The digitizer

In Germany, Planetactive is one of the top ten agencies in the digital marketing sector. The company from the Ogilvy network employs over 90 people. The parent company is in Düsseldorf. However, the branch office in Zurich is also playing an increasingly important role. In the Swiss market, there is a lot of catching up to do around marketing on the Internet. To this end, the curves for advertising on the Internet have been trending even higher since the economic crisis began to show itself more precisely every day. "Customers want advertising with measurable success," says Nicolas Noth. Since November 1, he has joined Managing Director Martin Sinning on the management team at the Zurich-based full-service agency for digital marketing. The Director Business Development wants to "further develop the strategic orientation and positioning of the agency as well as the product portfolio". An important part will also be advising clients. "More Swissness" in the management at Planetactive is a welcome side effect here, although the Swiss branch of Planetactive was already founded in November 2000 and has thus been working for Helvetic giants such as Migros, Toblerone, Axa Winterthur or Swisscom for a long time.
Planetactive advertises that the specialized agency is already further ahead than many competitors in the field of Internet. For Nicolas Noth, it is therefore an opportunity to be able to work at the forefront with the momentum of this head start, instead of just "providing development aid on the Internet," as he had to do in previous jobs. Nonetheless, he experienced these antecedents of the digital future as enriching.
The original career dream of today's digital media person was "business journalist with an understanding of the political context. The motivation for such a commitment matured in his parents' home. His father was a filmmaker and co-founder of the legendary Cortesi press office in Biel. In this "inspiring environment" with many people from the media, Nicolas Noth decided to study economics and political science in Bern. By then, however, he was already living in Zurich, and that was not to remain without consequences.

Fascination Eastern Europe
Here, in fact, he found a student job that would soon steer his interests into new worlds. Nicolas Noth was able to gain his first professional experience at Vontobel EC Consulting. At the time, this consulting firm within the bank holding company was primarily involved in setting up the new financial structures in Eastern Europe. As a result of the upheaval, the Czech Republic and Slovakia had to re-finance themselves, create new regional units and thus also new tax autonomies. Vontobel EC Consulting provided the basis for this for the political decision-makers via a mandate from the FDFA's Office for Cooperation with Eastern Europe. "They were looking for specialists from Switzerland to transfer our federalist know-how to the East."
Nicolas Noth first had to type up reports from the consultants, then he was assigned his own research. The working student spent more and more time in Prague and was fascinated by his involvement in the turning point of history. And the studies? "This period was enriching and, of course, very intense, because the Eastern Europe projects expanded more and more," he recalls. To resolve the conflict, Noth coupled his second licentiate thesis with a project in the East. Admittedly, as a Swiss health economist, his professor in Bern was not particularly enthusiastic at the beginning that Noth now wanted to conclude with a paper on "Czech health care reform". In the end, however, he found the result "very interesting". However, Noth had to do the final research for his degree in the East on his own. Vontobel EC Consulting was sold and thus his mandate stopped.
For his professional development, Noth initially continued to look for an area of activity with a focus on Eastern Europe. This led him to Ecoprocess in 1994. At that time, this Swiss agency was looking for and offering strategies on how Swiss companies could expand into the Eastern European market. After an office split, Noth went with one of the partners. They wanted to build something independent. With the project management for the Federal Council's "Energy 2000" action program, the young entrepreneurs quickly had an interesting mandate in their portfolio. In the meantime, however, four years after graduating, the economist wanted to put his skills and valuable experience with financial projects to more precise use.
The manager saw more opportunities to help shape the company at Pragmatica. "This company already suited me very well in terms of its name. Here, the pragmatic approach is to be made the program." When Noth joined the company in 1998, the Zurich-based start-up had eight employees developing solutions for problems at the interface between business and IT for all the major banks and insurance companies. "We acted as an intermediary or translator from the computer scientist to the banks, which were eager to use the new technology," Noth says of those assignments.
Another branch of Pragmatica was the development of web software. At first, the programs were only used to improve the company's own communication. Later, they wanted to commercialize their knowledge, especially with applications for SMEs. Pragmatica enabled access to a company's data from anywhere with a web interface. Things that are taken for granted today, but were revolutionary back then. Pragmatica developed accordingly quickly. The company went public. Eight people became almost a hundred within just three years. In order to be able to find a common language with the increasingly specialized engineers, Noth also completed a postgraduate degree in business informatics during this time.

Newsroom at Ringier
Pragmatica was still successful after the Internet bubble burst. "I meant that after the from 0 to 100 also comes the from 100 to 1,000," Noth comments with slight irony. However, when expansion plans for the competence center he had built up were increasingly truncated due to the overall economic development, Noth remembered that he "originally wanted to be a journalist" and sought a challenge in the media sector in 2004.
"In Ringier, I found an exciting media company that had interested me for a long time and where I could learn a lot." In a newly created position at Zurich's Dufourstrasse, Nicolas Noth became "Creative Manager" for projects, strategy and digital development within the Blick Group, reporting directly to the then Group Division Manager Bernhard Weissberg. With the idea that print and online could be better networked, the creative manager brought the newsroom into play back in 2005. An idea that is now to be realized under Marc Walder by 2010. "A lot of things were probably still too early at that time, because there was also not yet such a strong need," Noth analyzes today. In the first phase of declining circulation figures, he says, the company "still reacted rather helplessly." But as time went on and technology developed, more and more projects became more concrete. Finally, various ideas were bundled together. During this time, Noth, who was studying to become a qualified media manager, was put in charge of Blick Online and later also of the web presence of Heute. He was a member of the management board of the Blick Group. "With portals like these, I was able to live out my love of digital as well as my love of newspapers," says Noth - and this brings up the 360-degree strategies he now wants to implement for advertising clients at Planetactive.

Setting the pace
But before he became active on this planet, the then Chairman of the Board of Directors Thomas Sterchi brought him to Condor Films in mid-2007, where he became Head of Corporate Film & New Media and a member of the Executive Board.
But he had to "realize that film in a traditional house like Condor obeys different principles than the Internet". That's why he was looking for "a way to get back from this side road of film to the digital main road.
And the old ways to the east? "That's no longer an issue since I have a family with two little girls," says Noth. But family is not the reason why he stopped playing music. As a drummer in a punk band, Nicolas Noth toured all over Europe in the eighties. The memory of a gig as the opening act for Iron Maiden in Bucharest still lingers. But as a musician you have to "recognize your limits". And drumming alone in the basement is not his thing. One idea, on the other hand, would be to "buy a digital drum kit" for his two daughters. The girls would have fun. And the father would have a good reason to start again.

Andreas Panzeri

Digital Bang
"We create value" is what Planetactive claims for itself and also relies on technologies developed in-house. With this attitude and the corresponding tools, the agency has made a name for itself as a digital full-service provider. Now Nicolas Noth is to help trigger the "digital bang.