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: Women September 2006

 

Now and again, I find something in the Retrowurst files that I genuinely can’t remember writing. A symptom of ageing brain? I’m not convinced, as much of the category and brand-related stuff seems to have been filed away in a readily accessible place. Discounters to drugstores, beers to burgers. Maybe there’s an element of denial at play, as these pieces tend to be about social issues rather than marketing and brand communications. But what they have in common is that, reading them back nearly two decades later, they feel as if they hail from a different world.

This piece, taking the not-particularly-niche subject of “women”, used two self-help type books (one light in tone and tongue-in-cheek, the other sadly not) to introduce the theme of the lot of women, especially mothers, in Germany in the early 2000s. 

Does anyone remember Das Eva Prinzip by Eva Herman or Das Uschi Prinzip by Meike Rensch-Bergner? I wonder if the books are even still in print ...

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A well-known news reader and TV presenter is causing a storm here in Germany with a book that very few people have yet read but that on which almost everyone has an opinion to offer. The lady in question is called Eva Herman and she has called her book “Das Eva-Prinzip”. It really doesn’t matter one jot if you’ve never heard of Frau Herman as she and her book only really play a catalytic role in re-lighting a fire that has been smoldering away here for years.

 

In “Das Eva Prinzip”, apparently (as I also haven’t read it as the publication date seems to keep moving backwards and forwards like a silly girl who can’t make up her mind), Frau Herman sets out the case that feminism was a big mistake and has only led to women being unhappy, denying their innate womanliness and losing out on having children. It is a call to recognize that men are men, women are women, and men should be out working or hunting and bringing home the bacon and Bratwurst while women should stay at home and look after the children. If we all stuck to the way things should be, a lot more children would be born in Germany, and it would be a much happier place.

 

This jolly little tome, incidentally, is hot on the heels of another sort of Prinzip, “Das Uschi Prinzip”, which was a sort of German version of “The Rules”, giving tips and advice to young women on how the “catch the man of their dreams” by using their womanly wiles to the full rather than behaving like some sort of aggressive second-rate man. (See www.uschi-und-uschi.de where the author has made a whole concept out of this, offering seminars, workshops and the like!)

 

But let’s get back to Frau Herman. Interestingly, she doesn’t seem to have lived her own life so far according to her own principles and one can only imagine that she has written the book out of the kindness of her heart to stop young women from making the same foolish choices and mistakes that she did. Eva Herman studied for a career in hotel management and moved into journalism and TV. She has already written a number of books on such subjects as breastfeeding and how to get your child to sleep through the night (A sort of German Gina Ford.). In between she has gone through four husbands and has one child from the third of these. Just the sort of person that you want to have telling you how to run your life!

 

Some commentators have gone as far as to say that Frau Herman’s book has nothing to do with German society as a whole but is her own personal outpouring or sort of therapy to still her longing for a perfect family life that seems never to be satisfied. Eva Herman’s father died when she was only 6, her mother worked and it seems that, to compound this unhappiness, little Eva was not breastfed.

 

Whether we choose to agree with her or not, Eva Herman’s book argues for one solution to one of the main issues that is facing Germany in the 21^st century: one of the largest countries in the E.U also has the lowest birthrate at just 1.35. The future economic implications of this are clear so maybe we shouldn’t criticize Frau Herman too much, whatever her motives, in at least addressing the issue and presenting one way forward (or backward, depending on your perspective!).

 

There is a strange paradox in Germany whereby men and women have equal opportunities as long as the women are childless. In the school and study years, girls are even ahead of boys in terms of academic qualifications: there are more girls than boys with Abitur, which is like German A-Levels and it is expected that, by 2010, more women will go on to further education than men. But it seems that more and more intelligent and well-qualified young women are opting out of having a family:

 

26% of 37-40 years old German women are childless.

33.5% of women with further education in Germany are childless.

42% of women born in 1960 who have higher education are childless.

 

The reason for this is not, perhaps, as Eva Herman suggests, that these young women are making a mistake by pursuing a career, but more because German society in its structure and attitude makes it extremely difficult for women to have a career and a family. Structurally, it starts with the availability of pre-kindergarten childcare which is almost non-existent. Women are encouraged not to go back to work for the first three years (they are not financially rewarded but are at least assured of a job when and if they go back, although the job may bear little resemblance to the one that they left.) It is not unusual for those women that can to plan their children at 3-yearly intervals so that they can start the next round of Erziehungsurlaub as soon as the last one finishes. Employers, with odd exceptions, aren’t exactly welcoming when women come back, and one gets the feeling that a woman who comes back and works part-time is resented as a cost who probably needs re-training and who almost certainly is going disappear punctually each day rather than being appreciated for what she can bring to enrich the company.

 

You may have noticed “part-time” there. Why can’t these women come back and do a full-time job, you may wonder. The answer lies in the German school system, another example of an element of society that has not kept pace with the modern world. The fact is that in Germany, most children, from the age of 6-19, only attend school in the mornings. It is expected that someone will collect them at lunchtime, feed them, supervise their homework (which also starts at age 6) and then organize and ferry them around to any sports or hobbies in the afternoon. While most UK schools have sports teams, children in Germany have to join a club independent of the school to play football, hockey or whatever.

