Hung up

 

When I started this blog, I didn’t have an iPhone. It was iPod that brought me into Apple, followed by a MacBook and only then, the capitulation. 

I started using social media on a laptop, and as far as I'm concerned,  Facebook can stay there. I’ve never had the app on my phone, and it’s been a good decision. Ditto never joining Twitter. Although I’ll admit to having the Instagram app in my pocket. 

Have I missed out? Possibly. My biggest question is whether, had I leapt onto TikTok in the early days, might I have made something more of my children’s books? But somehow, I doubt it. I have a secretive nature (the clue's in the name) and I am now rather thankful that if I’m rising anywhere, it’s into obscurity.

The topic of mobile phones, social media and the potential damage they’re doing to people’s mental well-being, particularly the young, is hard to avoid these days. The sense of nostalgia for a world they never knew is strong amongst young people, as expressed in this article by Freya India. (Although I remember being obsessed with the 1950s and before in my teens, so maybe it’s part of growing up.)

There’s an interesting study out this week from More in Common  . The topline conclusion is that the Brits are more hung-up on their smartphones and more in favour of restrictions than people in France, Germany or the US. Here are just a couple of charts:

44% of Brits go for an hour or less without looking at their phone, compared to only 25% of Germans. That’s a major difference and one I can well imagine from my UK trips. 

Lots of questions, obviously.

Is it push or pull? It’s certainly more difficult to get by in the UK without a smartphone than in Germany, even with something as simple as paying for car parking. 

What are people checking their phone for? The weather? Messages from colleagues? News? Football scores? Or how many likes they’ve clocked up in the last 10 minutes?

Regulation and implementing restrictions is a huge area, and one where all parties - with conflicting interests - have to find common ground and work together. Government, social media platforms, telecoms companies, academics and health professionals ...

One thing the More in Common report does point out, which makes a lot of sense, is that all technology is not equal. This isn’t about technophobia, and of course smartphones have many beneficial functions. 

Surely it’s not too much of a challenge to make a helpful, useful phone for young people? With the functional stuff but less of the potentially dysfunctional? 

RETROWURST: World Cup Marketing May 2006

 

I was rather hoping this would come up: the 2006 World Cup, hosted by Germany. And what a fascinating insight into collective memory and how that works. I wrote this article in early May 2006, a few weeks before the tournament kicked off. It contrasts the doomful tone of the media (rubbish, no-hoper German team, hooligans, terrorists, worrying levels of flag-waving - where are the Neo Nazis?,  how’s the chap in the furry lion suit going to survive the heatwave ...

... with the cheap and cheerful to tacky and tawdry marketing and themed products (World Cup salamis and cheeses, an 11-bottle Schnapps team, the inevitable beach towels and Fußball sushi ...

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I’m afraid I can hold out no longer: since the beginning of this year, I’ve wanted to make some sort of comment on the preparations for the World Cup from a marketing point of view but have resisted. However, a walk through the town centre at the weekend was all it took to tip the balance. In short, I could hardly believe the extremes of silliness that some retailers and manufacturers will go through to make a quick Euro.

 

Although the bulk of what I am going to describe here can be classified under tacky, frivolous and throwaway, the overall climate of opinion regarding the World Cup in Germany as portrayed in the media is far from positive or optimistic. As well as the perennial discussion about just how badly or embarrassingly the German team will play, there are worries about whether stadium safety standards have been reached, how to control the hooligans (not just English: there are also severe concerns about punch-ups between Germany and its neighbours Holland and Poland), whether German efficiency will suffer a blow in the eyes of the world with it all simply not being ready in time, the possibility of Al Qaeda attacks (with the memory of Munich 1972 still strong in many minds) and, sometimes in the same breath, how the poor chap who has to wander around in the 35kg costume of the mascot “Goleo” will cope in in-costume temperatures of up to 50°C! All in all, one doesn’t get the impression that anyone here is looking forward to it much if you just read the papers.

