JUNO TALKS with Europa Bendig und Stefan Baumann
Why brand leadership is above all about shaping the future, and how we can recharge the brand “Made in Germany” with a sense of future again, is what Europa and Stefan from Sturm und Drang explain to us.
Talks
Europa Bendig und Stefan Baumann
The following transcript was created automatically and editorially revised.
Today on JUNO TALK: Europa Bendig and Stefan Baumann, the two founders and managing directors of Sturm und Drang, a Hamburg agency that has been researching at the intersection of culture, behavior and future for 20 years and advises both international and national brands. Their focus: brand positioning, innovation and corporate evolution. Europa is a semiotician, behavioral researcher and trained architect; Stefan is a cultural and future psychologist. We talk about brands as narratives and cultural systems. About how shaping the future may be the most important brand discipline of all. And about the state of “Made in Germany” and how the Germany brand can be retold.
Yes, Sturm und Drang – a programmatic name. Back then, the Sturm und Drang movement emerged as a reaction to the Enlightenment. Maybe you can tell us a bit about what led to that programmatic name.
EP: It was, of course, an incredibly exciting movement. It swept across all of Europe. This idea of Sturm und Drang was really new, because the Enlightenment had first said: we are all rational beings, and what counts is the factual, and in a way the scientific. The world needed that at the time too. But as always, when you look at trends, there was a counter-movement afterwards that once again put on a pedestal the idea that human beings are emotional beings. What was important to us was to say – when we founded the company, there were so many people who were following facts and quantitative research so strongly. And it was important to us to say: what ultimately brings people to decisions is mainly emotion. And when we try to do research, we will always get some kind of answers. People will try to give us rational answers when we’re sitting with them in a focus group. But that has nothing to do with what they actually do afterwards, because in the end they still decide emotionally. We wanted to bring that into our name from the start.
SB: I think it was very important for us to already transport the image of the human being in the name itself, the one we also want to apply in our research and in our strategic consulting. And that is not the image of homo oeconomicus, who, basically, as Europa says, can be addressed and acts purely according to rational, reasonable arguments. Rather, we believe very strongly in homo narrans and homo prospectus. That means that human beings are essentially future-capable and storytelling beings. And that’s why I think it is very important to understand them as such and to interact with them that way. Whether as a brand, as a company, when you have employees, or as a brand in a consumer relationship.
That era lasted around 20 years. And now you yourselves have turned 20. First of all, congratulations on your anniversary. The Sturm-und-Drang phase was followed by Classicism. Are you yourselves also at a turning point right now?
EB: We are at a turning point, and I think a lot of the analogy makes sense. So what came after Sturm und Drang? But we are not necessarily at a turning point because those 20 years are now over, as with Sturm und Drang, but because I think we all are, because the world is at one. We are at a point now, because of AI, where people are moving in a post-factual way, where we have more AI content than human-generated content, where people, through the imagination triggered by the things they see – even though those things are not human-generated – assume things that are not actually possible. And that has extreme consequences for our work, because we have to understand: how do you guide brands, and how do you guide people, through this post-factual AI era, in which at the same time there is a huge longing – like in Romanticism – for what is now called “in real life,” meaning sensuality, real bodily connection, being together, rebuilding relationships? That longing is of course growing enormously.
SB: For this external turning point that Europa has just described, actually the transition from the industrial age into what I also like to call the algorithmic age – or, as some say, the agentic economic age – this transition naturally requires exactly this other kind of transformation competence in companies, but also in society. And I think we can all feel right now how hard it is for us, let’s say, to change the operating system as well. And that is precisely why this is our time, because we have essentially been preparing for it for 20 years in our projects and processes. We have basically been advising people and brands all along on how to position themselves well for this age. And it is no longer purely a technical AI competence – as one supposedly keeps sensing and assuming is what is needed – but quite the opposite: we now need a great deal more human qualities and again a sense of self-efficacy. So reflection is important, creative power, imagination, visionary power, but also relationship competence, almost a kind of emotional, social systems thinking. That is what is really needed now. And for that you need this romantic – one might perhaps say again, if one speaks in literary epochs – romantic and narrative intelligence.