 

Some day-care places are available for primary school children, but these are few and far between, and even then, these places tend to be until 2 or 3 o’clock and only if you are very lucky, for a “whole day” which usually means until 4:30 or so. Priority is given to single mothers and cases of financial hardship, not to “dual earners”. With this kind of system in place and no signs of change in the near future, it is no wonder that many bright young women are choosing career over children. And if the system itself wasn’t bad enough, the overwhelming attitude from society in general doesn’t make things any better. There is an expression that seems only to exist in Germany – Rabenmutter – literally “Raven Mother” for any woman that dares to think that she might be able to carry on her career and let her children play happily and supervised by professionals in the company of other children until the late hour of 4pm! Why ravens should be party to this sort of insult is beyond me – there seems to be no biological basis for this and one would have thought that maybe a cuckoo was a better analogy. But perhaps the Germans just love their cuckoo clocks too much to use the bird’s name as an insult!

 

Interestingly, IKEA have timed their latest advertising campaign here impeccably to fit in with this controversy. Posters have appeared around the cities with provocative messages such as “Women must combine household, children and career!”, “Women who want children must give up their career!” and “Men must go to work, women must change nappies!” This is all a teaser, of course for the IKEA way of a more individual and comfortable life at home, whatever way you choose to live, work and have a family. And that’s the key to it, of course. German women don’t need any more Principles from Eva, Uschi and the rest, just flexibility in the system and support and tolerance from society to run their lives in the way that suits them.

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Eighteen years later, many of the mums I knew from the Elterbeirat or Kinderturnen are now Omas. And yes, that is reflected in the German birthrate. The lot of working mums has improved a little, with more Kindergarten places available, for children aged 1-3 as well as the 3 - 6 traditional age group. With increased female leadership in politics and business, and fathers playing a bigger role in Erziehung, society attitudes are shifing. Slowly, but shifting never-the-less.

The birth rate reached its low point a couple of years after I wrote this article, in 2008. It crept up a little, due to increased immigration, but has crept down again in recent years, although not below the 2008 low point.

The rate of childlessness rose up to around 2012, but seems to have stabilised, with around a 20% incidence of childlessness amongst all cohorts born 1966 - 1977 (women currently aged 47 - 58). But the rate is much lower amongst women with a low level of education - at around 11%.

And what of Uschi and Eva? 

Meike Rensch-Bergner is still writing, and also busy coaching, podcasting and running businesses connected with sewing, tailoring and body-positivity in general. 

As for Eva Herman, well, she was sacked from her prominent position as a news anchor by ARD in 2007. She made some unwise remarks about gender roles in Nazi Germany and has now drifted into writing and podcasting outside of the mainstream on Telegram. Topics cover everything from politics and gender roles to spirituality and health.

I haven’t ventured in to see if she’s got anything worth saying, or whether it’s all conspiracy theories and bonkers rants. But then again, I never read her book, either.

  

RETROWURST: Schreibwaren August 2006

 

Goodness me, how this piece on the mysteries of the German stationery shop and the strange rituals of school start takes me back. Back to another world where children born in the last century were only just starting school. They’re now winning Olympic golds and most likely running multi-billion AI companies, too.

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We are in the middle of the school summer holidays here in Germany. Rather cleverly, to avoid traffic jams, the different German Länder stagger the beginning of the six-week period, with some holidays starting as early as 26^th June and others starting as late as 3^rd August.

 

Despite the fact that we’re in the midst of the school holidays here in Hessen, the retailers are already filling their shop windows and shelves with the Schulanfang (School start) range. I thought I would take the opportunity to introduce you to one particular species of German retailer, the Schreibwarenladen, or stationer, and some of the main brands in the back-to-school market.

 

Before I embark on this, it has to be said as a foreword, that starting school in Germany is a very ernsthaft business. In the UK, introduction to school is gradual, with various pre-school possibilities and then a reception year, while in Germany, children move from the non-compulsory Kindergarten, where no “learning” in the sense of the 3R’s takes place, to the Grundschule, where it’s serious learning and teaching, albeit just for half a day. Children start school in Germany later than in the UK, at six or seven; so, for example, this year’s intake is children born between July 1999 and end of June 2000. In order to get a child accepted for school earlier, the child (and parents) has to go through a series of quite rigorous tests and interviews with teachers, school directors, pediatricians and the like to make sure that the little darling will be able to weather the tough time to come.

 

While getting all the bits and pieces together for starting school may focus more on uniform in the UK, German parents don’t have that to worry about. Enough mistakes have been made with children in uniform in the past here. So, in Germany, the bulk of the getting-ready-for-school purchases are made at the Schreibwarenladen.

