Soon it will once again be "Who will be 'Advertiser:in of the Year' 2025?". We have been selecting personalities from the Swiss advertising and communication scene for over 45 years. Since 2023, it is not only the high-caliber jury that decides who will be nominated, but also the opinion of the community.

We are looking for people who are active in the industry as service providers in the broadest sense. They should have distinguished themselves through outstanding achievements and represent the local industry as opinion leaders and ambassadors. It is irrelevant whether this person works in an agency or freelance and whether they work in a creative, strategic or advisory capacity.

The nomination takes place via the free newsletter from m&k advertisingweek.ch will take place. One person can be nominated per subscriber. Please provide the full name and explain in one or two sentences why this person should be given a chance to become "Advertiser:in of the Year" 2025. The nomination window opens on Monday, December 9, 2024 and closes on Friday evening, December 13, 2024.

After the nomination phase, the m&k editors review the entries. The ten most frequently mentioned nominees are presented to the jury, consisting of the last ten "Advertisers of the Year". Each jury member can also nominate an additional person.

From the final list of nominees, the jury will select a top 3, which will be announced in spring 2024. As in previous years, voting will again take place via the newsletter of m&k advertisingweek.ch will take place. Further information on the voting will be communicated in due course.

You can only take part in the nomination and the official voting in spring if you are a newsletter subscriber. If you have not yet done so: Sign up today for our newsletter to receive relevant news from the industry daily and free of charge as well as the chance to vote! Your details will of course be treated confidentially. They are only used to prevent multiple nominations. All personal data will be deleted immediately after voting.

We look forward to your input and wish you a happy Advent season.

Your m&k Werbewoche editors

A possible re-entry is to be re-evaluated at the end of 2025 if fundamental improvements in the Association of Swiss Student Bodies (VSS) become apparent by then, the University of Zurich Students' Association (VSUZH) announced on Friday. Improvements are needed in terms of cooperation and transparency.

According to a joint press release issued by the two organizations on Wednesday, a media report on the pro-Palestine student protests in May 2024 contributed to the escalation of the conflict. According to the report, the student association of the University of Zurich demanded a partial boycott of Israeli universities, which the national association criticized.

The VSS regrets that there were errors in communication in connection with the discussions surrounding the student protests, according to a press release issued on Wednesday.

For the VSUZH, however, the withdrawal was necessary in order to use its own resources specifically for the concerns of UZH students. The university should remain a place where difficult and controversial topics can also be discussed - without fear of personal attacks or the suppression of opinions, the VSUZH wrote. The association regrets that this step has been taken.

For fear of negative reporting and to avoid being accused of one-sidedness, the topic of the Middle East conflict is being kept to a minimum at universities, according to the VSUZH. Universities have a responsibility to create space for constructive dialog.

In mid-May, student pro-Palestine protests took place at numerous Swiss universities. Among other things, the groups called for an "academic" boycott of all Israeli institutions and a ceasefire in Palestinian territories. The protesters also accused the universities of having a clear political position on the Middle East conflict. In the course of the protests, university buildings were occupied. (SDA/swi)

"Knowledge is good, (our own) experience is better: with this in mind, we have taken on the process of climate accounting ourselves as pioneers in our industry and have been able to gain important experience," explains Vincent Furnari, CSO, Practice Head ESG at Team Farner and Managing Partner of Kirchhoff in Germany. "Together, we want to make our way to climate neutrality - step by step. With our carbon footprint, we have now reached the first milestone in the development of a Team Farner-wide sustainability strategy," says Melanie Faithfull Kent, CEO of Team Farner. "In the coming years, we will include other partner companies in the carbon footprinting process."

In the consulting business, greenhouse gas emissions are primarily generated in the areas of electrical infrastructure, building management and mobility. The joint assessment showed that around 25 percent of the four partner companies' emissions are attributable to employee commuting, 17 percent to business travel and 15 percent to the vehicle fleet.

