Came across the bastard

 
Books Robert Stalder, the former GGK managing director and doyen of the Swiss copywriting scene, has written an ambiguous crime novel entitled "Der Sauhund". 
WW: It's a tempting idea to top off a successful career as a copywriter, CD, thinker and managing director with a book when you reach maturity. Why did you decide to write fiction and not non-fiction?Rober Stalder: I don't know anything about things. Just a bit about people, so fiction is a good choice. I don't know if mine is fiction, but there are revelatory novels, philosophical material, romance novels and crime novels. Why did you choose the last one - which is not meant to be judgmental here - and again: I don't know anything about philosophy or love. Just a bit about people. And they are sometimes criminal.
Such literary ideas can be tragically styled or entertaining. You have opted for a mixture. Did you learn this tendency to compromise as an advertiser? A book should be entertaining anyway. Tragedies should be too.
You used to invent poetry and do cabaret. Then you switched to advertising. What has this now almost lifelong interlude as an advertiser brought you? Relatively well-paid continuation of your earlier activities: Industrial poetry and service cabaret.
For years, you wrote a regular column in the Basler Zeitung. Was that an early historical substitute for the newfangled blogging? Yes, because columns are always letters to readers. No, because I have often tried to prove that they are not.
In your novel, you describe a perfect murderer. Have you always had a penchant for perfection?
The book is called "Der Sauhund". Why didn't you look for a nicer title? The title is by Markus Raetz, not me. I thought it was nicer than my working titles.
In the heyday of the GGK, the writing workshop below you as a CD became a school for many young copywriters and later agency heads. Should they now also learn something from Robert Stalder as a book author? Otherwise someone else will be more successful than me. Like Martin Suter.
Your strength was the headline. What headline would you use to sell your own novel? The story is probably not for the bookshelf. But hopefully something for under the lamp.
And what's next for Robert Stalder as a novelist? I'm currently planning a non-fiction book about the crime novel, which will decide between tragic and entertaining for both.
What's next with the advertising? whoever wants a campaign or advertising material from me can have it from me for a modest fee (i.e. appropriate to my abilities).
What's the easiest way for the readers of Werbewoche to get their own "Sauhund"? If they don't have it in stock, order it. Pick it up the next day.
Interview: Andreas Panzeri
 

The bastardThe title character
in Robert Stalder's crime novel leads a double life. It's exhausting, he says, but then you live twice. Heiri Wenger has made it to head of finance at a medium-sized company, is a caring family man and always lives up to convention. But he is also a serial killer. And what happens when someone turns the career planning project into darkness? Driven solely by his ambition not to get caught, the head of finance orchestrates each murder a little more subtly, makes it a little riskier, and ultimately triumphs as a six-time murderer. Stalder describes this dark career subtly and with a great deal of cynical humor.
"Der Sauhund" was published by Kontrovers Verlag. This belongs to the Basel agency Bluegummy, Marketing Communications.the author
Robert Stalder ran the advertising agency GGK in Basel for six years and was the partner of the current author Martin Suter in the agency Stalder & Suter from 1981 to 1986. This became part of the then Jean Etienne Aebi conglomerate and later Publicis. In the meantime, Stalder managed GGK Düsseldorf. Today he runs his own advertising agency in Basel with his son Markus. He has published a collection of glosses and a novel. (pan)