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Hi there. Got this via mail from old Toufic. Interesting article from campaign regarding Berlin. Big Hello from Mr. Beyhum to everyone around.

milchsaeuregruss

berlin myth or magic


Berlin, according to some observers, is a hive of agency talent, but others say its reluctance to embrace international ways of working is failing to draw the big players. Jill Ervine reports
Berlin, a city once torn apart by war, is still a contradiction today; a city of parts that refuses to be constrained by a homogenous description. Sophisticated elegance nestles up to underground urban chic; grandiose, history-laden buildings stand beside architecture of the avant-garde, and a world-renowned creative seam still fails to produce brilliant advertising.
As such, it continues to fascinate.
A year ago, we looked at Berlin’s place in the international ad scene and its prospects. Amir Kassaei, the chief creative officer of DDB Germany, was not alone in his optimism when he told Campaign then that the “future of advertising, at least in Europe”, was being created in Berlin.
But what of developments since then? Is the reality living up to the hype? Such is the interest in Berlin’s potential that, in an effort to get under the skin of the city’s adland, we have given space over the next three pages to five senior ad executives and one client, who give their very personal perspectives on how Berlin compares with other international cities and what it needs to do to unleash its creative talent.
Even without any magic that Berlin might spin, Germany is beginning, rather quietly, to add sparkle to its creative performance. How many people would be surprised to discover that the country’s Cannes Lion haul this year was beaten only by the US and put the UK into third place? Time to re-evaluate some stereotypes.
Suzanne Bidlake, associate editor (reports), Campaign

This year, Monocle, the international magazine edited by the former Wallpaper* editor and Financial Times columnist Tyler Brûlé, rated Berlin as the “best cultural city in the world”.
“Berlin is pushing its creative industries where once more conventional trades were plied,” it noted. “Cheap studio space and round-the-clock nightlife make the city a magnet for enterprising designers and artists.”
So far, so good. Yet, despite its great cultural reputation, the city is still pretty broke. It remains a poor neighbour to the likes of Munich, Hamburg and Stuttgart, which have the infrastructure and big business to sustain their prosperity. Germany’s unemployment rate is 7.8 per cent (May 2008 figures); in Berlin, it’s 14.1.
In an attempt to get away from the city’s “sexy, but poor” image, its mayor, Klaus Wowereit, launched a campaign in March with the slogan “Be Berlin”. It has elicited a bemused response, with bloggers wondering how one might go about “being Berlin”, and laughing at the campaign’s Germanic bossiness.
However, no matter what economic problems the city may have, there is no let-up in the number of foreigners, and especially creative folk, who are falling over themselves to move there. Many are keen to work in the advertising industry while they’re at it. When it comes to finding talent, Berlin is a rich hunting ground, and much more so than any other city in Germany.
Margit Scheller-Wegener, the people and chief communication officer for DDB Group, Germany, says: “Some German agencies opened a Berlin office because they were unable to recruit in Hamburg and Düsseldorf. Then, in many cases, these Berlin-based creatives work on briefs from the Hamburg or Düsseldorf branches. Berlin, per se, doesn’t have enough local clients for its agencies, and our clients are situated mostly in mid or southern Germany.”
Forbes.com noted the event when two big German companies moved their headquarters to Berlin – the Bild newspaper and Pfizer. Bild’s relocation was based on the “political, cultural and artistic relevance of Berlin as the capital”, Christian Garrels, the head of international and digital media communication at its publisher, Axel Springer, says. “The board… decided that Germany’s biggest daily news­paper should be edited and published where ideas and trends are created. Berlin can be regarded as a real talent pool as well as a melting pot of different cultures.”
Yet none of the top ten German companies, which include Siemens, Allianz Worldwide and the Volkswagen Group, are located in the capital.
Scheller-Wegener believes that, while there is a tendency for agencies to favour foreign over homegrown talent, ultimately, talent is not dependent on nationality. Some clients are taken with the idea of having international creatives working on their accounts, but these creatives face a language barrier. “We get a lot of CVs from abroad, but unfortunately, without speaking German, we can’t employ many of them,” she says. “While the client may be international, the local offices are in Germany, and German is their office language. It’s also difficult for people outside the European Union to get a visa and a work permit here.”
Unlike Amsterdam, where agencies such as 180, Wieden & Kennedy and StrawberryFrog speak only English (so much so that it feels like working in London, only with very small beers), much of the Berlin agencies’ daily business is still conducted in German. Only a few agencies, such as TBWA\Berlin and Plantage, can claim to hold most of their meetings in English, and employ a significant number of foreign staff.
Many of the Germans who have moved back home seem less than impressed by how Berlin agencies function. They observe a disparity between the international nature of the city, and the still predominately German agency culture. Whether it’s because they have a broader awareness of what it takes to produce work of an international standard, or are simply a little less besotted with the city, they point out that a German attitude to work may be counterproductive to ground-breaking advertising.
Ilan Schaefer, the management supervisor at Jung von Matt Berlin, returned here in 2007 after stints in Amsterdam and Singapore. He says: “The creative output is very different to that from, for example, Amsterdam. Most campaigns are still done solely or predominantly for the German market.
It is good, solid work that sells, but German ads are mostly based on some intelligent thoughts and clever wordplay. They reach out more for your mind than your heart.”
There is, however, a fair sprinkling of managers and agency bosses in Berlin with significant foreign experience. Todd Schulz, for example, the executive creative director and partner of M&C Saatchi Berlin, began his career in Germany before heading to Leagas Delaney London. He returned to Germany to set up Leagas Delaney, then moved to 180 and Wieden & Kennedy Amsterdam. In 2003, he went to Berlin and set up INTERNATIONAL. Dominik Tiemann, the managing director and partner with Schulz, spent five years at W&K Amsterdam.
These homecoming Germans can use their international learnings to positive effect in Berlin. Schaefer says: “If I had only worked in Germany all my life, I probably wouldn’t recognise a lot of our opportunities, but also our weaknesses, compared with agencies from other countries. It gives you a good advantage on how to improve things and to change processes. And having the international experience helps in dealing with the increasing number of internationals on the client side.”
Oke Müller, the planning director at TBWA\Berlin, agrees. “My time spent working abroad was invaluable for gaining a broader view on brands and cultures, and is now directly applicable to my job, which is almost 100 per cent with our international clients.”
John Sealey, a Germany-based pitch consultant, is unconvinced that German agencies, including those in Berlin, feel any real imperative to position themselves in an international context. “Most agencies here don’t fully understand the concept of being international,” he says. “Not that many big German agencies have a global network to offer their clients, a notable exception being DDB’s global co-ordination department for Volkswagen in Berlin. Agencies do play at being internat­ional, but many don’t really have the ambition to rise to the challenge.”
Work that can stand up internationally also requires open-minded clients to help nurture the process. Sealey says German clients often don’t give their German agencies credit for being able to produce high-quality work. Berlin came second to Hamburg this year in terms of Cannes Lions.
Stefan Holwe, the managing partner at Plantage Berlin, also believes that while an international business mentality is growing in Berlin, so far only a few agencies have taken the step to become internationally operative businesses. Plantage is one such “new-school” agency, he says. “At Plantage, we work closely with our offices in Barcelona and Beijing, and a network of specialists around the globe. Of course, the agency language is English, since many of our team members don’t understand a word of German. We believe in progress through challenging the status quo, and that works best in an international team.”
Most of the German admen who’ve come back to the capital in the past few years have no delusions about what needs to change within Berlin ad agencies, if they are to make their mark internationally. There is a unanimous feeling that ad agencies here need to raise their game, harness the city’s creative energy and allow it to show through in its advertising. And everyone believes that it’s possible.