 

However, if you watch a TV commercial break or pop into your local supermarket, it’s quite a different story. Let’s take TV and radio first: if you watch a typical commercial break at the moment, you’ll be hard pushed to find a spot that doesn’t reference football in some way. On radio, it’s even worse. While many companies might think twice about producing a TV spot that they can only run for a couple of months, radio is quick and cheap in comparison. The other problem is that everybody – absolutely everybody – is leaping on the bandwagon. The official sponsors and those that have a logical connection to football or at least sport are all fair enough, but unfortunately everyone wants to play the game with connections that get spurioser and spurioser, to misquote Lewis Carroll.

 

The TV and radio breaks are bad enough but at least you can turn off or zap through them. What you can’t avoid doing for the next few weeks – unless you’re into Home Shopping, which, incidentally, hasn’t really caught on here – is do your shopping. I thought that you might be amused by just some of the products that are “available for a limited time only” from the local stores here. As well the stuff we all expect, like heavily discounted TV sets, football shirts (Germany, Brazil, Italy & Argentina – very rarely Holland or England!) and caps, goals and balls and flags, there are rather a lot of nasty novelties where one wonders what the people had been on in the innovation sessions where these were conceived:

 

The local bakers all seem to have got hold of baking tins that give rolls the appearance of a football and fast-food outlets such as Nordsee are using these as buns for some of their products.

 

As this is Germany, you can’t move for masses of specially produced beach towels with FIFA logos, maps of Germany, German flags and Goleo himself (so you can experience those 50°C temperatures yourself, I suppose.)

 

Salami in the shape of the World Cup itself or a football boot. Well, I suppose it could have been cheese, talking of which: slices of cheese with a footballer design in darker/orange cheese - I am the only one who finds a connection between football and cheese rather unsavoury, it seems!

 

A pack of 12 hard-boiled eggs coloured black (4), red (4) and yellow (4). This is called “Fanblock” which I suppose is what happens to your insides if you eat them all at once.

 

Lebkuchen made and coloured in football shapes and designs.

 

A “team” of 11 mini-Schnapps bottles in different fruit flavours, complete with a free whistle, presumably to call help when you can’t walk or speak properly any more after these.

 

A cake mix to bake a special “Fußballtorte” or Football cake.

 

But perhaps the overall prize for the nastiest idea should go to the deep-frozen 8 Fussball-Sushi, including a pair of chopsticks. These really are Sushi in the form of footballs and look so unappetizing that I think you’d need to drink the entire Schnapps team before even considering eating them!

 

I can’t really see anything improving in the next few weeks as the shops pile up more and more of this junk and compete with each other for the tackiest products and displays. In the meantime, I am going to keep a close eye out to see if anyone is actually buying any of this stuff but I have a nasty feeling that, once the final and the tournament is all over and the poor chap in the Goleo outfit climbs out of his furry sauna for the last time, then all these tacky products will still be sitting on the substitutes bench, or at least the discount corner, waiting in vain for their chance to shine.

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Well, I didn’t see that coming ... Die Welt zu Gast bei Freunden turned out to be a Sommermärchen - a Summer Fairytale. Italy won the thing, but the Germans - team and people won everyone’s hearts and third place. The best-organised World Cup ever. A month long festival of sunshine, football, optimism, family fun. People still talk about it with a misty-eyed reverence normally reserved for Woodstock or similar. 

Kaiser Franz is no longer with us, but I wonder how much of the golden memory will shine on when Germany host the Euros, kicking off in June.

  

Brands-with-a- small -“c"

 

There are a couple of words in the English language that are often suffixed - in speech - with a small “c”. One of these, catholic-with-a-small-“c”, means “universal, all-embracing, broad-minded, tolerant.” The other one is conservative-with-a-small-“c”. And this means - surprise, surprise - “tending to conserve (keep from harm, decay or loss, with a view to later use), averse to sudden changes".

In 2024, both of these words have a pretty bad rap. Blame the capitalised versions, but which brand today would dare to list “catholic” or “conservative” amongst its values?

No, brands today all want to be “progressive” - as an aside, this probably sounds more palatable than “activist” for some of the more conservative stakeholders. Progressive, advancing forward, open to new ideas, innovating all over the place, righting wrongs, acting with purpose, making agile leaps ...

And that’s fine, particularly for brands in tech, mobility, high fashion - and similar categories.

