RETROWURST: Carnival in Germany March 2003

Time to rummage around in the archives of my pre-blogging days again, and this month I have a special treat. My first ever Extrawurst, which also gives you a little bit about the origins of my blog name. This delight dates from March 2003, and is accompanied by the sound of slightly tiddly oompah music.

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Seeing as this is my first Extrawurst, I’d better give you a quick explanation as to what an Extrawurst is. Yes, it literally means a ‘sausage thrown in’ if you’ll excuse my German. A typical use of the phrase is ‘The problem with Franz is that he always expects his Exrawurst’ or, in better English ‘Franz always expects his added extras (at no added charge)’. I’ll be giving you some thoughts on life and brands from behind the Sauerkraut curtain every month which I hope will amuse and inspire. 

My theme for my kick-off Extrawurst is Carnival, or Karneval, or Fasching which you just can’t avoid here at the moment. I’m pretty sure that if you ask people in the UK about Carnival at this time of year, Notting Hill aside, they are far more likely to bring to mind the jazz bands of the New Orleans Mardi Gras, the sequinned costumes of the Rio dancers or the romantic masked balls of Venice than the goings-on here around the Rhine. But Carnival has been building up to a climax here since November, when the Carnival Clubs officially launch their campaigns with the high points of Rosenmontag and Fastnacht before Ashermittwoch (Ash Wednesday).

 

You may have noticed the mention of Clubs and Campaigns there, which is one little element of Carnival, German style. Everything is meticulously timed and organised with parades starting at 11 minutes past the hour precisely. There are also very strict rules of behaviour for the revellers- even though you may call the colleagues you’ve worked with for 20 years by the formal ‘Sie’ for the rest of the year, not calling them by the familiar ‘Du’ if you happen to bump into them at a Carnival party will mark you down forever as being hopelessly stuffy. 

 

What are some of the typical elements of German Carnival? Well - the skimpy costumes of Rio are not recommended in February temperatures in Germany- far more popular is something with maximum coverage and minimum shape, to disguise the number of beers you’ve downed - variations on clowns are a perennial favourite and furry cow suits seem to be this year’s fad. Of course, the powers-that-be in the Carnival club have their own special costumes and fools’ caps in the carnival colours of red, yellow, blue and white, with the most extravagant costumes worn by the Carnival Prince and Princess (who are likely to be called something like Prince Gunther II and Princess Gundula IV). Gunther could well sport a fine Rudi Voller hairdo and moustache with his costume while Gundula is likely to be a little on the portly side with a particularly severe pair of glasses. Who needs the glamour of Rio?

 

Whoever thinks that German carnival is all frivolity and foolishness is very wrong. The Carnival had its origins in satire against the government and politics still plays a huge part. In the parades, there are huge paper-machée models of Herr Schroeder, Fischer and other (un) popular figures with our friends from the US being high on the agenda for satire this year. Germany must be the only country who would think of sending a Spitting Image puppet of its Chancellor as representative at the Eurovision Song Contest! It’s no surprise that Carnival was very definitely verboten during the 1930s.

 

Carnivals isn’t Carnival without food and, most importantly, drink. Traditional fare is doughnuts, called variously ‘Kreppel’ or ‘Berliner’ depending on where you come from - hence JKF’s infamous statement on his visit to Berlin in the early 1960s. ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’. But the main course on the Carnival menu is drink, and plenty of it. Here the Germans really come into their own. Carnival is strongest around the Rhine, which is wine country and half litre white wine ‘spritzers’ where the wine is probably just given a quick look at the water bottle are a typical drink to get people into the mood. Beer is also not to be avoided, especially in the carnival centre of Cologne (Koelsch) plus little bottles of Schnapps with innocent –sounding names like ‘Pflaumchen’ or ‘Little Plum’ or ‘Kleine Feigling’- ‘The cowardly little fig’.

 

 So, what relevance does all this have for brands? Apart from not calling German colleagues too early in the morning on Ash Wednesday or the obvious product and promotional opportunities (buy a furry purple Milka cow outfit and get ten doughnuts free) I think that it says something important about brands. Sometimes, I feel we (brand owners, managers, stewards, whatever) get just a little bit too precious about what Brands should and shouldn’t do, rather than thinking about how the brand in question might do whatever it is, and, importantly, what effect that might have on the brand’s fortunes. Carnival is certainly a way of getting noticed and eliciting plenty of sympathy (and hangovers) amongst the brand’s community (or potential community).So, just because the brand Germany may have values such as efficiency, organisation, duty and obedience to authority at its core (along with the more Carnival-friendly attributes such as oompah-music, jolly good beer and no worry about wearing ridiculous clothes in public) doesn’t mean to say that these values can be brought to play in celebrating Carnival, as we have seen, in a way that is 100% true to the brand.

