Station to Station

 

As far as trains go, I’m rather “admire from afar”. I never did Interrailing in my youth. And while I’ve nodded off on a few train journeys, I’ve never travelled in a sleeper car. The only times I’ve slept properly on a train were under a table on the way up to Aberdeen from London on a night train. And in an absolutely charming little restaurant/hotel in Germany whose name evades me - but this was a few repurposed dining and sleeper cars from an old train - a delightful experience.

Other than that, my mind has a romanticised Wes Anderson-esque view of night trains, fuelled by Agatha Christie films and the gorgeous Auden poem “Night Rail”, above.

Normally when I hear about something new from a “Berlin-based startup” I assume it’ll be something techy and not relevant to someone making serious thoughts about retirement. 

But.

Maybe by 2027 I will indeed be retired and very keen to give Nox a go. 

What a splendid thought - overnight trains across Europe with 100% personal rooms - for the price of a cheapo airfare. The plan is to connect over 100 European cities by 2035. I’m already dreaming about Budapest, Vienna, Linz and now Györ (which I had to look up) - the connections already shown from Frankfurt.

Wishing Thibault Constant and his colleagues all the best with getting this on the road - I mean tracks. 

Potemkin Perfection

 

I don’t often read recently-published novels. Probably due to my weird penchant for living in the past, and I often think the old stuff is going to be more enduring. But now and then I have a go at something new, and, in the case of Perfection by Vincenzo Latronico, I was pleasantly surprised.

Here’s what I made of this tale of two digital nomads set in the first two decades of the 21st century:

-------------------------------------

This is a brilliantly observed novel, describing in detail the life on- and offline of a young couple, from the early 2000s to 2019. I say “the life” in singular, as Anna and Tom, digital creatives, are written mainly as one entity. The pair are originally from Italy, but find their way to buzzy Berlin at the time of the digital boom and the rise of social media.

Reading the first few pages, you wonder if you’ve stumbled into a talking IKEA catalogue or similar. The style is unemotional, descriptive, rather flat. This is curious initially, but soon mesmerising as you drift into a curated, algorithmically determined world where the public persona rules supreme and reality is “stuffed away into huge, clear storage boxes.”

Of the couple, the author writes: “Anna and Tom had grown up with the notion that individuality manifested itself as a set of visual differences, immediately decodable and in constant need of updating”. Their Instagram world of curated ephemera includes vintage clothes, cupcakes, crystalline coastlines, airy apartments, flowers and book covers. And “they would find themselves utterly mesmerised by the apartment, kale salad or kitten of someone living two blocks or two continents away. They would get worked up about silly fights between strangers.”

Offline, Anna and Tom live in a similar bubble, together with kindred ex-pat creatives. They frequent trendy clubs, Instagrammable restaurants and edgy art exhibitions. This bubble is like a 21st century global digital version of a Potemkin village - curiously flat and lacking in substance.

Gradually, the pair recognise a lack of purpose or fulfillment and attempt to rectify this via volunteer work in a refugee camp. But their digital creative skills cannot be usefully deployed here.

As the years pass, the couple sense the pain of a generational change and leave Berlin, returning to Southern Europe. Although the ending hints at a new stability, one cannot ignore the date - 2019. My mind continued to tick over when I’d finished the book, wondering what happened to Anna & Tom (and their ilk) in the pandemic.

Insightful, thought-provoking, well-written and translated, “Perfection” evokes the spirit of the early 21st century in Europe (almost) perfectly.

-------------------------------------

And even though I’m a little older than the protagonists, I had several ouch-been-there-done-that-moments.

Needless to say. I read Perfection on my Kindle, as is my wont these days. I still hanker after real books, to be honest, yet this was the perfect book to read on Kindle, which enhances that flat, Potemkin village feeling. 

Just as I’d finished the book, though, I saw a wonderful sight just down the road which could just be the start of the way back to real books. It’s kind of the opposite of a Potemkin village - an inside-out bookshop - Bruchköbel’s very own bricks and mortar brand.

Our relocated local bookshop, the Rathaus Buchhandlung, designed by the Artbau Gruppe. Congratulations to all concerned, and much success with the new shop. 

 

RETROWURST: Kik June 2007

 

What surprised me the most about my article about the fashion discounter Kik, back in June 2007, was the Creative Director asking “who?” Blimey, I thought our echo chambers were bad enough now!

Anyway, here’s how the wonderful world of Kik looked 18 years ago:

-----------------------------------------------------------------

This month, it is the turn of one of Germany’s fastest-growing retailers to be the subject of Extrawurst. A couple of weeks ago, there was a comment on one of the Brand Republic blogs about the brands “loved by metrosexuals” that seem to creep into every seminar and conference like the usual suspects. Brands like Apple, Nike and Innocent. The author called for celebration of Unfashionably Brilliant Brands such as Argos, National Express and Travelodge. Well, you will be forgiven for not being familiar with the brand I’m going to write about if you live in the UK, but I was a little worried recently when a creative director here in Germany had to ask “who?” when I mentioned this brand, so far away as it is from the world of advertising agency folk!

 

In fact, it is funny that this retailer should be a candidate for being Unfashionably Brilliant because it is a fashion retailer, Kik (www.kik-textilien.de ). Obviously the fashions that Kik sells are not really de rigueur in the creative departments of Hamburg and Berlin but no-one can deny that Kik is one of the few home-grown success stories of recent years in a somewhat lacklustre market.

 

If you have never experienced Kik, I can only say that, being kind, it is rather like a market (Wembley, if it still exists, rather than Camden Lock) or one of those “everything a pound” bazaar places. Being unkind, it is a depressing sort of jumble-sale with fashion mistakes from the last few years served up in sizes up to 6XXL!

 

Kik started 12 years ago in Bönen, Westphalia and now has over 2,000 stores with sales of around €1.2 bn (2006 estimated). The objective of the retailer is to get to 2,500 stores by the end of 2007. As Lidl has 2,750 stores here, you can get some idea of the size of the operation. The stores were originally in out-of-town locations, on bleak industrial estates but Kik is now going increasingly for city-centre locations.

