Nomads advertise sustainably
Otto Schumacher runs Switzerland's first explicit business nomad agency in Zwillikon
Otto Schumacher runs Switzerland's first explicit business nomad agency in ZwillikonBy Ernst Weber He works with creative and lateral thinkers from all over the world and transforms their creative energy into communication solutions: Otto Schumacher in Zwillikon near Zurich is convinced that this form of collaboration leads to a form of advertising that stays in people's minds for longer.
Otto Schumacher was always a deep-digging advertiser. The hallmark of his work has always been sustainability. For example, layouts that he designed as a freelancer helped Lesch+Frei's first important campaigns to achieve a breakthrough, such as the appearance for the Zurich carpet retailer Schuster. The campaigns that his agency Schumacher Glattfelder designed in the 1980s for Lancia, the watchmaker Harald Schade and the fashion house Big, for example, intimately reflected the substance of the brand identity. The Inlingua language school is still "the strict language school" that he positioned it as in a campaign over ten years ago.
Just over a year ago, Otto Schumacher moved his Zurich-based agency to the countryside. To a small village at the end of the advertising world, to Zwillikon near Zurich. Many smiled at him, but in the high, bright factory rooms of a disused weaving mill, he set up the control center of a network of creative minds and planners from England, France, Spain and Switzerland on 600 square meters.
Schumacher considered the change at a time when SwissRe, a client acquired in 1995, had moved to the international network agency Advico Young & Rubicam in 2001. The reason for the change of agency at that time: Swiss Re wanted to be represented locally in the increasingly important market areas of America and Asia. At practically the same time, the landlord of Schumacher's agency premises had announced his own requirements. But the move to the advertising province had nothing to do with an escape. Rather, the change of location was a well-considered move based on the philosophy of sustainability.
Schumacher's hike to the center of his advertising world
Otto Schumacher entered the world of advertising in 1966. Born in Lucerne in 1941, he originally wanted to become an interior designer. However, while completing his preliminary course at the Lucerne School of Arts and Crafts, he began to focus more and more on advertising.
He became more interested in advertising and eventually decided to pursue a career in graphic design.
After completing his apprenticeship, he worked for a year and a half as a graphic designer at the Zurich agency Klöti, which was a very promising "store" at the time. His next stop took him to Svenska Telegrambyrån in Stockholm. At the Swedish creative agency, which employed 300 people at the time and won the most "golden eggs" (the equivalent of the ADC dice), he worked as a junior AD for a year. Due to developments in the communications industry at the time, Otto Schumacher did not plan to go to America after his return to Switzerland.
"It was an interesting time. Agencies such as Lürzer Conrad, Eiler & Riemel and others that later became well-known came into being. You could also make a big impact in Switzerland," recalls the advertiser, who returned to Klöti after a detour to Sweden. He worked there for ten years before setting up his own business as a freelance art director in 1977.
It was at Klöti that Schumacher met the consultant Edi Glattfelder. Together with him, he founded the Schumacher Glattfelder agency in 1980, which got off to a flying start: after just six months, the advertising duo was working on the prestigious Lancia and Erickson accounts and also worked for Migros. Lancia proved to be a key client that attracted further clients. "We never made acquisitions," says Schumacher. The partnership lasted around four years, after which Edi Glattfelder, who now lives on the Greek island of Andros, took on other tasks. Among other things, he was Managing Director of DDB Needham, Küsnacht, and Ogilvy & Mather, Zurich, and worked for Lowe|GGK's Eastern Bloc network in Bucharest, Prague and Warsaw.
Time works for Schumacher's agency concept
The decentralized structure was a characteristic of the agency from an early stage, explains the owner, who characterizes the culture of his company expressis verbis on the business card: "The special agency concept includes networking with creatives and thinkers who have set up their lives in such a way that they can support selected projects in the long term; constantly and across all borders."
