The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) Switzerland, together with its partners Blick.ch, Goldbach Audience, Google, Microsoft Advertising, NZZ, Publimedia, Swisscom, Tamedia, and Trade Doubler, is launching a new training course in Switzerland. «With this new training initiative, we are responding to the significant demand for new talent in the Swiss online and digital markets. I am very pleased that we can count on such strong support from our partners. Through their commitment, they are helping ensure that this training initiative will optimally meet market needs,» says Ueli Weber, President of IAB Switzerland, with conviction. The «Digital Marketing Course for Beginners» is designed to teach participants the current fundamentals of digital marketing in a simple and understandable way. It covers all relevant areas, such as display advertising, AdWords campaigns, mobile marketing, video, online media planning, social media, and performance marketing. The course consists of seven modules, each lasting a full day. The first course begins in April. 

The NZZ and Globus am Bellevue are launching a new sales cooperation. Since February 11, 2012, customers in the food hall at Globus am Bellevue have also been able to read the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and NZZ am Sonntag digitally. Globus customers can borrow an iPad free of charge and read the NZZ e-paper by handing in an ID card. According to Globus Managing Director Peter Koller, this service is very popular: "A large proportion of our customers have been NZZ readers for years and many of them read it every day in our food hall. They really appreciate the fact that they now also have the opportunity to read it as an e-paper on the iPad. The offer met with great interest during the test phase and we are therefore happy to continue it." According to Markus Will, Head of Reader Market NZZ, the initial test impression confirms the experiences already made with the e-paper: "The desire for digital, time- and location-independent use of our content is increasing and our e-paper meets this need exactly. The cooperation with Globus enables us to make the new digital offerings even better known and experience them live." 

At the weekend, Switzerland's youngest bank presented its new corporate design at the Mercedes CSI. Since Wednesday, Notenstein Private Bank has been using full-page print advertisements in the national and regional daily press to promote its new logo and online presence. In the coming days, further advertisements with the slogan "Great experience. Young bank. Strong partner" and impressions of the Alpstein mountains in Eastern Switzerland will follow. The new corporate design and the campaign were developed by Notenstein Private Bank's internal creative department under the direction of Roman Burch. The new logo harks back to the Notenstein coat of arms, which shows a white standing dog on a red background. The modern interpretation of this traditional coat of arms symbolizes - like the slogan - the bank's great experience and its simultaneous focus on the future. "Our team developed and implemented a new Notenstein Private Bank website in record time. All social media channels were also relaunched overnight.
 

Thanks to a boom in digital business and successful international business, the German media group Axel Springer earned more from operations in 2010 than ever before. The operating profit is expected to increase further in the current year. In 2010, Springer earned 510.6 million euros before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization (EBITDA), 53 percent more than in 2009. Group sales increased by 10.8 percent to 2.89 billion euros. The net profit adjusted for special effects rose by 85.5 percent to 283.2 million euros, the company announced on Wednesday according to SDA. Shareholders are to receive a dividend of 4.80 euros per share, an increase of 40 cents. Springer also announced that it would increase the attractiveness of the share with a one-for-three split. Revenues are expected to increase further in 2011. Our digital and international activities will continue to drive sales and earnings growth in 2011, said Group CEO Mathias Döpfner in Berlin. In Switzerland, various TV program guides as well as Bilanz, Handelszeitung and Beobachter, among others, belong to the German publishing house. 

Top of the week 1: Communicator of the month
Hanspeter Lebrument, President of Schweizer Presse and publisher of Südostschweiz, has been named Communicator of the Month for January by Schweizer Werbung (SW). Lebrument earned the award for his speech at the Epiphany Conference on January 5. Hanspeter Lebrument had finally delivered a presidential speech. And this after he had incomprehensibly assumed the role of entrepreneur in recent years and talked about the sensitivities in his company. According to the association in a communiqué, this naturally did not interest the audience, even alienating them and repeatedly causing them to shake their heads. It was not the publisher president's job to point out his own needs, but to speak "for his clientele", the press. And he has done this clearly and unambiguously this year. He castigated the masochism of publishers who cheered a Federal Councillor at their annual congress after the latter had previously accused them of how unspeakably unprofessional the Swiss media were.
Top of the week 2: Start of broadcasting for Tele 1
The new Central Switzerland regional television station Tele 1, which belongs to the LZ Group, has been on air since Monday evening. Tele 1's program focuses on information and culture as well as regional reports. Editor-in-chief of the new station is Oliver Kuhn. Once a week, he will host the program "Kontrovers" and discuss topics from politics, business and society with guests. A total of 53 employees work for Tele 1, 40 of whom are permanently employed by Zentralschweizer Fernsehen. In order to fulfill the performance mandate from OFCOM, Tele 1 places great importance on the training of its employees, the broadcaster writes in a press release. They are therefore accompanied by experts. The MAZ is a partner in training and junior staff. CHF 5 million was invested in the technology and a further CHF 4 million in the construction of the Central Swiss television station. The broadcaster's annual budget amounts to a good CHF 8 million. CHF 2.3 million of this is concession money, the rest has to be earned through advertising money, as Managing Director Bruno Hollenweger emphasizes.

3+: Market share up again in September
3+ continued to make gains in September. With a market share of 5.3 percent in the target group of
15-49 year olds, Switzerland's largest private channel was in fourth place among the most-watched channels for the first time in the prime time 20:00-22:29 time slot and thus on a par with Pro7.
In the first nine months of 2009, the channel, which was founded three years ago, reached over 40 percent more viewers than in the same period last year. According to its own figures, 3+'s current figures are therefore ahead of those of international competitors such as Sat1, ORF1, RTL2, ARD, ZDF, Kabel1 and VOX. In September, 3+ was able to catch up with Pro7 for the first time with a market share of 5.3 percent, putting it behind SF 1, SF 2 and RTL. The growing popularity of 3+ is also confirmed by the Brand Asset Valuator (BAV), a study conducted by the Y&R Group. In the international brand study, which analyzed the change in brand vitality of over 40,000 brands between 2000 and 2009, the young Swiss television station was ranked 26th among the rising stars of the new millennium in Switzerland.