The planning director
Oke Müller planning director, TBWA\Berlin
I didn’t feel I was moving back to Germany, but rather forward to Berlin, when in May 2005, I left the Springer & Jacoby office we had opened in Amsterdam to join TBWA\Berlin.
You can feel the shift in the German ad landscape towards Berlin. We grew the TBWA group in Berlin from 35 to 120 people in under three years. Major car accounts such as BMW and Mini have chosen agencies in Berlin over those in Munich and Hamburg – most likely because the city attracts more international creative talent than other German cities. There’s a real culture of “open-source creativity” here, with lots of talent working freelance or in loose collectives everywhere in the city.
A couple of years ago, German agencies pigeonholed their international talent into “world force”, or other strangely named, departments.
At TBWA\Berlin today, all is integrated and most of our meetings are in English. Around a third of our staff are foreign: Brazilians, Americans, British, French, Spanish – you name it.
Aside from the growing internationalism of Berlin agency staff and the assignments they are given to work on, the big thing here is that the traditional way of advertising will be challenged by new and more compelling agency models.
At TBWA\Berlin, we’re working on a redefinition of how we want to work and on integrating media thinking firmly into our planning and creative processes.
Overall, this city is buzzing with a constant flux of creative ideas, expressions, experiments in arts, music, food, life and culture. You can’t help but be blown away and inspired by what you can do here.

The global account director
Stefan Petzinger global business director, DDB International, Berlin
Ever since I toyed with the idea of leaving Amsterdam, where I was an account director with StrawberryFrog, Berlin held a certain attraction for me – but only as a city, not as one of the world’s advertising hotspots. I wouldn’t have come back to take on a “German” role, but when I was offered a global position in Berlin, it really was a no-brainer.
As DDB’s global business director for Volkswagen, I head a department responsible for the co-ordination of one of the network’s biggest and most prestigious clients. We are probably some of the few truly international people in the Berlin ad scene, as we work directly with more than 32 countries around the globe.
Given the city’s reputation, you’d think Berlin should be the perfect breeding ground for a highly creative ad scene. Looking at the work, however, I doubt that the bulk can match the creativity and the courage of that from London, Amsterdam or the US. Since the city seems perfect, there must be another reason. I can only speculate what that might be, but perhaps “Germanness” and creativity are counter-productive, not only within agencies, but also on the client side. After all, we are known more for our engineering skills than for our great sense of humour.
There is also the language barrier. Fortunately, it is starting to crumble, with more Germans speaking excellent English and an increase of international talent in local agencies. Perhaps our ad agencies are not yet up to par, but Berlin is making the right moves to establish its unique place in the world of communications by doing things slightly differently. Who knows, possibly one day the big advertising centres will look at Berlin and wonder if they missed out. But, even if not, we’re still having a great time living in this very special place.

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