"Our mobility is the biggest driver of emissions and at the same time the most important lever for potential savings," explains Dominic Thalmann, Senior Consultant and responsible for ESG/Sustainability at Farner. "Not only can we derive our own reduction targets from our carbon footprint data, we can now also provide our reporting customers with the necessary Scope 3 emissions data for their carbon footprints."

The creative ranking of m&k shows how Swiss agencies fared at the most important national and international creative awards. The ranking will be published in the first print edition of m&k in the new year and online at m&k online published.

Points from the main competitions - D&AD, One Show, ADC*E, Eurobest, ADC Switzerland and Effie Awards Switzerland - can be used for this year's creative ranking. In addition, there are again five international and five national competitions to choose from, from each of which the three best results can be counted towards the points from the main competitions.

New entry conditions since 2023

Last year, the conditions of participation were adjusted to ensure better comparability over the years and a more accurate result.

Participants from the past five years are automatically included. Those who did not enter or win any of the awards that count, but were listed in the ranking in previous years, will be marked accordingly.

Those who have not actively participated in the last five years but have won or been shortlisted for at least one of the relevant awards are also automatically included in the ranking.

This changes - in part - the concept of the "debt to be discharged", which m&k has pursued so far for the implementation of the creative ranking. Participants are still cordially invited to take part in the to complete and submit the form themselves so that they have control over their points distribution from the outset. For those who do not submit a form but are included in the ranking in accordance with the criteria just mentioned, the agency is responsible for the count - the points are always distributed in favor of the agency. There is also a control round.

Download form

Please download the current form. On the left-hand side (main competitions, green) enter as many award wins as possible, on the right-hand side (5+5 competitions, yellow) select the three awards that give you the most points.

Download form Creative Ranking 2024

The same rules apply as last year.

• If a campaign has won several awards (for several individual subjects) in the same jury category, only the highest award will count.
• Only one award per category and campaign will be recognized.
• Work in which a substantial contribution to the work comes from Switzerland is eligible for points. If a Swiss agency submits work for a foreign agency, the latter is not eligible to participate.

Please return the completed form by December 18, 2024 at 12 noon at the latest on sarah.willi@galledia.ch and johannes.hapig@galledia.ch.

Review of the 2023 creative ranking

After almost two decades in the top 5, Ruf Lanz once again made it to the top of the 2023 creative ranking, followed by Wirz and Team Farner. Read more here the article.

In 2023, Agence Trio was commissioned to develop an exhibition about Lausanne station and the Léman 2030 project for SBB. The mandate included the creation and realization of an interactive space dedicated to the various people interested in the future of rail transport in Lausanne and the rest of French-speaking Switzerland. The exhibition aims to immerse visitors in the mobility of tomorrow's railroads. Trio collaborated with Miss Camping for the realization.

The various stages of work that make up the "Léman 2030" program are of key importance for mobility in the region. To make the complexity of these projects and the associated challenges tangible for the population, they should be presented in the exhibition in an easily accessible way.

Visitors encounter a series of stops that allow them to travel into the future of mobility and immerse themselves in the various stages and aspects of the renewal of the rail network. There are interactive elements such as buzzers, models and screens at each stop.

Lausanne station plays a special role as one of the cornerstones of "Léman 2030". The future station is presented as a living space that has a lot to offer - beyond the mobility hub.

The exhibition is located on the 4th floor of Place de la Gare 1 with a view of Lausanne station and follows a sustainable logic by designing the material to be movable and renewable. It is open every first Wednesday from 5pm to 7pm and every third Saturday of the month from 10am to 12pm. Private visits can also be arranged. be booked.

Advent, Advent. As excessively as calendar doors are being opened and window frames decorated for Christmas, frames are currently being opened and thematically decorated in meetings. But it's not just in the run-up to Christmas that the verb "frame" has found its way into the lingo of advertisers, marketers and "communicators". It has been haunting meeting rooms for some time now and, according to the Duden dictionary, means to classify, categorize or assign something. Doing this seems more important today than in the past.