 

The concept is incredibly simple: do what Aldi and Lidl do for food, but for clothing. But before you start thinking that this is a sort of German Primark, please stop. While Primark has some aspirations to fashion, style, service and even shopping experience, you can forget all of those with Kik. Kik is deliberately cheaper and no-frills-er than anyone else in the business. There are no shop-window displays or dummies in Kik. There are no bags unless you pay for them. There are no nice carpets or luxurious changing-rooms. There are a couple of mirrors in each store and a couple of tiny basic cubicles (without mirrors) should you want to try on a bikini. Generally, trying-on is discouraged as Kik worry that seeing yourself in an orange, purple and turquoise kaftan in the cold light of day could put you off purchase. On the other hand, they make a big thing of their “exchange without discussion” policy: being cynical, they probably think that, at these prices, people won’t bother to bring something back.

 

Kik relies on the impulse additional purchase. The way to the till is via a bazaar-like collection of bargains: toys, sweets, make-up and perfumes, greeting cards and wrapping paper and household goods such as rubbish bags and batteries. Most of these items sell for €1 or less. And the clothes are amazingly cheap: a T-shirt at €1.99 is cheaper than buying a pack of 8 toilet rolls!

 

Although the quality is not first-class, it is reasonable, especially for the price. Kik has some “minimum standards” ensuring that, while most of the clothes are produced cheaply in Asia, child labour is not used, nor are there any dodgy chemicals in the clothes. Although one gets the feeling that no more questions are asked than necessary about suppliers, Kik does make some effort in the direction of CSR with the “Help and Hope” Foundation, formed in 2005 to help children in poverty. However, it is not one of the top places to train or to work: there is a large turnover of staff and these are not really trusted or well-looked-after in the way that IKEA, for example, does.

 

But, going back to the clothes, one can’t really argue with the prices. Kik proclaim that you can “dress yourself for under €30” which they can certainly live up to. T-shirts are €1.99 and jeans are €7.99 – with no price increase since May 2002! Three pairs of socks will set you back a mere €1.99 and children’s jeans can be had for €4.99. In the non-clothing lines, the look-and-smell-alike perfumes are €2.99 and greeting cards and gift wrap €0.49.

 

Advertising and promotion are loud and cheerful, as you’ll experience if you click on the website link. Kik do a roaring business in outsize and there is no pussyfooting around here with size 14/16 models – the guys and girls that model the XXL collections are BIG!

Kik have found a very upfront and prominent form of promotion in terms of football tricots. As well as a number of major teams in the Bundesliga, Kik supplies kit to all manner of local and junior teams. And, when you can kit out a complete team (with a bag and ball thrown in) for a mere €99.99, who is to argue?

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Interesting that Kik foresaw and acted on the whole Plus-Size models thing - a pioneer of inclusivity if ever there was one!

In 2025, Kik are still plying their wares, successfully - with 4,200 stores across Europe. Sales have doubled to £2.4 bn since 2006. I haven’t been in there recently, but I had a quick look at the website and the usual suspects are all present and correct - paper plates with rainbow princess unicorns, sequinned denim jackets, garden gnomes. You can still get jeans for under €10 and a T-shirt for €3.49.

There was even a phase when Kik parties were a hip thing to do.

Kik have even more competition these days - not just from Aldi and Lidl - but there’s a whole army of discounters for textiles and bits & pieces - from TEDi to Takko. We’ve got a new Woolworth opening up round the corner, too.

One thing I omitted to mention in my original article is where the name comes from - it’s an acronym for “Kunde ist König”.

The customer is king (or princess). And maybe that’s less about a seamless customer journey/unique branded experience or whatever the latest buzzwords are, and more about a constantly-changing range of cheap and cheerful tat that’s within the reach of anyone’s wallet or pocket money. 

 

Heads or tails?

 

I got the sad news yesterday that the headmaster of my first school passed away recently - although he did achieve the grand old age of 96. There’s a Facebook group for ex-pupils of the school and I spent some time browsing old black and white school photos. These were taken on a summer lawn, in front of the rhododendrons, many moons ago. 

The photos were usually arranged so that there was a group of taller, wholesome-looking girls standing in front of the prize cups and trophies. A combination of being small for my age and slightly precocious as far as learning went meant I was never destined to stand behind the cups. I’m somewhere off to the side - in one photo with a badly concealed snigger. I was prone to giggles about absurd and puerile things in those days. Still am.

When I reached secondary school, the teachers were probably relieved I didn’t seem quite as oddball as my brother, who was rumoured to "drink ink and play his trumpet in the toilet.” I was never the out-and-out rebel, bad girl or geek, but I did have a slight dusting of eccentricity and subversiveness. 

Bookish and useless at most sports, I never really wanted to be like David (or Davida) Watts, in the words of The Kinks’ song (performed here by The Jam). When I got to the Sixth Form, almost everyone was made a Prefect. I was one of the few that wasn’t. That changed when I passed the Cambridge Entrance exams, though. I think the head of sixth form even invited me for a glass of sherry in his office. But I shrugged off the smarminess for what it was, played the game and wore my Prefect badge with apparent pride. Although I was more likely to have my nose in something like Colin Wilson’s The Outsider than be patrolling the corridors during Prefect Duty.

I did manage to collect a couple of “Head” titles during my career. I was “Acting Head of Market Research” during our boss’s maternity leave, then later “Head of Planning” at Saatchi Frankfurt. But along with this, I can remember at least one telling-off from a (female) boss about my dress sense. I sat there wearing a long yellow-gold jacket, leggings and pointy black shoes with gold embroidery, like some sort of gender-fluid member of Showaddywaddy. If I’d been tarty or scruffy, it would have been easier to deal with. All the boss could come up with was that the outfit didn’t convey “corporate gravitas” or some such. Again, I shrugged and smiled. Weren’t we an ad agency? Not bloody McKinsey?

But there were plenty of colleagues who did tow the line. Stick to the agenda. They were safe pairs of hands who’d probably stood behind the cups in the school photo. I note that a lot of the women I worked with in the past are now OBEs and Dames. Of course, there were the out-and-out rebels, too - and they were celebrated accordingly.

But I was always a "neither-nor" case. A bit of a chameleon, fitted in when it suited me. Had my independent thoughts but often kept them to myself. 

