Du bist Deutschland = Trouble

Jean-Remy von Matt, who runs the German ad agency Jung von Matt, has fallen foul of the bloggers. Von Matt was the man in charge of creating the Du bist Deutschland campaign by the German government which is designed to make Germans feel good about their country again. The campaign has been heavily attacked by German bloggers. “What on earth gives every computer owner the right to exude his opinion, unasked for? … and most bloggers really just exude,” he wrote in an e-mail to staff. Not surprisinly, the e-mail found its way onto the web…which made the bloggers even crosser.

There is an interesting lesson in this for ad agencies. They are used to having a platform which is very one way. They get to spend millions of pounds putting across a simple, and often deliberately misleading, message. Nobody gets to debate or question the message (certainly not traditional media, which depends on the millions spent by men such as Von Matt). Yet now anyone putting out a misleading ad is lilkely to be shot down in flames. It will certainly do more harm than good.

Advertisers will need to get used to just being part of the conversation. Or else end up looking as dated and out-of-touch as Von Matt.

This entry was posted on January 30th, 2006 and is filed under Blog Home. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or Trackback from your own site.