You say: “We research at the intersection of culture, behavior and future. We position companies and brands where the future emerges.” Maybe you can explain a little: where exactly does the future emerge?
EB: Actually, we don’t look at “the” future at all. It doesn’t exist. What we look at is changed behavior, the shifts in change. That means: within those things that are changing, new ideas arise about what the future can be. So a new vision of the future emerges about who we can be. Or the family breakfast became the mobile breakfast, and then turns into an intense brunch culture. What is the new breakfast behavior? And that’s where, in this space of possibility of what can become, of where we can go, the future emerges. That is the lift we as strategists also have to develop for our clients. Of course, we can always say: yes, culture is changing, behavior is changing, we’re just observing it. But our desire is of course that brands actively shape the future and shape culture. That means I have to be one step ahead of it. I have to say: what is the desirable future into which I am now steering behavior? How do I want people to drink beer and corner? What is it that I want to encourage with my brand? And that is how a new image of the future emerges too.
SB: We are cultural researchers. We understand markets as conversations, and that is why we research and develop brands as living systems of meaning and also behavior – brands more as cultural concepts. Our brand research is not market research but cultural research, and a lot of it is about developing a cultivation strategy as a long-term practice. Not a campaign, not communication testing, but about continuing to research where you stand while developing that cultivation strategy, that cultural strategy.
Can you give me an example of how you’re maybe approaching the topic of future in a brand, in the brand system, right now?
SB: I basically always look, or we basically always look, into the fields of tension. So we ask: where are there tensions right now between the now, the desirable, and tomorrow? That’s usually where the energy fields open up that describe very well – and can also be identified very well – where a society, or maybe also a market, is tending toward. And that’s why we look for newly emerging fields of tension between I and we, between tradition and progress, between being on the move and arriving at home.
I threw a quote at you from the FAZ in March that said: “The Germans have lost the future.” That sounds like a certain kind of future fatigue. Now you’re saying that you are in a position to sketch out the future – also a desirable future – and to make people want it. Can you give an example where you look at culture, hold up a mirror to people, and then sketch out this kind of desirable future that creates desire and also works?
EB: An example that is pretty well known in the north is Blume 2000. I still remember when they came to us. They said: we’re competing with gas stations, because now the flowers are standing there in buckets. We’re competing with hardware stores – the flowers, the tulips, are standing there in buckets too. And now we have to get even cheaper and even cheaper and put more flowers into simple, splash-clean, efficient spaces. That was the original lever for them, so purely sales and logistics. And today, when you go into Blume 2000 stores, they’re all about experience. For the first time, you really get the feeling that you’re strolling through a kind of market of fresh flowers. They have their own bee breeding, they have sustainability principles, and so on, and they have aligned their whole culture to a new era. And that took seven years.
SB: And what’s interesting, of course – we’ve been working with them for over twelve years now – is that there are always cycles in which a new generation develops a new kind of way of relating to flowers and plants. They increasingly become social partners, they get names, they’re greeted in the morning while they’re being watered. There is, similar to what we see with animals, a strong need to surround yourself with living things and to bring a piece of joy in life into your own life. And I’d say that these changing relationships between people and products and services are something we always try to anticipate and think along with and research along with, so that the brand promise can keep being updated from that. And maybe new assortments can be developed too that can then serve this new, changing relationship.
Is it too trivial to say that, in a way, you’re also “makers of desire for the future”? Because you do open up spaces, projection spaces, for tomorrow, and create the joy of moving toward them. How do you see yourselves?
EB: I love this question because – well, on the one hand, a short quote – Florence Gaub says: “Future is not what is ahead, it’s what’s in your head.” And for us that of course means exactly this: we have to awaken powers of imagination. The problem with the positive worlds we project here in Germany is that people are used to thinking that negative is intellectually sharp and positive is pie in the sky. That’s the challenge we have a bit. But at the same time, we know people. If you give them negative images of the future, they don’t move at all. So in order to create a pull, we have to prioritize positive images of the future and use that to activate system one. Namely the system in human beings that is emotional, the one that governs more than 90 % of decisions, and we have to use these positive images of the future to generate that magnetic pull. And at the same time – if we’re talking about companies, about brands – we have to provide a lot of rational substance too. That’s very interesting: in the German Bundestag, the word “future” has been used less and less since the seventies, and when it is used, it is increasingly linked with negative associations. That means we are conditioned to feel that when the future comes into play, it can really only be terrible.
