The Swiss cross on a pocket knife is a protected trademark
As noted by the portal Swissinfo.ch, Swissness as a brand is popular worldwide and has not been damaged by either the near-bankruptcy of UBS bank or the complete bankruptcy of Swissair airline.
How valuable the Made in Switzerland label is can be demonstrated by a recent legal dispute between Victorinox and the Swiss federal authorities, represented by one of the structural divisions of the Swiss armed forces. The parties reached a compromise pre-trial agreement, under which the Swiss federal authorities receive the right to register and protect this brand in the United States, and Victorinox receives the right to obtain a long-term license to use it for marking its products.
In other words, there is no doubt that simply referencing the Swiss origin of a product or service immediately increases its price. In Berlin, this is currently evident in numerous construction sites in the city center, including the construction of the grand City Palace (Humboldt Forum), which will open its doors next year, 2019. The implementation of this highly complex construction project was entrusted to the Swiss construction company Implenia, which has covered the entire center of the German capital with its logo (an alpine edelweiss). And perhaps this flower will become a welcome addition to the canon of standard visual symbols of Switzerland, but more on that later.
In any case, one thing is clear: the Swiss cross (and now also the edelweiss flower) and the Swissmade label in general have been and remain equivalent to reliability, quality, a symbol of a distant world where everything is still arranged "as it should be," almost an idyll with rivers of milk and banks of jelly. Therefore, the question arises: is reverse development possible? For example, if after the opening of the Humboldt Forum in Berlin, it suddenly collapses, God forbid? How great would the image and reputational losses be for the Implenia brand and Switzerland as a whole?
Do you think this is a completely fantastic scenario? Not at all. And yet. "National brands are surprisingly stable," says Daniel Traxler from Präsenz Schweiz, an autonomous structural unit of the Swiss Ministry of Foreign Affairs (EDA) responsible for promoting Switzerland's image abroad.
He probably knows what he is talking about. His organization was founded in 2001 amid the culmination of a major scandal related to so-called "dormant accounts and assets" in Swiss banks belonging to Holocaust victims. This was a huge blow to Switzerland's image, and echoes of this scandal can still be found today on social media, where specially trained trolls, looking into their manuals, begin posting comments like "Switzerland got rich on the gold teeth of Jews" as if from a template.
Despite the cynicism and falsity of such statements, it should certainly be acknowledged that the issue of Switzerland's course during World War II was one of the most difficult for the country at the end of the 20th century. In the field of science, Switzerland responded by creating an international commission of historians led by the now-deceased patriarch of Swiss historical science, Jean-François Bergier. But saving the country's image was also necessary in the field of marketing. And, as can be seen, Präsenz Schweiz handled its task well. In the medium term, the "dormant accounts" story left no qualitative scratches on the country's image.
Against this background, the near-bankruptcy of UBS in 2008 looks like a mere trifle, even if this "trifle" cost taxpayers billions of francs. Today, 10 years later, few people in the world even remember how the leading financial institution of Switzerland and the world nearly collapsed into the abyss due to its overly risky policies in financial markets. However, the situation on the domestic market was completely different.
The bank lost a very large number of its clients. This is what Daniel Fischer, head of Swiss marketing at UBS, tells us. To more or less restore its reputation, the bank needed to invest a lot of time and money. It is clear that the bank could no longer appeal to "old" Swiss values such as reliability and quality. Therefore, it now builds its marketing strategy in the Swiss market not on emotions, but on its rational and purely business qualities.
Thus, the crisis with UBS was seen as an expression of a general crisis in the banking and financial sector worldwide, and it most likely did not negatively affect Switzerland itself. "A solid national image and the reputation of a state can significantly mitigate the impact of even the biggest political scandals," confirms Daniel Traxler. And this asset cannot be measured by any money.
"For the mere fact that these watches are produced in Switzerland, the customer is willing to pay a premium of even 100%." This empirically confirmed thesis, contained in a recently published study, is brought to our attention by Stefan Feige from the consulting company htp St. Gallen Managementberatung AG. For cheese, this indicator is also at a solid level of 50%, while the specific brand of cheese and the name of its producer turn out to be completely unimportant.
"Origin completely pushes the specific brand into the background," emphasizes Stefan Feige. Indeed, the Swiss watch industry, for example, benefits from this phenomenon like no other. As early as 1971, it developed a set of rules and standards based on which it could be clearly determined whether a given watch is entitled to bear the label "Made in Switzerland" or not.
The country of origin is a central supporting element for Swiss watch products in any marketing strategy on any market, because only it fully “reflects such values as precision and quality, which we cannot afford to lose under any circumstances.” This is the conviction of Hans-Peter Rentsch, Vice President of the Swiss Watch Industry Association (Vizepräsident des Schweizer Uhrenverbandes). And that is precisely why the Swiss watch industry was one of the main lobbyists for the new legislation defining what Swissness and Swissmade mean.
No less of a “catastrophe,” at least in the eyes of the Swiss themselves, was the bankruptcy in 2001 of the Swiss national carrier Swissair. But here too, the Swiss brand demonstrated all its “Teflon” qualities. “Most foreign customers didn’t even notice the company’s bankruptcy, and it didn’t particularly interest them. Only in Switzerland, of course, was this topic on everyone’s lips,” says Bernhard Christen, head of marketing at Swiss International Airlines.
It turns out that the much-publicized bankruptcy of Swissair and its subsequent sale to Germany’s Lufthansa under the SWISS brand apparently did not cause much damage to either the Swiss brand or the country itself, famous for its precision mechanics, even though the reference to Swissmade is by no means a guarantee of success, especially in the air transport market.
Unlike customers of watch brands, who are willing to pay any price for a guaranteed brand, civil aviation passengers closely monitor prices and discounts and compare them. Only the highest quality and cheapest carrier survives. And yet, for B. Christen, it is very important to continue writing the company’s history with an eye on and reference to its Swiss roots. “On board, for example, we offer passengers not just some cheese product, but authentic Emmentaler or Appenzeller. In this area, by the way, we had to fight a whole battle with Lufthansa, which, for the sake of economy, wanted to centralize food procurement and switch to a standardized menu.”
Bernhard Christen says that relying on Switzerland as a brand helps maintain the image of SWISS as a carrier with a claim to the highest quality of service, because only in this way can the company withstand the ruthless competition from low-cost carriers in the future. At the same time, of course, the image of Switzerland itself could undergo some modernization and reboot.
As Daniel Traxler says, “Mountains, cheese, knives, and chocolate have dominated Switzerland’s image advertising for decades. That’s all true, but we would also welcome some change in external optics; we would like the world to perceive us as a modern, innovative country as well.”
Legislation and Swissness
The new legislation defining the criteria that must be met to be proudly called a product “made in Switzerland” came into force on January 1, 2017. It serves the main goal of protecting the “Schweiz” (“Switzerland”) brand and the Swiss cross as trademarks.
According to this legislation, only goods predominantly produced in Switzerland are entitled to use images of the Swiss cross and symbols based on it for their marketing promotion.
For example, in the case of processed food products, raw materials must be 80% produced in Switzerland. In the consumer goods sector, “system-forming” production operations and steps that turn a set of parts into the actual product must be 60% carried out in Switzerland itself.
Purely decorative use of the Swiss cross or any other symbols relating to Switzerland is permitted without restrictions, provided that it does not create or commercially exploit the impression that the product in question is a Swiss product made in the Confederation.
Petra KRIMPHOVE.
Translation by Igor Petrov.