I ended up talking to Mirko Derpmann, Executive Creative Director at Scholz & Friends, on January 27 2025 – the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. And one year to the day since the launch of the award-winning campaign featuring Holocaust survivor Margot Friedländer.
The powerful photograph of this admirable woman – taken by Wim Wenders, no less – was the latest in a long line. Scholz & Friends launched the campaign in 1995. Inspired by an even earlier illustration, from the 1950s, it features a famous person hidden behind a newspaper. The full slogan is: “There’s always a brilliant mind behind it.”
To give a little more context, FAZ, as the paper is known, is the German equivalent of The Times in the UK. A little to the right, slightly conservative. “Frankfurt is a banking town,” Mirko observes dryly. Mirko (pictured with the original illustration) is a mere youngster on the project, having joined the agency in 2004. CCO Matthias Spaetgens has been around for 25 years. The campaign was actually started by ex-CEO Sebastian Turner, who later became involved in the newspaper industry himself.
The first ever subject was the German TV journalist Friedrich Nowottny, director general of the broadcaster WDR. As time went on the campaign became a cultural event. Mirko says: “At the beginning it wasn’t always easy to get the right people. But today when we ask someone, they say yes instantly, because they’re so happy to be asked.”
An unexpected candidate
There were several extremely prominent names on the list for the landmark 100th version of the campaign. But in a period when racism and hate were on the rise again, Margot Friedländer embodied a different attitude. After everything she went through, she still spreads a message of peace and tolerance.
“She was not quite as famous a year ago as she is now,” says Mirko. “She was present in Berlin educating young people about the Holocaust. A year ago she was awarded the Order of Merit. Her 102nd birthday somewhat put her on the map. It was actually a colleague of mine who first mentioned her name. When we read about her, we all agreed she was the one.”
The plan to photograph this fragile figure in the middle of the Holocaust memorial, dwarfed by its chilling enormity, quickly emerged. But there were nagging doubts.
“There were some fears that an advertising campaign with a memorial for murdered Jews in it might seem a bit off. So we made a mock-up which we showed to a Rabbi here in Berlin, obviously to Margot Friedländer herself, to Wim Wenders, and to a few younger Jewish people at the synagogue. And everybody said it was OK. No one was offended. Everybody liked the picture, the vastness of it.”
The campaign’s photographers have changed over the years – Helmut Newton actually photographed himself, in a mirror. Getting Wim Wenders wasn’t necessarily a given.
A different perspective
“We thought of Wim Wenders because he was born in 1945, directly after the war. And he is a brilliant landscape photographer. When I called the Wim Wenders Foundation they told me he wouldn’t do it because he doesn’t take portraits. But I explained that was the point – the person is not really visible in the picture.”
Wenders knew the campaign (he himself had been a “Brilliant Mind”, sitting on a copy of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Texas) and rapidly agreed. “I talked to him and he was fascinated by the idea of getting this new perspective on the Holocaust memorial. Because you never usually see it from this angle. You go inside, into the darkness, but you don’t see this huge monument from above.”
The campaign has some digital elements – a stirring interview with Margot Friedländer and a “making of” with Wim Wenders – but at its heart is a picture of somebody reading a newspaper. An act that is slowly dying out. How long can the campaign continue?
“We’ll carry on as long as they’re still printing the newspaper, which I’m sure they will be doing as long as people enjoy the luxury of print,” says Mirko. “If they ever stop, I guess we have about half a year when we can have fun with iPads, iPhones, whatever.”
He admits they’re not the same thing. “The campaign works because it’s a metaphor for the idea that a newspaper is a signifier: the newspaper you read says something about your position in society. On a digital device, nobody knows if you’re reading Tolstoy or 50 Shades of Grey. So we may have to find other identifiers that say: ‘I’m an FAZ person.’ It’s something to think about.”
For the time being, the concept of a newspaper is still familiar to young people, even if many of them no longer buy one. After that…my guess is that Scholz & Friends will find a solution. As they’ve already proved, a good idea stands the test of time.
We’ll carry on as long as they’re still printing the newspaper.
The very first edition of the print campaign, with TV journalist Friedrich Nowottny