SOMMER+SOMMER wins German account for DocMorris pharmacies

SOMMER+SOMMER, the Stuttgart-based creative agency run by brothers Leonard and Gordon Sommer, is behind a new campaign for DocMorris pharmacies in Germany. The agency beat four competitors to win the pitch. DocMorris Kooperationen GmbH, the arm of DocMorris responsible for the company’s German retail business, was looking for an advertising agency to provide year-round communications support to DocMorris brand partners.
The first results of this new partnership will be unveiled in pharmacies across Germany starting April 2012. The campaign encompasses above and below-the-line promotions to support DocMorris’s brand partners – around 160 independent pharmacies that operate under the DocMorris brand.
DocMorris is Germany’s best known pharmacy brand. Launched as a mail-order pharmacy, it began working with independent local pharmacies across Germany in 2007. DocMorris is part of the Celesio Group.

Germany’s second-largest Sunday newspaper begins campaign with SOMMER+SOMMER

10 January 2012 – fernweh-aktuell.com, the new travel portal by Sonntag Aktuell, Germany’s second-largest Sunday newspaper, has been online since 2 January 2012. The site offers visitors a wide array of information on selecting and planning trips, plus helpful tips and advice, as well as offbeat and surprising reports penned by experts and travel professionals.

To ensure the portal is well-visited right from the start, its marketing manager Matthias Horst chose to pair up with Stuttgart-based creative agency SOMMER+SOMMER. The new project represents an intensification of the agency’s partnership with the publishing house, which is also based in Stuttgart. SOMMER+SOMMER has already completed a number of small projects for Stuttgarter Zeitung and Stuttgarter Nachrichten over the past two years.

The main aim of the fernweh-aktuell campaign was to raise awareness of the new portal, thereby increasing its number of visitors. The campaign, which has already been rolled out, takes the form of print and online advertising, as well as a presence at the CMT tourism fair from 14 – 22 January 2012.

The campaign visuals deliberately avoid images like perfect beaches and mountain panoramas, instead pairing familiar online symbols with headlines relating to travel and holidays. The five motifs will appear in the partner newspapers of Sonntag Aktuell, all Stuttgart daily newspapers, in the news magazine Der Spiegel, and as banners on appropriate websites. The campaign aims to draw the attention of newspaper readers and keen travellers to the new portal, as well as advertising customers.

Stefanie Graf and Nintendo play doubles
Campaign for Wii Fit Plus and Wii sports series joins forces with Germany's tennis legend

"We enjoy our time together as a family. All of us love being active, trying different sports and enjoy playing games", explains Stefanie Graf. "The whole family tried Wii and liked it right away.  We realized Wii is fun for all ages". A television ad set to appear in early November will show just how much fun Germany's most successful tennis player has with the Nintendo television game console. In the ad, Stefanie Graf is shown moving along with Wii Fit Plus and along with kids, enjoying ecstatic gameplay with Wii Sports and Wii Sports Resort. The ads are part of a large-scale TV, print and online campaign for three of the most popular, motion-based Nintendo game titles.
Stefanie Graf is clearly taken by the active Wii games, especially considering that they spark a passion for sports and an active lifestyle. The games are also perfect for families. "I had already heard a lot about Wii Fit Plus", she explains, adding "I was pleasantly surprised when I learned that I benefit from it, too."
Thanks to her own experience with Wii, Stefanie Graf is a particularly credible advocate not only for sports games, but also for family gameplay. "When we met for the first time, I was impressed by her lively and enthusiastic account of her experience with the Wii console," reflects Dr Bernd Fakesch, General Manager Nin-tendo Germany. "That's when I realised that she was just the right person for our campaign".
W&V presents the campaign under: www.wuv.de

Frankfurt opens the floor to the future with Xetra.Deutsche Börse marks historic move with campaign.

23 May will be a historic day for the Frankfurt stock exchange. Deutsche Börse is switching over all floor trading to the Xetra trading system, allowing Germany’s leading stock exchange to offer the best of both worlds: all the high-tech benefits of ultra-modern Xetra technology combined with the individual management and know-how of trading floor specialists. To mark the move, marketplace organiser Deutsche Börse is running a campaign through online and offline media.