I found this blog post about “Head Girl Syndrome” a few years ago. It’s a little dated now and has a rather bitter tinge - and something of that "either-or" binary. But a lot of it resonated with me. A Head Girl is “a good all-rounder - pretty, popular, sociable and well-behaved.” The description has never fitted me particularly well. The long yellow-gold jacket was better. The author points out how the Head Girl type is favoured by committees, peer review processes, voting and anything that favours consensus. And how “modern society is run by Head Girls, of both sexes, hence there is no place for the creative genius.”

There is a place for the creative genius, of course, but it’s not at the top of a government or commercial organisation. 

Since 2013, when that article was written, we’ve seen yet more dumbing-down and risk aversion in politics and commerce as these are further driven by frameworks, processes, ideologies and dogma. There's a distinct lack of emphasis on independent thought. And it’s pretty obvious that the advent of AI will advance all this normalising and homogenising further despite a lot of noise about neurodiversity. Head Girl CVs are a very attractive catch for AI.

This is a brilliant article by James Marriott of The Times (sorry about the paywall) in which he bemoans the “normie-doom spiral”. In essence:

21st century Britain is beset by mediocrities who rise to the top not by doing anything right but by not doing anything wrong.

Now, I’m certainly not dumping all ex-Head Girls and Boys in with this. I’ve come to terms with my own lack of Head-Girlness. Nor do I hold myself up as a some sort of wronged and unrecognised creative genius. 

I certainly haven’t got all the money that David/a Watts has got - but I’m not a “dull and simple” lass, either.

I’m the Tail Girl. Wagging most of the time, doing the stuff I like, rather than being a nodding dog. 

But I have a sting tucked away, too.

Tell it like it is

 

Having (potentially) two Mothers’ Days (the UK Mothering Sunday in March and yesterday’s international Mother's Day) is a bit like having two passports.

When all’s going well, you get the best of both. But, more often than not, you end up sitting on the fence and not really getting much of either. 

Mothers’ Day in Germany was a bit of a mixed (old) bag for me this year.

My one offspring was not around, having absconded to Helsinki on a spontaneous jaunt with a chum. But he did deliver a couple of very fine bottles of wine before he flew off.

I didn’t receive any flowers, but I did get a delightfully kitsch heart-shaped strawberry cake, which was delicious and quickly gobbled up.

No lie-in for me*, as we had an early morning band rehearsal for our Spring concert. Two of the band’s young mums turned up, one wearing a “Beste Mama der Welte” T-shirt and the other with two small boys in tow. She spent much of the practice dealing with snacks, drinks, a few squeals and shrieks that weren’t on the manuscript, as well as at least one nappy change. 

Mothers’ Day isn’t really like this - probably not even for Meghan:

  

Amid all the kitsch and chocolates, flowers and fake smiles, it was refreshing to see this ad for the Aldi Süd brand (creative from Antoni99). 

Now, Mothers' Day and Fathers’ Day (which is Ascension Day) are always pretty close to each other in Germany. This means a film about parents and children makes a lot of sense. 

This film speaks for itself - it’s a kitsch-free yet moving look at the relationship between parents and children over a lifetime. It’s based on a powerful insight - or what we used to called a Simple Universally Recognised Truth (SURT) - “because all parents are also children.” It ends with some genuine photos of generations that Aldi customers have sent in, showing the love between parents and children of whatever age.

Now that’s what I call authentic.

*By the way, I didn’t draw the shortest of short straws - it was my husband who valiantly got up at some unmentionable hour to drive the offspring to the airport for his Finnish jaunt.

RETROWURST: Apples May 2007

 

It’s the merry month of May and apple blossom time - and 18 years ago, my Extrawurst article was all about apples. The varieties, the orchards, the cakes, the juice and that Hessian speciality, Apfelwein.

--------------------------------------------------------

Around about this time of year, on the gentle hills around Frankfurt, the orchards are in full bloom, which brings me on to the subject of the German – or more specifically, Hessian, love-affair with the humble apple. Although the Germans are only fourth in the European league of apple-growers, behind Poland, France and Italy, they are passionate about their apples, particularly in the Bundesland in the middle of Germany, Hessen, where I live.

 

Some 1,500 apple varieties are grown in Germany, but only 30-40 of these are widely available or commercially important. The number of varieties in general is declining with fewer and fewer home-grown varieties available in the supermarkets. The traditional way of growing apples, the Streuobstwiese, where a mix of different fruit trees of different ages co-exist in an orchard, together with typical fauna and flora, is also on the decline, being taken over by more formal – and efficient, from a commercial view – plantations. The decline of the Streuobstwiese is of concern, not only to environmentalists, but also to honey producers and many average Germans. Especially in the area around Frankfurt, it is not uncommon for people to own a few trees in such an orchard and to sell the fruit off in the autumn to one of the local producers of Apfelwein, of which more later! In almost every village there will be an active Apple or Fruit Tree Club, whose members vigorously undertake such projects as reviving old apple varieties or giving technical demonstrations of tree pruning to local schools!

 

Apples are a mainstay of German cooking and baking. The average German recipe book will give you more recipes for Apfelkuchen than you could have dreamed possible. There are apple crumble cakes, apple sponge cakes, apple strudels and even cakes made with Apfelwein! In addition, Germans munch through litres of Apfelmus, which is like apple sauce, or baby food, depending on how you look at it, every year. Apfelmus is available in huge jars in every Supermarket and, instead of a couple of spoonfuls with the Sunday roast pork; Germans ladle it over yoghurt, pancakes, quark and specially made potato fritters, or Kartoffelpuffer.

 

Moving on to the subject of juice, the Germans are a pretty thirsty nation when it comes to fruit juice, slurping through 41litres per head per year. Of this, 11.7l is apple juice, followed by orange juice at 9.8l. Apple juice mixed with mineral water (Apfelschorle) is the acceptable non-alcoholic drink for adults and the standard for children whose parents don’t want to fill their little ones with additives and nasties. The apple juice available ranges from the “industrial” fizzy drink end to the “artisan” organic end of the market.

 

At the “industrial” end is the Coca-Cola brand, “Lift”, which is a sparkling apple/water mix and sold in 1.5l Coca-Cola bottles. On the website, www.lift-schorle.de, you can see the rather alarming TV ad for Lift: it gave me bad dreams, anyway! At the gentler end of the market are a lot of more “authentic” products, often produced by smaller, local producers. Visiting the websites of these, you can easily overdose on total fruity wholesomeness! One example of a fruit juice producer local to me is www.rapps.de, another is www.beckers-bester.de.

