Measurably successful

Wirz Wietlisbach Dialog is the performance-focused agency of the Wirz Group and offers a wide range of dialog and response activities to clients such as Swiss Post, Betty Bossi and TCS. Founded just three years ago, the agency is excited to be in the spotlight in 2014. With two gold and three silver awards, it was the runaway winner at the Swiss SDV Awards. The most successful Swiss agency also won gold and silver at the German Dialog Marketing Award. At the same time, co-founder and name giver Guido Wietlisbach retired from his CEO function to the board of directors. Operational responsibility is now borne by a trio: Stefan Dätwyler remains on the management board. He is now supported by the creative Jörg Bewersdorff and the consultant Nadine Vasella.

Stefan Dätwyler is a founding member of Wirz Wietlisbach Dialog. He also shaped the eventful prehistory of the still young agency, whose roots lie in the digital sector. As a trained graphic designer, Dätwyler originally worked in classical advertising. Among other things, he worked as an art director at Advico Young & Rubicam. However, he entered the Internet age at a relatively early stage. In 1998, he joined the international Internet service provider Pixelpark and moved to Berlin. A year later, he returned home on behalf of the group to set up the creative departments for the new offices in Basel and Zurich. "At the time, clients were literally beating down the door to Swiss digital agencies," Dätwyler recalls. Smiling, he adds, "That's why we preferred to go into business for ourselves back then and set up our own company, Endeed Interactive. "

In 2002, Endeed merged with Wirz Interactive and was renamed Assai - the predecessor agency of Wirz Wietlisbach Dialog. "At that time, we were constantly among the top 3 in the online sector," says Daetwyler. The 2007 renaming to Assai Dialog + Digital already marked the increasing importance of dialog marketing for the group, which was finally addressed in 2011 with the founding of Wirz Wietlisbach Dialog. Meanwhile, his enthusiasm for digital communication has remained with the juror of numerous creative awards. Whereby, as he says, he "basically thinks channel-neutral." "For me, it's all about the idea. The channel in which it is then communicated depends on the message and, above all, the target group."

As Managing Director, Nadine Vasella represents consulting on the executive board - and at Wirz Wietlisbach Dialog, this is not a subordinate function, emphasize the two creatives at her side. Vasella started her career as an advertising assistant and later as a marketing and communications manager. Her first stations were the Internet platform Car4you and its parent company, Eurotax International. From here, she moved to the agency side. As a consultant at Ogilvy One in Zurich, she met Guido Wietlisbach, then head of the agency. After completing an MAS in fundraising, she went to Pro Senectute and later to the Swiss Red Cross as head of fundraising. "It was the social aspect that attracted me," says Vasella. According to Vasella, the main reason why she switched from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to the agency side again was that she was "more suited to the agency business with its constantly changing tasks. She continues: "It's true, I'm more of a numbers person. That's why I feel so comfortable when it comes to extensive testing processes and the resulting learnings." When Wietlisbach asked her in 2013 if she would like to take over as head of consulting at Wirz Wietlisbach Dialog, Vasella jumped at the opportunity. She feels she is in the right place at the Wirz Group's dialog agency. "In a dialog marketing campaign, you can usually check the success of the measures used exactly. "With time, you understand the mechanisms behind it and can thus predict the effectiveness of details. She would also like to make more use of this experience to support NGOs from the agency side.

Jörg Bewersdorff has been heading up creation together with Stefan Dätwyler since 2012. The copywriter and concept developer landed in dialog marketing rather by chance - after all, a fortuitous decision that has proven itself over the past 16 years, according to Bewersdorff. Instead of dialog marketing, however, he prefers to speak of "emphatic marketing". That, he says, more precisely sums up what the discipline is all about. "You have to empathize with the target group to find the stories that are relevant to them." Direct contact with the target groups is also what still makes him happy to reach into the keyboard himself every day. Bewersdorff learned the "craft of copywriting" at Ogilvy One in Frankfurt am Main. This is also how he came into contact with Switzerland "many years ago". At that time, Bewersdorff worked on an international project for Ogilvy One Switzerland - on behalf of Guido Wietlisbach. Before leaving his native Germany two years ago, he gained experience at various creative agencies and international network agencies such as McCann Erickson Communication House in Berlin, Springer & Jacoby Direct and TEQUILA \, both in Hamburg. Bewersdorff is convinced that dialog marketing is a promising form of communication for the future. "The importance of social media plays for us. It gives us a much better idea of how people react to measures."

Not least because of this back channel, he is a fan of social media. "Furthermore, people's media usage behavior in recent years is playing extremely into our cards." People are now used to communicating directly with companies and their brands, he says. At the heart of the multi-award-winning "Advertiser Anonymous" dialog marketing campaign is dialog marketing itself: The campaign, commissioned by Swiss Post, aims to strengthen the image of direct marketing among advertising and media agencies. The target group is addressed in a way that is unusual for Swiss Post: instead of putting their own services in perspective, the postmen make fun of advertisers and their ideas of direct marketing. "The customer needed a campaign that breaks with the expectations of this demanding target group," Bewersdorff says. "The thing is, as an agency representative, when I get advertising from the post office on my desk, I know beforehand that I'm definitely not interested in it," Bewersdorff continues. Of course, that's not true, but in case of doubt, the target group doesn't even know that, because they throw the advertising away or skim it.

According to Bewersdorff, the postal service - like dialog marketing in general - unjustly suffers from an image problem. The negative external image results from the experience at the own mailbox: mass advertising. "Within the Wirz Group, on the other hand, people always appreciated the agency," Dätwyler clarifies. As early as its founding in 2011, Wirz acknowledged the importance of dialog marketing as a discipline in its own right. "The awards have played their part, but internally we are perceived positively primarily through intensive contact." In internal presentations, he said, the versatility and craftsmanship inspire enthusiasm. For recipients, too, dialog marketing measures are ideally not annoying mass advertising, but surprising and tailored to their needs. And thus correspond to a trend. "Campaigns with dialog marketing components simply work better - in the future, they will be the rule." There is a general tendency to be measured more by performance.

Day-to-day business has not changed massively with the change in management, the new management trio agrees. Guido Wietlisbach is still called in for strategic decisions. "Strategy is his strength and his passion - and he can now devote himself fully to it," said Vasella. During the conversation, however, an important expansion of the portfolio was announced. From now on, the company will also offer analytical CRM and the entire area of customer value management. In order to address the right people with the right messages at the right time via the right channels in an even more targeted manner, the agency is now relying on the support of partner Datalogue for the evaluation of customer data. "There's still a lot of room for improvement in Switzerland," says Vasella. Many companies have excellent customer data, he said, but don't have the contacts on the agency side to also use this capital sensibly and profitably. Dätwyler and Bewersdorff are convinced that analytical CRM and customer value management are not at odds with the creativity that is otherwise so emphasized. It is not as if Wirz Wietlisbach Dialog were a hotshop. It is not without reason that the company is the exclusive partner of the German Institute for Communication Analysis and Optimization (IKAO) in Switzerland. Whose "scientific dialog structure measurement has helped numerous customers achieve greater impact with their advertising materials," Dätwyler confirms. "That's right," Bewersdorff adds. "We are actually rather structured craftsmen who additionally have extreme fun with good creation."

Simone Isliker