There is no other explanation for its almost excessive use. The word has been around for a long time. It was the sociologist Erving Goffman who coined the term "framing" in the 1970s and launched it within what is known as frame analysis. This is a kind of interpretation scheme that helps people to classify everyday experiences and categorize social experiences and events. In times like these, a good thing. The more complex everything becomes, the more we want to put situations into existing schemes of experience or frameworks in order to understand them. We can only answer questions such as "What is actually going on here?" in a reasonably satisfactory way if we place them in the context of what we have already experienced, otherwise a situation is neither meaningful nor comprehensible to us. So it's understandable that everything is being framed at the moment. And still difficult.

It's all about marketing

It was framed in sociology and psychology and from there it went via theater and film studies into our industry. And as it happens, our industry craves new words and then uses them in abundance.

If we question the elections in the USA, the war in Ukraine and the Middle East, climate change, migration, violence, housing shortages and other topics in order to understand what is going on, that makes sense. When political organizations and actors in the foreground and background frame issues to the point of manipulation in order to influence us, it becomes difficult. In a country like Switzerland, where the media is almost exclusively owned by billionaires, we have to deal with the question of how and by whom public opinion is shaped and major topics and news are framed.

Why should we also question campaigns, subjects or advertising texts in marketing meetings? Can't we simply judge them as good, bad or semi-successful in our meetings? This is only about marketing, not about society or even life and death.

Let's leave framing in the fields of psychology, politics and media analysis. Let's only use it in marketing and communication when it comes to consciously or manipulatively influencing or questioning perceptions. Let's be more careful about where something is being framed and where it is being judged objectively. Otherwise we will be like Truman Burbank in the film "The Truman Show", who only realized that he was not in real life but in a TV show when a spotlight fell in front of him. So, question the big frames and stop framing marketing decisions - please. Instead, open and decorate doors and windows not only during Advent, but also in your mind.

* Benno Maggi is co-founder and CEO of Partner & Partner. He has been eavesdropping on the industry for over 30 years, discovering words and terms for us that can either be used for small talk, pomposity, excitement, playing Scrabble, or just because.

Since 2017, the Swiss Advertising Client Association SWA and Leading Swiss Agencies LSA have been collecting and publishing a meaningful price/performance index for media contacts.

Newspapers and magazines have been characterized by major changes in recent years. To take this into account, the selection of titles was fundamentally revised for the following analysis. The adjustments to the selection of titles - in particular the inclusion of high-reach but low-cost titles from the group of special interest titles - have significantly reduced the price-performance ratio compared to the previous selection.

Although many curves show a downward trend compared to the previous year, in most cases this is not an effective decline. Rather, based on the old universe of securities, there has been an increase in the price-performance ratio. The year 2024 could therefore be seen as a new start (index 100).

On TV, the planned thousand contact price (CPT) for older target groups remained stable overall, although it continued to rise in German-speaking Switzerland and Ticino, but fell significantly in French-speaking Switzerland. Among younger target groups, the planned CPM is rising constantly throughout Switzerland. The reason for this is that they are increasingly using digital and new channels.

In the cinema, the index value for Switzerland as a whole and the entire population rose slightly (+1.2 points).

In radio, the MPLI measures the situation with a delay of one year. By the end of 2023, an increase in price of 1.9 points can be observed across the whole of Switzerland and the entire population.

In the OOH market, the figures can now be reported again following a change of method in the SPR+ model. A new index point (index 100) was defined as the starting point for 2023. In a year-on-year comparison, some steep price increases (+6.2 points) were recorded across the whole of Switzerland and the population.

With the annual publication of the Media Price/Performance Index MPLI, the LSA and SWA associations want to make a joint contribution to transparency in the Swiss media business. The price/performance development of digital channels is currently missing from the index because the dominant players in this area are reluctant to "show their cards", as the associations put it.