 

Rapps also produce Apfelwein, the “national drink” of the Frankfurt region. Apfelwein is a very tart form of cider with 5.5-7% alcohol. It’s said, even by locals, that it takes at least two or three glasses before it begins to taste OK! Apfelwein is the official name, but there are almost as many different names in dialect for this drink as there are producers, centred on Franfurt in mid- and south-Hessen. Apfelwein was first recorded in Frankfurt in 1600, but there was already a Reinhaltsbestimmung (Purity Charter, similar to that for beer) in 1638, which producers still have to follow. And although too much Apfelwein can be a disaster for stomach and guts, it rarely gives you a headache!

 

Apfelwein is available at most pubs and restaurants but there are also Apfelweinlokale, marked by a green wreath over the doors, which specialise in the drink and traditional hearty Hessian food to accompany it (N.B: not recommended for vegetarians or the faint-hearted!). The rituals surrounding Apfelwein are many and strictly adhered to, even after a number of glasses! The wine is brought to the table in a large blue and grey earthenware jug, called a Bembel, which keeps it cool, and is drunk out of diamond-patterned glasses called Gerippte. It is said that these glasses come from the time before cutlery, when fingers greasy with boiled pig fat would be more likely to be able to hang onto a glass with a texture to it, especially after the second Bembel!

 

The famous Apfelwein producers in and around Frankfurt include www.possmann.de, who also run the Ebbelwei Express, a brightly-coloured tram that tours Frankfurt while the guests enjoy a glass or two of Possmann’s best. The largest producer is www.hoehl-hochstadt.de . There are many smaller producers around and many of the juice producers also make Apfelwein. One such is www.kelterei-heil.de, where the website reflects the image of the apple to the Germans: a kitschy country idyll. You will be disappointed to see that you have missed the Apfelblütenwanderung(“Apple Blossom Hike”) on the 1^st May, but you can still enjoy the photos of hearty and wholesome German folk yomping through pretty orchards on the site.

 

However, hidden within this website are signs that the humble German apple may be getting subversive in its old-age. Kelterei Heil has launched a new product called Fichtekranz. Actually, on closer inspection, it is clear that it is not a new product at all but some sort of sheep in wolf’s clothing. Fichtekranz is none other than good old Apfelwein mixed with water or with lemonade but bottled with a minimalist, trendy label. The strap line actually translates as “from happy apples” (meaning, hopefully, that it is organic, rather than injected with any dubious substances!). There is a chance for hip young things to participate in the brand, by designing their own label for it, in return for a bit of word-of-mouth promotion. Fichtekranz is available in Frankfurt’s hipper clubs which would never have dreamed of serving anything as rustic as Apfelwein.

 

So, maybe this is the way forward for a traditional drink: to use the tactics of Bionade and move Apfelwein away from the boiled pig legs and into the “see and be seen” clubs of the big city.

--------------------------------------------------------

As I expected, the Apfelwein producers have been busy getting a bit of modern marketing in the whole mix. The Walther family live in our street and they, for example, are constantly launching new variants based on Apfelwein to increase its appeal. There’s a rosé variety and an Apfel Secco, reflecting trends in (mainly female) wine consumption. And there are special editions, too - for example made from Braeburn apples. The design and idea has a bit of a “single malt” vibe.

But it’s not just about hip and trendy. The interest in regional, local and authenticity has given Apfelwein a boost, I suspect. Provenance and history are now something to be celebrated, not disguised in the latest cool outfit. Apfelwein culture was added to the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2022. A former colleague of mine has opened the Apfelwein Galerie in Frankfurt, offering tastings as well as art and photography. And just down the road, in Hanau, we now have an Apfelwein Museum.

I’m hoping that in eighteen years, our harvest from Carlos (our very own apple tree) will be more impressive than last year’s ;)

BREXILE: Passport Palaver

 

I’m doing it like this. 

Brexile-related activities only every other day, for the sake of my blood-pressure and family harmony.

This is one I’d been dreading, and was actually on the cards, Brexile or no Brexile. 

The joy of passport renewal. I kept putting it off because the fiasco of 10 years ago is still horribly fresh in my mind. In those days, you could get the whole process speeded up by taking everything to HM Passport Office in person (and paying a wad of cash for the pleasure).

I braced myself, with some professionally-taken biometric photos in tow that cost me a good few €s. And all was going smoothly until my expensive photos were rejected:

My pleas that it was cream or greyish and not Persil-white were to no avail. I was shooed off to the convenient photo booth where a combination of trying to take a picture without my glasses (which are for moderate-to-severe myopia, not for vanity), no makeup and unwashed hair resulted in a passport photo that looks like a corpse dredged up from the murkier parts of the Thames.

I’m not sure it’ll be any better this time. Renewals, from overseas too, are done online. And there’s no way of telling what you’ll need to answer or find or indeed pay in total without starting the thing onscreen.

It’s not a blinking exam, for goodness sake!

Now to my favourite topic: photos. Two options were presented: go to a proper photo shop or booth, and you’ll get a nice convenient code which will speed everything up.

Or mess around doing a selfie - and woe and betide you if you take this ill-advised option.

Unfortunately it has not occured to the UK passport office that professional photographers abroad e.g., in Germany, can do proper biometric photos but haven’t heard of this code system.

I struggled on.

Next issue - I owned up to having 2 passports (maybe unwise) and learned that I had to - in addition to the soon-to-expire British passport - send either my current German passport to the UK (no way!) or get a colour photocopy of all 34 pages. Including blank ones.

My colour copier has long since been deemed incompatible with my laptop. And the local copy shop closed down many moons ago. The local stationer's came to my rescue and gave me a discount - 60c instead of 80c per sheet. So much for sustainability, though – I could have sent photos or a scan but it seems that the UK passport office prefer to waste paper.

 

My day of fun was completed by a trip to the only remaining local post office, contending with roadworks, only one woman on duty, a queue of disgruntled people …  

Can’t wait to hear that it’s all been lost in transit.

What a wonderful world

 

When I was writing my children’s books, there was a lot of blab about world-building. Fantasy author types would wax lyrical about the joys of creating mystical realms - with many of them getting a bigger kick out of this stuff than plot or character. I often found it all a bit much - reminiscent of the Dungeons & Dragons nerds I met at college. 

