"Making campaigns a people's event"

Regula Bührer Fecker, you are celebrating the 10th anniversary of Rod Kommunikation on Friday. You founded the agency in 2007 together with David Schärer and Oliver Fennel. Why?

Regula Bührer-Fecker: The three of us worked together at Jung von Matt for a long time and always saw ourselves as a bit of a "group" within the agency, working well together across disciplines. We had pretty clear ideas about what an agency should ideally look like if you could build it from scratch. There was no such agency. Ten years ago, it was rather unusual to work cross-media and interdisciplinary. Everything ran even more "from the top down," the classic channels first, leading and determining. Everything waited reverently until the idea of the creatives was established and the others "down below" were allowed to get started. We found this dogma out of date. Our attitude is that ideas can come from any source and from any discipline. The main thing is that they solve a problem cleverly. In the meantime, Oliver Fennel, one of the founders, has left the company, but Pablo Koerfer, a partner, has joined Rod, who as managing director has really brought the agency into a new league.

What makes Rod, what is your philosophy?

We are doing well, we have no pressure that we have to grow quantitatively. But we want to grow qualitatively. We're all driven by the idea of making campaigns that make a difference in the lives of the people who see them. And that takes the more clever, thoughtful, innovative strategy today. Because how do you even get on the radar of people who stare zombie-like at their iPhones all day? By packaging communication messages in new formats and disguising a message as attractive content and feeding it in via suitable channels. To do this, you have to think in a completely new way. That doesn't trigger fear in us, but curiosity. We work best with people who think alike.

Was the start difficult?

No, it "flowed" right from the start, you can really say that. We are a team that really enjoys working together. And the customers notice that too. That's why we've been lucky from the start to get into pitches that were actually always a shoe size too big. That's why we have constantly grown with our tasks.

They started with four people. Today, Rod has around 25 employees. A good size?

Yes, definitely for Switzerland. With 25 employees, you have an impressive size, but you remain very personal. Every Rod client is guaranteed to always deal with an owner. We are big enough as an agency to be able to do anything we want. And we don't have to do anything we don't believe in. We don't sell "mobile advertising" because we have a "mobile advertising" unit to fill. That keeps us neutral and makes us unpressurizable. That's crucial for optimal solutions - that you can decide freely in every area - whether it's creation, implementation, media or partners.

What makes Rod successful?

We now have ten years of experience in how to make campaigns in Switzerland a real people's event. One that is discussed in the media, that encourages people to get involved on social media and in real life. One that can grow beyond the paid advertising space. We know exactly which elements we need to use and need for this and how to adapt them depending on the task.

Your favorite campaign(s)?

They change all the time. I find Snickers' Australian campaign sensational. Every time the internet goes crazy again with mott comments because something bad/crazy/absurd is happening in the world, Snickers become dynamically cheaper. Because the thesis is that commenting people are "hangry" and desperately need a Snickers. Absolutely brilliant, from the insight to the creative and technical execution. I wish this idea wasn't done yet.

What are your plans for the future?

We have three areas in which we want to invest even further and in which we want to become much better. First, strategy, my discipline. We already understand people very well, work like detectives - we now want to understand the target groups much better in digital behavior. We still have a few arrows in our quiver there. Secondly, amplification, our way of doing PR, far beyond the classic PR measures. We don't just want to cover the paid space, but think and act specifically beyond these spaces right from the start. This approach is very popular with clients. We have had the term amplification protected and will develop this area even further. The third area in which we want to get much, much better is creation. Our new creative director Martin Arnold is a stroke of luck for Rod. He has complete freedom to make Rod a sensational address for creation. (nod)

Current campaigns by Rod Kommunikation: