The largest Swiss agency group comes to Switzerland

WW: Serviceplan Suisse is launching on the day of a possible end of the world. Are you optimists?
Florian Haller: We think December 21, 2012 is an ideal date for the beginning of a new era.
 
Does this start from zero?
Christian Baertschi: No. I'm bringing my agency BMB, which I founded in 2005, into the creation of Serviceplan Suisse. BMB is fully functional and thirsty for us to do more. We also have interesting clients who are happy about the new perspective. Sacha Moser is not coming alone, but with a well-coordinated and strong creative team. We will certainly start with 22 permanent employees. But we are still looking for more employees.
 
Is the time good for such a personnel search?
Sacha Moser: There are many attractive employers. But when a Serviceplan Suisse is founded, it's a very attractive topic, especially when you look at how Serviceplan is taking off at the moment. On the one hand, the growth, a fantastic 18 percent last year. The second point is creativity. Serviceplan has continuously positioned itself superbly and has just moved up to No. 1 in the German creative rankings of Werben & Verkaufen magazine. Serviceplan has thus "knocked off the throne" of long-time winner Jung von Matt, as the headline of the trade magazine puts it.
Florian Haller: I'm a little proud of that. It's an important issue for me that we are not only considered a successful agency, but also a driver of innovation in the industry.
 
Therefore, more interesting people will also change?
Moser: When my colleagues heard about this project, some of them applied immediately, of course. I'm glad that we can continue to work as a creative team in this constellation. When you've built up a constellation like this over a long period of time, it's very valuable.
 
How is Serviceplan positioned today?
Florian Haller: We are an agency group that is very expansive, generating around 200 million euros per year. There have been three phases in the company's development. The first was in Munich, where an advertising agency was turned into a "House of Communication. That means: everything under one roof from a single source. This is how we are positioned in the market today with Serviceplan, Mediaplus and PlanNet. The second step was to move out of Munich to Hamburg and Berlin. Hamburg is a Siamese twin to Munich. Berlin is a special agency, where we do political communications. The third step is now to move forward internationally. On the one hand, this is driven because it is a business opportunity. On the other hand, it's also driven because our clients are demanding more and more international know-how. And it's also a bit of fun for us, because it's just great to have people from different countries with different languages and their often different understanding of communication in a joint agency.
 
What role does Switzerland play in this international expansion?
Haller: Switzerland is of course a very important market for us. Firstly, because it is an interesting economic area. There are a lot of international customers here who also do international communication. Great brands. But it is also a matter of the heart for me to establish a great agency concept in Switzerland. Our vision here is to build a "house of communication" in Zurich.
 
That will also call itself?
Haller: I still have to pay attention there. Maybe the term doesn't quite fit in a multilingual country. But it is the strategic vision - with creation, media and online under one roof. We have already entered into an alliance with Mediaschneider. The big part that we've been missing in Switzerland so far is a creative agency. We're very happy that we've found two partners in Sacha Moser and Christian Baertschi, with whom we can build up this agency here.
 
Baertschi and Moser become partners?
Haller: Partner is very important for us. Sacha and Christian are not employed managing directors in Switzerland, but are substantial partners who hold a large part of the share capital themselves. The partner model is an important success factor for us. This means that we are not managed by the stock exchange or by any financial investors. We are managed by ourselves, by managing directors who always hold a substantial proportion of the shares. We want to do the same in Switzerland.
Baertschi: An important success factor in addition to this participation is also the integration that actually works. It's true that everyone has been working on this for some time now. But I can say from experience that nowhere does it really work as it should. In contrast to Serviceplan. Here, with its mainstays Serviceplan (creative), Mediaplus (media) and PlanNet (digital), the Group has three brands that are among the market leaders in their field.
 
Zurich relies on access to the German network? Baertschi: Yes. Of course, we have access to the know-how that exists in the German market. That is very valuable, especially in the digital area. That gives you a different starting position than when you argue that you have "everything under one roof" because the person who does a bit of dialog also designs the Flash animation at the same time. Which is often a bit of the reality. We have the situation here that in the small Swiss market, hardly any agency can really build that up themselves. People always say that Switzerland is lagging behind in digital development. But one reason is that everything is ten times smaller. There can be less investment.
Haller: This integrative approach is certainly a key growth driver of our 18 percent at Serviceplan last year alone - in a market that is actually saturated.
 
Is that why Serviceplan has its sights set on other countries?
Haller: We are already present with agencies in Austria, in Milan for Italy, in France and Dubai. Last year, we also participated in an agency that took us to Moscow, India and South Korea. If you want to do an inter national business, you have to cover the most important economic areas as well and have your competence locally.
 
Are there already other customers in Switzerland than these from BMB?
Baertschi: The interest has not yet been confirmed statistically. But we are in the middle of several pitches. I had to inform our customers, and they had priority in the information. The reactions are quite positive. Here comes the integration issue again. Customers are quickly seeing the benefits. For many customers, this whole fragmentation has become a nagging issue: What do I give to which agency? We also notice this in pitches. All of a sudden, there's a digital agency in the round, a traditional agency, and suddenly another specialized agency. This means that customers no longer know what to give to whom. This decision is taken off the client's hands when they can draw on Serviceplan's entire pool.
 
Moser: When it was already partly leaked, we received inquiries. The fact that we are a partner-led network is very positive and appealing. It's a completely different way of working in terms of commitment. The whole responsibility is assessed differently. You also see the customer's problems as an entrepreneur and try to solve them together. You can see that in Switzerland and also in other markets that the owner-managed agencies in this industry approach things more freely. As a rule, they are also the more creative agencies.
 
