A recession and the growth in digital media is encouraging advertisers and agencies to take a new approach in Europe's biggest economy.
 
Germany’s ad market is perceived, even internally, as disciplined but uncreative. Few German campaigns raise headlines beyond its borders while international brands tend to originate European work from London. But as Germany recovers from its economic recession, both media and creative agencies are starting tochallenge this conventional wisdom. Consumers are being targeted in a new way and the work is being recognised at international awards.
 
“Germany is a hard market,” asserts Nicole Prüsse, chief operating officer and managing director at Zenithmedia. “German clients are risk-averse, conservative and unadventurous. As agencies have realised how difficult it’s become to engage with certain audiences, they’ve had to adopt more creative ways to address them.”
 
Peter Petermann, managing director at Carat Hamburg, offers a sociological perspective. “The Germany I grew up in was always more negative than positive, more critical than enthusiastic,” he says. “The younger generation is open-minded and that has influenced the way we look at communications in general.” The recession between 2001 and 2003 also forced media owners to become more open to new ideas.
 

“A few years ago everything was sold at ratecard,” notes Jeannine Soeldner, online sales manager at IGP, which represents German print titles including leading news weekly Der Spiegel. “Now media owners have to fight harder for their share of the budget and have started to think about longer-term relationships with brands.”

Hard times create opportunity 
Christof Schmid, chief executive of Mediaplus, concurs: “Since media owners failed to sell sufficient classical ad space across all media, they have had to become more open to special ads and content integration. This is harder to achieve and needs more effort from both sides, but it can also maximise PR value and improve the reputation of a media.”
 
Nowhere is this more apparent than in TV where the impact of online TV services and new product placement restrictions on terrestrial services, particularly for state channels ZDF and ARD, has compounded the debate surrounding the future of the 30- second spot. A potential ban on advertising around kids’ programming has also focused minds.
 
As a result, split-ads, branded content and “platforming” – advertising placed outside the commercial break – have all become established. For insurance group RNV, Carat sister company Bloecher & Partner devised a “thinking break” for Das Quiz mit Jörg Pilawa in which the viewer was given a 15-second ad-pause while the contestant thought of an answer.
Zenithmedia incorporated white mice, seemingly at random, along the bottom of the screen in a mix of programmes on MTV, Sat 1 and RTL. The mice eventually ran into the ad-break and the yellow plastic heel of a Puma training shoe.
 
According to Petermann, advertising outside of the regular commercial block now represents 15% of the average on air budget. “Given the fact that product placement is more difficult, the idea is to produce unique content in which the brand or product plays an intrinsic role,” he says. Sister agency Optimedia was able to create a PR storm for Nestlé brand Maggi by buying the right to name an anticyclone weather condition (see Case Study, page 40). Even print, the most static medium in terms of new titles or format launches, has seen attempts to integrate brands within the editorial.
 

Mediaplus, for example, created a teaser campaign for BMW by stamping out the silhouette of the new BMW 3-series in magazine pages. Online is also showing brands there is another way. Hamburg independent Nordpol devised a humorous take on the familiar slow-motion footage of crash-test dummies for Renault. To win over a reluctant client, Nordpol posted “crash test” on YouTube where it took off virally, before being transferred to cinema and TV.

Digital experimentation 
It is the advance of digital communications, believes Petermann, that has alerted media owners to the potential of breaking traditional formats. “In a culture that doesn’t reward entrepreneurial decision making, media owners have hesitated before doing anything that breaks the mould,” he says. “The arrival of Web 2.0 changes that because for very little outlay you can experiment online.”
 
Der Speigel has used its status as the largest German online news site to attract sponsors of video-streamed news updates such as Zurich Finance and VW, which also runs a sub-channel on the Spiegel online car section. “There’s a trend to integrate ads as close as possible to the content and to create more interaction with the media.
 
Media is being selected with the creative idea in mind more than ever before,” says Mediaplus’s Schmid. Thomas Koch, chief executive of Starcom Frankfurt, agrees: “Most new creativity is being placed into research and insight. Germans have always been good planners. Now we’re becoming more strategic by finding out what’s relevant to the consumer.”

A number of outdoor campaigns are testament to this.

Auris goes outdoor 
Zenithmedia and creative agency BMZ+more generated Germany’s largest-ever outdoor campaign with 200,000 sites in 82 German cities populated with 27 executions for the launch of the Auris. For telecommunications provider Alice, Mediaplus promoted the message “The most attractive connection” by creating 30 unique outdoor sites linked by a red ribbon that burst out of large-scale posters, wrapping itself around entire buildings and connecting them with others.
 
The rise of these new advertising spaces owes at least some debt to the 2006 World Cup where special-format out of home demonstrated what could be achieved. Spectacular outdoor included the 160-metre-long superstructure of footballer Oliver Khan outside Munich airport and a projection on the ceiling of Frankfurt railway station, both for Adidas.
 
However, not everyone accepts that the World Cup has ended the cautious client syndrome. “Germany may feel like it’s a market on the rise, but decision making is still very judicious,” says Koch. “Clients aren’t braver. They look for discounts more than anything else. I don’t expect to see a big change for at least another five years.