 

The first day at school is celebrated traditionally in Germany by the poor child staggering into the playground clutching a thing which, rather unfortunately, resembles an upside-down clown’s or dunce’s hat. This is a Schultute and it is filled with pencils, small toys and a few sweets. In some cases, the Schultute is almost as big as the child itself, especially those children who are little younger, although, having been through the rigourous school acceptance tests, carrying an upside-down dunce’s hat brimming over with goodies while trying to maintain some sense of decorum probably does not present too much of a challenge. Needless to say, the Schultute is one item that is very prominent in the Schreibwarenladen’s window display and choosing the right pattern and size a matter of great concern as the Schultutewill feature with the child in all the inevitable photographs and may even be handed down through the generations.

 

So, onto the Schreibwarenladen. In Germany, there are no jolly own brands like Tesco or W.H.Smiths doing school requisites so it is over to the local independent dealer. In every German village, however small, there will be a shop selling stationery. This shop may also sell newspapers and magazines or toys. It will certainly also sell lottery tickets and perhaps a few sweets. The lady (as usually is) who runs the shop is likely to be a highly respected member of the community who takes a pride in her intimate knowledge of paper clips and staples, ring binders and pencil sharpeners with almost that air of being party to a great learning of mysteries that we observe in the Apothekerin. Her store is likely to have a rather old-fashioned air to UK sensibilities: the kind of place where you actually have to ask for things rather than just grabbing them self-service from the shelf.

 

Before we look at the main brands dominating this emporium, I would like to give a brief introduction to two other branded players in the starting school market. Now, up to two years prior to their children starting school, the Übermuttis (my best go at Yummy Mummy in German - not bad, I think!) will already be discussing whether little Florian or little Björna has got a Ranzen yet and which brand and pattern will it be and are they also getting the complete range of matching accessories? You may wonder what all the fuss is about a satchel, but satchels in Germany have become a science since Scout (https://www.scout-schulranzen.de) created the market for ergonomically designed school rucksacks back in 1975. These health & safety-conscious-inside and kitsch-child-appeal-gone-mad-outside Ränzen replaced the old leather school satchel overnight in Germany and the company has stretched the brand to include the accessories (purses, pencil cases, gym bags) to go with the basic school Ranzen, to bike helmets, to games, to discovery toys, to duvet covers and even to Müsli bars. Have a look at the website: this really is a child brand that manages to combine super design and quality with fun and child-appeal by the bucketful.

 

While talking about Scout, it is only fair to mention their main rival, the number 2 in the market with 25 years’ experience, www.mcneill.de . McNeill have not yet diversified as much as Scout, but they are also a high-quality supplier of Ränzen. In buying your child his or her school backpack, the salesperson will probably start by advising which of the two main brands is ergonomically more suitable for your child and how he or she walks before you get onto the really important stuff of whether it’s pirates or planets on the design. Incidentally, the designs on these bags bear absolutely no relationship to whichever TV programs, films or games are in with primary school children at the moment. You won’t find any Power Rangers, Barbie or Through the Hedge here, or any nasty commercial arrangements with Disney or Dreamworks, just rather Technicolor depictions of universal childhood interests.

 

It is when we consider what has to go into the Ranzen that the Schreibwarenladen and its brands come into their own. Parents of every Schulanfänger are provided with a rather alarmingly long and detailed list of drawing pads, pencils, paintbrushes of particular sizes, exercise books, covers for exercise books in specified colours, folders in specified colours and materials, crayons and modeling clay with a request that “high quality brands” be purchased “for the benefit of your child.” This is, of course, a conspiracy between the teachers and the Schreibwarenladen lady to make sure you don’t go buying that cheapo stuff at Aldi and Lidl. Of course, said brands do sometimes make a celebrity appearance at the discounters but, frankly, by the time you’ve battled your way through the ranks of the Übermuttis-on-a-budget at 8 am just to find that they haven’t got the colour that was specified any more, you might as well have saved the petrol money and got the whole lot at the well-mannered and old-fashioned Schreibwarenladen.

 

There is a plethora of high-quality stationery brands in Germany, some of which are also well-known in the UK. Looking at the brands as a whole, judging from their websites, most of them pride themselves on their long history, their “Made in Germany” quality and the number of quality awards, seals and insignia they have won. In the websites, you enter another world of worthy philosophies, elegant historic engravings and endorsements from the highest authorities. It brings quite a lump to one’s throat to think that this worthy presence is Marketing, too!

 

www.brunnen.de is a good place to start. A family firm for generations and proud of it, the brand Brunnen has been around now for over 100 years and covers all manner of school and office requisites. At just one year younger, but another centenarian, www.herlitz.de is also well-known outside Germany. Herlitz is also in the Ranzen market.

 

Experts in colour, with a core range of paints, felt pens and crayons, www.pelikan.de have 128 years of experience in their field. Another name that is well-known outside Germany for their pencils is www.staedtler.de, the big granddaddy of the pencil world with 170 years in business.

 

If you go by the philosophy that “a bad workman always blames his tools”, German school children really have no excuse to perform so badly in comparison to their peers in other countries. One can only conclude that the system must be at fault, rather than the materials.