Download MPLI 2024 (LSA, SWA)

In his opening speech, Igem board member Roger Baur from Ringier Advertising emphasized the growing importance of gaming as an advertising platform. This was followed by five presentations on key findings and concrete implementations.

Andreas Weiss from Mediaschneider presented gaming usage in Switzerland based on the Igem Digimonitor study. 53 percent of the population aged 15 to 75 play games occasionally, 20 percent of them even on a daily basis. This applies equally to women and men. The target group is therefore correspondingly large, but also diverse in its gaming preferences.

Luca Hartmann from MYI presented how brands can inspire gamers. Using several short customer cases, he showed that there is no blueprint for successful brand campaigns in the gaming target group. They are also difficult to reach via traditional online advertising due to installed ad blockers. In Switzerland, 65% of male gamers under the age of 30 use an ad blocker to suppress online advertising (compared to 37% of the overall population, according to the Digimonitor study). Accordingly, he gave the audience key questions to help them develop the right campaign for their brand and goals.

Tim Buzzi from Goldbach presented gaming ads as a network product. The global industry is worth 214 billion US dollars - and gaming is no longer a niche hobby in Switzerland either. Nevertheless, the sector is barely represented in the media mix in this country, despite a large target group and growth potential. Buzzi shed light on gaming advertising and highlighted examples and potential, but also the challenges in this area.

Sam Lutz from Drop8 showed how advertising in the gaming environment represents an opportunity for advertisers. The amount of time people spend gaming is higher than that spent on music/podcasts or online news and is almost on par with social media and TV. Despite this high usage time, advertising spend in gaming is almost nine times lower - a huge untapped opportunity for advertisers. It also enables a unique increase in reach: in-game advertising is not a mere extension of digital channels, but offers a unique opportunity for an incremental increase in reach. Some of the target group in Switzerland can no longer be reached via traditional media such as TV, news websites or social media - gaming can close this gap.

Arend Hendriks from League-M / NetGrowth showed how advertising can be placed not only within the gaming world, but also in the wider environment. Using practical examples from Swiss brands, he made it clear that in-game advertising often has strong similarities with outdoor advertising and that there are exciting opportunities to reach the brand-affine target group of gamers in their extended community.

"The event shows the increasing relevance of advertising in gaming environments. Uniform standards and further research are crucial in order to exploit the full potential," summarizes Roger Bauer. "Igem will continue to make its contribution by giving gaming a prominent place in the Digimonitor study."

Dentsu EMEA is restructuring: Under the leadership of André Andrade, CEO of Dentsu EMEA, the previous DACH and CEE clusters will be merged to form the new Central Europe cluster on January 1 and Sławomir Stępniewski will be appointed CEO of Dentsu Central Europe & Poland. Karin Zimmermann, currently CEO Dentsu DACH, will take on the new strategic role of BX (Business Transformation) President for the entire EMEA region.

The aim is to be strategically better positioned and provide customers with easier access to multidisciplinary skills and talent through a more integrated model.

For the past five years, Stępniewski has headed the Central Eastern Europe cluster, which comprises eight markets, including Poland. Zimmermann brings more than 20 years of experience in brand management, consulting and customer-centric transformation to her new position. She will be responsible for building the regional BX community in EMEA, defining cross-functional competencies and solutions and focusing on key strategic challenges for clients. Stepniewski and Zimmermann have initiated a close partnership between their two clusters in 2024. The new appointments mark the final merger of the two clusters, according to a statement.

To appeal to the young target group, the chewing gum brand Stimorol has been using activations at festivals or collaborations with musicians for years. The WPP agencies won the pitch with their combined creative power: Ogilvy Switzerland with a refreshing campaign concept, GroupM and Mstudio Austria with their experience in the music industry. They have already been responsible for various 360-degree activation measures for Stimorol at the Swiss Music Awards and Masked Singer Switzerland. "We are delighted that the cogwheels all meshed perfectly during the collaboration and that we were able to generate a lot of traction," says Martin Distl, Managing Director of Mstudio.

