You Are Germany! Du Bist Deutschland!

Du Bist Deutschland...Sig Heil!

The blogging world is all excited by the latest slogan for promoting Germany - "Du Bist Deutschland" ("You Are Germany"). Which unfortunately was also a Nazi propaganda slogan. The genius behind it, Jean-Remy von Matt, heads up a P.R./Marketing mob called Jung Von Matt. Here's a translation of what he said to explain himself and why the bloggers are pissed off.

My mother taught me to say thanks for a present, even if you have no use for it. I only just realized again how right she was.
Two weeks ago, "You are Germany" ("Du bist Deutschland") was launched, the biggest non-profit campaign of all times and a huge present.



The big publishers made a 35 Million Euro gift of time and space. 30 a-list celebrities gave their time and their faces. We and kempertrautmann gave our time and our hearts.



The aim: to fight grumpyness.

"You are Germany"


The thanks: grumpyness. Which, fortunately, came only from the groups you wouldn't expect anything else from:

1. Our fellow advertisers, busily piping up in trade journals. Many of them find the campaign useless, "because advertising cannot be the adequate way to economically push a nation forward". It is really sad that our trade doesn't believe in the power of communication any more.

2. Weblogs, the toilet walls of the internet. (What on earth gives every computer owner the right to exude their opinion, unasked for? And most bloggers really just exude. This new, lowest level of opinion-forming becomes evident when you search for "Du bist Deutschland" on www.technorati.com.)

3. Intellectual Journalists from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to Die Tageszeitung who do exude their opinion "asked for" in so far as they have verifiable readers, but: "The campaign reaches its cynical peak in the spot showing gay and disabled people on the holocaust memorial in Berlin" (Die Zeit).
Tough luck to have so much on your mind that you completely lose your gut feeling.

By the way: Sebastian Thurner finds the campaign simply wrong.

Wrong, what is that? Even after watching it fifty times I still feel touched, even moved - although I am not even German.


Can that be wrong?

Yours, Jean-Remy

Well mate...if you wanna go down that path, why not just resuscitate "Deutschland Uber Alles" and be done with it - "Germany Above All Others". And stamp it with a swastika if you really want to brand it.

This guy's copping heaps of flak BTW.
"You are Germany" Jean-Remy (a Belgian) you are a complete dumkopf.