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Another world, indeed. The children starting school in the next few weeks were born in 2017/18 - younger than TikTok for goodness’ sake! McNeill has indeed sold out with McNeill x Disney.

But, but, but ... I took at look at Scout. Robots, kittens, dinosaurs and ponies still there. And one tie-in ... for the Bundesliga. 

Reassuring, somehow. And our local Scheibwaren shop still doing a roaring trade.

RETROWURST: Ten years in Germany March 2006

 

My latest delve around the Extrawurst archives has made me feel uncharacteristically glum. For this month’s Retrowurst was a personal reflection on how life in Germany had changed in the ten years since my touchdown one chilly March morning at Frankfurt airport, in 1996.

Partly because optimism was my default setting in 2006 and partly because those days really were more hopeful than the current grim era, this article makes me yearn for those days gone by. I characterised the changes I observed as Germany moving from its rigid, rulebound, stuffy character to something more flexible, changeable and fluid. 

Shops were opening up on Saturday afternoons and evenings! 

Women were on the up, even mums in the workplace, with Angela Merkel and the “extraordinary” Ursula von der Leyen in charge! 

A vibrant, southeast-Europe-influenced youth culture, galaxies away from the 80s USA-influenced dull rockstar stuff was thriving!

And that’s not all!

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Around about now – I can’t remember the exact date as I’m not yet that German – is the tenth anniversary of my arrival in Germany. Seeing that there seems to be an overkill of anniversary-celebrating in advertising here these days (this is the “can’t-think-of-a-better-idea-so-let’s-use-our-31^st-anniversary-and-some-funny-nostalgia-footage-from-the-70s” school of advertising) I thought I’d join in, be a little self-indulgent and let you know what I see as the biggest change factors in Germany since I’ve been living here.

 

Overall, I suppose it can be summed-up that the Germans are being dragged kicking and screaming away from their rigidity, their rules and their solidity to a more flexible, changeable, fluid way of living. Of course, the rules and rigidity are still there (someone from the local Ordnungsamt could apparently come around at any time and ask us to dig up our laurel hedge because it’s not a plant local to Germany – just let them try that and I’ll give them what-for about flora racism!) but there have been some encouraging signs that things are becoming a little less stiff and stuffy.

 

From my own point of few, one of the biggest changes that symbolise this relaxation in attitude is the change in opening times for shops. When I first came here, everything shut on Saturday at 1 o’clock except for one Saturday in the month when shops shut at 4 o’clock. To be honest, I could never be bothered remembering which Saturday it was and always braved the crowds of formidable Hausfrauen in a sleepy haze every Saturday morning. The only places where there was an exception to this rule were petrol stations, where one could buy emergency items – I remember being viewed with complete disdain as I bought a packet of rice at five-thirty on a Saturday afternoon – or the kiosks where one can buy beer, cigarettes, newspapers and rather nasty wine. Needless to say, these have a rather dubious clientele, and you wouldn’t want to be spotted by your boss buying a couple of bottles of beer from one: it would send out all the wrong signals! 

 

Weekday evenings were also not much better, with most shops closing at six, so you’d often have to rush out of work shortly before six, brave the queues, then dash back in to do another hour or two. Gradually, though things have changed. It’s now perfectly possible to buy food and drink until 8 in the evening without being made to feel like a social inadequate and although Sunday opening still seems a long way off, life is a lot less stressed.

 

Maybe now that they’ve been released from queuing at the Tengelmann checkouts on Saturday mornings and have more time to do something useful and interesting could be one reason that women are (at last!) on the “up” in Germany. I can always remember how completely amazed I was when I arrived here of the conservative, chauvinistic attitude of traditional Germany towards women. I think that, from the outside, one imagines that Germany is a typical modern “Northern European” country, maybe a bit like the Scandinavian countries, in terms of its attitude to women. But my own experiences and those of friends continually proved this otherwise. Young women in Germany are perhaps lulled into a false sense of security: opportunities really are equal in terms of higher education where as many young women are at university as young men. In fact, the men are a little bit “behind” at this stage as the National or Social Service (one year to eighteen months at age 19) is only compulsory for men. And opportunities on the lower rungs of the career ladder seem to be quite fairly spread, too. But it is once women have children that the problems start.

 

It is an alarming statistic that only half of women born in Germany in 1960 with a higher academic qualification have children. Children are still viewed as a career-killer for women: companies simply do not offer opportunities for senior women executives to combine family and career, childcare is inadequate and the school-system is still based on half-days where the children from 6-19 finish at noon without lunch.

 

However, with Angela Merkel in power, together with her Minister for Family, Seniors, Women and Youth, the extraordinary Ursula von der Leyen (a doctor, very photogenic, seven children!), the groundswell of opinion seems to be changing. Injustice in the workplace is becoming a topic of public debate and there seem to be real efforts to drag Germany out of the 1950s (and before) in terms of attitudes to and provision for working mothers.