So no long consideration for entry?
Moser: We did an interview just a few months ago about Red Lion. At the time, I was very happy with the situation and it got off to a very good start. We were able to do some nice campaigns. There was practically nothing that would have taken me away from there. But a constellation like the one Serviceplan is offering me now only comes along once every ten years, if at all. A new brand entry - and I can even get involved myself.
Haller: That was a very decisive point for us. The question: Why did it take you so long to set up a creative agency in Switzerland? The reason is because it's not easy to find partners with whom you can build such a company together and with whom you want to do so. That's what sets us apart from other agencies. We don't want to send someone from Berlin, Hamburg or Munich to set up a Serviceplan branch here in Switzerland. We want to work with someone to really build up an agency. That's what will make us successful in the end.
 
Was a headhunter used?
Haller: We have evaluated ourselves. Of course, we talked to several people, as is necessary. But in addition to the professional component, the human component always plays a very strong role. We are not a financial construct; we also have to work together and have fun doing it. That was a very important issue for us in addition to the professional qualifications.
 
Did you already know each other well?
Moser: Christian approached me. That wasn't very long ago. But we now know each other very well. I was also very impressed by the fact that Christian has been successfully running an agency since 2005. In the last few years, there have been many new agencies, but many more have had to close down again. Christian with BMB has managed this wonderfully. With this set-up and the international partner, it's a completely different perspective. But it's certainly a very solid basis.
Baertschi: Why Sacha Moser? When the first discussions with Serviceplan took place, the list of possibilities was not insanely long. Sacha has proven that he can do very outstanding work on large and difficult clients. That's a quality that very few creatives really bring to the table. Add to that: In the field of moving image, there is no one in Switzerland who brings so much experience to the table. And the coming developments will take place in the moving image sector.
 
What will the division of labor be?
Baertschi: We are both partners. I certainly have consulting and strategy background, Sacha creation. We'll give each other a bit of a talking to. Haller: I sit on the Board of Directors. But I have no operational responsibility. They don't need me there.
 
There are many creative people from Germany. How Swiss will Serviceplan Suisse be?
Haller: We don't want to install a branch of a German agency here, we want to be a Swiss agency here. That's why the idea can't be that we now do the creation in Germany, but that there has to be a local setup. It has to be strongly Swiss. People of all nationalities can come, and Germans are certainly not unwelcome. One strength is: We can breathe very strongly. We are a manageably large team here for the time being. But of course we can react very quickly, pull together people from the network and very quickly handle large tasks and projects. These people can also come from Italy or France.
 
Where will the agency be located?
Baertschi: At the moment we are at BMB at Seefeldstrasse 307, but we will be moving in the first half of the year and are about to sign the contracts for the new premises.
 
What are the first targets in Switzerland?
Haller: We don't want to get carried away with goals in the area of numbers. The only goal is first of all a strategic one in terms of content. We want to be a serious major agency here with the set-up from communications that makes us unique. We want to create campaigns that are innovative, that people talk about, that show new approaches. Those three things have to come to pass. But we are not pressed by time.
Moser: One important goal is to become the most attractive employer in our industry. We also want to manifest this with the location. We want to have room for maneuver. In Germany, this is very well exemplified. It is very important to us that we create an extremely attractive location for our employees. So that creativity can be fully developed there.
Haller: That is one of our strengths in Germany. People find an ambience with us in which they feel comfortable. In a survey last year, we were voted the most popular employer of all German advertising agencies. That makes us proud, because it's an important issue. On the one hand, it's a labor market issue if you want to attract young people who you have to compete for. That's even worse in Switzerland. But it's also a matter of making people feel good about themselves. That creates a culture of cohesion.
Moser: This closes the circle to the owner-managed agency. In such an agency, it's much easier to implement something like this.
Interview: Andreas Panzeri
 

Serviceplan Suisse
 
Christian Baertschi studied business administration in St. Gallen and started his career in management consulting. After additional training as a strategic planner, he gained many years of national and international experience at Advico Young & Rubicam and Spillmann Felser Leo Burnett. Here he worked as a member of the management team since the company was founded. In 2005, Christian Baertschi founded his own BMB advertising agency with ten employees in Zurich Seefeld.
Sacha Moser graduated from the School of Applied Arts and did an apprenticeship as a graphic designer at DDB. At the early age of 23, he became an AD at Advico. He worked for two years as Senior AD at Young & Rubicam in Puerto Rico and was Senior AD and Associate CD at Young & Rubicam in New York before being appointed CD at Publicis back in Zurich in 2005. In the summer of 2012, Sacha Moser was entrusted with the leadership as CD of the newly founded spin-off Red Lion, before now being confronted with the opportunity to found his own agency.
Florian Haller is one of the managing partners of the Serviceplan Group. He is one of the handful of Swiss who have made a career as an advertiser abroad. Haller studied in St. Gallen and also did "a bit of involuntary" military service here. He worked for five years in Geneva at Procter & Gamble before taking over the management of Serviceplan in Munich, founded by his father Peter Haller in 1970, in 2002. Florian broke up the one-location policy. Today, Serviceplan is also present in Hamburg, Berlin, Bremen, Zurich, Vienna, Paris, Dubai, Delhi, Seoul, Moscow and Beijing. During Florian Haller's time, fee revenues have increased from 54 to around 200 million euros in just eight years. At the German Media Awards, Florian Haller was named "Media Personality 2010.