“Figugegl” advertising icon Doris Gisler-Truog in portrait: She introduced fondue culture to Switzerland

Even at this advanced age, Doris Gisler-Truog looks extremely fit when she visits Blick’s villa on Lake Zurich. His thoughts are sharp, his charm is captivating.

The retiree still travels a lot. Two years ago he bought a new car, Peugeot. “I’ve always been a good driver,” he says confidently. She learned to drive from her boyfriend at a time when women almost never drove. 70 years later she still enjoys driving she. “Today it does a lot of things on its own, like parking, so driving is very easy.”

Great success with fondue

Your birthday dinner? No fondue. Although Switzerland owes much of its fondue culture to this woman. From 1954, Doris Gisler ran the Gisler + Gisler advertising agency in Zurich with her husband, Kaspar Gisler († 53), who died in an accident in 1971. At that time, the cheese union was trying to increase cheese consumption by promoting fondue. Only: Almost no one knew this at the time. “A 1954 study showed that only 30 percent of German-speaking Swiss eat fondue, and only 5 percent prepare it at home,” says Gisler.

With public relations fireworks, advertising campaigns and the then still unusual slogan “Fondue isch guet und git e gueti Luune”, Gisler turned melted cheese into an overnight hit. Fondue represented unity, even harmony; plain cheese was turned into a national dish. The word Caquelon, previously largely unknown in German-speaking Switzerland, was suddenly on everyone’s lips and in almost every home.

In the 1970s, the fondue advertising slogan became the shortened anagram “Figugegl” and continues to evoke memories for many people today. But Gisler deserves no more because he did not preserve the motto and acronym himself.

Crazy advertising years

Gisler still didn’t need to suffer. “Life has been kind to me,” he explains. Both family and professional. Success with fondue brought him client after client. From the 1960s Gisler + Gisler was the largest advertising agency in Switzerland. Customers included Knorr, Valser, Ovaltine, Thomi + Franck, Feldschlösschen and Eterna.

Gisler calls these “Häsch din Ovi hüt scho gha?” He created slogans such as. For Ovaltine. “The phrase is borrowed from the phrase ‘Häsch din Demo hüt scho gha,’ which was around during the Cultural Revolution in the 1970s,” Gisler says with a smile. He is also responsible for the cult advertising slogan from Graubüsü “S’isch guat, z’Valserwasser”. Or the first advertising rap in Switzerland: “No, you called you Faster than Leisi.”

The Order scored another notable coup in 1971 with the successful campaign to introduce women’s suffrage. This made Gisler immortal in the women’s movement. “We did not portray the men as fools and did not provoke them unnecessarily, instead we focused on the undecided and gently persuaded them,” says the trained journalist. In this way, he established a strong network in the political environment. “Every vote we supported through advertising was won,” Gisler says triumphantly.

No longer a company, but a legacy

The only time he was denied success was when he left: Gisler describes the failed succession plan as his “biggest mistake.” In 1985, he sold his agency partly to BBDO and partly to beneficiary managers. Although she was already with her second husband, psychiatrist Arnold Truog, 79, she “underestimated the psychology of my separation.” He handed over management of the company, against his wishes, to his long-time artistic director, Gebi Schregenberger. “There was a false sentimentality behind it,” says the 1977 publicist. There were power struggles within the company, and the company was later merged into a larger structure where “the cultures did not fit together.”

Doris Gisler is unbothered by the fact that her life’s work cannot continue, at least not as a company. He continues to lead an active life: “I never get bored.” She doesn’t want to explain how she fills her days. This much: Her family is important to her, she supports her husband, who is currently an active sculptor, and she is passionate about collecting.

The spacious rooms of the neoclassical villa in Meilen ZH are filled with collectibles: glasses, Mickey Mouse figures, farm furniture, books, one of the largest hat collections in Switzerland and, of course, her husband’s works of art. When asked if he still has goals in life, he replies: “I’d like to bring order to all this, but I probably won’t be able to do that anymore.”