 

Talking of Angela Merkel brings me on to the next point. Not only is Angie female, but she is also from the former DDR which is a bit of a double whammy. When I first arrived here, the “East” were still very much the poor relatives and somewhat resented. Former West Germans grumbled about the amount of money they were shelling out to the East in taxes and the former East Germans – “Ossies” – were regarded very much as figures of fun: somewhat naïve characters with dreadful fashion sense left over from the 1980s and music taste to match. A few years later, around the early noughties, there was an acceptance that the “Ossies” were here to stay and wave of Ostalgie or “Eastalgia” swept the country with T-shirts sporting logos of former DDR brands, the revival of many “cult” brands and websites devoted to the whole era. Cities such as Dresden and Leipzig were actively pushed not just as tourist destinations but also as potential hosts for forthcoming events.

 

These days, however, the difference, such as it was, is hardly noticed. The roads in former East Germany are every bit as good as those in the West (thanks to all those taxes, presumably) and in events like the national song contest (a bit of homage to Eurovision) it’s hard to say whether the Neu or Altbundesländer are more innovative and cutting edge when it comes to music and fashion.

 

On the subject of fashion – not that I’m an expert on youth culture anywhere at my age – it does certainly seem that the influence of the US on young people here has waned. While certain US-originated styles do seem to have an influence, the youth here take those styles and customise them locally. One good example is Hip-Hop which is more often heard here in the German language on the radio than in the original. Interestingly, it seems to be Southeast Europe that has an increasing influence on German youth culture. With large immigrant populations from former Yugoslavia, Romania, Albania and of course Turkey, German middle-class youth has real life “ghettoes and gangsters” in the neighbourhood with plenty of language and dress codes with which to shock traditional parents.

 

While the kids are getting nicely integrated into Southeast European ways, the rest of the population seems largely happy with closer ties within Europe as a whole. While there was plenty of grumbling about the Euro and how everything had been marked up (ooh, it’s just the same in Euros as in Marks – no pun intended) for the first couple of years, one has the feeling now that people are beginning to see the benefits. It certainly seems to have eased traveling within other Euro countries for many people: driving through Europe these days you hardly notice the borders and you often find yourself asking what country you’re in!

 

The common currency and a few common “enemies” – not least the war-mongering politicians of certain nations - do seem to have united the people of Germany closer with their immediate neighbours. There is a definite feeling of Camaraderie or I suppose I should say Bruderschaft around, especially in places like the Ryan Air airports. The cheap air travel has also contributed to this Eurocentricity, and popping off to Jerez, Montpelier or Milan for the weekend has become as affordable as taking the family to the nasty theme park half an hour down the road. 

 

These are just some of the signs I’ve seen over the last ten years of Germany losing its stuffiness and rigidity. I’m sure there are many others and I’ll keep my eyes and ears open too over the next ten years.

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Well, 18 years on, I am German. The shops are still firmly shut on Sundays and Segmüller still runs dire 131st anniversary radio ads. Some things carried on getting better, such as the lot of working mums, but sadly, too late for me. 

National Service has been abolished, but how long before it’s revived in the current war-ridden mess?

What’s of concern is that some things seem to be going backwards - or rather towards a new and different form of stiffness, rigidity and lack of openness. One rule book has been torn up, but there’s a weird new one in place, written by fear. The former East German states are strongholds for the AfD and other extremists of various shades.

And a thousand and one articles about Germany - The Sick Man of Europe. The less I say about Ursula von der Leyen, the better.

Maybe the answer is to dig out my 2006-tinted glasses and philosophise that perhaps a step or two backwards is inevitably the way forward.

 

Penny for your thoughts?

 

I’ve been writing an article for one of my clients about Christmas advertising. Because it’s for an international audience, most of the focus is on ads from the UK and other English-speaking markets. In Germany, Christmas advertising is a thing, but not such a colossal humongous thing (literally, in the case of this year’s John Lewis ad) as it is in the UK. 

You can see what I mean if you scroll down this article about German supermarkets’ Christmassy commercials. Apart from Edeka’s slightly weird meaty mumblings, there’s nothing really unexpected and many of the ads are a little lacklustre and conventional. 

There’s cuteness, kids,  magic and animals with Lidl and REWE. Some “get the tissues” from Co-op. And a bit of fun and nostalgia from Aldi with grown-ups behaving like big kids.

But that’s me with my London ad person hat on (also looking a bit lacklustre these days, to be honest). Time and time again, we hear that the ads that do well at Christmas are those that do all the cuteness, tears, smiles, entertainment and general warm fuzziness. And do it well.

So what the heck were Penny thinking? Over 3 minutes, entitled “The Kids” with the message “It’s our future, please listen to us.” Four youngsters, discontented, sad and angry about the grown-ups in their immediate family, or society in general. A girl forced into ballet when she’d rather dance freestyle. A little chap who can’t bear his mum’s social media obsession. A young lad upset by all the “six-pack” bodies he sees on his phone. A junior environmentalist striding around the house switching lights and appliances off.  

