Head of the week: "I don't believe in a loss of confidence in the advertising market"
Hansruedi Bichsel has been CEO of Publimag AG since the beginning of the year
Hansruedi Bichsel has been CEO of Publimag AG since the beginning of the yearHead of the week "I don't believe in a loss of confidence in the advertising market"
From the Publimag headquarters in Glattbrugg, Hansruedi Bichsel can see the planes take off from Kloten. A whiff of kerosene still accompanies him at work today. Originally, his fascination with flying determined his career choice. Becoming an air traffic controller was the goal. However, he was denied this due to a recruitment freeze. "Today I'm glad that didn't work out," reveals the 42-year-old, "the stresses and strains in this job are too extreme."
As an alternative, he started an aviation apprenticeship at Swissair in 1977 and remained loyal to the airline for 13 years before setting off for new shores in 1989. "Malicious tongues claim that Swissair has been going downhill ever since," jokes Bichsel.
He trained as a marketing planner and found a job as an assistant manager at Ofa Orell Füssli Werbe AG. The transition from highly technical flight operations to advertising marketing felt like an exploration of unknown territory for the then 30-year-old. "I was told that the only thing Ofa did was sell white space," recalls Bichsel. "That sentence is still true today, but the complexity of the business has steadily increased over the last ten years."
In his twelve years with the company, Bichsel has climbed the career ladder of today's Publimag AG to the top: After a short stint at Ofa Schaffhausen, he moved to Glattbrugg as advertising manager for the trade press and, after the magazine division became independent within Ofa, built up the back office and logistics. After training as a qualified marketing manager, he took over the management of the trade press division in 1996. Following the merger of Ofa Zeitschriften with Publimag and the expansion of the branch network in Basel and Berne, he took over as operational manager of Publimag Glattbrugg in 1999. He was finally appointed CEO of Publimag AG at the beginning of January 2002.
In this role, Bichsel intends to continue the integration work of his predecessor Stefan Staub, bring the four Publimag branches even closer together and significantly increase market share over the next five years.
His optimism helps him here: "I don't believe in a loss of confidence in the advertising market," emphasizes the new CEO, "I think that the situation will calm down again by mid-2002." Nor does he want to attribute too much influence on the advertising market to September 11, 2001: "It was of course the ideal time to get all the skeletons out of the closet," Bichsel assumes, "but that should put us in a positive mood for the coming year." Bruno Amstutz
From the Publimag headquarters in Glattbrugg, Hansruedi Bichsel can see the planes take off from Kloten. A whiff of kerosene still accompanies him at work today. Originally, his fascination with flying determined his career choice. Becoming an air traffic controller was the goal. However, he was denied this due to a recruitment freeze. "Today I'm glad that didn't work out," reveals the 42-year-old, "the stresses and strains in this job are too extreme."
As an alternative, he started an aviation apprenticeship at Swissair in 1977 and remained loyal to the airline for 13 years before setting off for new shores in 1989. "Malicious tongues claim that Swissair has been going downhill ever since," jokes Bichsel.
He trained as a marketing planner and found a job as an assistant manager at Ofa Orell Füssli Werbe AG. The transition from highly technical flight operations to advertising marketing felt like an exploration of unknown territory for the then 30-year-old. "I was told that the only thing Ofa did was sell white space," recalls Bichsel. "That sentence is still true today, but the complexity of the business has steadily increased over the last ten years."
In his twelve years with the company, Bichsel has climbed the career ladder of today's Publimag AG to the top: After a short stint at Ofa Schaffhausen, he moved to Glattbrugg as advertising manager for the trade press and, after the magazine division became independent within Ofa, built up the back office and logistics. After training as a qualified marketing manager, he took over the management of the trade press division in 1996. Following the merger of Ofa Zeitschriften with Publimag and the expansion of the branch network in Basel and Berne, he took over as operational manager of Publimag Glattbrugg in 1999. He was finally appointed CEO of Publimag AG at the beginning of January 2002.
In this role, Bichsel intends to continue the integration work of his predecessor Stefan Staub, bring the four Publimag branches even closer together and significantly increase market share over the next five years.
His optimism helps him here: "I don't believe in a loss of confidence in the advertising market," emphasizes the new CEO, "I think that the situation will calm down again by mid-2002." Nor does he want to attribute too much influence on the advertising market to September 11, 2001: "It was of course the ideal time to get all the skeletons out of the closet," Bichsel assumes, "but that should put us in a positive mood for the coming year." Bruno Amstutz