 

That’s my first Extrawurst- I hope that you enjoyed it. I’m off to eat some doughnuts because tonight it all has to come to an end and the offer of ‘Traditional Aschermittwoch herrings in our local town hall’ tomorrow doesn’t sound that appetising!

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Well, a lot of readers will know where it went from there. The music got worse as the years went by, the costumes even more grotesque (1980s shell suits were very popular last time I looked) and, in a tip of the clown's hat to inclusivity, we had a gay Prinzenpaar locally.

Last year, I made one of my biggest mistakes ever. We spurned the local carnival parade in a self-righteous manner and went jogging, for about 10km, around it. How smug and holier-than-thou can you get? I really don't know what on earth got into us. Certainly not alcohol.

We paid for this error. Last year would have been the last carnival as we know it for some time. Carnival parades 2020 were some of the first super-spreader events, and this year it's all been online and making cute YouTube videos with Playmobil figures. Yawn.

At least I don't have to eat pickled herrings, though.

The dinosaur had a baby - and they called it O.W.N.

 

A couple of years ago, I addressed the question of old dogs and new tricks, and a little while later wrote about Beiersdorf's first new product launch in 30 years, Skin Stories.

I'm back to Beiersdorf again today, with the launch this week of O.W.N. - a personalised skincare brand for cleansing, day and night care.  

Now, to look at O.W.N. you'd be forgiven for thinking it's yet another of those hip, start-uppy new brands that flood Instagram. 

All the boxes and more are ticked: 

A pure digital D2C business model

On self-care mega-trend and need for individualisation

Sustainability

Personalised at scale, with 380,000 formula combinations on offer

All driven by A.I. and algorithms, which get to know your skin better day by day

Brand identity fits current aesthetic, including brand name (which stands for "Only What's Needed"), and of course your own name on the packaging

But what's different here is the role of the dinosaur mother company. Only with 140 years' knowledge on skincare and the backing, in development, of a study of 10,000 women in Europe and Asia, with 2.5m "skin measurements", are you going to get the trust and buy-in at scale that O.W.N. is really going to do what it says on the recyclable tin.

And it's all part of the grand (yet flexible) strategic plan and purpose of the matriarch.  

Now, notice I said "mother company", not "mother brand". Did Beiersdorf consider bringing out the new brand under the Nivea name, or at least make some allusion to it? I'm sure that was hotly debated.

Maybe there's something to be learned here for the companies where brand and corporate name are one and the same. 

Whatever, this is a clear sign that some of those legacy dinosaurs aren't going to die out just yet.

World sanitiser

 

                                                            The author in Paros, October 2005

Nine months ago, I was maybe foolishly optimistic about the return of travel and the re-emergence of a revived travel industry. With all the talk of building back better and big resets, the industry that is still suffering from the pandemic fallout is travel. The hoped-for recovery just isn't happening, whether it's airlines, hotels or tour operators. Not surprising, as we have just had lockdown extended for the umpteenth time.

There's an article here from Springwise that tries to take a positive tone, about clever innovations within the travel industry to adapt to people's changed behaviour and need expectations as a result of the pandemic.

But can I be the only one that finds this dreary, and rather missing the point?

Whether it's art exhibitions or travelling exotic lands, there is a limit to how much virtuality you can take. Like those virtual shoes and outfits that some people apparently pay astonishing sums of real money for, the novelty wears off at some point. 

Virtual reality Japanese Onsen bathhouse experience? I'd prefer to wait for the real thing. One day.

Guest rooms in bubbles? Haven't we had enough of bubbles, from the filter sort to the friends and family sort?

Robots doing all the stuff that, in years gone by, came with a twinkling smile, a drink on the house that stretched into six, and stories about the days and nights they shot that famous Hollywood film in the bay round the coast ...

Contactless hotels, facial recognition technology ... yes, good. But the photos are cold and perfect and devoid of any human touch. Contactless, indeed.