Then a montage of sulky glum faces, school protests, “Fridays for Future”-style activism clichés accompanied by a children’s choir rendition of a song from P!nk (I think).

Maybe it seemed like a good idea when the agency made this back in the Spring or Summer. But at this time of year, and given the news of the last few weeks, it feels completely tone deaf. As I said last year, no-one wants to be reminded of misery, hate and division. Especially not now. 

A long time ago, when I worked on P&G, I’d often have to steer the clients away from anything that felt like finger-pointing. I’d remind them that new mums often felt inadequate and hopeless enough without ads suggesting that if they didn’t use the new-improved super-ultra-Pampers (or whatever), they were a crap mother. Especially if they couldn’t afford better than Aldi.

That attitude from advertisers and their agencies is sneaking back into commercials, and this is a prime example. Finger-pointing, parent-shaming (if you like) manipulative stuff to make people feel lousy about themselves. Backed up by some sort of agency bullshit that they’ve “got out there” (where is “there”, anyway?) and listened to “real” children’s wishes. Well, I have my own experience of that.

I quoted an article from Richard Huntington in my last post and this was one of the stand-out sentences for me:

Everyone is trying in their own way to be a good person living a good life.

In the end, it shouldn’t be more complicated than that.

Make 'em laugh

A week later, and I'm still on my soapbox about humour (or lack of) in advertising. I read a super piece by Paul Burke in Campaign entitled No laughing matter: Why Advertising isn't funny anymore. The guilty are all called out and charged, from the Client to Sir Martin Sorrell and his bean counters, from Tony Blair to the Creative Department. Well worth reading: even if advertising isn't funny anymore, this article is, particularly the paragraph with the ghastly client marketing-speak.

One potential culprit, or group of culprits not mentioned in the article, are what we used to call target audiences. The people 'out there.' With social media, the stereotype of 'Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells' (usually a retired colonel) has been replaced by a whole army of militant social justice warriors, just waiting to spring onto your ad from Twitter, Mumsnet, Facebook, you name it, and give it a good savaging. Advertisers and agencies live in fear of causing offence and outrage. 'All publicity is good publicity' has its limits. It's one thing upsetting a stuffy retired colonel, but quite another offending an entire generation.

But I question: are the new audiences lacking in humour? Do they take a masochistic delight in ads 'making them cry?' I'm not sure. There's still plenty of humour around. But I feel sometimes that it's only the medium that's changed. Youngsters used to tell jokes in the playground, that they'd heard on TV, or through word of mouth. Now they flick through 9gag. And maybe show their mate if it's particularly funny. But the jokes haven't really changed. There's stuff on there that I remember from my schooldays, and that's going back.

20 years ago, it was cool for creative people to be finding inspiration on the internet. But, as I've said before, we've gone from surfing to stumbling to being fed as far as the internet goes. I think - and hope - that there's a huge opportunity for brands and the creative people who work on them to reclaim humour. Fresh, new humour that fits to the brand and comes from observation of life out there, not rehashed old chestnuts from the internet.

I'm convinced that people are even more well-disposed towards a brand that can make them laugh as one that makes them cry.

Mommy Me

Dove. The brand that kicked off a million 'Purpose Campaigns', some better conceived than others. Marketing people still cite Dove as the Grandmommy of all purpose campaigns, so it's not surprising that all eyes are on the brand when it makes its next move.

Well, Dove has had a baby. Called, unsurprisingly, Baby Dove. So far so good. And to extend the idea of empowering (women) and building self-confidence that the mother brand has, the brand communication is focussing around the idea Trust Your Way. There are no perfect moms. Only #RealMoms. At first glance, a logical extension of an idea that'll probably strike a chord. There can't be a mother alive who hasn't felt pressure from friends, relatives, society to do things in a certain way.

Here's the US launch ad:



This, apparently, sets out to 'shatter stereotypes about motherhood.' Hmm. I wouldn't go that far. Some would describe it as 'heart-warming'. I'm afraid I'd put it in the wallpaper category, with its patchwork of different moms, straight out of 21st Century Diversity Central Casting.

For the UK launch, Baby Dove went for something more controversial. A poster at Waterloo Station asking the question 'Is there a perfect mum' with the visual of a Stepford-Wife-style mother and baby.  The twist was that this image was revealed to be that of an AI-generated woman rather than a real (albeit retouched) photo - that is, a woman who does not really exist. This was all done to provoke debate. You can read about it here.

I'm not sure how much debate was provoked. I only know that if I'd caught sight of that image as a sleep-deprived mum in a hurry to get somewhere, I would probably have merely been irritated and later, felt rather stupid if I read that it was all a marketing trick. And, indeed, I question why Waterloo Station was used. Because of the large numbers of new mums who happen to be passing through, with or without their babies? I think not.

Then we get onto the next subject. Dads. There are one or two references to Dads on the Baby Dove website, but only one or two. Doesn't it make sense in the 21st Century to acknowledge that more and more young fathers take paternity leave?

