Letter from Germany: the era of Projektgeschäft (project work)

Things used to be so much easier than they are today. That’s not just true of life generally, but also true of my experience working in advertising, which started in 1997 in Hamburg, Germany. Life wasn’t boring, but it was certainly more predictable. Most clients had a lead agency, a media agency etc. When I worked in an agency in the 1990s, 90 percent of clients paid monthly retainers and had long-term contracts.

That agency was the incumbent on a large tobacco account for 15 years and it was quite normal to fly to L.A. for a shoot with a world-renowned photographer and invest several million deutschmarks in the process. Those were the halcyon days before the dot.com bubble had even been identified as such.
Inconveniently, that bubble burst with great impact a few short years later.

Seemingly overnight nothing was like it used to be. In Germany, the mother country of precision engineering, where marketing has at best only ever played second fiddle, there was no longer an appetite for big marketing spending. The angst of making long-term commitments spread like an epidemic and the age of short-termism, and with it, the era of Projektgeschäft (project work) was born. Every agency felt the pinch, suddenly having to pitch seemingly every project against a flock of others.

And things pretty much stayed that way for more than a decade. Of course, project-based work has allowed advertisers to maximise their flexibility, trying out new suppliers and driving down costs. German process specialists rejoice in the fact that they have perfected complex processes to award project work - remember, we’re structured over here! But all this has its downside. Experience and resources have been thrown overboard in the religious attempt to adhere to process. Continuity in the brand’s communications and specialised knowledge have suffered as agencies have come and gone in rapid succession.

However negative I may sound, one phenomenon has led me to revise my attitude towards project work - the onset of digitalisation and its game-changing effect on the marcoms arena. The need to employ armies of specialists on an adhoc basis finally delivers the justification for project work. Agile processes simply wouldn’t deliver without the necessary flexibility and speed. With its highly educated, technology-savvy workforce, Germany has no shortage of digitally-minded specialists who are in demand and are well rewarded for their expertise. Many thrive on changing environments. This bodes well for the immediate future.

In Germany, project-based working seems to have finally come of age.

John Sealey is Regional Managing Partner for Roth Observatory International Germany, CEE & CIS