"Andy Was Right": Go-ahead for social content newsroom

It really shouldn't have come to light: A few weeks ago, it became public that EU Commission President-designate Ursula von der Leyen was using the services of Storymachine. The Berlin-based social agency, launched without much publicity by former Bild editor-in-chief Kai Diekmann and a few associates, pushed von der Leyen's Twitter account to more than 60,000 followers. And that was virtually only the first official act.

Games in the shade

Games in the shadow of power, supposedly more CEOs among the customers than the entire competition, and no effort whatsoever to discuss how, when, and why...this concept seems to work. And is now coming to Switzerland. Sir Mary and Shining Pictures are launching Andy Was Right, the first social content newsroom with a (only semi-ironic) guarantee of fifteen minutes of world fame per post.

On deck is a helmsman who understands social as few others in the country: Roger Hämmerli, a digital veteran at just 28 and a former engagement magician at Ringier. The industry is likely to keep a close eye on what Hämmerli and his team are up to on Pfingstweidstrasse - although, as with their Berlin counterpart, it is questionable how much will leak out.

Advertisingweek.ch was nevertheless allowed to take an exclusive look behind the scenes in advance and talk to Roger Hämmerli about the new company.

Werbewoche.ch: Roger Hämmerli, what is the goal you are pursuing with Andy Was Right? 

Roger Hämmerli: We think content differently. We have a team of journalists, social media managers and performance experts who act as a collective like a publisher: We produce content for clients based on breaking news, things that are happening on the networks right now. We don't say, "Here's a blank sheet of paper, we'll sketch out the next mega-idea that the whole world will then be talking about," but we look at existing narratives in digital and decide whether that fits our customers.

So you curate news - and enrich it, as needed? 

We tell stories, 365 times a year, as a newsroom for hire. Today, a 30 percent intern position for social media is no longer enough. But where are companies supposed to get the time and budget for it? That's why we find out how our customers want to position themselves, then define a strategy with them and can act together immediately.

A big PR agency might now say: Finding and telling stories for clients, we've been doing that for a long time. What do you think? 

We are on a completely different footing. For example, my team and I know a lot about social listening, we have different tools than other companies currently in the market. We have journalists who have a tremendous feel for news and who help brands jump on that news. I'm not saying that PR agencies are no longer needed. But the need for fast, up-to-date content as a supplement is huge. 

You hear time and again that agencies struggle with a certain, shall we say, institutional inertia when working with larger clients. If you want to be up to date, how do you deal with different instances on the client side? Do clients have to rethink that as well? 

That doesn't happen overnight. We take the customer by the hand and take each step together. The team that starts has produced more than 144000 digital content in the past years. We know what we are doing. So every client of ours should realize that the chances of good social content that is up to date on a daily basis are much greater than the risks.

But that also means: You will not appear in public, but only act in the background? 

Exactly. We won't be name-dropping. You won't hear much from us. (laughs) We do our job best when people don't notice us at all, while our clients' content gets better and better and better.

Can you tell us how the unusual name of your company came about? 

We wanted a name that wasn't too descriptive, but that already had a certain meaning. We then came across an expression by Andy Warhol: "In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." He was right about that - today, for better or worse, people can get incredible exposure on social media through digital storytelling. People tell stories and want to be heard, social media allows that to happen. Andy was right.

You can read the full interview with Roger Hämmerli in the current issue of the Advertising Week.