Advertising with negative headlines

Relaunch campaign The highly topical subject of economic scandals gave the Publicis creation team the opportunity to realize a provocative campaign, with prominent Swiss CEOs not only making headlines in the business magazine Bilanz itself, but also in the ads for the relaunch campaign. "Attention: your balance sheet has been embellished", reads the warning. Swiss CEO André Dosé had to take the rap for this headline. Filippo Leutenegger also showed some in-house humor to take the rap for "Attention: your balance sheet has been fudged". The campaign for the revamped balance sheet thus combines several effective advertising factors: celebrities as eye-catchers, a topic to which the public is sensitized and an advertising idea with a surprise effect. To kick off the campaign, Publicis also organized mini-demonstrations in Zurich, Basel and Berne against doctored and polished balance sheets. At Zurich's Paradeplatz, the demonstration looked so real that the police intervened.