But I do wonder if, in this swarm of bright and buzzy continuous reinvention, a brand that’s unashamedly conservative stands out?

After all, people do look to brands for stability, reassurance and dependability. Particularly in categories like food and drink, banking and insurance - or even babycare and petfood. This comes from a sense of continuity, hanging on to what works, maintaining a consistent distinctiveness.

It’s well-known that the “modern mainstream” are less enamoured by progressiveness than the marketing community. Movement and change is not always in a positive direction.

And isn’t being conservative, by its very nature, more in line with sustainability? Conservation rather than constant updates, upgrades, pivots, redesigns and relaunches?

But doesn’t this all sound rather undynamic and stuck-in-the-mud? Far from it - after all, a conservatory is what allows tender plants to thrive.

And there’s a wonderful quote, often attributed to Gustav Mahler, Benjamin Franklin or Thomas More, but probably from French Socialist leader Jean Jaurès :

Tradition is not the worship of ashes, but the preservation (or passing-on) of fire.

My name on it

 

For all the talking I do about personalisation, it’s only when I receive brand communication deliberately directed at me, and me only, that I realise its potential impact.

It’s six years since I was pleasantly surprised by a direct mail flyer from a local sports store - which, incidentally, I’ve kept to this day. 

My latest encounter happened today. I’ve recently been reviewing my insurance policies (always fun in Germany). Allianz have sent me a couple of little personalised videos about my revised policies.

To be honest, they are only personalised to the extent that my name appears from time to time, as in the screenshot above. And I know only too well now that there’s no magic about this with AI these days. But they’re well put together and quite entertaining (a dummy called “Johnny Crash” demonstrates the Accident Insurance - well, it made me giggle). 

I know this’ll become standard, and quite likely, I won’t notice this sort of communication in future. So why am I blogging about it?

I felt well-disposed towards these films, and there’s a simple reason for that. Context. My insurance representative spent two hours with me last week, in my sitting room, getting to know me and my insurance needs. Yes, he was selling me insurance, but that’s his job. By the time these films arrived, I’d already signed the new contracts and had the feeling that there’s someone working for Allianz who knows what’s necessary about what sort of person I am and what makes me tick. 

Contrast that with some bright agency spark “powered” by AI who decides to “serve” me brand communications out of the blue, featuring a short-sighted old bag with pasty white skin.

There’s personalisation, and there’s putting people in irrelevant boxes.

RETROWURST: Sekt April 2006

 

In this uncharacteristically bubbly article from April 2006 (why so many exclamation marks? What had I been drinking? Oh.) I gave a quick slurp-down of the German Sekt market. Its commodity-commonplace nature. Its sweetness and general perception of harmlessness (as recommended to breast-feeding mums). Its alarmingly low prices. And the dominance of the star of the former DDR, Rotkäppchen.

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Over Easter we’ve all probably over-indulged, either in chocolate or perhaps in hot-cross buns – or maybe in the subject of this month’s Extrawurst: sparkling wine. 

 

While sparkling wine still has a bit of a luxury status in the UK, Sekt, (from the Latin for dry) as it is known here, is more of a commodity. On the flimsiest of excuses for celebration, bottles of Sekt seem to appear from nowhere to anstoßen or drink a toast. While Champagne and sparkling wine seem more related to each other in the UK, the two are worlds apart here: real Champagne is drunk only on the most exclusive of occasions whereas Sekt is very much an everyday product.

 

Sekt has been produced in Germany since 1826 when a Herr Kessler brought back his knowledge of Champagne production to set up Germany’s first Sektkeller. There are various quality levels and descriptions for Sekt in Germany, for example, whether the process includes a Methode Champagnoise-type turning or not, which is all strictly controlled by the E.U these days, as you can imagine.

 

As well as quality variations, there are a wide variety of dryness and sweetness levels, most of which seem impossibly sweet to UK tastes! The range goes from mild to halbtrocken to trocken to extra trocken to brut to extrabrut. I would strongly recommend UK tasters to stick to extra trocken and above!