Rulf Neigenfind, for example, ex-CEO of GGK Germany, has been writing and designing copy for Otto Schumacher for 18 years. Gerd Hiepler, an exceptional creative in many respects, has been contributing to Schumacher's communication solutions since 1981. Hiepler, who in his younger years often traveled in a VW bus and spent the night in underground garages, now lives in Spain. Another "loyal" free spirit named by Schumacher is Thomas Bernold, an astrophysicist with Nasa experience, who has been working in communications for ten years, "but whose training and way of thinking means that he contributes completely unexpected thoughts and ideas". The collaboration with Wolf Rogowski, which began in 1994, came to a premature end with his death. The top advertiser, who had built up GGK New York and managed GGK Paris, died two years later. However, he lives on in the term "talents unlimited", which Schumacher uses in his agency name.
"This stability is rather rare in the advertising business," says the advertiser, who sees one of his agency's strengths in the fact that it is primarily made up of people "who are really very individual".
The future belongs to business nomads
The young-at-heart creative recently found confirmation for his agency concept, which has been working for 20 years, from Matthias Horx. The Hamburg-based trend and future researcher predicted that there will be eight million so-called business nomads in German-speaking countries by 2010. These are "restless wanderers" who "lead a life on the move", whose "social contacts consist of business meetings, professional networks" and "circles of friends that are maintained by e-mail".
Madeleine Hermle belongs to the sedentary species. Born in Solothurn, she has been Managing Director of this business nomad agency since the end of last year. Hermle, who most recently worked as a consulting group leader at McCann-Erickson in Zurich, is convinced that the agency concept works. She believes that "communication is enriched by mobility, it helps to make a product interesting in the long term".
Hermle expresses a plausible thought and takes Horx's argument to the level of advertising. In doing so, she opens the door to Schumacher's agency concept. According to this concept, the original purpose of communication is to transform distance into proximity and the unfamiliar into the familiar.
In future, sustainable advertising could therefore be increasingly developed from the idea of mobility. This is because it has been shown that advertising novices are always unhappy when they are thinking about something far away but cannot physically overcome the great distance to this object. Those who try to overcome this feeling generally also produce communicative energy.
On the other hand, it is quite conceivable that Otto Schumacher's very own understanding of communication is the source from which his advertising draws its effectiveness.
Otto Schumacher was always a deep-digging advertiser. The hallmark of his work has always been sustainability. For example, layouts that he designed as a freelancer helped Lesch+Frei's first important campaigns to achieve a breakthrough, such as the appearance for the Zurich carpet retailer Schuster. The campaigns that his agency Schumacher Glattfelder designed in the 1980s for Lancia, the watchmaker Harald Schade and the fashion house Big, for example, intimately reflected the substance of the brand identity. The Inlingua language school is still "the strict language school" that he positioned it as in a campaign over ten years ago.
Just over a year ago, Otto Schumacher moved his Zurich-based agency to the countryside. To a small village at the end of the advertising world, to Zwillikon near Zurich. Many smiled at him, but in the high, bright factory rooms of a disused weaving mill, he set up the control center of a network of creative minds and planners from England, France, Spain and Switzerland on 600 square meters.
Schumacher considered the change at a time when SwissRe, a client acquired in 1995, had moved to the international network agency Advico Young & Rubicam in 2001. The reason for the change of agency at that time: Swiss Re wanted to be represented locally in the increasingly important market areas of America and Asia. At practically the same time, the landlord of Schumacher's agency premises had announced his own requirements. But the move to the advertising province had nothing to do with an escape. Rather, the change of location was a well-considered move based on the philosophy of sustainability.
Schumacher's hike to the center of his advertising world
Otto Schumacher entered the world of advertising in 1966. Born in Lucerne in 1941, he originally wanted to become an interior designer. However, while completing his preliminary course at the Lucerne School of Arts and Crafts, he began to focus more and more on advertising.
He became more interested in advertising and eventually decided to pursue a career in graphic design.