All this stuff may be about "needs" and "changed behaviours", but what about desire?

I've got a yearning for dirt. Greasy spoon cafes and restaurants without a menu at all (and I don't mean it's all online). Heat and dust, colourful chaos, mess, adventure, surprises - the bad ones, too, that you can laugh about afterwards. Places so windy wearing a mask is laughable. Laughing about everything and anything.

A pre-pandemic, pre-Instagram, unsanitised world.

RETROWURST: Mixed Beers February 2004

A New Year, a new series on Extrawurst. Going back to my roots aka Wurzeln, if you like.

When I started freelancing, back in 2003, I decided to write an article each month on a market, brand or aspect of life in Germany. This was originally for my friends The Value Engineers.  Later, the collected articles found their way onto my (currently undergoing digital transformation) website. And in 2008, I started this here blog, and the articles grew sad and dusty on a long-forgotten external hard drive.

I reckon 15 years is long enough in the past to be retro, so, with a fanfare of red plastic trumpets, here comes Retrowurst. There'll be one of these a month, and I hope they will interest, intrigue and maybe give a nostalgic taste of the early days of this millennium, the days when I was still a relative stranger here.

From February 2004, here's a piece on 'Mixed Beers.'

Cheers!

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This month, I am going to consider a few developments in the German drinks market that would have Wilhelm IV, Herzog of Bayern, turning in his grave (and which would have probably turned his stomach too, had he still been alive)!

 

Wilhelm IV of Bayern was responsible for passing the world’s oldest law concerning foodstuffs, otherwise known as the Reinheitsgebot or Purity Law. It is not known whether the duke of Bavaria passed the law as a result of a terrible hangover or stomach upset, but he decreed, on 23^rd April 1516, that beer produced and sold in the towns, markets and countryside of Bavaria should contain no ingredients other than barley, hops and water. For hundreds of years brewers in Bavaria and later in the rest of Germany obediently followed the Reinheitsgebot and Germans enjoyed the benefit of what is arguably the best beer in the world. The German beer market has not been so influenced by the fads and fashions seen in the UK, for example. Of course, the odd imported beer can be seen now and again in the more fashionable bars and clubs but, by and large, most Germans are happy with a glass of Pilsner or one of the more localised beer variants. Whether it’s a bottle at home in front of the TV for Sportsschau (no self-respecting German would dream of drinking a can of beer) or a half-litre sitting in the Biergarten in the shade of chestnut trees in summer, it tastes good every time and generally has no undesirable or anti-social after-effects.

 

However, one thing that Wilhelm IV did not forbid in his Reinheitsgebot was the mixing of beer with other drinks. And it is in this area that the worrying developments are now taking place. There is a fairly long tradition of beer-based mixed drinks in Germany. What we would term shandy – beer mixed with lemonade – is known here as Radler. Radlerliterally means ‘cyclist’ and this drink was traditionally offered as a thirst-quencher to cyclists in the summer as an alternative to drinking large quantities of potent beer. Jerome K. Jerome’s book, “Three men on the Bummel”, a sequel to “Three men in a boat” paints an evocative picture of a cycling tour through the Black Forest in the early years of the 20^th Century where Radler is, naturally, consumed.

 

Another more recent beer-mix drink is Colabier, which is particularly popular amongst young people. Colabier is also known as Dreckigesbier or ‘dirty beer’ on account of its somewhat off-putting appearance. Despite being an odd concept and looking pretty revolting, Colabier is actually quite palatable in the right context. It is a good party drink, as the caffeine kick counterbalances the soporific effect of the beer.

 

As they stand, Radler and Colabier seem harmless and non-threatening enough to the mighty German beer industry, with their connotations of idyllic Edwardian summers and youth club barbeques. But the beer industry here is not as healthy as it was. Although the Germans are still high up there in the beer consumption league (second only to the Czechs), beer consumption per head is down. In 1995 consumption was 136l per head per year; by 1999, this was 127l per head. Although this is still equivalent to 0.33l per person per day, the trend is at best static and at worse, in decline.

 

Increasing concerns with fitness and health have resulted in less alcohol consumption generally and young people are beginning to look to other drinks.