Nevertheless, I did get on and do it myself. The world of my stories is based on the real world in the late 1950s to mid-60s, then given a blast of kerosene in the form of action-spy-adventure films of the time. Maybe there is already a name for the genre - Jet Punk, or something. My publisher, Kay Green, described it thus:

There is a subtle magic here. The book matches the demands of modern 9-12s fiction and the main character is very much a 21^st century boy but, without interrupting the action, the story speaks eloquently of a long-forgotten beauty – not fantasy, not ancient history, but something you and I had forgotten was magic: a Britain where country roads were bright and welcoming, where cars, motorbikes and aeroplanes – not to mention their pilots – still had an aura of adventure about them. And on top of all that, it’s laugh-aloud funny.

World-building is something that good planners and creatives have always done without thinking about it too much. (Or talking about "world-building”. Which always sounds a touch self-important and pompous to me.) But it seems to be something that’s being rediscovered - many of the trend reports have mentioned “brand lore” and a couple of weeks ago, I read this article from Tom Donohue of BeenThereDoneThat.

Warning: one or two phrases in here did make me squirm, but the point “You build the mythology, they tell the stories” is a good one. I’m not convinced that “we need new frameworks that break the rigidity of the brand key/onion”, though. I think it’s too many frameworks, tick-boxes and processes that have brought us to the sorry state that commercial creativity is in. Frankly, the fewer frameworks, flywheels, models, tools, templates, personas and CDJs I have to deal with, the better. 

To prove I’m not just being a dreadful curmudgeon, here are a few ad-type things I’ve seen recently that do portray a wonderful (and distinctive) world of the brand in question, capturing its soul or spirit (if you like).

Poretti Beer - I haven’t seen such a brilliant and distinctive campaign since many a year. Away with all the stock pictures of inanely-grinning young things! (Who’d probably turn their noses up at a nice beer if it was offered.) “Welcome to the Lake” - yes, please!

Funny that the next one’s alcohol, too. My old friend Jägermeister. 

Swag meets Stag. Like it - and the women’s sneakers are already sold out - I checked.

While we’re in Germany, have a look at Jack Wolfskin’s latest campaign. Which goes to show that you don’t need to invent a fantasy world for your brand - just explore the wild places of our own world ...

... you’ll see trees of green, red roses too ...

RETROWURST: Playmobil April 2007

 

In April 2007, I wrote about the colourful, happy world of Playmobil. Pirates, cowboys, builders ... a world that revolved around people, not bricks as Lego used to. Twelve years ago, with the burgeoning Playmobil film industry on YouTube, and the opening of fun parks, the world seemed to be Playmobil’s oyster ...

-------------------------------------------------------

It is time that I let you into a few secrets of a race of little people who are steadily taking over the world. It is estimated that are over 2 billion of these little characters in the world today – that is more than the Chinese! The little people are 7.5cm tall and even the baddies have a cute little smile: Playmobil!

 

Playmobil is the main brand of the company Geobra Brandstätter GmbH & Co. KG, who are based in Zirndorf, which lies in Frankenland, the northern part of Bavaria. The company has been going since 1876 and originally produced toys made from wood and metal. The current owner, Horst Brandstätter, the grandson of the founder, introduced plastic toys to the range in the 1950s. These were typically larger toys such as hula-hoops or pedal tractors.

 

All was going pretty well for Brandstätter in the halcyon days of the 1960s – the baby boom had reached its peak so there were plenty of eager customers for his toys and the economic miracle meant that most German parents were relatively happy to open their wallets to indulge their offspring.

 

However, the oil crisis of the early 70s meant that reliance on large unit size plastic toys would be dangerous for the company. Brandstätter had to find some way of using less and less solid plastic for his toys. A couple of years before, an inventor by the name of Hans Beck, who had trained as a cabinet maker, pitched a range of model aeroplanes to Brandstätter. Brandstätter was impressed with the designs and asked Beck to develop a range of toy figures.

 

Beck did not summon a crew of child psychologists and educationalists, as far as we know, but designed the figures based on common sense. The size of the figures, 7.5cm, is just right for a child’s hand. The face was based on a child’s drawing: a large head, smiling mouth and no nose. The figures could move their head, hands, the arms separately and the legs together. The first series launched were knights, Indians and builders, the latter complete with crate of beer! (Difficult to imagine in the world of Bob and Wendy!).

 

Since 1975, Playmobil has been sold worldwide with series as far apart as Romans and Fairytale Castle joining the staple collections. Playmobil “worlds” include just about everything but there is nothing too overtly military or aggressive from recent history. In addition, certain ranges seem to go down better in some countries than others – Cowboys and Indians is not a big seller in the USA.

 

Playmobil is one of Germany’s success stories. Despite rising material growth and general stagnation in the toy market, where even Lego has had serious problems, Playmobil had sales of some €380m in 2006, a 5% increase on 2005.

 

Horst Brandstätter, now 73, still heads the company. He appears to be somewhat eccentric, publicity-shy and stingy, rather like a German Ingvar Kamprad. Stories go around about Brandstätter that he picks up golf tees on his golf trips in exotic locations, in disbelief that anyone could be so wasteful as to discard such a thing. He himself relates the story that, as boy, his Granny gave him a coin to buy an ice-cream with. Young Horst did so but then bitterly regretted not having his coin anymore and vowed there and then never to buy an ice-cream again, a promise that he kept for a couple of decades!

 

Although Brandstätter is still a strong presence and appears not to want to let go, he did appoint a marketing expert, Andrea Schauer to run the company, considering his sons not to be up to the job! Frau Schauer has been in this role since 2000. The marketing of Playmobil is very clever: although no educationalists are used in its development, parents do believe that it is educationally sound, somehow, and are quite happy to shell out €158 for something like the Knights Castle. Any parent of a small child is probably well aware of the reaction of the average 6-year-old to the Playmobil Catalogue: “I want that, that, that, that and that…oh, and that!”, while happily running up a bill for 000s of Euros. Predictably, the little pieces get hoovered up regularly so replacements must be bought and there are additional and top-up packs available for €5-15 Euros for birthday presents and the like. Individual figures are also available which are well within the reach of small children’s pocket money. And at Christmas you can even buy a Playmobil Advent Calendar with little figures inside.

