The Biergarten of Eden

Seasonality and regionality are always the big themes when it comes to German food and drink and what could represent Bavaria better in the summer than a typical Biergarten?

A Biergarten combines everything that is dear to the Germans, particularly the Bavarians. Beautiful old chestnut trees, conviviality, warm summer evenings that go on forever, hearty food, and the best beer in the world, in large (but not indecent) quantities.

A Biergarten is a multi-sensory experience. The sight of all those blue and white Bavarian coats-of-arms, the sound of heavy glasses clinking and maybe a brass band, the feel of the cool beer trickling down your throat and the heaviness of the Maß as you lift it, the smell of Schweinshaxe and the taste of salty Pretzels or sweet mustard with your Weißwurst.

No wonder that there are beer brands, for whom the Biergarten is their spiritual home. If all this is making you thirst for more, take a look at Paulaner's virtual Biergarten here.

In yer face

I have been rather amused by the latest scandal and "breach of security" to hit the UK government. The wife of the newly appointed head of MI6 has been splashing holiday snaps all over Facebook.

One of the comments on the Telegraph website described this incident as "not a risk but impossibly vulgar." I'm glad that there are still a few old-school Telegraph readers left. Another mused over what various fictional spies might have on their Facebook profile.

Given that I'm calling myself Secret Agency, I did wonder how much or how little of my latent exhibitionism should come through on Facebook. If you're employed by a company, there may well be rules about when, where or what you can do on Facebook in office hours. As a self-employed planner it leads to an interesting dilemma. On the one hand I don't want to run the risk of coming across as "impossibly vulgar" - especially if potential clients are Telegraph readers, Old School.

But I also don't want to come over to potential clients as a digital Luddite. So I tow a slightly uneasy balance. And, at the end of it, I know that there aren't that many people who are desperately interested in the detail of my Facebook page.

By the way - do you remember how Facebook used to be? Glad I made that screenshot.

Generation Uh-Oh

My attitude to those generational studies is rather akin to my feelings about astrology. I used to be quite into both (and I am sure that the keen astrologers amongst you will point out that these generational descriptors do have a planetal basis. If I remember rightly, some of the planets furthest from the sun stick around in the astrological signs for years.)

However, I now take a lot of it with a pinch of salt. It's quite possible, after all, to trawl through Wikipedia and find fundamentally different individuals who were born under the same sign, in the same year. And another thing that used to get my back up was being lumped in with the Baby Boomer generation. Vietnam and Woodstock had zero influence on me. I was too young and on the wrong continent.

But now I find out that I'm actually part of Generation Jones. I'm not sure what that means or which Joneses it refers to (Tom? Bridget? Davy?) but it does mean that I'm in there with President Obama, which can't be bad.

Talking of President Obama, what was Generation Y (always a sorry excuse for a name, I thought) has now been rechristened Generation O, after the great man himself. These are people born in the 1980s and early 1990s. Levis are launching a new campaign Go Forth, on 4th July, aimed at this group. It's all about rebuilding America and the new American pioneer.

I had a look at the campaign and it seems very worthy (I mean that in a good way) but possibly a bit too earnest. Call me a superficial old floosie from Generation Jones, but I prefered that chap in his pants in the launderette.

Has anyone got any good names for Generation Z? These are "today's kids", born from the mid 1990s onwards.

The Rebuilding of the German Man

It's an oft-discussed topic at the Elternbeirat - the lack of male staff as role models for boys in Germany's schools and Kindergartens. And this, in turn, leads to a debate much in the media in Germany generally these days - the crisis of German men. Of course, the Germans love having a crisis and beating themselves up about something and, since this one covers 50% of the population, it can run and run.

In the latest newsletter from Sturm und Drang, there's another article about the crisis. And it's pointed out that 98% of Kindergarten personnel are female, along with 87% of primary school teachers. This is one factor, it is believed, in the lack of orientation experienced by many men in Germany. The old role models have been toppled, but nothing positive has filled their place. This dilemma was summed up in Die Welt: "Machos are out. Softies aren't in."

While the feminisation of German culture and commerce has been long overdue, one does wonder where the male role models are. While internationally top-of-their class females are everywhere, from Angela Merkel to Heidi Klum, where are the men? Of course, there are good German sportsmen and there always will be, but otherwise, who is there? The Pope, of course. But these days, Boris Becker is more famous for his serial marriages than his tennis skills.

Where are the great artists, musicians, statesmen and captains of industry? In the world of advertising, it's also not much better. Most of the characters in TV ads here fall either into the category of hapless fools or Superstar-winner clones. Or maybe they are the real thing. Who could tell the difference, anyway?

Brand Story

Various metaphors seem to come in and out of vogue in the world of brands. Now Storytelling is up there again. At Cannes this year, the Wildfire Seminar will be on the subject of the ultimate brand story, to be unveiled on Wednesday 24th June at 4pm.

There's a website with a bit of background to this, plus the opportunity to nominate examples. Some of the examples given include "Coca Cola - The American Dream in a bottle" or "Apple - prodigal son returns, steers company to design immortality". What I find interesting here is the difference between these two: Coca Cola is about the brand, Apple is about the company. And I believe that this little game only really works well when the brand and the company are one and the same - one integral whole.

This latest incarnation of the storytelling story seems to have emerged from the book "The Seven Basic Plots" by Christopher Booker. Now, for those that feel that this is a bit limited when searching around for their Brand Story, I will draw your attention to Georges Polti's 36 Dramatic Situations. Here is the perfect framework for really getting up your own bottom with your brand. How about "Slaying of kin unrecognised"? Or the ultimate aim for all marketeers, surely, "Conflict with a God."

What was the year?

I used to be terribly good, to the point of nerdishness, at telling you in which year a particular song came out. In fact, in my teenage years and early twenties, I could probably specify the month, too.

This ability has faded with the years, mainly because there are more of them (years and songs), although I'm still pretty good at anything between 1976 and 1981.

I was amused to see this little game from About Time, which tests this (useless but charming) ability on brands and ad campaigns. It's worth a go. I managed to notch up more than 300 points which wasn't too bad for an old crock. Or is that clock?

Einigkeit und Recht und Freiheit

Trendbüro have recently developed a "Value Index" to look at which values seem to be particularly pertinent to Germans today. Rather than the usual practice of constructing a questionnaire and interviewing, Trendbüro have analysed 150,000 German-speaking blogs, forums and communities. This method strikes me as one of the great new things you can do now with data in Web 2.0 - analyse real behaviour in terms of conversations, rather than confronting people with an artificial interview situation and words out of context.

Anyway, the results are as follows - the Top 11 German values:

1. Freedom

2. Success

3. Family

4. =Health and Safety (these two always seem to pop up together!)

6. Nature

7. Simplicity

8. Recognition

9. Justice

10. Authenticity

11. Self-realisation

Trendbüro seem to be rather surprised at the results, not because punctuality and efficiency are nowhere to be seen, but because those marketing darlings Authenticity and Self-realisation are on the lowest rungs. I'm not that surprised. Authenticity has always seemed a bit of a phoney thing to me. I know I'm authentic, if the value is being ascribed to me. And if a brand has to bang on about its authenticity, well, then I think it protests too much. Passion falls into the same camp.

In fact, it's just as well that the German National Anthem doesn't start off with "Authentizität und Selbstverwirklichung und Leidenschaft" as this would sound like a musical Mission Statement.