The Video

Minorities in Advertising

Walking around Berlin, there weren’t too many ads that “featured” minorities. With clothing companies like H&M, pretty much all of the models were white with blonde hair, except for that one black baby. I’ll be honest; I wasn’t looking too hard for ads with minorities on them. Still, it seemed the only time there were any minorities would be on the posters about giving money to charities supporting children in Africa, as in the picture below.

However, there were often ads in Turkish, though those ads did not feature people on them. Berlin is a relatively diverse city for Germany, but pretty much all the ads just feature white people and their white body parts. Seriously. So many ads feature just the (white) body parts, think that’s weird? Well think about the Apple ads, and the ad below that’s encouraging you to shop naked in German!

So this whole hardly-any-minorities advertising is a far cry from Miami’s approach to advertising. Tons of advertisements in Miami are in Spanish, or feature both English and Spanish (and even Spanglish if you want to talk about those lawyer ads on Univision) and print ads are a total melting pot. There are often kids of all races, from Asian to Middle-Eastern, in all sorts of ads. Often times it feels like there’s more diversity in a Kids R Us catalogue than all of Berlin.

It’s funny, I was on Volkswagen’s site for it’s new car: the CC. I was browsing through its photo gallery and there’s a picture of a funky black dude driving their new, high-end sport sedan. On the German site, they don’t have a picture of anyone driving their car at all.

All in all, I feel it’s hard to judge whether Berlin’s advertising is truly diverse or not, as we never really watched TV, so we never watched the TV ads. We also didn’t look through much promotional material. In fact, pretty much the only thing we were exposed to were the ads on the subway stations and public billboards. So keep in mind, my view of minorities in advertising is limited.

Non-Traditional Media

Non-traditional advertising and media is ubiquitous in Berlin. Off of the web and onto the streets, non-traditional advertising is everywhere: up and down the stairs, on bikes, and sometimes, even on people. It’s extremely common to head out of the subway and see an ad for some cereal on the stairs as you walk up. One might think that it’s just brands that aren’t concerned about maintaining a “high-end” image, but brands like Oakley do it too. They had a single black-and-white image displayed on the flat, vertical side of the stairs (what do you call that?!).

Anyways, it was pretty cool, and from far away (and at the right angle) you could see the ad perfectly. Personally, I find this sort of advertising much more effective than a traditional poster on the station wall. Granted, the only “drawback” would be that the ad wouldn’t get noticed if there were many people going up and down the stairs, but c’mon: this ad on it’s own is far more engaging than a poster of anything else.

On the web, the ad agency AKQA, which just opened an office in Berlin this January, handled the launch of Volkswagen’s 2010 GTI. However, not a single print ad, online banner, or any other sort of media was used. Only an iPhone app was released by Volkswagen and AKQA. In the racing videogame, you could race a GTI and post your stats online and even post videos of your race, and also view your stats where you could see how you’d stack up against other players. You could also view the car and its specs in a showroom within the app. Though this move was risky, it paid off: this campaign was immensely successful and dramatically increased the sales of the car, many of which were directly attributed to the video game. The app was #1 in America, where it then gained popularity throughout the world.

Here's a great video on the whole story:

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=324848336756

Another ad agency with some non-traditional advertising was Wall AG and their ad bikes. Personally, I wasn’t too crazy about it. Personally I don’t pay too much attention to bikes, and if they were zooming past me I wouldn’t even notice the ad, much less be engaged with it. Also, if it’s a smaller, harder-to-recognize brand, I wouldn’t even bother with that kind of marketing. Maybe companies like Nike or McDonald’s would do well with that kind of marketing but not much else.

Free Topic: The Quest for an Internship

I’ve always loved travelling and really felt like I “grow up” taking trips like these. I really enjoyed my time in Berlin and, as I’ve said way too many times on this blog, I really love its culture. Naturally, I want to go back and see what I can get done, so I figured I should go around networking and seeing what I can get for an internship. But in just learning how to ask/hint around for one, I feel like I’ve learned a pretty valuable skill!

I mean, it was usually pretty easy asking the people I knew well, like Silvia or Norbert,

but asking at some of the site visits we went to was a bit more difficult as the people presenting the company to us are pretty much total strangers. But you know, for times like that, you can count on your friends on breaking the ice: even when you don’t have much of an intention of doing so. I remember at the Sound Branding firm, I was talking to the guy about the programs they used and a bit about the company, and eventually it was just me, him, and Denise left and I was about to go and Denise was stopped me completely and had the guy give me his business card and encouraged me to go and fetch an internship from the whole thing. It was awkward, but hey I appreciated it, haha.

But I feel like it takes a certain confidence to ask for an internship, especially when you’re worried about being totally under qualified for one: I don’t speak German, I’m only 19, and would have just 2 years of college experience. The only thing I really have going for me is my Spanish citizenship that basically just permits me to work/live in Germany. Still, mustering up the courage to ask, I believe, is part of that whole “growing up” thing I mentioned earlier, which I think is still a big thing for me being the youngest of everyone in the Berlin group. Still, the quality of my work was up to par with everyone else, which is something I’m very proud of.

Regardless, I’m still trying to do the hardest part about searching for an internship, which is following up. I really have to get on that and email the people that said they could pull a few strings for me internship-wise. I mean, my chances of actually landing the internship are still rather slim, but it definitely won’t stop me from trying.