 

The 56-strong development team does not work with child psychologists but still seem to get it right most of the time. I think that the secret of Playmobil lies within children’s imagination: enough of a “world” is presented as a stage but children are then free to devise their own adventures and mix Vikings with Pirates and Policemen, if they feel so inclined. Unlike Lego, which is more about the building and less about the ensuing adventures, Playmobil has an appeal to boys and girls because of its human element. The key element is a human figure, not a brick. And it is a safe, friendly world at the end of the day where even the fiercest pirate has a cute smile under his stubbly beard.

 

The core market of 3–8-year-olds is declining in Europe so Playmobil must seek new ways to continue their success. Theme parks is one area that they are already in, and they are looking to the potential of the Asian markets: China, India and Japan.

 

Playmobil also has an assured place outside of the core target market as a cult brand. Everyone in Germany under 40 has grown up with Playmobil and one can see that in the popular culture. A German comedian famously produced the life of Franz Beckenbauer with Playmobil and there is even a yearly “Playmo Convention” where Playmobil freaks display and discuss their customised Playmobil scenes, such as a re-enactment of the entire American Civil War.

 

And there is a growing body of Playmobil film-producers. YouTube is littered with them. One film promises “a brave Playmobile fights against the chess pieces with the hymn of FC Barcelona.” You can also see Playmobil versions of “Pirates of the Caribbean” or even “Casablanca”.

 

As a final thought, I leave you with YMCA, Playmobil-style:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3skx_oqKzOc

-------------------------------------------------------

In the intervening twelve years, I haven’t thought that much about Playmobil. Our sets are packed away, awaiting grandchildren or sale. During Covid, I remember Fasching taking place via YouTube and Playmobil characters - and although the film clip I linked back in 2007 doesn’t work any more, there’s plenty to replace it. This creator of great world literature as reenacted by Playmobil is a particular favourite of mine. 

Playmobil’s all-time best-selling figure (a rather unlikely one for non-Germans) hit the headlines a few years ago - and rather than the DIY Village People that featured in my 2007 link, you can now get the real thing (or close to it). 

But maybe my adult-at-a-distance viewpoint wasn’t telling me the whole story. I made a trip to our local stationer/toy shop yesterday and the picture was less rosy. The windows were full of huge, fading boxes of Playmobil at reduced prices. Inside the shop, it wasn’t much better. Almost everything was reduced. Gone were the pirates, Romans and Vikings. The Playmobil sets on offer seemed rather drab and insipid. A pastelly dolls house. A watered-down Game of Thrones wannabe fantasy world. A few random horsey and mermaidy bits and pieces.

All is not well in the state of Playmobil. Horst Brandstätter died in 2015, and I get the impression that the brand has lost its way and simply not kept up. Despite the YouTube film activity, the official feature film was a flop. Sales have declined from €736m in 2021/22 to €571m in 2022/23 down to €490m in 2023/4. 

It makes me sad, but the fact is that a brand can’t live on nostalgia and jokey special edition sets for adults alone. The main problem is the impact that digitalisation has had on childhood and play. Playmobil used to be for children up to 10, but these days the 7/8 year-olds are already lost. Add to that worries about plastics and sustainability and it makes you wonder if Playmobil is doomed.

But ... look at Lego and maybe look at Barbie. Is there hope?

There are signs that things can turn round. A new positioning was announced in January this year. I’m not convinced by what I’ve read (“The future is now” - strengthening brand relevance - reach new target groups - drive globalisation) but let’s see. A new line called Sky Trails will be launched. Looks like an aerial Hot Wheels to me, but maybe ...

I hope Playmobil can turn things round. But I suspect what is needed is for a hoard of playful, ruthless, fun-bent, devil-may-care pirates and Vikings to leap onto the dull old ship, shine it up again, set a completely new course and watch the gold bullion roll in.

BREXILE: Lost Content

 

A spot of Brexile nostalgia - one of the first things to make a new home in Germany was The Shell Nature Book, published in 1964. Fifty years later, in 2014, I wrote about how this early example of “branded content” (yeurgh!) stirred my childhood imagination. 

My imagination (slightly addled) continues to be stirred.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

LOST CONTENT

 

The usual portal to the landscapes of childhood, those blue-remembered hills, is a photograph album. Something with tassels and stiff dark pages, perhaps. Or from a later era: once-sticky backing sheets that now release fading squares like autumn leaves.

 

But not for me. Those happy highways are captured only in slides, packed in their yellow and white boxes, dated with Dymo tape and relegated to the category of one-day-we’ll-sort-those-out.

 

No, my vehicle to the vistas of days gone by belongs to the collective, not the personal. A book, one that I’m sure many 1960s families possessed. But with the boundless and borderless imagination of a child, I made it my own. The process of growing up involves the setting of more and more boundaries. What is real. What is imagined. What is present experience. What we can see. What we can’t. As a child, these merge into one, as they did each time I opened that book. I made it an interactive medium before the notion was ever dreamed of.

 

My copy of The Shell Nature Book was published in 1964. Bought, I expect, by my parents on their return from the barren rocks of Aden. Were they driven by underlying guilt? Their two small offspring had been deprived of the British countryside for most of their lives. That we had paddled daily in a warm sea and conversed with camels did little, perhaps, to mitigate this imagined deficit.

 

The book has seen better days. Although, like a much-loved toy, I still see it as I did then. The cover picture, with its unlikely juxtapositions of butterflies and bats, birds and beetles, night and day, lies under cellophane courtesy of my mother. As a primary school teacher, she knew the secrets of protection from eager clumsy thumbs and sherbet-licked fingers. Inside, the pages are still shiny as mother-of-pearl, faintly redolent of the print room.

 

I still wonder that “branded content” – for this is the 21^st century term for such publications – can be of such high and utterly lasting quality. Shell’s reputation these days has so much of the negative baggage associated with the fossil fuel industry that the words “Shell” and “nature” sit uneasily together. But the list of contributing painters (not illustrators) reads like a Who’s Who of mid-20^th century British talent. S.R.Badmin, Edith and Rowland Hilder, John Leigh-Pemberton … In between war service – often as not for the RAF – their work was commissioned by the Ministry of Information, by London Transport, by Ladybird Books.