SB: The psychological perspective on the topic of the future is also very clear: people and systems actually become ill when they have no future. So it’s not just about desire and joy for the future – it is fundamentally necessary. That’s why it is so important, and really the first discipline, that we always view brand leadership as a future discipline. So we are not showing what the brand has achieved so far, but our work consists above all in illuminating possible futures, keeping them connectable of course, but really achieving a translation into the new context and a new relevance in that new context. And we all know that, above all, in the present we are motivated by an idea of who we might become one day. There are also extremely good examples and evidence from behavioral science that if you want to steer your own behavior and give it a direction, it is much better not just to set yourself a goal, like running a marathon, but to imagine and picture what it would be like to be a marathon runner. As if it were already so. And the brain is not able to distinguish whether I am only imagining that or whether it is actually happening.
EB: Yes, and that is totally true for brands as well. Brands and companies also become sick from too little imagination of the future, and when everyone is running empty because all they ever get are quarterly targets and they don’t know what they are really working toward. Young people who ask about purpose and are laughed at for it. That is so true, because of course we are not only being called on as individuals, but also as leaders. And transferred to brands, it’s exactly as Stefan says. You really shouldn’t underestimate what the word “Futures Literacy” already changes. And that doesn’t just mean the power to imagine one possible future, but also: to what extent have companies, in the past and up to today, trained themselves to conjure up different scenarios of a future and to think very concretely about how would we deal with this kind of future? That is a very particular kind of training, also a collective kind of training in a company, that would make it much easier for all kinds of agencies to bring about decisions or changes. But it’s a capability that is not trained at all. In some companies, yes, absolutely, but in many companies it has no priority whatsoever. Even though it should, because being ready to mentally think through these different possibilities and understand where the risks and opportunities lie is clearly part of leadership.
I’d like to ask again: please briefly describe the term “Future Literacy.”
EB: More specifically, the term is actually “Futures Literacy,” because there is not “one” future, and the term itself is an established term. I think UNESCO or major organizations say that it is the future competence we are collectively lacking the most in order to think into the future with regard to a new AI, sustainability, all these different topics. And this “Futures Literacy” simply means the ability to imagine different futures and to think through different reactions to them, in order to reach a form of elasticity. For a company, or for me as a person, that means: I am mentally prepared.
A thought experiment: if you were advising Germany now, what would Germany need in order to develop this “Futures Literacy,” or a desirable future for itself?
EB: People always say: let the wild horses run, because you can still tame them later – you can’t breathe life into the dead. What I would find most important first of all, and what is extremely underdeveloped here if you want to get to “Futures Literacy,” would of course also be imagination, partnerships, and cross-functional or cross-sector thinking – as it’s often called. So that means seeking conversations between areas that, in Germany, in a strange, crusted-over way, have very little to do with each other. I’m a big advocate of bringing together – in the broadest sense – art, business, and science, scholarship, to speak together about this challenge, and also to bring AI in as a new player, in order to talk about the new challenges we have in Germany.
In this context, the study on “Made in Germany” that you did is of course also super interesting. Could you briefly describe again what kind of study that was and what you took away from it?
SB: It was an international B2C consumer study on the topic of “How is the narrative of ‘Made in Germany’ changing?” We spoke to 3,000 consumers, but before that there were expert interviews with representatives from a wide range of regions. We studied the EU, China, and the US.
Okay, exciting. And what came out of it?
