"Brands need to have the courage to not be perfect"

On the café table in front of the young couple is a camera on a small tripod. "Don't worry, it's not running," says Loredana, laughing, and her husband Kilian laughs too. She wears red lipstick, red coat, plaid scarf. He wears plaid shirt, black jeans, brown sneakers. Her baby - the camera - simply has to be with her at all times. Something worth filming might happen, after all. "Today, for example, we're filming a bit of everyday life," explains Loredana. The two influencers want to show their 18,500 followers, who follow them via blog, Facebook and Instagram, how their day goes when they are not traveling for once. The pair has just arrived from Heidiland, where they are teaching the marketing team how to use storytelling to create good videos for social media.

In the fall, Loredana and Kilian Bamert-Carrabs founded an agency they christened The Corporate Storyteller. But the two are best known for their travel blog Saturday.and.Sunday. It all started when the couple decided to travel the world a year and a half ago. "We both had well-paying jobs and a fancy apartment in the Zurich area," says Loredana. "It would have been easier to say, let's enjoy life as it is." But that wasn't enough for the two. "The year dragged by because nothing was happening," Kilian recalls. "We wanted to break this daily rut and not always wait for Saturday and Sunday."

Until then, they say, they had always been ambitious. The man from Muttenz and the woman from the Rhine Valley met when they were studying multimedia production together in Chur. After graduation, they worked their way up the career ladder for six years in the field of marketing and communications - he on the agency side, she on the client side. When Loredana had the advanced training as an art director and Kilian the EMBA in New Business Development in his pocket, they packed their bags. "It wasn't about us going on a self-discovery trip," Loredana says. "We wanted to build something together."

So instead of just relaxing, the couple decided to record their experiences on the road in videos and share them with the world online. Saturday.and. Sunday, because Loredana's favorite day is Saturday and Kilian's favorite day is Sunday. And because they wanted to try to live every day as if it were the weekend. A bereavement in the family contributed in no small part to this desire. "That made us realize: life can be over so quickly. When, if not now, to live life consciously," says Kilian.

Full time traveler and video blogger

To become known, Loredana and Kilian applied to 20 minutes as travel vloggers, got the nod and regularly posted content on the commuter platform. While traveling, they asked the hotels where they were staying if they would be interested in video content. In turn, by sharing the content via blog and social media, tourism boards in the regions became aware of the two. "We received more and more requests and were ultimately almost forced to start an agency because we had to bill," says Kilian.

People watching the video on the train in Switzerland don't care." Loredana adds: "People want to find the ups and downs of their own lives again, instead of seeing dreamlike, beautiful pictures of laughing people.

On the Internet today you can find numerous photos and videos of the two. Swimming in the turquoise sea. Embracing each other in the Alps. As a radiant wedding couple in Ticino. But also: as a quarreling couple in their new apartment in Buchs SG. Or on their first wedding day in a fast-food joint. "We've also had people tell us, 'We'd also like to have a perfect relationship like you,'" says Kilian. "That has made us aware that we have to be careful not to spread an idealized image, especially to younger viewers. That's why we reveal more and also show sometimes when we argue." Arguments have actually been more frequent between the two since they started working together. Loredana laughs, "You could also put it this way: Before, with our 100-percent jobs, we could easily pass each other by. But now, when I criticize: 'I don't like the video, I think what you said was stupid,' that's personal. But that's what makes us human and real. That's why people follow us - because we appear as we are." The two laugh at comments like "What are they going to do when they're 45 years old?" or "They're just publicity-seekers. They only keep taboos to themselves, they say, where they really feel vulnerable. Where they knew that a false comment would cut deep. But otherwise, they advocate showing real life. "A desert island on the other side of the world can still be so beautiful," Kilian says. "The people watching the video on the train in Switzerland don't care." Loredana adds, "People want to find the ups and downs of their own lives again, instead of seeing dreamlike pictures of laughing people."

It is precisely these insights that the two are now passing on to companies with their agency. For Hotelplan, for example, they produce a video series called #nofilter. "We show vacation destinations as they are," explains Kilian, and Loredana gives an example: "In Mexico, we had a lot of algae on the beach. We didn't cover that up, but explained in the video why there is a lot of algae on beaches at this particular time of year. And that these are cleared away in certain places." There is a solution to every problem, he said, and vacations are always nice. "If you promise customers only white sandy beaches and blue skies, they will be disappointed and lose trust." Another example: In Lapland, globetrotters saw no northern lights. "Sure, we could have used Shutterstock images. Instead, we say in the video: 'We sat in the cold for three hours without seeing a green light.' But it was still a mega awesome time.'" To catch on as a brand, he said, it's important to take the target audience seriously instead of selling them for suckers. "In a time when everyone is trying to stage themselves perfectly on social media," Kilian says, "brands have to have the courage to not be perfect. Today, the real is more eye-catching than the perfect. Perfection is not a good story anyway."

And while we're on the subject of storytelling in everyday life, the camera of the two influencers comes into play after all. Kilian grabs it and off they go: "We were just allowed to do a little interview with Ann-Kathrin from the Advertising Week ..."

During the interview with Werbewoche editor Ann-Kathrin Kübler, the camera was of course used (from minute 9:40).

Loredana and Kilian Bamert-Carrabs ... live in Buchs SG. Their blog Saturday.and. sunday, where they share travel tips and private stories from their everyday lives, has 18,500 followers. In the fall of 2017, the couple founded the agency The Corporate Storyteller. Since then, Loredana (28) and Kilian (29) have appeared on camera for companies as brand ambassadors or conducted training sessions for employees. Their clients include Hotelplan, Boa Lingua, Vögele Shoes, Ford and BonusCard.ch.

Text: Ann-Kathrin Kübler

Note: The article first appeared in the Werbewoche print edition 09/2018.