 

These paintings captivated me, and I would lose myself in their Arcadian landscapes. The Flowers of the Countryside section, arranged by month, features a detailed foreground by Edith Hilder against a backdrop stretching into infinity, by her husband. In June, a rustic wooden pail brims with dog roses, foxgloves and wild irises, buzzing with summer, while the background of ivy-clad ruins – and a blue-remembered hill – fades mysteriously under a high sun.

 

S.R.Badmin’s painting of Trees and Shrubs for May beckoned me in, from the balcony, overhung with Horse Chestnut candles, down, down, under caterpillar-green beech leaves and wild cherry blossom, to the lake, where a boat waits ready to row to the island. John Leigh-Pemberton’s Life on the Downs scared me a little with its soft eeriness – sinister fairies had surely not long departed the ring of mushrooms nestling under that foreboding, rainbow-streaked sky.

Many of these paintings merged into real places plucked from my 1960s Home Counties world. The Hilders’ May with its backdrop of oast houses and rolling hills mirrored the view from my paternal grandparents’ Kent garden. Badmin’s July, all clipped hedges and lawns, seemed to echo with the clipped accents of the Air Force Staff College. And the Rowland Hilder and Maurice Wilson sun- to moonlight scene with young badgers frisking oblivious to the stateliness of the white mansion in the background was surely a corner of Windsor Great Park.

 

Amid these scenes of moor and meadow, cornfields and copses, like the evil godmother at the christening, lurked a stranger section to the book. Entitled Fossils, Insects and Reptiles, the paintings are by Tristram Hillier, who I have since learned was a British Surrealist, influenced by de Chirico and Max Ernst as well as Paul Nash, with whom he worked. And here they were, the bits that didn’t fit in the golden land of the other paintings. Creepy-crawlies, lower forms of life. Parts discarded by death. Or that not yet alive. Shells. Moths. Birds’ eggs. Skulls.

 

Hillier’s painting entitled Fossils epitomises this curious world that skulks below the surface of the sunlit British countryside. A quartet of books sits on a desk, two of these perched on a Pandora-esque box. Proper learned books, with stiff spines, muted cloth covers and old gold lettering: Elements of Geology, Vol II. And growing out of the volumes, like petrified fungi, are the fossils. Corals the shade of ancient teeth, a sea-urchin resembling a decaying bun – and the “ites”, iron-grey relics from way beyond the Iron Age. Belemnites, Pyrites, Ammonites.

 

One ammonite sits at the centre of the display, a perfect specimen, although all ammonites are perfect in their neatness, coiling for eternity to the centre. They are described in terms of extinct weights and measures – “vary from penny size to giants two feet across.” 

 

Before leaving this page, the eye is drawn to the left of the desk. A used match lies there, carelessly placed but carefully painted. Did Hillier light a pipe – perhaps the one that appears in his otherworldly study of moths three pages later – before he embarked on his work? Was this a hint towards the carboniferous era? Or simply a surreal gesture?

 

In these days of Google Earth, we can travel to any landscape on the globe in a matter of seconds. We never have to visit the same scene twice. Yet I still have a yearning for these scenes of my childhood, for they have not been fossilised. Viewing them today, memories and experience combine with my immediate perception, to create something of wonder anew.      

Dixi-Klo: A brand in need is a brand indeed

 

I woke up in the night during the annual carnival carousing. On the way back from the comfort of our own bathroom I wondered why on earth I’d never blogged about what must be one of Germany’s absolute brand leaders.

It’s a brand whose name has become the generic here, like Tempo. I’m talking about the humble Dixi-Klo. From building sites to Fests of all kinds, here’s a brand that’s not going to save the world, but has certainly saved most of us from nasty spots of bother and embarassment.

The Dixi-Klo was invented, and given its name by a US soldier based in Germany, Fred Edwards. While on manoeuvres in 1973, he identified a gap in the market - presumably through bitter experience - as an alternative to the proverbial convenient grove of trees.

A German company founded Dixi’s main rival, TOI TOI ten years later. Toi Toi Toi  is best translated as “touch wood” - so a remarkably clever brand name all in all. The two businesses fused in 1997 and now give jobs (big and little) to over 4,000 people. TOI TOI & DIXI is said to be “the world’s largest portable restroom provider.”

On the company website, you can even find a Fan Shop, which sells everything from cool bags to drinking flasks to carnival outfits (could cause all sorts of kerfuffle for the inebriated and short-sighted as well as the wearer, I fear). And my favourite - an air freshener to hang in your car.

Who said Germans are short on humour?

I haven’t seen many case histories on TOI TOI & DIXI on LinkedIn, but both are brands that deserve a little more praise. 

The classic question on Meaningful Brands goes along the lines of “which brands would you miss if they were to disappear tomorrow?”

I rest my case. 

RETROWURST: Brand consultancies March 2007

This month’s Retrowurst is less about brands and markets and more about those that earn their living through understanding what brands are, how they work and helping helping them to grow. In March 2007, I examined Germany’s brand consultancy agencies - and came to the conclusion that the choice was more limited than in the English-speaking world. 

Eighteen years is a long time in the world of brands and marketing. 2007 was pre- Byron Sharp’s How Brands Grow (2010) and Les Binet and Peter Field’s The long and the short of it (2013). I also note that the only business-orientated social media network mentioned was Xing. LinkedIn was launched in 2003, but in 2007, it would only have attracted English speakers working internationally.

----------

My Extrawurst this month is inspired by my recent work with a UK-based International Brand Consultancy which left me wondering why this particular market is so under-developed in Germany.

 

My last month seems to have been one workshop after another and, interestingly, it has given me an opportunity to muse on the German way of doing things and on the UK (or perhaps I should say International) way. This led me to wondering why the market in Germany for Brand and Innovation Consultancy is so underdeveloped, so I have had a quick look into who is there, what they do and a few reasons for why, in my opinion, they are not doing it better.

 

The first point is that there is no lack of companies and individuals in Germany who set themselves up as some sort of Brand Consultant. I suppose that I belong to this motley bunch as well! If one starts with doing a Google search, on something like Markenberatung (Brand Consultancy), there are pages and pages of links. In addition, there are whole networking websites such as www.marketing-boerse.de or www.xing.com  where you can seek out and contact companies and experts in whatever field of marketing or branding you fancy.

