Goal (PR agency)

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The Goal AG is a Swiss public relations agency based in Andelfingen , Kanton Zurich . According to lobby control , she is particularly active for the Swiss People's Party (SVP), the Alternative for Germany (AfD) and other right-wing populist parties in Europe. One NGO calls the trademark of Goal AG “strong simplifications and targeted breaking of taboos”. Alexander Segert is the managing director of the company, which has existed since the 1970s .

history

Goal AG has existed since at least 1979. Its boss at the time was Hans-Rudolf Abächerli. The politician Christoph Blocher (SVP) engaged Goal AG for the first time in 1979 for his election campaign and the company advanced to become the central advertising agency for Blocher's party. Abächerli designed the so-called SVP-Sünneli, a drawn sun with a smiling face. In 1993, Goal AG created the poster that, according to Die Wochenzeitung, is considered to be the "turning point" in Swiss political advertising: The poster showed a shadowy dark figure threatening a woman with a knife. The slogan for this is: «We owe that to the left and the 'nice': more crime, more drugs, more fear”. After much criticism, u. a. the Federal Council with the company's poster. Hans-Rudolf-Abächerli later told Weltwoche : “The campaign had a value of less than 30,000 francs. The editorial contributions that it triggered would have cost over a million if they had been paid for as advertisements ».

Alexander Segert later succeeded Abächerlis. Today he is the sole owner of Goal AG. Segert has also been active internationally with his company since 2008. In order to create the legal framework for this, he changed the entry in the commercial register at that time .

In 2010/2011, Goal AG developed an Austrian version of the “minaret attack game” that the company had developed for the Swiss campaign to ban minarets . In the Austrian version of the game with the title " Moschee baba " you could shoot muezzins with a click of the mouse. The right-wing populist Freedom Party of Austria used the game in an election campaign in Styria. The public prosecutor was investigating sedition against Segert and the FPÖ politician Kurzmann ; both were acquitted in the following process.

In 2016 Segert was expelled from the Swiss Public Affairs Society (Spag). Segert refused to implement the association's voluntary transparency rules. The spag rules stipulate that the members of the company must disclose all mandates on the association's website.

Portfolio

The agency says it offers a wide range of services. Most are tailored to political parties and range from strategic advice to rhetoric seminars for individuals to the design of advertising material.

Customers

In 2017, Florian Buehrer pointed out that large business and umbrella organizations in Switzerland and non-partisan committees were among the customers of Goal AG.

Customer SVP

The SVP has been one of Goal AG's customers since the early 1980s. The agency steered the campaign in the referendum on the so-called "deportation initiative" for the national conservative camp. She also designed the controversial poster motif of the black sheep . The campaign associated with the collection of signatures had content-related overlaps with the SVP's election campaign for the Swiss parliamentary elections in 2007 . Florian Buehrer states that this bypassed the legally permitted deadline for election posters.

Customer AfD

In Germany, the company plays a central role in the indirect election campaign for the alternative for Germany . Goal works for the association for the preservation of the rule of law and civil liberties ; the association financed non-transparent election advertising for the party that does not fall under the German political party law. From the summer of 2017, several cases gradually became known in which the company directly supported AfD politicians: it placed ads for Jörg Meuthen (AfD Baden-Württemberg) and paid for them, as well as for Guido Reil (AfD North Rhine-Westphalia). Goal also financed posters and other advertising material for Reil's 2017 state election campaign . It is not clear where the company got the money for the ads. No payments were recorded in the AfD report for the corresponding period.

Lobbycontrol declared in 2018: “It is grotesque that more than two years after the state elections in Baden-Württemberg we still do not know who supported Meuthen in the election campaign. The advertisements and posters were designed like AfD materials. According to an analysis by LobbyControl, this is clearly to be seen as a party donation ... As a party, the AfD is not doing anything against the non-transparent election advertising in its favor. "

The Bundestag administration has been investigating possible illegal election funding since 2018. According to Spiegel, Goal AG received a request to cease and desist from the AfD federal board in July 2018. The AfD logo and corporate design should no longer be used by the company in connection with the party. The same was sent to the Association for the Preservation of the Rule of Law and Civil Liberties .

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Goal AG - Lobbypedia. Retrieved on June 7, 2018 (German (Sie-Salutation)).
  2. ↑ a b Export nationalism: The foreign deployment of the SVP advertiser . May 17, 2017 ( woz.ch [accessed June 8, 2018]).
  3. ↑ a b Florian Buehrer (2017): Attention! - S 'Schöfli makes politics . In: Thinking about methods of art and image science, doi: 10.18452 / 7357 .
  4. ↑ Sensitive AfD donations from Switzerland , Tages-Anzeiger , August 30, 2017
  5. ↑ Donation affair: AfD threaten more than 100,000 euros fine. March 7, 2019, accessed on March 8, 2019 (German).
  6. ↑ a b tagesschau.de: AfD: election campaign in the gray area probably without consequences. Accessed June 7, 2018 (German).
  7. ↑ AfD: A million dollar black box . In: ZEIT ONLINE . ( zeit.de [accessed June 7, 2018]).
  8. ↑ tagesschau.de: AfD at a distance from its own supporters? Retrieved on July 23, 2018 (German).