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Germany's Art Directors' Club (ADC) gets together once a year to celebrate its successes and - it must be said, in regard of the country's performance in international advertising festivals - analyse its failures.

The next ceremony is not until next March but, between now and then, the ADC is holding an exibition to celebrate its 40-year existence under the title "Ideen" ("Ideas").

Newspaper Die Welt am Sonntag has been talking to some of the industry's leading lights about the current state of affairs in German advertising and casting a look back over its history.

Logo of Germany's Art Directors Club

 
The awards handed out each year are of immense value for the market value of the winners, says Die Welt. And for their ego. This should be further boosted by the exhibition currently open to the public at the Berlin Kunstgewerbemuseum. It comes, the paper says, at the right time. After a period when German agencies generally featured among the poorest performers at international festivals, at this year's Cannes meeting, Germany ranked third overall and top in the print category.

"We also won gold in the table tennis competition", says Sebastian Turner of Scholz & Friends. Turner is relatively happy with that performance, but still considers that German agencies have some catching up to do in the area of television advertising. Private TV channels, he believes, are a relatively recent phenomonon in Germany. In addition, says Die Welt, it could have something to do with the genetically-determined inability of German film makers to tell a story briefly, concisely and in a way that can be understood. Spots filmed by Detlef Buck, it says, are a notable exception.

This year's performance was a surprise against an economic backdrop in which one might have expected to find despondency. Says Carsten Heintzsch, creative head of BBDO in Berlin: "People who won their first medal 20 years ago are now in charge of agencies. They know the value of being seen and demand the unexpected". Heinz himself started out at Springer & Jacoby in Hamburg, an agency which has been an agent for change in the industry since the 1980s with its strict discipline (completely clear desk at the end of the day), innovative employee motivation methods (company homes in Majorca and Sylt) and shameful starting salaries.

Despite of probably because of this - and the outstanding creative work that resulted - 'graduates' of Springer & Jacoby were always sure to find a job. Or, like Holger Jung and Jean-Remy von Matt, start their own agency. Jung von Matt, one such agency, has long surpassed Springer & Jacoby in Germany's creative rankings, Die Welt says.

However, this retrospective at the last 40 years of German advertising is more than just an exercise in self reflection. It is also a mirror of popular culture over the period. Societal attitudes are portrayed through the ads, as are ideal representations of beauty and the spirit of the times.

Take the current campaign for Dove, for example, which uses 'natural' women and body forms as its main characters instead of models and, in doing so, acts to break a kind of 'taboo'. Or Boris Becker who, at a time when everybody was talking about the internet but did not necessarily have access yet at home, appeared at exactly the right moment and became the nation's symbolic 'surfer'. "Bin ich schon drin?" ("Am I in?"), Becker's question posed in each ad for AOL, perfectly embodied the slightly fearful curiosity of the inexperienced internet user. Boris, DIe Welt says, was digital 'everyman'.

Or the slogan "Geiz ist geil" ("Stingy is smart", click here to see another article on this campaign here on this site), with which the electronics chain Saturn seeks to emphasise its discounting power. That slogan is perfectly suited to a country that following the collapse of stock market euphoria is characterised by a single hand movement - that of closing ones wallet. Consumers who had got their fingers burnt during their first tentative steps into stock ownership now wanted to punish companies by hunting for special offers or desisting from buying altogether.

To read the rest of this article for yourself, in German, on the pages of Die Welt am Sonntag, click here. To ask for a full translation of this or any similar material, either contact a good translation agency or get in touch with From Europe With Love. To visit the ADC website for further details of this exhibition, click here.