After completing his apprenticeship, he worked for a year and a half as a graphic designer at the Zurich agency Klöti, which was a very promising "store" at the time. His next stop took him to Svenska Telegrambyrån in Stockholm. At the Swedish creative agency, which employed 300 people at the time and won the most "golden eggs" (the equivalent of the ADC dice), he worked as a junior AD for a year. Due to developments in the communications industry at the time, Otto Schumacher did not plan to go to America after his return to Switzerland.
"It was an interesting time. Agencies such as Lürzer Conrad, Eiler & Riemel and others that later became well-known came into being. You could also make a big impact in Switzerland," recalls the advertiser, who returned to Klöti after a detour to Sweden. He worked there for ten years before setting up his own business as a freelance art director in 1977.
It was at Klöti that Schumacher met the consultant Edi Glattfelder. Together with him, he founded the Schumacher Glattfelder agency in 1980, which got off to a flying start: after just six months, the advertising duo was working on the prestigious Lancia and Erickson accounts and also worked for Migros. Lancia proved to be a key client that attracted further clients. "We never made acquisitions," says Schumacher. The partnership lasted around four years, after which Edi Glattfelder, who now lives on the Greek island of Andros, took on other tasks. Among other things, he was Managing Director of DDB Needham, Küsnacht, and Ogilvy & Mather, Zurich, and worked for Lowe|GGK's Eastern Bloc network in Bucharest, Prague and Warsaw.
Time works for Schumacher's agency concept
The decentralized structure was a characteristic of the agency from an early stage, explains the owner, who characterizes the culture of his company expressis verbis on the business card: "The special agency concept includes networking with creatives and thinkers who have set up their lives in such a way that they can support selected projects in the long term; constantly and across all borders."
Rulf Neigenfind, for example, ex-CEO of GGK Germany, has been writing and designing copy for Otto Schumacher for 18 years. Gerd Hiepler, an exceptional creative in many respects, has been contributing to Schumacher's communication solutions since 1981. Hiepler, who in his younger years often traveled in a VW bus and spent the night in underground garages, now lives in Spain. Another "loyal" free spirit named by Schumacher is Thomas Bernold, an astrophysicist with Nasa experience, who has been working in communications for ten years, "but whose training and way of thinking means that he contributes completely unexpected thoughts and ideas". The collaboration with Wolf Rogowski, which began in 1994, came to a premature end with his death. The top advertiser, who had built up GGK New York and managed GGK Paris, died two years later. However, he lives on in the term "talents unlimited", which Schumacher uses in his agency name.
"This stability is rather rare in the advertising business," says the advertiser, who sees one of his agency's strengths in the fact that it is primarily made up of people "who are really very individual".
The future belongs to business nomads
The young-at-heart creative recently found confirmation for his agency concept, which has been working for 20 years, from Matthias Horx. The Hamburg-based trend and future researcher predicted that there will be eight million so-called business nomads in German-speaking countries by 2010. These are "restless wanderers" who "lead a life on the move", whose "social contacts consist of business meetings, professional networks" and "circles of friends that are maintained by e-mail".
Madeleine Hermle belongs to the sedentary species. Born in Solothurn, she has been Managing Director of this business nomad agency since the end of last year. Hermle, who most recently worked as a consulting group leader at McCann-Erickson in Zurich, is convinced that the agency concept works. She believes that "communication is enriched by mobility, it helps to make a product interesting in the long term".
Hermle expresses a plausible thought and takes Horx's argument to the level of advertising. In doing so, she opens the door to Schumacher's agency concept. According to this concept, the original purpose of communication is to transform distance into proximity and the unfamiliar into the familiar.
In future, sustainable advertising could therefore be increasingly developed from the idea of mobility. This is because it has been shown that advertising novices are always unhappy when they are thinking about something far away but cannot physically overcome the great distance to this object. Those who try to overcome this feeling generally also produce communicative energy.
On the other hand, it is quite conceivable that Otto Schumacher's very own understanding of communication is the source from which his advertising draws its effectiveness.