Working With the IMK

The group one had in IMK these weeks basically determined what kind of week you were going to have, as well as how much free time you were going have. The second you found out who your group was, you’d talk to the people who had them last week and gauge this week’s difficulty with the last.

I was pretty lucky: the one week I did present, I had a great group. Everyone was competent and we all split up the work well. As an added plus, both teammates had great English and we had an awesome presentation. My second and third week, luckily, I did not present. I mean, the second week wasn’t quite as good as my first, and I wasn't quite as proud of my work as I had been the first week.

Though I had had one of the same teammates from the previous week, the new team member did not put as much for as us two did. Also, I didn’t have much faith in the company, The Sabah Rhino Project, which in my view was a futile attempt to resuscitate an evolutionarily inept species of which only one is in their custody. Still, we tackled the project head on and enthusiastically and came up with pretty innovative ideas to help them promote their cause. And oddly enough, even as much as I wanted to not go at first, I was kind of disappointed that my group wasn’t chosen. After putting so much work into the PowerPoint, I was a bit disappointed that I couldn’t “show it off” to everyone else, especially granted the generous scoring that was done that week compared to the first and third week.

The third week, I honestly felt like I was doing most of the work, but at least I my teammate gave me an internet anywhere USB thing which was a) a godsend, and b) the envy of pretty much everyone else at the hostel. I had pretty mixed feeling about this group. One of the teammates was pretty helpful, but we would kind of butt heads on a lot of stuff. Then the other teammate was helpful in giving me the Internet stick but didn’t much other than that. But hey I was pretty glad that I didn’t go that week, as I was able to breathe easy and just hang around the golf course for the day.

Social Marketing Campaign: Kenn Dein Limit

Is it just me, or are the social campaign in Berlin always the raciest? I know I mentioned this ad in a previous post, but as a recap, this ad depicts three teens each having drinks around a table at a party. The girl on the left basically says that she’ll end up naked tonight, the guy next to her can’t wait to put the naked pictures up on the internet, and the guy on the right it’s gonna party ‘till he’s in the ER. Compared to the ridiculously lame “Above the Influence” campaigns in America, I’d have to say that the “Kenn Dein Limit” ad is much more effective in reaching it’s target audience. I really think American ad agencies responsible for the anti-drug ads could learn from this ad.

For starters, the ad is pretty realistic: it’s not asking you to never drink, just to know your limit. That’s reasonable, and far more realistic than telling teens not to drink at all. Then, it’s also bringing up some realistic, though messed-up, consequences. I think that in acknowledging that the whole naked-picture-taking thing happens, the ad gains credibility among the target audience, which makes this an effective ad.

Compare that to this ad, which is probably the most moronic attempt I've seen to get kids off of weed:

First, the only way any “kid” can identify with these anthropomorphic insects are the early 00’s clothes they’re wearing and the fact that the insects are wearing converse. Not only do I think that pot-smoking teens will use this print ad for rolling paper, but I think it detracts from other anti-drug campaigns, and is detrimental to the “brand image” of campaigns like that of Above the Influence.

EDIT: Looking through all of the Above the Influence ads, I have to say, this one is actually the best, and actually wouldn't be made fun of.

Music in Berlin

Though one of my previous posts touches on this issue, I have to say that music in Berlin definitely merits it’s own topic. Berlin is considered by many to be the global capital of Minimalist music. Being a fan of it myself, I had never previously encountered any fans of the genre, but a few of the students at IMK were big fans of it, and pretty much everyone had at least heard of it. When I went to see Steve Aoki at club Weekend, I was pretty excited to see that the DJ that played before and after Aoki was Minimalist. It was a pretty soulful experience to see everyone grooving to the beats that were being played by the DJ.

Another interesting only-in-Berlin moment was when I went out to a movie-theater-turned-club and saw these two bizarrely dressed DJ’s spinning extremely old tracks. Among which were “We Like To Party” by the Vengaboys, “All Around the World” by ATC, and, of course, The Backstreet Boys. The only thing odder than their playlist was their outfit. They wore fit pink hoodies with wife beaters that had kittens bedazzled onto them. Throughout the night they distributed sparklers to the crowd, jumped up and down, and just had a really good time. I mean, this would never take place in America: between the liability issue that is the sparklers, the kids that are “too cool” to dance to crappy 90’s techno, and the fact that the whole thing is taking place at a functional cinema, this wouldn’t be possible.

(Yeah, it can get ugly)

My favorite encounter with Berlin’s underground music scene was going to Trésor, an abandoned generator turned club where every inch of concrete wall was covered in graffiti. It felt like it was my first time experiencing something genuine, even though we had class the next morning. See, this party starts at 2:00AM, but it doesn’t end until 9:00PM the next day. Did I mention it started Wednesday night?

The room within the club itself was awesome. The room was lit mainly by the projector, which was displaying some sort of rotating Vitruvian Man-like figure, as well as some other nonsensical English phrases. There was also a window that let you see into the rest of the building: a few concrete pillars ominously stretching into the void that was the poorly-lit roof. The DJ was playing house, which does have an audience in the United States, but nothing compared Berlin or Trésor.

Overall, I feel that Berlin is fertile soil for electronic music. I really think that electronic music is a part of Berlin’s culture, even though it’s not part of the mainstream. Berlin’s prevalent subcultures make up it’s culture, which I believe has given the city its character. I mean, just take a look at all the graffiti!