Christoph Bürge is the new Managing Director Consulting at Krieg, Schlupp, Springer & Jacoby. He has big plans and knows exactly what he wants for his future. That's why he has now changed agencies twice in a short space of time. "I describe this as my second year of learning and traveling," says Christoph Bürge. After uncharacteristically short stints at Matter & Partner and Jung von Matt/Limmat, the internationally experienced advertiser "settled down for longer" at Krieg, Schlupp, Springer & Jacoby (KSSJ) at the beginning of May. His father already worked in marketing and his mother in advertising. Bürge therefore knew early on: "This will also be exciting for me." After completing his business degree, he joined Grendene and Lanz as an advertising trainee. That was "a great agency and the first formative experience. I knew I was in the right industry." Guest appearances at Metzger Blatter und Partner and Ogilvy were followed by seven years at Lintas. That was the second formative experience: "I learned a lot about my craft, progressed and was able to develop further."
Bürge describes this time as his "first years of apprenticeship and travel". At the same time, he trained as an advertising assistant, marketing planner and advertising manager. In addition to management courses, he also attended the Marbach Academy, the joint management school of the German and Swiss industry associations BSW and GWA, where talents are honed to become agency managers.
During his time at Lintas, Bürge tried to get into an international exchange program. At first, they wanted to send him to Prague. As he was in the middle of training to become an advertising manager, he turned it down. The next offer was Warsaw. This was also less appealing, so he postponed his upcoming final exams for a second time. The third "and last" offer was Shanghai. "I was summoned to London and had to make a decision within 24 hours." Two months later, he found himself in China.
In 1995, that was "in a completely different Chinese world than today". Nobody spoke English on the street. You had to get by, get electricity and a telephone before you could even start working. Posters were still painted by hand on the walls of houses.
There were 15 people working at the agency, only two of whom were from the West. Bürge's job was to look after the international clients, move the agency forward and explain the basic rules of advertising to the Chinese employees, who had heard nothing about marketing in the communist era.
After two years, Lintas Shanghai already employed 70 people, only four of whom were still non-Chinese. Today, the branch is one of the top players in China with 700 people. The first customers included Audi, Electrolux and Johnson & Johnson. Over time, Bürge has also acquired local customers, such as the Shanghai evening newspaper and the local beer brand.
They would have liked to keep the Swiss player for longer. However, after two years in what was then a developing country, Bürge wanted to get a taste of the West again and asked for a year's break. As Lintas wanted to transfer him to Vietnam instead, he eventually left.
After returning from China, he worked briefly as a freelancer at Scholz & Friends in Hamburg before another important door opened at Advico Young & Rubicam. "In the heyday of this agency, that was certainly my second formative time, one great campaign after another ..." The consultant is still proud of the commercials for Ovomaltine and Migros today. The latter led to Bürge launching, developing and managing the Migros agency Exxtra with Peter Felser, Dieter Hofmann and Silvia Rohner from AY&R, until he felt the urge to move on again. "I could easily have worked at Exxtra for three years longer. Here we did advertising the way I like it." Nevertheless, he felt a growing need to do other campaigns beyond Migros. "And I wanted to end up in an agency environment at some point, where I could have a decisive say."
Throughout his career, there would have been various opportunities where Bürge could have teamed up with a similarly minded creative, "with the same idea of good advertising and also the idea of how to get there". But his gut feeling always told him he wasn't ready for his own agency.
"With Daniel Krieg and Uwe Schlupp, I have now found two creative people who think alike and are in similar situations: same generation, young family with children. What's more, all three of us come from great creative agencies and want to do something ourselves."
There is still room for more desks at Seestrasse 367 in Zurich. The KSSJ agency started just over a year ago with two people and has already grown to eight. The next goal is to become a medium-sized agency with 15 people. Bürge is also already thinking about becoming one of the top ten agencies with 30 employees. This goal is to be achieved in small steps.
Several meetings took place before Bürge and the two namesakes of the agency found each other. "We wanted to talk more than less and really see if we ticked the same way." Although it was already clear to everyone after the first meeting, they met five more times and had intensive discussions about goals, methods and skills. Bürge summarizes the concept with the three E's, which are also part of the philosophy of Springer & Jacoby's international network: "simple, imaginative and exact".
"Simple, imaginative and precise": the philosophy of Krieg, Schlupp, Springer & Jacoby fits Christoph Bürge perfectly.
Andreas Panzeri
