. On this basis, companies can further develop their marketing strategies in a targeted manner.

Through this further development, Converto offers companies the opportunity to design data-based and future-proof marketing strategies.

The neutral portal can be used free of charge by both agencies and clients and combines the completeness of search engines with the efficiency of conventional industry portals. This is because traditional search engines such as Google are only of limited help in finding the right agency. Flinxio addresses this with a neutral overview of all relevant agencies and services, a filter-based search without hurdles and verified customer reviews. The foundation for this has been laid with the beta phase.

The start-up now relies on the active involvement of agencies and broad acceptance in the industry. By adding their own data to their pre-collected profiles, the search results will be continuously improved. They can also obtain customer reviews. It takes just a few minutes to check and complete the free profile, and review invitations can be sent to customers directly via the portal. Well-rated agencies benefit from optimal visibility. This means that every agency has a fair chance of being found by clients - regardless of how well known they are or their size.

Acceptance and participation are crucial

"We have put a lot of effort and passion into the new portal. Now we are inviting agencies to maintain their profile," says René Amstutz, Founder and CEO of Flinxio. In order for Flinxio to establish itself as a portal for agency searches, the cooperation of the agencies is now required. Clients would welcome such a solution. "The Swiss Advertising Client Association (SWA) supports the idea of a comprehensive and neutral search portal," says SWA Director Roland Ehrler. The agencies therefore have it in their own hands to create a new standard for agency searches together with the clients.

Larissa Mörgeli joined Nova Impact as its first employee in January 2020, shortly after it was founded. With a great deal of "expertise and her tireless commitment", she has made a significant contribution to the development and success of the agency over the past five years, according to a Nova Impact press release. Mörgeli has extensive professional experience and in-depth specialist knowledge with a focus on digital marketing.

The appointment of Mörgeli as a partner is a logical step in the agency's development, the statement continues. "Larissa has played a central role in our company from the very beginning and has contributed significantly to the growth and success of the agency with her strategic foresight and entrepreneurial thinking," explains founder Sandra Fehr.

At In December 2024, the m&k Community Nominate potential candidates for the 2025 «Advertiser of the Year» title. The process is now entering another exciting phase: On Thursday, January 16, 2025, the jury will meet to select the final nominees from the list of nominees. The announcement will be made in mid-February on Markt-kom.com.

Who ultimately wins the title of «Advertiser of the Year» for 2025 will be decided by a vote, as usual, and is not solely in the hands of the jury. As always, the community’s vote also counts. The jury and the community each hold 50 percent of the voting power. The decisive Newsletter voting will take place from February 24 to 28, 2025 held.

Still not a subscriber to our free m&k Newsletters? Then it's time to get started! Only those who Anyone who registers by January 20, 2025, at the latest, is eligible to participate. All votes cast will be checked for validity after the voting period ends.

Join us and help choose the industry's most outstanding creative mind!