The immigrant
As the new Creative Director at Sulzer, Sutter, Jens Telgenkämper aims to combine his German experience in integrated advertising with a Swiss sensibility for creativity and art.
As the new CD at Sulzer, Sutter, Jens Telgenkämper wants to combine his German experience in integrated advertising with a Swiss sense of creativity and style.
For Jens Telgenkämper, the "recession hysteria" in Germany had increasingly led to an overheated "stinginess is cool" mentality. "The advertising messages ebbed and flowed into flat price and promotional offers, the creative swell was modest. Art work and image ideas were underutilized and underappreciated. That's why I deliberately moved from Munich to Switzerland." The agency Sulzer, Sutter in Zurich was unknown to the Munich native. His wife stumbled across their website on the Internet, and they both found it "very likeable and not so capricious".
Together with Sulzer, Sutter, the former Head of Creation at BBDO InterOne Munich now wants to "bring together the best of both worlds and formulate new, unmistakable impulses and signals" in a classic agency. New media such as iPod, UTMS, PDA and other future developments are opening up ever better and more direct channels to the consumer.
Telgenkämper came into advertising as a career changer. He began by studying economics in Essen, specializing in marketing and psychology. Then he was tempted by a journalistic internship at the Bild newspaper, where he ended up staying longer than planned. From this "very intensive and informative time", he particularly remembers an interview with the still fresh-faced Harald Schmidt. "He first turned me down five times, then stood me up twice, gave me a migraine once and then, as a small consolation, gave me a very nice headline." But "the tough stories and ratings boosters" were also part of the job, so that Telgenkämper finally experienced tabloid journalism as more than just a dream job.
True to the unbeatable Bild motto - if you have something important to say, don't make long words - he moved overnight from the editorial desk to the creative department at BDO Munich. His most important clients at the time were Smart, Geo and National Geographic.
Two years of "hard school" later and in the middle of the dot-com wave, Jens Telgenkämper set up his own business together with his former CD and a consultant and founded the agency 3/10 thesen. "At the time, three people had ten plausible theories on how advertising should work." The agency was "a bit crazy", as they say in Munich. Nevertheless, the start-up developed "very successfully". For clients such as Siemens, Sun Microsystems, Feinschmecker and Yahoo, the wild 3/10s also carried out their first guerrilla campaigns in addition to classic communication. Even then, the initial questions were always: What is the idea? Is the idea strong? Does the idea have sex?
After two years, 3/10 thesen was already employing seven people in 1998. Then the dot-com bubble ran out of steam. The agency's lights went out. The young entrepreneur mutated back into a freelance CD and finally became Head of Creation at BBDO InterOne in 2001.
"An interesting model," says Telgenkämper. In Munich, five different individual BBDO agencies have merged to form a large agency with 350 employees. The most diverse specialists under one roof - this allowed for very short distances. "The integrated concept was implemented very directly, without bends and chicanes." As the main customer, BMW accounted for 80 percent of sales. This also included Mini and BMW Financial Services.
During this time, Telgenkämper also tried "to take a less traditional approach, even if we did do traditional advertising". For example, a large TV gala was launched for BMW and a short film award and a BMW music magazine were established. In a similarly unconventional way, the agency had the planes for the low-cost airline BA sprayed in a "rather biting" aggressive green. So is snappy advertising his style?
"Advertising should not be boring. Advertising should still - or again - be seen as a living branch of the art world. Not as an annoying weed, but rather as an exotic, entertaining cross between a crop plant and a genetically modified orchid," he explains.
To be able to deliver good ideas every day, Telgenkämper gets new impetus "preferably through creative breaks". At Sulzer, Sutter in Zurich's Seefeld district, this can be a short walk by the lake. But he also enjoys taking the S-Bahn and seeing "the people we are advertising for". Bertolt Brecht said of this inspiration "to look the people in the mouth". Anyone who sits at a computer for eleven hours and looks for other ideas in the media "unfortunately no longer notices what's going on". He calls it the instantaneous water heater principle: "In the end, something lukewarm comes out, something that has been chewed over a thousand times, something against which the taste buds immediately rebel."
Telgenkämper has also won at the New York Festival with his integrated ideas. However, he has never worked specifically for competitions. Ultimately, he hopes that his decision to move to Zurich will give him more time for customers, whom he wants to serve in a more intimate and sustainable way.
At Sulzer, Sutter, the new CD can contribute his ideas for Parisienne, Fifa or American Express, for example. He also wants to invest a lot of time in new business. The former top athlete benefits from the fact that he can still rely on his strength and ability to concentrate when things get tough.
The former 400 and 800 meter runner continues to keep fit by jogging. He also wants to become more active again in his private writing training. He is planning a book on the history of international athletics. Of course, there has to be a chapter about Zurich. This thought makes him nostalgic. "It's a shame that the Letzigrund Stadium has just been demolished, I would have loved to run on holy ground again - but without a stopwatch - the time would probably be cruel ..."