And finally, isn't this all a bit 'me' focussed? What about the babies? Years ago, when I worked on Pampers and later on Hipp, we learned that mums aren't really interested in other mums. They are interested in babies, and their baby in particular. They're fascinated by their little miracle, how he or she grows and develops, and they're thirsty for information. While I worked on Pampers, the whole advertising direction changed from a focus on Expert Moms to Learning from Babies.

But maybe the new parents of the Millennial generation are different.

A bundle of good

One of the biggest problems in the modern age is getting rid of stuff - and I know I certainly feel the pressure to get rid of stuff in a responsible way, not just 'chuck it out.'

Mothercare have estimated that there are some 183 million items of outgrown baby clothing lurking in UK cupboards and drawers, and they've come up with an excellent promotional idea in time for Mothering Sunday/UK Mothers' Day. The thought is Gift a Bundle , with Mothercare partnering with environmental charity Hubbub - pick up one of the promotional bags from your local store, fill it with 6-10 items of baby clothing, and return it to be given to a local family in need.

This is a nice down-to-earth idea that combines lots of good stuff: topical, local, sharing, bringing people together, good for the environment - and all of this through a simple action, not preaching from on high with questionable statistics, expensive film directors and heartstring-pulling plinky piano music.

This is called driving the band waggon (for a short trip, at least) rather than leaping on it.

Mad women

Throughout my whole career in advertising - which now spans 4 decades (!) - debates come around again and again with the regularity of theories of 'How Advertising Works.' The 'Women in Advertising' debate is one such - not just the portrayal of women in ads, but the status of women in the industry.

The Kevin Roberts debacle this summer stirred the debate again, and got me thinking about my experience as a woman and a mother in the industry. Maybe it's because I am a bit longer in the tooth than the average in what is a notoriously 'young' industry, or maybe people have short memories, but I notice that the players in each new wave of the debate seem to think they're the first to raise the subject.

For example, there a well-reasoned and thoughtful article this week in Campaign by Nicola Kemp, but at some point it references 'Back in 2014, when the conversation about the lack of women in senior positions was just getting started.'

In fact, while I was at Saatchis, in 1990, our then Head of Planning, Marilyn Baxter, was commissioned by the IPA to undertake a study as to why so few women were in top management roles in ad agencies:

I remember the study highlighting the woeful lack of women generally in UK creative departments, which was related to the extreme laddish/macho culture of the time. Ten years later, Debbie Klein updated the study. In 2000, her findings were rather more positive. Women in advertising were optimistic about opportunities for the future. Women made up half of ad agency staff, and compared to FTSE 100 companies, were four times as likely to reach a board position.

But since then, I've found references to reports that suggest that, although the 50:50 split of employees is there, the % of women in senior management is only creeping up slowly - 20% in 2009, 22.4% in 2011 and 25% in 2014.

The Nicola Kemp article rightly focusses on motherhood and paints a picture familiar to many women in advertising. All is well and good until you have children. Unless you are extremely lucky to work for an enlightened agency, or you take the decision to leave the upbringing of your children to your partner, or maybe a series of nannies, you are likely to meet what's described as  'toxic environment.'

And what's particularly alarming for agencies is that client companies are far more on the ball when it comes to flexibility for working parents. 

I don't like to be cynical, but I do wonder if, as long as agencies keep up their 'working relatively young (cheap) people all hours of the day and night to keep the client happy' business model, things will not change for mums in advertising.

And the agencies will miss out on a wealth of insight and wisdom - and potentially great creative ideas.

Hold that status!

Somewhere in an old briefcase, I've got a British Airways Gold Card. Being a Gold Member was certainly good while it lasted, but my status went back to almost zilch with the birth of my son. On my return to work, I orientated myself more towards working within Germany, with at most short trips within Europe.

I was pleased to read that Qantas have launched a Status Hold initiative. Frequent Flyers will be able to hold their status 18 months after having a child. This applies to mums and dads, as well as those adopting or fostering a child, as long as they have taken at least 6 months m/paternity leave. So no more having to rebuild your status, and you can still use all the privileges bestowed on you - lounges, preferred seating and so on.

This is a great idea, and shows the true meaning of a loyalty scheme. It's a long-term reward, with the new parents getting something back. The brand recognises the potential value of those customers in the future, and also gives the new offspring a good first impression of the airline when they are travelling with their parents.

More than that, it recognises the way a new mum who has been a successful career woman may be feeling. She may feel guilty about leaving her young child, she may experience a loss of confidence. She is almost certainly sleep-deprived. Letting her keep her status and all those privileges, just when she needs them most, is something that hardly costs much to the airline, but could lead to increased loyalty in the next phase of her life and career.

Now that's what I call family-friendly!

66 Identities

'Marketing to Mums' is one of those age-old topics that no-one seems to be getting right. I've posted about this old chestnut here and here. Much of the difficulty seems to stem from brands and agencies putting their agenda first, rather than what is important to women in their role as a mother. And although there are probably a few more mothers working in marketing and advertising than there were when I was in my 20s and 30s, many feel pressured into leaving their mother identity at home.