On 23 May, all trading on the Frankfurt trading floor – at Germany’s most traditional and well-known exchange – is switching lock, stock and barrel to the Xetra trading system. After the switch, it will be possible to order over 40,000 securities (shares, ETFs, ETCs, ETNs, funds and bonds) directly through Xetra specialists. As before, private investors need only enter Frankfurt as the trading centre in their bank’s order form or order forms provided by their online broker.
Switching floor trading to Xetra, which already enjoys international renown as an ultra-modern trading system, will make private trading quicker, safer, more liquid and more than anything: more efficient. One thing is set stay the same in Frankfurt, however – personal aspects, in the form of one-on-one supervision for each order and the combined knowledge of all specialists in Xetra Frankfurt.

The countdown to the “Trading Floor of the Future” starts ticking on 2 May 2011.
To mark this historic move, Deutsche Börse is planning a marketing and PR campaign under the German slogan “Xetra kommt. Frankfurt bleibt.” (Xetra’s coming. Frankfurt’s staying). The campaign will last from May to October. The aim of the campaign is to dispel uncertainty and enhance the appeal of ordering through the Frankfurt stock exchange even further. To promote its campaign microsite, www.dasparkettderzukunft.de, the exchange will be running a series of press ads, radio spots, online advertising and promotions at trade fairs. It will also organise social media activities in Facebook, the German student platform StudiVZ, the business networking site Xing and the stock exchange’s own YouTube channel. The campaign draws to a close in October. It was created by advertising agency SOMMER+SOMMER, which has been working on the Deutsche Börse account for the past three years.

SOMMER+SOMMER wins Wii Fit Plus pitch to expand Nintendo portfolio. 

Frankfurt, Germany. 4 May 2011 – Following a pitch for the new Wii Fit Plus campaign, Nintendo Germany has recruited SOMMER+SOMMER to its pool of advertising agencies. With immediate effect, the agency headed up by brothers Leonard and Gordon Sommer will be responsible for strategic planning, concept development and the implementation of two new marketing campaigns for Wii. As well as activities for one of the client’s most important products, Wii Fit Plus, SOMMER+SOMMER will be responsible for the launch of the Wii Play successor, Wii Play: Motion.
The decision to bring SOMMER+SOMMER on board lays a new foundation for the long-term management of the Nintendo Germany account. SOMMER+SOMMER already has a couple Nintendo projects under its belt, having already managed the launch of two other Wii games in Germany: Donkey Kong Country Returns and Kirby’s Epic Yarn.

Kirby’s Epic Yarn: wild and woolly adventures for Wii fans everywhere

What are heroes are made of? In the case of Kirby – one of Nintendo’s cutest and most popular characters – it’s fabric. This year, Kirby celebrates his long-awaited and hotly-anticipated return to the world of video gaming. His “comeback” game, Kirby’s Epic Yarn, is set in a world made entirely of fabric. The game was released exclusively for Wii on 25 February 2011.
In the game’s madcap story, villainous sorcerer Yin-Yarn exiles Kirby to Patch Land, a world created entirely out of fabric, and also transforms Kirby’s body into yarn. Yin-Yarn then throws Patch Land into chaos by undoing the magic yarn that holds the land together. In his quest to rescue Patch Land, Kirby is lucky enough to find a helpful companion in the form of the brave Prince Fluff. Kirby can also undergo a variety of transformations, and thanks to his textile body, he has brand new attack methods. Instead of inhaling his enemies as in previous Kirby games, he now attacks them with a yarn whip. Kirby can also unravel enemies and roll them into a ball of yarn, which he can throw at anything that gets in his way.
Kirby’s Epic Yarn is the first new home console game in the Kirby series since Kirby Air Ride was released for the Nintendo GameCube in 2003. It’s also the first game in the series to be developed exclusively for Wii. Kirby’s Epic Yarn is the perfect platform game for anyone who wants to get wrapped up in a wacky, woolly wonderland full of adventures.

We certainly had a lot of fun developing the launch campaign for the German market (point of sale, TV, print and online advertising)!

CIBA VISION® launches cross-brand promotion to attract young new lens wearers.