 

Alcopops and ready-mixed drinks hit Germany a little later than the UK but have become very popular in the last couple of years. The focus is more on the ready-mixed drinks, such as Smirnoff Ice or Bacardi Breezer, or bottled versions of cocktails such as Mojitos rather than alcopops. The breweries have responded by producing commercial, ready-mixed versions of beer-mix drinks with a difference. While ready-mixed Radler has always been available, this was normally promoted at a very low level with nostalgic graphics and imagery, which could have come straight out of Jerome K. Jerome.

 

The new beer-mix drinks are aggressively promoted and clearly targeted at the young club and party crowd with funky or hi-tech names, graphics and ingredients. Most of the major breweries are getting in on the act, with an ‘if you can’t beat them then join them’ mentality. Licher, a medium-sized regional brewery from Hesse, which promotes its main beer brand on a very ‘nature-influenced’ platform, has introduced ‘Radler Limone’, ‘Cola 2’ and ‘Fresh Lemon’, with modern graphics and pack design. Diebels’ Cola Mix is called ‘Dimix’ with hi-tech graphics, while Köstritzer has a sub-brand called ‘bibop’ described as ‘dark beer with cola and guarana’. One of the biggest breweries, Krombacher, has a sub-brand called ‘Cab’ which is ‘Cola and beer flavoured with dragonfruit’. The pack design has a far-eastern touch, with no reference anywhere to the Krombacher or German heritage.

 

It will be interesting in the long run to see what effect these developments will have on the German beer industry. Will these commercially produced and over-marketed mixes pollute the good name of German beer? Or will they introduce young people to the world of good quality beer? Without being too pessimistic, these sub-brands have a distinctly ‘mutton dressed as lamb’ or ‘embarrassing Dad at school disco’ feel about them and one can’t help wondering if there are more appropriate and effective ways for the German brewing industry to revive its flagging fortunes, maybe by going back to its roots – all the all way to 1516 and Wilhelm IV, in fact.

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Well, as always happens, the answer isn't either/or - it's both. And neither. Beer consumption has continued to decline in Germany (from 115.3l per head in 2005 down to 99.7l per head in 2019), while Germany now appears to have slipped down to the 4th in the world in terms of consumption - yes, the Czechs are still up at the top, but both the Namibians and Austrians have slunk in between, according to one data source.

The wild and wonderful flavours have continued to proliferate, including some unholy mixtures involving energy drinks. But - the trends to local and regional, sustainability and craft beer have meant that even though Germans are drinking a little less, there's more choice on offer than ever. 

Getting your facts straight

 

I'm not sure when the obsession with "fact-based" and "data-driven" insights began, but I do know that often enough, chasing after spurious "facts" and/or data to support whatever argument you want to make takes more time than carefully constructing your knock-their-socks-off strategy. 

Let me take a good insight - Guns don't kill people, people do

Now, who in their right mind would demand to see the data or facts supporting that? The whole thing about insight is that when it's good, it's like an a-ha, a Eureka, a leap of faith, a revelation, the obvious that you'd never really thought about that way. Your mind has done a flip from rational, step-by-step logical thinking into a more holistic way of seeing the world.

I must admit it can be tiresome to be continually asked to back everything up with facts, or data. I'm a one woman show, and if clients think it's best use of my time scouring the internet for random information that may appear relevant to the case, but on closer inspection isn't, then so be it.

For my own part, I'd offer the following advice:

What are your reasons for demanding facts and data, and are they good, or is it about ticking the "selling it in to management" boxes?

Have a look at some of the facts and data you're presented with. Do you see a % sign, an asterisk and a source and think good-o, time to move on?

Only too often, I see "facts" presented along the lines of "32% of people believe that ...."

When looking at numbers and percentages, I always ask myself whether those numbers and percentages represent people directly, or not. If not, they may well represent something like € or £ , which likely means that they are less open to interpretation.

But if the percentage represents people, you really do need to find out at least which people, when and where, to judge whether the data is relevant to your case. And best to delve into what (was meant when the word "brand" was used in the survey, for example) and why the survey was done, while you're there.

For example, you may find that those numbers regarding propensity to switch brands during the pandemic were only referring to brands of toilet paper, not brands in general.

Or that the survey of young people's attitudes to social media privacy was carried out in 2015.

Or that the sample asked about brand activism consisted only of college students from the USA, who'd volunteered to take part in a survey on the topic.

It's far more dangerous to argue from the particular to the general than it is to admit to not having 100% relevant hard data to support a particular point.