 

Sekt is drunk on all manner of occasions and is generally regarded as a “harmless, fun little drink” such that people who don’t normally drink will also take a glass. Sekt is even recommended to breast-feeding mothers to increase milk production. As well as the normal 0.75l bottles, small bottles of Sekt (0.2l, known as Piccolos) are also popular, seen as a reasonable size for someone to drink alone, perhaps in the evening when the other half is having a beer.

 

Although sparkling wine from other lands is available in Germany – for example, Cava, Prosecco, Crémant or Krimsekt from the Ukraine – home-produced Sekt takes the lion’s share of the market. A recent development on the German market in Hessen where I live is “Pomp” from Kelterei Höhl, which is a mix of Sekt and Apfelwein (the local speciality which tastes like a very tart cider). It does taste better than it sounds!

 

The popularity of Sekt is not unrelated to its price. Although Kaiser Wilhelm II introduced Sektsteuer or “Sekt Tax” to finance the imperial fleet (which is still continued as far as I know, even though the Kaiser, his fleet and his empire are long-since gone) a bottle or two of Sekt is hardly going to break the bank for most people. While a bottle of a premium brand such as Henkell Trocken will set you back €4.99, Aldi have a Riesling Sekt for €3.49 or a standard Sekt for €2.49, which is well under £2.00! 

 

Some interesting websites relating to Sekt include www.sekt.de , which is a site from a collection of the major producers, plus the individual sites of some of the main brands such as www.fuerst-von-metternich.de , www.deinhard.de , www.henkell-trocken.de and www.soehnlein-brillant.de .

 

However, maybe the most interesting Sekt brand of them all is the one that claims brand leadership: Rotkäppchen.Rotkäppchen means “Little Red Riding-Hood” in German and the brand itself is characterised by the red metallic top on the green bottle. Rotkäppchen is an extraordinary brand as it is one of the very few DDR brands which has not only survived the re-unification of Germany but has also won the heart of the former West German consumer.

 

Rotkäppchen is a commodity Sekt: the basic wine comes from Italy, France and Spain as well as Germany and there is no fancy turning or bottles here: the wine ferments in big vats with the addition of yeast and sugar. Having said this, the brand does have a history and heritage that long pre-dates the DDR: Rotkäppchen was first produced in 1894 in Freyburg an der Unstrut in Saxony. In the DDR days it was very much seen as a luxury, but a luxury that was affordable now and then even amid extreme socialism. In those days, Rotkäppchen was selling about 15m bottles per year- that’s about a bottle per head per year.

 

After the Wall fell, so did Rotkäppchen’s popularity to an all-time low of 1.5m bottles per year in the early 1990s. The former East Germans turned their backs on their old friend, demanding “proper” West German Sekt, while the former West Germans turned their re-unified noses up at what was seen as a cheap-and-nasty party fizz for the socialist masses.

 

Rotkäppchen’s saving grace was a management buy-out in 1993. The management team, led by the current MD, Herr Gunter Heise, really turned the brand around through clever marketing and their inherent faith in the product and brand. While the advertising and the presentation of Rotkäppchen may look a little Ferrero-Ambassador’s party to us cynical Brits, the brand has really caught onto the German middle classes’ yearning for “a little bit of Heimat glamour and luxury”. There is a sense of escapism back to an age of romance and beauty, albeit with a fairy-tale familiarity that is very appealing to a country terrified of an uncertain future. And all of this for a mere €3.99 per bottle!

 

Rotkäppchen is now Germany’s No. 1 Sekt brand, selling 66m bottles a year. 50% of the sales are accounted for by the halbtrocken variant which says a lot for where it has found its customers: the middle-of-the-road female pillars of German society (of which there are many!) with a sweet tooth and the yearning to play the mysterious lady in the red dress if only in their dreams.

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Well, despite a Prosecco surge that must have started not long after I wrote this, and rather more pink fizz around, very little has changed. The prices are still pretty good:

Henkell Trocken 2006 €4.99, 2024 €5.49

Rotkäppchen 2006 €3.99, 2024 €4.99

Aldi’s Riesling Sekt 2006 €3.49, 2024 €4.69

Aldi’s standard Sekt 2006 €2.49, 2024 €2.69 - Aldi also have a Secco Vino frizzante for €1.99 

And Rotkäppchen is still leading, having also branched into non-sparkling wine and the very popular alcohol-free sector.