The campaign will go live in mid-2025 and will be rolled out across Switzerland. Bruce Roberts, Executive Creative Director of Ogilvy Switzerland, says: "Time to make Stimorol the Love Brand of Music Summer 2025 once again".

Digital competitive advantages in practice

How to successfully plan, implement and anchor digital strategies.

• Bramwell Kaltenrieder, Marc K. Peter and Kai Reinhardt
• Publisher: Schäffer-Poeschel
• Publication year: 2024
• Pages: 220
• ISBN: 9783791060606

With its precise academic structure, this book reflects the current state of knowledge on the subject of digital transformation. Several examples illustrate the predominantly theoretical explanations. The book's main advantage lies in its systematic approach. Anyone involved in transformation management in practice will find a guide for finding a strategy and an orientation aid when things get stuck in day-to-day business. Because that is the rule - most transformation projects do not achieve their goals. Those who want to do better will find help here.

Autocorrect

Mobility for a world worth living in.

• Katja Diehl
• Publisher: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag
• Publication year: 2022
• Pages: 272
• ISBN: 9783103971422

Why is the traffic turnaround in Germany just not getting off the ground? On the face of it, the answer is simple: for far too long, urban and transport planning has been focused solely on car traffic. But why is this so difficult to change? Katja Diehl takes a close look and breaks down in detail the extent to which the car-centric nature of our society is rooted in completely different problems: poverty, discrimination and a lack of diversity. She takes a clear stance in favor of healthy mobility for all and points out various ways in which this could be achieved.

Climate-neutral companies

Management, control, technologies.

• Ulrich Sailer
• Publisher: UVK
• Publication year: 2024
• Pages: 130
• ISBN: 9783381113415

Germany wants to become climate-neutral by 2045. This is also a highly relevant goal for companies. Many have also started to align themselves with the goals of the Paris Agreement. But how does this work in practice? Ulrich Sailer provides an overview of how companies can strategically and operationally move towards climate neutrality. He provides a compact explanation of how sustainability can be measured and managed and how sustainability reporting can be put on a solid footing. Not an easy read, but a helpful and well-founded introduction to corporate climate management.

Do less, achieve more!

How you can take the pressure off yourself as a manager and achieve more at the same time.

• Alfred Faustenhammer
• Publisher: Wiley-VCH
• Publication year: 2023
• Pages: 288
• ISBN: 9783527511662

Should managers be open and direct? Yes. Do they have to be able to lie? Also yes. What sounds like an irresolvable contradiction becomes clear as soon as you read this well-written guide. Alfred Faustenhammer explains in a refreshing, sometimes controversial, but always constructive way what successful leaders must - and must not - do. His practical examples are highly recognizable, and those who take his clear messages to heart will avoid typical mistakes. This applies to seasoned but stressed managers as well as (over)eager newcomers.

Priska Schoch co-founded the procurement platform for SMEs Gryps in 2010 and helped build it up. In 2021, the company was sold to the former Ringier Axel Springer Schweiz AG. After 14 years, Schoch has now decided to end her active work for Gryps at the end of the year and retire.

As part of this change, Co-CEO Urs Gysling will take over the sole management of Gryps with 20 employees as CEO on January 1, 2025. Following the company takeover by Ringier Axel Springer Switzerland in fall 2021, Urs Gysling joined the management of the SME portal as Chief Content Officer and worked with the team to expand the content offering.

In 2023, Gysling also took over responsibility for the Sales division and successfully developed the partner business. Since March 2024, Urs Gysling has led the company as Co-CEO together with Priska Schoch. Before joining Gryps, he managed various publishing houses, including the Beobachter and LandLiebe editions from Ringier.