"Getting people to 'fall in' should not be the goal of advertising"

1. who was the most amusing lunch partner?
Fish, the former singer of Marillion. When he started singing or bawling Scottish tunes after the who-knows-how-many carajillo at the high-end Italian restaurant Conti da Bianca in Seefeld. That was in the 90s. Back then, people still drank alcohol over lunch.

2 . Do you agree with the popular opinion that you can't grow old in agencies, or is that a prejudice?
In view of the age of the people usually interviewed in this section, this prejudice can certainly be classified as dubious.

3 . Does the classic agency model have a long-term future?
I'm going to use a platitude here, sorry. The only constant is change. Even in advertising. Ammarkt has a nice phrase about this: embrace the unknown.

4. Do you fall for advertising? When?
Without wanting to sound like a Sunday school student. Getting people to "fall for it" should not be the aim of advertising. But I always like to be gently seduced into buying a product by good advertising arguments.

Have you ever thought about leaving the advertising industry?
If you work in our industry and have never thought about it, you should seriously consider seeing a good neurologist.

6. a buzzword that gets on your nerves?
Just one? I could fill books with it.

7. can you tell us a little secret?
I own considerably more shoes than my partner.

8. What inspired you to enter the advertising/communications industry?
The cries of hunger from my two children.

9. what role do awards play in the advertising industry?
Unfortunately a wrong one.

10. why don't you conform to the usual clichés of an advertiser?
When I walked into an antique store in the small Dutch town of Alkmaar two years ago, the owner asked me after a minute or so of conversation whether I worked in advertising. I have not yet recovered from the shock.

11. what do you think about adblockers?
Every problem has a solution.

Where do you see the biggest challenge for the advertising industry at the moment?
I would like to respond with the nasal words of an advertising Indian: Only when the last 90-character Facebook ad fizzles out into digital nothingness, the last Snapchat post fades and the last pre-roll runs in an endless loop, will we realize that consumers won't buy anything if we no longer tell them what brands stand for and what a product is good for.

13. which advertising campaign from your childhood left a lasting impression on you?
Mrs. Sommer and her Jacobs Krönung always triggered something in me as a little boy that I only found out years later.

Thomas Engeli is Executive Creative Director and a member of the management team at Ammarkt. After holding positions at Alex Schmid, Fisch.Meier/Publicis, Jung von Matt and most recently almost six years as ECD at the Y & R Group Switzerland, the 45-year-old joined the 50-strong, owner-managed agency in St. Gallen at the beginning of October.

The "13 Questions" appear both online and in the print edition of Werbewoche. Realization: Thomas Häusermann.