I was very impressed with a joint project conducted by Saatchi & Saatchi partnering up with Mumsnet, which you can read about here and even download the white paper. It's all about how marketing can create more meaningful connections to mums.

At the heart of the study is a great idea - what I would call back-to-front research. Instead of taking all the brand data and throwing it all into the giant factor analysis and segmentation machine, then giving the six segments it spits out oh-so-witty but rather patronising names, Saatchi and Mumsnet did something different.

They asked the question - how do mums define themselves, when they are conversing in social media? And to do this, they analysed all the popular mum-orientated social media networks in the UK. Which topics or groups were there?

The answer was 66 ways in which UK mums define themselves, ranging from the seemingly pure demographic 'mums with teens' through to something like 'mums with cheating partners'. On average, any woman will identify with around 6 of these groups - I tried it and found 12 that I identified with.

The next step was to do a sound quantification of these groups, amongst mothers aged 16-60, both in terms of volume and intensity of identification. This is important. Mothers with special needs children may be a smaller group in terms of volume, but are likely to identify at a high level of intensity.

And this is where the back-to-front bit comes full circle. Only at the end did they take a smaller number of these groups into qualitative research to get more insight and revelation about the lives of these mothers and their children. And here, the really fascinating stuff comes out.

One might think that 'one-child family' or 'rural mum' are not that exciting - just demographics, really. But knowing that for rural mums, a trip into town to do shopping is turned into a fun day out and really a bit of a treat for the child gives marketers all manner of possibilities to make a better connection.

Meanwhile, for those of us who are mothers and work in marketing, let's not be frightened to yell loudly when we detect our colleagues 'faking it.'

Marketing with mother

I have written from time to time here about the futility of "marketing to the over 50s". A similarly futile exercise, as I see it, is "marketing to mums." I don't know if anyone else felt vaguely uneasy about the much feted P&G campaign a few years back, around the time of the Olympics: Proud Sponsor of Mums. My uneasiness came from a number of angles - first, the obvious, what about Dads? There was also the manipulative, cheesy tonality of the films. But the uneasiness also came from knowing the agenda at P&G, a company whose main brands are household and baby care products. I even worked on Pampers for a few years and I hate to say this, but there were precious few mums around, on either the client or the agency side. More of that later.

There's a article entitled Marketing to mums is broken in Marketing magazine which touches on this issue. It's written by a woman, who is a mother herself, Nicola Kemp. But, curiously, even in this article, three of the six people who are quoted are men, and it's not clear how many of the women are mothers. Now, I know you don't have to belong to a target group in order to market to that group, but the bias in advertising agencies against mothers still seems to be extreme. Of the three women quoted, one of them said this: There aren't enough female creatives and there aren't enough creatives that are mums. If we changed this, we would do a better job.

The woman who said this is Roisin Donnelly, of P&G. So that, at least, gives me hope.

Mum's the word

In time for Mothering Sunday in the UK and to lead up to the London Olympics 2012, Procter & Gamble are about to unleash their first-ever corporate advertising for the general public. Interesting, because I've been involved in discussing the rights and wrongs of such an approach in the past. Interesting, because arch-rival Unilever has had its corporate logo on all its brand advertising since 2009.

Of course, newer companies don't have this headache. There aren't shadowy corporations lurking behind the brand names when it comes to the amazons, Googles and Virgins of this world. And even some of P&G's fellow-centenarians from Coca-Cola to many car brands have put their company name forward as brand name from the start.

You have to sympathise with P&G and their ilk to some extent. In the brave new internet age you can't hide. And if you don't take some kind of stance about who you are and what you stand for, someone else will do it for you. But however much I believe that P&G should have done something, I'm afraid that they've done the wrong thing.

Part of this comes out in the way both P&G and Unilever talk about why they've gone for the corporate-to-general public approach:

"(The Olympics)...is a great opportunity to talk to consumers about P&G and what we stand for." The phrase "talk to consumers" says it all. Isn't it about conversation these days? It's true enough that people these days want to know more about the companies that they buy products from - but they won't learn by being "talked to," like a naughty child standing in the corner.

Or this: "Our research says that consumers...are increasingly marketing-savvy and know that there are people who are behind brands." Well, I never!

While I'm sure that P&G have done their research, I'm a little uneasy that they appear to have done their usual version of copy & paste, which is known as "search and reapply". A successful campaign that ran for the Vancouver Olympics will be used in the UK - "Proud Sponsors of Mums."

I do find this a slightly patronising - and exclusive approach - after all, men and women without children have to clean their homes, wash their hair, use denture fixative, do the laundry and all the rest, too.

And when it comes to it, do I really want to be thinking about Pampers when I'm buying perfume? And talking of Pampers, what would be really fantastic is if P&G ditched the corporate budget when it comes to Germany and ploughed the money into an action-led campaign - from Pampers - that really did something to change the lot of mothers in Germany, as suggested here.