For Jens Telgenkämper, the "recession hysteria" in Germany had increasingly led to an overheated "stinginess is cool" mentality. "The advertising messages ebbed and flowed into flat price and promotional offers, the creative swell was modest. Art work and image ideas were underutilized and underappreciated. That's why I deliberately moved from Munich to Switzerland." The agency Sulzer, Sutter in Zurich was unknown to the Munich native. His wife stumbled across their website on the Internet, and they both found it "very likeable and not so capricious".
Together with Sulzer, Sutter, the former Head of Creation at BBDO InterOne Munich now wants to "bring together the best of both worlds and formulate new, unmistakable impulses and signals" in a classic agency. New media such as iPod, UTMS, PDA and other future developments are opening up ever better and more direct channels to the consumer.
Telgenkämper came into advertising as a career changer. He began by studying economics in Essen, specializing in marketing and psychology. Then he was tempted by a journalistic internship at the Bild newspaper, where he ended up staying longer than planned. From this "very intensive and informative time", he particularly remembers an interview with the still fresh-faced Harald Schmidt. "He first turned me down five times, then stood me up twice, gave me a migraine once and then, as a small consolation, gave me a very nice headline." But "the tough stories and ratings boosters" were also part of the job, so that Telgenkämper finally experienced tabloid journalism as more than just a dream job.
True to the unbeatable Bild motto - if you have something important to say, don't make long words - he moved overnight from the editorial desk to the creative department at BDO Munich. His most important clients at the time were Smart, Geo and National Geographic.
Two years of "hard school" later and in the middle of the dot-com wave, Jens Telgenkämper set up his own business together with his former CD and a consultant and founded the agency 3/10 thesen. "At the time, three people had ten plausible theories on how advertising should work." The agency was "a bit crazy", as they say in Munich. Nevertheless, the start-up developed "very successfully". For clients such as Siemens, Sun Microsystems, Feinschmecker and Yahoo, the wild 3/10s also carried out their first guerrilla campaigns in addition to classic communication. Even then, the initial questions were always: What is the idea? Is the idea strong? Does the idea have sex?
After two years, 3/10 thesen was already employing seven people in 1998. Then the dot-com bubble ran out of steam. The agency's lights went out. The young entrepreneur mutated back into a freelance CD and finally became Head of Creation at BBDO InterOne in 2001.
"An interesting model," says Telgenkämper. In Munich, five different individual BBDO agencies have merged to form a large agency with 350 employees. The most diverse specialists under one roof - this allowed for very short distances. "The integrated concept was implemented very directly, without bends and chicanes." As the main customer, BMW accounted for 80 percent of sales. This also included Mini and BMW Financial Services.
During this time, Telgenkämper also tried "to take a less traditional approach, even if we did do traditional advertising". For example, a large TV gala was launched for BMW and a short film award and a BMW music magazine were established. In a similarly unconventional way, the agency had the planes for the low-cost airline BA sprayed in a "rather biting" aggressive green. So is snappy advertising his style?
"Advertising should not be boring. Advertising should still - or again - be seen as a living branch of the art world. Not as an annoying weed, but rather as an exotic, entertaining cross between a crop plant and a genetically modified orchid," he explains.
To be able to deliver good ideas every day, Telgenkämper gets new impetus "preferably through creative breaks". At Sulzer, Sutter in Zurich's Seefeld district, this can be a short walk by the lake. But he also enjoys taking the S-Bahn and seeing "the people we are advertising for". Bertolt Brecht said of this inspiration "to look the people in the mouth". Anyone who sits at a computer for eleven hours and looks for other ideas in the media "unfortunately no longer notices what's going on". He calls it the instantaneous water heater principle: "In the end, something lukewarm comes out, something that has been chewed over a thousand times, something against which the taste buds immediately rebel."
Telgenkämper has also won at the New York Festival with his integrated ideas. However, he has never worked specifically for competitions. Ultimately, he hopes that his decision to move to Zurich will give him more time for customers, whom he wants to serve in a more intimate and sustainable way.
At Sulzer, Sutter, the new CD can contribute his ideas for Parisienne, Fifa or American Express, for example. He also wants to invest a lot of time in new business. The former top athlete benefits from the fact that he can still rely on his strength and ability to concentrate when things get tough.
The former 400 and 800 meter runner continues to keep fit by jogging. He also wants to become more active again in his private writing training. He is planning a book on the history of international athletics. Of course, there has to be a chapter about Zurich. This thought makes him nostalgic. "It's a shame that the Letzigrund Stadium has just been demolished, I would have loved to run on holy ground again - but without a stopwatch - the time would probably be cruel ..."
Andreas Panzeri