Perhaps the “harmless” image was a deliberate ploy all along to pave the way for the sober-curious or whatever they’re calling themselves these days.

Hic!

A drink in the Black Forest

 

I first travelled to the Black Forest around the time of this musical masterpiece (or at least, the Herb Alpert version). My parents bought me a little plastic cuckoo-clock-style house, which you could peer into and click a button for changing colourful landscapes - dark pine forests, snow and sky, sweeping lush pastures with perfectly positioned cows.

I didn’t return for more than two decades, which is when I most likely first encountered the wonderful Pils from Rothaus brewery - Tannenzäpfle. The pine-cone beer. The beer has been around longer than I have, and originally featured an illustration of a the typical Schwarzwaldmädel beloved in the wholesome Heimat films from the 1950s. These were a kind of escape into a world that never really was, an attempt to console the German population and blot out some of the stains of Nazism from the national psyche:

The label was redesigned in 1972, with a graphic version of the young lady - nicknamed “Biergit Kraft” by brand fans. I recall that this characteristic bottle was the beer available at the primary school’s “garden” at our local Hof und Gassenfest, along with Baden wines and Schwarzwald sausages, further imprinting the idyllic imagery in my mind. It’s a brand that’s a long way from edgy, gritty, urban pubs or laddish humour. In the past, sponsorships and a bit of outdoor aside, Tannenzäpfle hasn’t been a huge advertiser. But who needs to be, with a label like that?

But that’s all changed. The first big brand campaign for Tannenzäpfle has been developed by Kreuzbergkind (you can’t get less Schwarzwald, or more Berlin than that agency’s name!)

It’s all based around the idea of “Always calm.”

It’s a nice campaign - I like the calm pace, the slowing down, the serenity.

But I wonder: is it a little bit too goody-goody? Substitute other methods of crafting, and it could be for mineral water, or outdoor clothing or something like Bionade. It’s missing the quirkiness of “Biergit Kraft” and her pine cones. 

Pass me a another slice of Schwarzwälderkirschtorte while I consider.

Just neat

 

One reason that so much advertising looks identikit these days is the obsession with representation and “people who look like me.” I’ve discussed this in relation to static images already here and here. With film, taken to its logical and literal extreme, the result is invariably one of those generic creations that resemble what we used to call a mood film. No story, just a series of vignettes showing different people all using the brand. 

But with a distinct move back to more entertaining and humorous advertising, it’s time to look behind that mirror. After all, Alice found some pretty weird, neat and entertaining stuff there. And Just Eat have done just that with a delightful series of short films. Close your eyes and listen - you can probably identify with the conversation in at least one of these films. 

Maybe the voices even “sound like you” - or someone you know. Now, open your eyes - someone who “looks like you”? Unlikely, unless you get your kicks dressing up in a furry bunny costume at weekends.

These Wes Anderson-style puppets are the latest in a run of pretty impressive advertising from Just Eat. I am unfamiliar with the brand as I don’t live in the UK, but I know a good thing when I see it as far as creative goes.

Animals and brand mascots have always been a useful trick in the ad magician’s box. 

Cute cats and dogs behaving (almost) naturally - either for “natural fit” brands (real life, like Arthur the white cat, or cartoon like "Cats like Felix like Felix”) or for brands where the association is built (the Dulux dog, the Andrex puppy).

Anthropomorphised animals of all sorts - again, either real or animated/puppets - the Cresta and Hofmeister bears, the Duracell and Caramel bunnies, the CompareTheMeercat bunch, the PG Tips chimps, Tony the Tiger from Frosties ...

Or the vaguely humanoid product mascots - Bertie Bassett, the Michelin Man, Mr. Peanut - although these may be more vulnerable to changing times, as M&Ms have demonstrated.

Given the popularity of cat, dog, wombat, capybara, llama, guinea pig and marmot films on social media it’s a wonder that casting a few furry friends instead of casting around to find someone that “looks like me” hasn’t been revived earlier.