advertising Archives - Page 3 of 4

Everybody Talks About the Weather

Alle reden vom Wetter. Wir nicht. Everybody talks about the weather. We don’t. In 1966, the Deutsche Bundesbahn, the West German railway, advertised itself with this line. A 23-year-old secretary at the McCann agency in Frankfurt, Margot Müller, came up with it while serving coffee at a meeting. The railway presented itself as a way to travel that the weather could not stop.

Today the railway publishes its punctuality every month. A long-distance train counts as on time at a stop if it arrives no more than 5 minutes and 59 seconds late. By that measure, 62.5 percent of long-distance trains were on time in 2024, and 60.1 percent in 2025.

Campaigns for Confidence

In 2005, twenty-five media companies ran a national campaign called Du bist Deutschland, you are Germany. It aimed to spark a movement for more confidence and personal initiative. Its lines included Du bist das Wunder von Deutschland, you are the miracle of Germany. Critics called it a feel-good campaign. In the same year, the federal government and German industry launched Deutschland – Land der Ideen, Germany, land of ideas. Twenty years later, on 3 November 2025, the federal government started another national campaign, Das kann Deutschland, Germany can do this. One of its stated aims was Zuversicht für den Wandel stiften, to create confidence for change.

New Territory

On 19 June 2013, at a press conference with Barack Obama in Berlin, Chancellor Angela Merkel said: Das Internet ist für uns alle Neuland. (The internet is new territory for all of us.) #Neuland quickly became the most-discussed term on German Twitter. The next day, the car rental company Sixt ran an advertisement with Merkel’s picture: Für alle, die #Neuland entdecken wollen. (For everyone who wants to discover #Neuland.)

You Know What You Have

Until 1973, the name on a pack of Persil, Henkel’s laundry detergent, normally came with a year. In 1973, Henkel dropped the year from the pack. The new advertisements carried a new slogan instead: Persil. Da weiß man, was man hat. (Persil. You know what you have.) Henkel’s own history says that this line stayed in consumers’ memory for good.

It Runs and Runs and Runs

The Volkswagen Beetle was sold with the slogan Der VW läuft und läuft und läuft, the VW runs and runs and runs. It was written by the copywriter Werner Butter. After 1967, the outside of the car hardly changed. On 17 February 1972, the Beetle overtook the Ford Model T as the most-built car in the world. The last Beetle sedan made in Europe left the plant in Emden on 19 January 1978. Production ended for good in Mexico on 30 July 2003, after 21,529,464 cars.

Always Better

Carl Miele and Reinhard Zinkann founded Miele on 1 July 1899 in Herzebrock, Westphalia. The two founders wrote their brand promise, Immer besser, always better, on their first machines. The company still uses it. Miele says its washing machines are designed to last about 20 years.

The testing foundation

Stiftung Warentest. A foundation established by the federal government in 1964 that tests consumer products and publishes comparative results with numerical grades. It takes no advertising. A poor grade is commercially serious, and a good one appears on packaging for years.

Personal Branding

Personal branding is not new. People have always taken into consideration how they are perceived by those they are trying to persuade. It is natural that the marketing techniques used to sell products are being applied to selling a person, or a person’s skills, experience, value.

Books, seminars and companies advise individuals on how to best manage their reputation in the Internet. Google, Facebook, LinkedIn and other forums and communities exert influence on how people are perceived. Perceptions are personal and subjective. Branding means presenting the messenger in the most positive light.

See what books Amazon offers on personal branding.

Resumé

A persuasive curriculum vitae (resumé) in the American context stresses achievements, awards and areas of special competence. It is not an official document produced by a neutral party such as a government agency or an educational institution, but rather a testament to how what was learned has been applied in the real world.

Resumés in the U.S. are in a way (self-)marketing documents. Americans highlight not only their subject area expertise, but also their character strengths, such as persistence, discipline, teamwork and, of course, leadership. Every American reader of an American resumé knows that they are carefully written subjective statements aimed at a specific effect.

“A work of art”

Penguin. An American publishing house (a part of Random House, which was acquired by Bertelsmann). A flyer tucked into one of their books purchased via Amazon. Quotes by reviewers about some of those other Penguin books:

“A work of art. One of the greatest political biographies ever written.”; “How non-fiction should be written.”; “Magnificent. I finished it with a sense of exaltation.”; “One of the world’s most original and provocative thinkers.”; “A mind-altering book.”; “The most important book on the Second world War in decades.”; “When you read it, you feel like you can topple giants.”