SWA Annual Meeting 2016 : "Communications in the age of disruption".
Disruption is sweeping the entire advertising and media world—but not at the SWA: More members than ever, more guests than ever, and unity and strength within the Swiss Association of Advertising Clients (SWA).
"Clever Data and Clever Communication are more important than Big Data. Clever business often emerges from this. And today, clever business is usually intensively linked to clever communication," said Harlacher, using the example of Uber to show how cab use has been disrupted. Founded in 2010 in Silicone Valley, Uber is now active and very successful in 68 countries and 370 cities.
With that, he passed the floor to the conference moderator, Matthias Ackeret, editor-in-chief and publisher of Persönlich. The first speaker was Christoph Tonini, CEO of Tamedia, who was pleased with 2015 as his company's best business year. He explained how a private company copes best with disruption through constant adaptation and improvement: In 2004, Tamedia still consisted primarily of the Tages-Anzeiger, Switzerland's third-largest daily newspaper. Today, the media Tages-Anzeiger, 20 Minuten, Newsnet National and Tamedia Classifieds, Local.ch and Search.ch, Ricardo.ch, Homegate.ch, Tutti.ch etc. form a high-reach digital portfolio. It is astonishing that the classic titles Tages-Anzeiger and Tribune de Genève were still able to increase their overall reach. And "20 Minuten" now reaches a whopping 60 percent of the Swiss population. The latest highlight was the successful launch of the #12 app in fall 2015: the 12 best articles from the Tamedia media combined on one app every day.
Thomas Koch, "Mr. Media" from Germany and doyen of the German media world, said in his presentation "The end of media as we know it": "We're talking about disruption today - and it's about time. Our world is in a state of upheaval. Unfortunately, advertising is not quite ready for it. And certainly not media strategies. Hand on heart: your media plans still look like last year's!". Koch lamented that, in view of the collapse of their usual structure, the media are only beating on each other, that everyone is breaking into the business model of the others, and suggested: "We urgently need a discussion - along the lines of: 'Is this digital, or can it go away? Do we really need digital? The best thing is to have this discussion before digitization and its algorithms destroy everything of value in a blind rage that we possibly wanted to and should preserve!"
Konstanze Kossack from the Hamburg-based innovation consulting agency Futurecandy showed in her presentation "Digital Transformation" that the future is already here. And this despite the fact that, according to her experience, the question "Quo vadis digital?" has not yet been internalized in 60% of German boardrooms. Everyone says: Sure, it's coming - but that's usually all it will be! A digital Edeka advertisement of the consulting agency, which registered 4.3 million clicks in 2 days, shows that it actually works. The company's concept for Vodafone's appearance, the Cebit Oculus Project, which mainly consisted of a virtual reality LTE game for visitors, also became known.
The innovation consultant is dedicated to all questions concerning future work technologies and the possibilities that can already be implemented today - from "Smart Life" and "Connectivity" to the "New Technology Wave". Anyone who listens to Ms. Kossack soon comes to the firm conclusion that the real Silicone Valley is not in California, but on the Elbe.
The subsequent roundtable discussion with Matthias Ackeret (personal), Christoph Tonini (Tamedia), Martin Schneider (Publisuisse) and Thomas Schwetje (Coop Switzerland) focused - as was to be expected - on disruption in communications and the planned SRG/Ringier/Swisscom joint venture (Admeira). It is one thing that the media wheel of time cannot be turned back and that the joint advertising platform opens up new multi- and cross-media paths. The SWA is also aware that such an advertising alliance probably also has disadvantages. Nevertheless, the association welcomes the innovative offers and the competition for advertising clients. However, Tamedia CEO Christoph Tonini's political arguments that state-owned and semi-state-owned companies such as the fee-financed SRG and Swisscom should not simply create a fait accompli cannot be dismissed out of hand. The next court decision on this matter is now with the Federal Administrative Court, after the Competition Commission and the Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications (DETEC) had already given the project the green light.
New and previous board members in SWA
Immediately before the Annual Meeting, the 67th General Meeting of the Association took place. Andreas Schönenberger, CEO of Sigvaris, was confirmed as a member of the board for a further term of office of 3 years. Newly elected to the board were Mr. Roman Reichelt, Head of Marketing Communications, at Migros Genossenschafts-Bund , Mr. Thomas Schwetje, Head of Marketing/Services at Coop Switzerland and Mr. Marc Werner, COO and Member of the Group Executive Board, Swisscom. The three gentlemen replace Oliver Schwegmann (L'Oréal), Marc Engelhard (Migros) and Jürg Pauli (Swisscom), who are stepping down from their positions for professional and private reasons. Finally, the president thanked the entire board, the director, Roland Ehrler and the team in the office for their tireless efforts in the past anniversary year 2015. (pd)