CIBA VISION® – a leading manufacturer of contact lenses and lens care products – is stepping up its advertising activities, with the aim of strengthening its contact lenses business in the German and Austrian markets. Starting this April, the Novartis subsidiary will be launching a broad-based consumer campaign targeted directly at young people aged 16 to 25. The campaign focuses on attracting first-time lens wearers to the AIR OPTIX® and DAILIES® brands. In Germany and Austria, the campaign’s main channels will be online advertising, print advertising including leaflets, and POS (media agency: Mediaedge:cia).
All featuring the slogan “Say it with your eyes”, the six different campaign visuals show how contact lenses help young people to flirt with each other. SOMMER+SOMMER in Stuttgart developed the visuals for use throughout Europe and internationally. They were shot by Hamburg-based photographer Frank Wartenberg, who has also shot international campaigns for brands such as New Yorker, Bruno Banani and Schwarzkopf. The campaign continues the previous CIBA VISION® campaign developed by Saatchi and Saatchi in 2006.

SOMMER+SOMMER to promote cult video game Donkey Kong Country Returns.

Remember those wild and wacky chases in mine carts? If you didn’t jump off at ex-actly the right moment you’d tumble off the screen. Oh, the music, the bananas, the vines, the barrels! And then there were the frantic searches for secret passages to bonus games. And the golden letters: K-O-N-G! So many Nintendo fans still revel in the memories, now refueled by renewed, intense anticipation: the cult video game of the 90s is back!
The mythical character will be up to its monkey business again on 3 December, as Donkey Kong Country Returns. For the first time, Donkey Kong will be aping around in his own series of games on the Wii console. For those who really can’t wait to jangle through the jungle, Nintendo is accepting preorders as of 13 November: every binding order, complete with downpayment, placed with a video game vendor will be confirmed with a special preorder “thank-you” package. The game itself will then be available for pickup on the very first day of sales.
Donkey Kong was one of the very first video game characters. Created by Nintendo’s famous video game designer Shigeru Miyamoto, the game was originally released in 1981 in an arcade machine version of the same name. Later, it was adapted to the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) for TV and produced as a sequel for Game Boys.
Nintendo will be promoting the king of the jungle on TV, in cinemas, through the In-ternet and a print campaign. There will also be POS promotions. The Stuttgart-based advertising agency SOMMER+SOMMER is responsible for the launch campaign of the cult ape game.

JUST IN TIME FOR SUMMER: SOMMER+SOMMER LAUNCHES AGENCY FACEBOOK PAGE.

SOMMER+SOMMER’s Facebook page gives fans behind-the-scenes snapshots of agency life. Inside gossip, special events, and staff news and views are dished up: How do the three yellow gnomes reflect the mood of the day? Who’s been nominated the “workplace hero”? When were medals awarded, and why? Via Facebook, SOMMER+SOMMER has created an open platform to communicate with staff, clients, advertising industry professionals and prospective employees. In parallel, Leonard Sommer, Gordon Sommer and Stefan Narjes are twittering in personal and agency Twitter accounts, tweeting on breaking news in the agency and the advertising world. The strict separation between the Twitter and Facebook accounts is due to the platforms’ features and has received positive feedback from the social web.

LAUNCH CAMPAIGN FOR “21ST CENTURY THRILL” WINS COVETED INDUSTRY AWARD

At the Leipzig Book Fair, the 11th annual BuchMarkt Award, sponsored by the publications Die Welt and BuchMarkt, honored outstanding book marketing campaigns. In the high-powered “integrated campaign” category, the SOMMER+SOMMER relaunch of the “21st Century Thrill” young adult series (published by KOSMOS) was awarded the silver medal. For those not familiar with the product and campaign, “21st Century Thrill,” first published by KOSMOS in early 2009, is a book series for young adults dealing with current and controversial subjects such as cloning, biological warfare and international terrorism. SOMMER+SOMMER created an appropriately provocative campaign using a blend of online, POS and PR. The fictional journalist Christopher Key has a real homepage at www.21st-centurythrill.de, where he writes articles on the issues raised in the books. Young readers can share their opinions on his blog. Playing up the campaign slogan, the book trade press received a highly unusual teaser mailing: the “secret” covers of the books – on microfilm!

This year’s winners in the “integrated campaign” category:
Gold: PONS, “Rechtschreibung 2.0” (agency: vm-People)
Silver: KOSMOS, “21st Century Thrill” (agency: SOMMER+SOMMER, Stuttgart)
Bronze: Eichborn, new corporate image for the publishing house (agency: Jung von Matt/Neckar) and tied for
Bronze: Carlsen, “Arkadien erwacht” by Kai Meyer.

We congratulate all winners, and we’re over the moon about the prize awarded to our client KOSMOS!