That, by the way, is my view. Not a fact. 

Whatever happened to the inno-net?

 

I've remarked before how the relationship to the internet has changed over the last few decades - from the intrepid surfing and exploring of the early days, to amiable stumbling through to passive feeding. Well, of course, it was never going to stop there. The last couple of weeks have made me wonder if a better analogy for" being fed" could be "unwittingly poisoned".

And I'm also wondering if, these days, it's less Brave New World and more 1984.

In the late 90s and early 2000s, with the advent of Web 2.0, an optimistic and idealistic mood prevailed -  how wonderful that each and every member of the human race could communicate with anyone else they pleased - across and beyond borders. Could social media be the instrument of world peace?

But the realities of what human beings are actually like are now all too apparent, and the answer is: Not Bloody Likely. I'd love to know how often the word "toxic" is used in on- and offline conversations today compared to even twenty years ago.

Human beings don't like other human beings disagreeing with them. Neither do they like to be ignored.

And it's well known that nothing pleases human beings better than having their own opinions confirmed and amplified by others of a similar view. Hence the efforts built into the algorithms to keep people "inside the corral", as Bob Hoffman, the Ad Contrarian, puts it: "the algorithms feed us incrementally more lurid notions of our own dispositions." And this, of course, is in the platform's interest, to sell more advertising space.

I'm not on Twitter, but I did experience the diffusion of an online forum for writers a few years ago. The forum was run on some fairly shaky technology, and in the early days was a convivial and collegial sort of place. Of course we had differences of opinion, but we were all writers, right?

But at some point it started to go sour. A few righteous souls started stamping around and policing the place, which naturally led to individuals of a loud and rebellious nature taking a few pot shots back. Entertaining at first, but inevitably it all got rather tiresome, and writing took a second place. There were even accusations of fixing competition results - a microcosm of what's happening across the pond, if you like. Then at some point the shaky old software finally gave up the ghost.

New groups formed - a big shiny commercial one from the original hosts, as well as others created by individuals of one hue or another. It's accepted we'll never be the big happy friendly cloud crowd we were ten years ago - although maybe that was an illusion, too.

This brings me to this article by Aris Roussinos which suggests that maybe Europe needs to get out of the information and (Big) tech stranglehold as well as China's industrial and economic stranglehold. Could this be the beginning of the deglobalisation of the Internet? A European, civilisational internet?

Or maybe just civilised would be a start.

Scale of economies

 I never studied Economics, which probably accounts for a lot - it's something I've sort of muddled through and picked up as I've gone along. We touched on socialism and capitalism as systems for how production, distribution and consumption work at school, in History, and since then I've become aware of the various variants on and hybrids of these basic models. Overall, how resources are managed and value, in terms of goods, services and quality of life is produced.

Throughout my working life, various expressions including the word "economy" have come in and out of vogue. When I started work, in the 1980s, there was a lot of talk about how we were moving from a production economy to a service economy, and as we moved into the 1990s, chatter about the information economy and the attention economy was all the rage. There's still plenty of chit-chat about the latter.

Moving on to the next millennium and, in the wake of advertising agencies re-inventing themselves, up popped the ideas economy and the experience economy. Whether "economy" was exactly the right word for these concepts, or whether "current obsession" might have been more honest, is debatable. 

In the last few years, I've been aware of the ideas of the circular economy (sensible), the gig economy (euphemism) and the purpose economy (hmmm).

What's interesting is that many of these ideas are still circulating, and I think it's yet another example of less neat and tidy "from - to" and more cumulative, with everything piling on top of each other.

My prediction for this year is for two more economies to join the merry band. There's the wellness economy for starters. I thought we'd done and dusted wellness fifteen years ago, but it's back with a Covid-propelled vengeance, fanned by the flutterings of self-care, it seems. 

And the other rising star is the identity economy (I can hear the groans from here). There's all sorts of self-improvement and personal growth gubbins attached to this one - "brand me", "being the best version of yourself" (I've often wondered - in whose eyes?), "authentic self-discovery" and "life as an identity project."

But maybe the part brands can play in the super shiny identity economy is not so new. If it's all about the question "who can X brand help me to become?",  then my thoughts go all the way back to saving up my money aged 13 to buy a Ben Sherman shirt.

Brands have always been expressions of status and identity, even if what we mean by those terms may change.