GGK
The GGK is a Swiss advertising agency , which in 1959 by Karl Gerstner and Markus Kutter as Werbeatelier Gerstner + Kutter in Basel was founded. After Paul Gredinger became the third partner in 1962, the agency was renamed Gerstner, Gredinger + Kutter (GGK). Growth and internationalization in the 1970s followed massive customer losses in the 1980s, which led to the network being merged with the Trimedia Group in 1990; later parts were sold to the TBWA network. Today only the offices of GGK Zurich and Lowe / GGK Vienna exist as independent companies without mutual interests.
history
The graphic artist Karl Gerstner and the then advertising manager of Ciba-Geigy AG, Markus Kutter, knew each other from their work in the advertising department of the Basel pharmaceutical company. With the order to create an anniversary brochure for the 200th anniversary of Geigy AG, the two started their own business in Basel as Gerstner + Kutter. In 1962 Paul Gredinger joined the company as a third partner. As one of the first agencies in Europe, GGK, as it was called from then on, marked advertisements and posters with this abbreviation. The agency now pursued a strategic growth course and opened its first German office in Cologne for customer Ford in 1968, but after the loss of this budget it moved to Düsseldorf and developed into the largest branch of the group. From the early 1970s, spin-offs followed in Italy, France, Austria, the Netherlands, Great Britain, Brazil and the USA (Lois / GGK New York). In 1988 the GGK network comprised 20 branches and thus belonged to one of the largest owner-managed advertising agency groups in the world. Under the leadership of GGK Vienna, after the opening of the former Eastern Bloc countries, branches were established in Warsaw, Prague, Budapest and Moscow, which were later integrated into the Lowe network. Losses of the largest agency customers Volkswagen and IBM led to an economic crisis in the early 1990s and the shrinking or partial sale of the agency group and the departure of the last founder remaining in the holding, Paul Gredinger. With the merger to form Trimedia Holding, the name GGK disappeared as an international network. Only the offices in Vienna and Zurich continued under the old agency name after the managing directors at the time bought themselves out of the holding company.
The founders
Karl Gerstner (born July 2, 1930 in Basel; † January 1, 2017 in Basel) studied at the Basel School of Applied Arts and worked in Fritz Bühler's advertising studio from 1950 . The local studio manager Max Schmid later became Geigy's chief graphic designer and brought Gerstner into the company. In 1959, Gerstner founded the advertising agency Gerstner + Kutter in Basel with Markus Kutter, the then advertising manager of Ciba-Geigy AG, from which the agency group GGK emerged. In 1970 Gerstner left GGK and took on assignments as a freelance consultant, e.g. B. for the design of the business magazine “Capital” and in 1980 for the magazine “impulse”. In addition to his graphic work, Gerstner dealt with non-representational painting and developed design programs based on the square. In 1964 and 1968 Gerstner took part in Documenta III and Documenta IV .
Markus Kutter (born October 9, 1925 in Beggingen; † July 26, 2005 in Basel), who has a doctorate in history, began working in the public relations department at Ciba-Geigy AG in 1953, where he met Karl Gerstner. Kutter wrote essays, novels and articles for newspapers. In the GGK agency, he shaped the unorthodox, intellectual style of writing and designing. In addition to his work at GGK, Kutter - together with Friedrich Dürrenmatt - became co-owner and publisher of Zürcher Woche in 1969 . In 1975 he left the company and devoted himself to politics and contemporary history.
Paul Gredinger (born July 27, 1927 in Chur; † October 6, 2013 in Thalwil) studied architecture and, after graduating in 1954, became involved in electronic music ( studio for electronic music of Westdeutscher Rundfunk (Cologne) / K.-H. Stockhausen and Herbert Eimert). At the end of the 1950s, he met Karl Gerstner and Markus Kutter. In 1962 he became their partner. From then on the agency operated as Gerstner, Gredinger + Kutter (GGK). After Gerstner and Kutters left, Gredinger took over their shares in 1975 and expanded the agency into an international network with up to 20 branches. In 1990 he sold his shares to the Swiss Trimedia Group.
