New life in the Schönbrunn Zoo: UNIQA insures Fu Hu,
the newborn panda cub who arrived in August 2010.
In the previous year, UNIQA insured and sponsored the
journey of the panda bear Fu Long, born in
Schönbrunn Zoo in 2007, back to his Chinese
homeland.
By starting a series of initiatives in 2010, UNIQA continued to implement its strategy for improving the Group’s level of recognition and positioning as a European quality brand with Austrian roots through a series of targeted sponsoring initiatives.
A particular sponsoring highlight was the birth in August 2010 of the panda cub Fu Hu at Vienna’s Schönbrunn Zoo. UNIQA celebrated the cub’s birth with comprehensive insurance protection on all three panda bears in the historic zoo. Now, three years after the birth of the Schönbrunn panda cub Fu Long, the zoo was able to welcome the next generation with Fu Hu. Since 2003, insuring the panda bears has been an important sponsoring project for UNIQA, one that began with a custom-tailored transportation insurance package for the transport of the parent pandas from China to Vienna. Because the panda bears remained the property of the People’s Republic of China, a special liability insurance had to be developed for the Schönbrunn zoo. UNIQA also insured Fu Long’s return to his Chinese homeland in 2009.
The artist Brigitte Kowanz, in the course of
her exhibition at MUMOK, took the moving
lettering of “Now I see” and translated it into
morse-code lighting on the UNIQA Tower.
In the area of cultural sponsoring, UNIQA was one of the main sponsors for the eighth time of the Salzburg Festival and for the fourth time of the Grafenegg Music Festival in 2010. Substantial support was also given in 2010 to the Lake Festival at Mörbisch and the Vienna State Opera House as well as the production of Verdi’s “Rigoletto” at the Volksoper Vienna. One highlight, which also lit up the UNIQA Tower, was the exhibition of Brigitte Kowanz in MUMOK, the artist who designed a light installation of 40,000 LED lights for the 7,000 m2 facade of the UNIQA Tower. UNIQA has insured and sponsored the MUMOK for several years, and this enabled the company to bring art into Vienna’s public spaces in an extraordinary way in 2010. The UNIQA ArtCercle, a special programme for customers who love art, offered exclusive events during Brigitte Kowanz’s exhibition.
Additional sponsoring contributions went to exhibitions at Austrian museums during the reporting period, including the Albertina, the Belvedere, the Kunsthistorisches Museum, the Museum of Technology in Vienna, the Joanneum in Graz and the Vienna Centre for Architecture. Until January 2010, the illuminated manuscript on the life and legend of Saint Wenceslas, purchased several years ago by UNIQA, was on display at the Austrian National Library for its exhibit “Wenceslas from Bohemia – Saint and Ruler”. Not least because of this historical document’s significance for the understanding of Czech art, the exhibition has been on display since March 2010 at the National Museum in Prague, with a festive opening attended by President Václav Klaus. The UNIQA Group also sponsors various regional artists and art initiatives in its international markets. In Bulgaria in 2010, for example, UNIQA was the main sponsor of an exhibition of the renowned contemporary Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi in the National Gallery of Foreign Art in Sofia.
The illuminated manuscript on the life of Saint
Wenceslas, owned by UNIQA, moved from Vienna to
Prague, where it was on display from 24 March to
2 May 2010 in the Prague National Museum. Czech
President Václav Klaus gave the inaugural address.
In the area of sports, UNIQA successfully continued its long-running partnership with professional skiers Benjamin Raich and Marlies Schild. The power pair of Austrian sports represents the ideal embodiment of the “new generation” for UNIQA. This makes them perfect advertising figures, and not just on the world championship slopes. UNIQA also continued its safety campaign, “Real pros wear helmets and back protection”, with Raich and Schild testimonials in 2010. UNIQA athletes also had outstanding success at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver: Marlies Schild and snowboarder Benjamin Karl both won silver medals. The cooperation between Raiffeisen Versicherung and Matthias Lanzinger also continued in 2010. Lanzinger provides testimonials in the area of classic advertising and serves as an ambassador at security-related events.
In Eastern and South Eastern European markets, UNIQA is also cooperating with famous athletes (“Faces for UNIQA”), thereby promoting recognition of UNIQA’s successful brand in this important strategic region. In addition to Slovakian slalom skier Veronika Zuzulová, Polish national handball team coach Bogdan Wenta, Serbian basketball legend Aleksandar Ðjorðevic, Montonegrine water polo star Nikola Janovic, or world-class Bulgarian sprinter Ivet Lalova, UNIQA osiguranje has also sponsored the Croatian national handball team since 2010. UNIQA Biztosító 2010 also showed its sporty side by supporting the largest amateur sailing competition at Balaton, which took place for the fourth time last year.
UNIQA was also a sponsor of the national Summer 2010 Special Olympic Games in St. Pölten, Austria. Roughly 2,000 athletes took part in this exceptional international event, which took place within the framework of the global Special Olympics initiative. The Special Olympics were founded in 1968 by Eunice Kennedy Shriver and offer year-round training and competition opportunities in 26 different Olympic disciplines for more than 2.5 million children eight years and older as well as adolescents and adults with mental disabilities from 180 nations around the world.
In the area of social sponsoring, in 2010 UNIQA once again donated a large amount together with Raiffeisen Zentralbank to the Mobile Caritas Hospice, making another important contribution to the care and treatment of people suffering from severe and incurable diseases within their familiar environments. The “Pink Ribbon” campaign was also supported again in 2010 as part of the fight against breast cancer and to raise awareness of prevention opportunities and the risks of the disease. Like many other buildings and sights throughout the world, the UNIQA Tower was once again blanketed in pink light on October 1st, World Breast Cancer Day. The UNIQA VitalTruck also stopped by in 2010 at Vienna’s Saint Stephen’s Square for a good cause in two senses: The employees of the Vienna Archdiocese were able to donate ten cents to Saint Stephen’s Cathedral for every fitness point that they earned on the ergometer. Two hundred employees “cycled” a distance worth €10,000, which UNIQA donated after the event.
In 2010, the “Austrian Integration Prize” was awarded for the first time by the “Economy for Integration” Association and the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation, ORF. Together with the Federation of Austrian Industries, UNIQA took over the sponsorship of the “educate and enable” category, thereby emphasising once more, from the perspective of an internationally active company, the importance of the ability to move between different worlds of culture and language. Another project, initiated by the “Economy for Integration” Association, is also being facilitated by UNIQA as the main sponsor: the multilanguage speech competition, “Sag’s multi”, promotes language competence among Viennese school children from immigrant families. The UNIQA Group also supports various initiatives in its international markets. In Romania, for example, an awareness-raising campaign began in 2010 that seeks to inform eight- to ten-year-old school pupils about dangers in their own home and to teach children about the topics of prevention and safety.