SB: I think the strongest thing is that “Made in Germany” is still one of the strongest origin narratives in the world. What we really stand for, and what people of course still continue to love us for, is precision, reliability, and engineering. But at the same time – and that gets mirrored back to us – in narrative terms it is more backward-looking. “Made in Germany” basically always tells the story of good old Germany. The central insight, though, is that we are no longer competing with Made in China and Made in the US on the product level and the functional level – it is really a competition of narratives. And that is where Germany has catching up to do. Because what is actually the feeling, or what is the quality? What is the lived world that Germany sells, in a way, through “Made in Germany,” that is more than reliability and safety? Those things are also super important to us, of course, but in this new era they are no longer enough. And that is particularly important because origin – and this also came out very clearly in the study – is increasingly becoming a cultural added value in a post-global world. In other words, regional identity counts for an enormous amount. And what is especially interesting is that, in that sense, we still actually have a good reserve as the “Made in Germany” brand, if you want to call it that, as a label brand. It’s even better than the internal self-image.
Okay, so Germany is lagging behind in the competition over the best future narrative. Did you develop ideas for how the narrative of “Made in Germany” could be recharged?
SB: Yes, we developed four, let’s say, new narratives, or strengthening narratives. They are already seen in Germany and are also associated with Germany. But they are still not, as we would say, dominant – the dominant narrative is still German Engineering and German Craftsmanship. And I would say, for example, that there is a great need to sell not just innovation capability, but above all regenerative capability for Germany. And we call that future proof, because longevity, which is very strongly attributed to us, is becoming a real moral and economic superpower in this new era. Germany has really always built for eternity, if we think of VW or Miele. And combining that with the circular economy – circular, repairable, renewable – that is not just a legacy, it is a clear competitive advantage. The second thing is this cultural depth: the theme of education, philosophy, love of detail, craftsmanship, especially in times of anonymity, in the age of AI, where everything looks uniform and is produced quickly, it becomes about the design of experiences, above all human-made experiences. I think that is also a new label. In the future, it’s no longer so much about handmade, but about human-made. And that has a lot to do with culture, of course, with individuality, independence, originality. And that is something Chinese consumers, for example, still envy very strongly in Europe and in Germany. And building that up again more consciously as an added value, and speaking about our offerings as always culturally enriched, is, I think, something that would suit us very well.
Because the topic has already come up a few times, I’d like to ask again about AI. What does that mean for your own work?
EB: Can AI build cultural capital? Can AI sense where meaning is shifting in a society? Can it resolve the tension between what an organization is and what the organization can become tomorrow in a narrative? There are so many questions that remain human for us. So we have no fear at all that AI will take our work away from us. We will work more and more interpretively and translate culturally. Using it as a tool makes absolute sense. I love working with AI as a form of sparring, but I also wouldn’t want to do without human sparring.
One more question, because I’m obviously curious. You look at the fringes, at the edges – has there been anything recently that you’ve seen that really surprised you again, where you said: this is new for us too?
EB: In the overlap, where new forms are emerging between AI, algorithms, and the human-made. There are new formal languages there. The way an AI algorithm has now been transferred onto a Rimowa suitcase surface and edged into it so incredibly cool. So real craftsmanship, enhanced with this kind of AI aesthetic. Or the new technologies that make it possible to create incredibly filigree wood structures, or even paper structures, which then still produce really expansive buildings. Or building on water, like BIG in Copenhagen, for example. That fascinates me at the moment. When I have time, I leaf through books and look at the new architectures and designs. I think something wonderful is coming toward us there, something that might really make young people here want a future that is both innovative and sustainable.
SB: I also think that the new thing will above all be the integrative – the integration of the worlds between the analogue and the digital, between the industrial world and the virtual world. Integration is the special new hallmark of a – let’s call it – metamodernity, in which these concepts once again come back together in a particularly strong synthesized way across all worlds.
Okay, and if you transfer that thought to brands, what would that mean from your point of view?
SB: What I’m noticing, when it comes to brands, is that we are moving from a performance level through a lifestyle level more and more into an impact level, into a new task that brands actually have: namely to have a transformational effect, to change the customer a little bit. So not just to offer them a beautiful world in which they feel comfortable, but rather: the new task of brands consists above all in entering into a partnership with them in order to develop further, in order to learn new skills. Especially in these times, when all of us are having an incredibly hard time even knowing what tomorrow will be like, and when learning and further development are really permanent tasks – education built in as brand strategy, knowledge as experience.