 

Most of the companies that come top of the list in the Google search are what I would call “old-school brand management consultants”. Typical of these is www.brandmeyer-markenberatung.de (which you can look at in English) which is full of process and promise to pinpoint precisely what profit each element of your marketing mix will bring. The idea of “brand core analysis- or whatever else they may be called (Sic.)” is heavily pooh-poohed as being fanciful, flakey and having no connection with commercial reality.

 

In a similar vein, but dry and intellectual rather than aggressive and dismissive is www.taikn.de . This is a website that I don’t think you can read in English but be thankful. A little better are www.esch-brand.com “The Brand Consultants” who appear to be a husband-and-wife combo with more academic qualifications than you could shake a stick at. They offer all the usual fare of Mission, Visions, Positionings and Architecture and make big of their academic connections to the Justus Liebig University in Giessen. However, despite their intellectual posturing, the site is loaded with marketing clichés of the “Win-Win” or “Whole is more than the sum of its parts” type.

 

Another category of Brand Consultancies is P.R, advertising, market research or media agencies who obviously want to add a bit of added value and substance to their offering and thus add a bit of Brand Consultancy to their menu. For example, www.k-mb.de, Kamps Markenberatung or www.brandaide.de . 

 

The Planning or Strategy part of an advertising or communications agency may also set themselves up as an independent Brand Consultancy, taking on their own clients as well as those of the main agency. A good example is Publicis-Sasserath www.markenfreunde.de who offer consultancy to clients outside the Publicis stable via their own tools and methods, such as the MarkenWesen. The question here, though, must always be: how independent are they really? There are other Brand Consultancy Agencies, who appear to be independent but on closer inspection, they are part of one of the giant communications networks. One example is www.economia.de , which offers trend-watching, innovation and new product development in addition to brand consultancy but appears to be part of BBDO. Another is www.21twentyone.com who promise to “make your brand an everyday hero” but who seem to be something to do with Carat.

 

The final category is Brand Consultancies who position themselves more on the innovation and creativity side of the spectrum but who are independent of major communications networks. These seem to be rather few and far between, but I have managed to find a couple of examples. First up is Dr Krüger & Equity, www.equity.de who formed as the first Strategic Planning Agency in Germany in 1995. They position themselves as “Creativity based on Information”. Another example is Diffferent, www.diffferent.de who also offer a combination of creative spirit and analytical expertise. Diffferent take on strategy for brands and communication, innovation and product and brand development.

 

Getting back to my differing experiences with the International and the German workshops, I suppose I can sum it up by saying that the International camp centres more around a way of thinking where a number of avenues are pursued in parallel, where we have to move out of comfort zones and where we must have faith that things will fall into place. The German experience was far more about following a linear, deductive process (“when we have got the answer to this, we can move on to the question for that”) with far more of a feeling of (false?) security that everything would be approached “step by step”. Maybe it is my UK training and upbringing, but I found the UK/International approach preferable in that it seems to lead to a number of possibilities rather than a definitive solution to one problem. 

 

While it is easy to dismiss the German way of doing Workshops as rigid and German Brand Consultancies as being inferior to ours, it did get me thinking about the why and wherefore and what we can do about it, especially if we are working with clients who are from a predominantly German culture. I think it is true to say that Germans are very reliant on structures and definitions and dislike ambiguity. This does not make their way of thinking inferior to ours, only different. After all, they have some pretty strong brands, too! I was reminded of a recent personal battle I have had here with the Finanzamt (or Tax Office) about my status. While I have argued that I am a professional freelancer, they want me registered as a “trade”. While I initially was more concerned about the tax implications, it became a matter of professional pride about what I do. My mistake was to call myself a Werbeberater (Advertising Consultant) instead of an Unternehmungsberater (Management Consultant). Now, these were the only two job descriptions in the Finanzamt’sapproved list (compiled in 1974, I have found out) that came anywhere near to Strategic Planner. Once I tried to argue that I was a Management Consultant with specialization in Brands and Marketing and not someone who advises the local nail studio on how the layout of their flyer should be, the Finanzamt demanded that I produced evidence that I had appropriate qualifications, that is, a Business Studies degree. To cut a long story short, I only achieved my desired status after much argumentation from my husband, who happens to be a German lawyer!

 

This little story sort of illustrates the problem about the fixed circle of ideas: in Germany, you can only set yourself up as a Brand Consultant if you have the relevant qualification. Although I do not have a German degree in Business Studies, I know plenty of people who have and the sort of stuff you learn there is not the stuff of creative innovation. And if you have studied something else, maybe rather more “academic”, there is a sense of “selling out” if you go into commerce. There is a distinct feeling of distaste in mixing the academic and the commercial. If you should go into qualitative research after studying Psychology, for example, you only do this on the grounds that everything is taken very earnestly and seriously. You will stress your qualifications on your business card and website and write lots of learned books about the state of the German psyche: “pop psychology” will have no place in your offer.

 

I think that there are two main points to this Extrawurst: firstly, that there is a real need for good Brand Innovation Consultancies here and secondly, that maybe we should have a good think about how we can really make use of people’s creative and thinking skills in a way that doesn’t alarm them too much when we’re working with predominantly German clients.

----------

There are a lot more players in the Brand Consultancy market in Germany these days. I guess that, as Account Planning in German ad agencies reached its critical mass a lot later than in the UK, it took a while for the idea and principles of Brand Strategy to take root. I came to Germany in 1996 to develop a fledgling Planning Department at Saatchi & Saatchi. At that time, people looked to marketing people in organisations such as P&G as the brand experts, rather than anyone within an ad agency. 

Many of the agencies I mentioned in 2007, particularly those that were offshoots of a communications agency network have bitten the dust. But most of the “pure” brand consultancies are still going strong. And although these have relished the rise of performance marketing with theit own Customer Journey models and growth flywheels, I’m pleased to see more acceptance of “fluffier” ideas about the nature of brands, too. In other words, that creating and growing brands is as much art as science. 

There’s a lot more choice on the market, from one-(wo)man bands to sizeable agencies, from the academic and learned to the design-thinky and innovative. And it’s good to see plenty of formal and informal networks of brand strategists as well the sharing of useful stuff on LinkedIn and beyond. 

Will the brand consultancies all have been gobbled up by AI by the end of the decade? I’m inclined to think not. In the end, you can have all the synthetic respondents and data you want, thousands of AI-generated concepts, research summaries at the touch of a button - but none of this will replace human insight.