Plan.Net expands into Switzerland

 
Agencies Plan.Net opens its own agency in Switzerland in February. The leader in innovative interactive communication is part of the German agency group Serviceplan. 
For traditional agencies, the market in Switzerland is probably pretty much exhausted. The most important positions for large networks are occupied, as are the niches for small creative boutiques. However, industry experts see more opportunities for start-ups and thus also newcomers from abroad in the online sector. Plan.Net is now seizing a significant opportunity to become a future competitor to Futurecom or Web2Com. Since February 2008, the market leader from Germany has also been represented in Zurich with an independent branch. Yvan Piccinno, previously Account Director at Planetactive, the online specialist of the Ogilvy Company in Zurich, has been appointed Managing Director.
Plan.Net is part of the German agency group Serviceplan. It employs a total of 750 people and, with a gross income of EUR 103 million (FY 06/07), is "the largest owner-managed agency group in Germany". It has four divisions. The classic Serviceplan is responsible for "integrated brand management", Mediaplus for "communication planning", Facit for "qualitative marketing research" and Plan.Net for "interactive communication". The head office is located in the Haus der Kommunikation in Munich and unites "innovation culture under one roof" with all four agency branches. A second center is located in Hamburg.
30 percent growth per yearPlan.Net was founded in 1997 within the Serviceplan holding company and today employs around 210 people. In each of the last three years, the Plan.Net Group has recorded regular growth of 30 percent. Plan.Net's core competencies are innovative brand management, online conception and creation, media planning and buying, web design, mobile advertising, e-publishing and performance marketing. Its client list includes BMW, Media Markt, Lufthansa and Mars.
The Plan.Net Suisse office is set up in Zurich in the newly renovated "warehouse" at Giesshübelstrasse 62. It will start with four people. As early as 2010, Plan.Net Suisse wants to be able to offer all tasks autonomously on site in Zurich with 14 employees. "It's not just about being able to serve existing customers even better from Switzerland. We want to find new clients here and also acquire new international business from Zurich," explained Piccinno at the presentation of the new agency.
Plan.Net Suisse has already won the online platform Piazza.ch from Tamedia. Potentially, projects for Swiss will also be managed after the parent company Plan.Net in Germany has just won the global budget for the online creation budget of Swiss parent company Lufthansa.
For Manfred Klaus, Managing Director of the Plan.Net Group in Munich and responsible for the internationalization of the multimedia agency, Switzerland is a very important country for the development of the German market leader. He bases his plans on the statistics that Switzerland already has an Internet penetration of 73 percent compared to only 59 percent in Germany. Despite this, only 1.3 percent of total advertising money is spent online in Switzerland, while Germany already invests over 10 percent in this new media. In addition, 68 percent of people in Switzerland already have a broadband connection, compared to 51 percent in Germany. For Manfred Klaus, who has bundled the expansion efforts in a specially founded holding company, Plan.Net International, Switzerland, with its numerous international companies, was therefore a strategically important target.
Back in April 2006, Klaus founded the first agency abroad for Plan.Net in France. There are 31 people working in Paris. The most important clients are Porsche, Peugeot Scootes and Banque de France.
To date, Plan.Net has generated around 5 percent of its sales abroad. At the same time, the agency is responding to the wishes of its customers with this expansion. International brands have understood that online branding must take place simultaneously in all markets. Their target groups may be local, but they live and act globally. This is why Plan.Net entered into a partnership with Profero back in 2001. This specialist was founded in 1998 and is now one of the leading online agencies in the UK. Profero employs 250 people worldwide. Plan.Net and Profero together have more than 460 online marketing experts, media billings of over 160 million euros and cross income of almost 32 million euros. Together, the two owner-managed service providers form one of the largest independent online advertising providers in the world.
Close networkingThe specialists for interactive communication develop integrated online concepts in close networking with classic communication. Within the Plan.Net Group, Plan.Net concept's award-winning conceptual and creative expertise is complemented by the planning know-how of Plan.Net media, which has the purchasing power of a market leader and the largest online advertising media database in Europe. The Plan.Net Group's other fields of activity and areas of expertise also include mobile marketing, interactive TV, electronic publishing, performance media and search.
In future, Plan.Net intends to provide all these services not only for a broad portfolio of brands and products in Germany, but also increasingly on an international level. In addition to Switzerland, Manfred Klaus has therefore already set his sights on addresses in Eastern and Northern Europe.
Andreas Panzeri