Early years between graphics and advertising
The Swiss typography developed in the 1920s ( Müller-Brockmann , RP Lohse ) with strict design grids and reduced typography also set the style for Swiss advertising in the 1950s. The graphic artist Karl Gerstner developed the typography further into an integral image-text continuum. Through the collaboration with the historian and author Markus Kutter, a new advertising language was developed that relied on the interaction of independent, unusual language and graphics or image statements. In the early years, the Gerstner + Kutter office mainly developed brochures and posters.
Promotion to creative lead agency
With the entry of Paul Gredinger, the agency pursued a more strategic advertising direction. For customers such as VW, Ford, Oetker, IBM and Swissair, not only brochures but also advertising campaigns for the German-speaking area were developed in the leading media of the time (Der Spiegel, FAZ, Stern, NZZ). The unusual style of many advertisements (Audi advertisement with Latin text, advertisements without text or without image) established GGK's reputation as the most creative agency in the German-speaking area at an early stage. After German companies such as Lufthansa, Oetker and Volkswagen were initially looked after from Basel, the agency strengthened its presence on the German market with the establishment of the Düsseldorf branch in 1968 and gained numerous new customers who were willing to accept the agency's unconventional style to be seen as a competitive advantage. As early as 1962, the Swiss received a takeover offer from the New York agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB). The purchase did not materialize, but DDB boss Bill Bernbach succeeded in poaching Helmut Schmitz, the fourth partner who had just joined GGK, whom he knew as head of advertising at Volkswagen USA and under whose direction the DDB branch in Düsseldorf was founded in 1962 . From 1968 to 1988 the agency group GGK was one of the most frequently awarded agencies in Germany and Europe.
After Gerstner left the operative business in 1970 and Kutter in 1975, Gredinger pushed the internationalization of the agency group. American advertising guru George Lois became a partner of GGK in New York. In addition to the branch in Milan (previously Turin), which has existed since 1966, and the mergers with existing agencies in Vienna and Amsterdam, offices were opened in Rio de Janeiro, London and Paris. At times there were five offices in Germany and two in Austria. In Switzerland, a further branch was established in addition to the head office in Basel in Zurich.
End of the "old" GGK
In 1984, Der Spiegel reported about economic turbulence at GGK. At the end of the 1980s, many top creative people and former GGK managing directors set up their own agencies and took customers away. At the same time, the “GGK style” seemed to have outlived its creation. The agency group ran into economic problems and merged with the Swiss Trimedia Holding in 1990.
Today the Austrian Lowe / GGK group operates under the old name as an independent agency network and the Zurich agency GGK, which is independent of it.
meaning
The work of the early years was influenced on the one hand by the graphic design of the Swiss school, on the other hand strongly influenced by the intellectual text and advertising style of the up-and-coming New York agencies Doyle Dane Bernbach, Carl Ally and Papert Koenig Lois ( George Lois was supposed to be the US partner in the mid-1980s from GGK). In the 1970s, GGK developed its own advertising style and caused a sensation with unusual campaigns such as B. for the herbal liqueur Jägermeister (slogan: “I drink Jägermeister because ...”), where more than 5,000 testimonial advertisements were only placed once. In addition to the agencies DDB, Young & Rubicam and TEAM / BBDO, hardly any agency in Germany was as celebrated by the industry for its creative performance as GGK between 1965 and 1985. At the same time, the agency was viewed as controversial by many advertising companies because of its ostensibly attention-grabbing and often little branding campaigns.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ The designer as programmer. In: eyemagazine.com. 2002, accessed January 7, 2017 .
- ↑ AGENCIES: Enjoy it . In: Der Spiegel . No. 46 , 1965 ( online ).
- ↑ Caspers, Markus: Advertising - A crash course. Cologne 2010 (Dumont), pp. 56f., 105f.
- ^ Advertisement: The Last Judgment . In: Der Spiegel . No. 12 , 1984 ( online ).
- ↑ THE LEGENDS OF THE HONORABLE MEMBER 2003 AND THEIR RELATIONSHIP TO REALITY. - The ingenious legend spinner ( Memento from July 2, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ 25 years of the Art Directors Club for Germany. A selection of the work that the ADC has honored in 25 years. Art Directors Club Deutschland (Ed.) Art Directors Club Verlag GmbH, 1989.
- ↑ Graphis # 238, August 1985 (Volume 41) pp. 8-25.