GoSee CREATIVES TO WATCH : Carsten Menge, CEO of KEKO, on the PORSCHE double win, creative ideas and their impact on consumers, luxury as expertise, and inclusion à la KEKO

Full-service agency KEKO has just won the pitch for PORSCHE’s retail marketing, defending the budgets for PORSCHE Germany & Switzerland. Following this double victory, the agency will continue to support 90 Porsche Centers in Germany as well as nine in Switzerland. KEKO will continue to work for the brand in areas where customers, fans, and cooperation partners all come together. A team of around 70 KEKO creatives in total will work on the production of all communication materials, the implementation of new strategies as well as in the areas of customer segmentation, CRM and community building.

We are delighted to present Carsten Menge here on GoSee, the CEO of KEKO, and as a consultant, responsible for more than 80 Porsche Centers in Germany. He also supports the VIA Group in Berlin and the Anne Ramm Foundation. In 2011, Carsten put in a stop in Singapore to open KEKO’s office there, after which he was in charge of new business for KEKO.

Carsten Menge : Thank you. This is a tremendously important win for us. On one hand, it puts us in the position to continue our 30-year partnership. On the other, it is also simply so incredibly much fun working with one of the best brands around. After 30 years, innovation may slow down a bit because doing something new always means leaving your comfort zone. What we are especially proud of is that this doesn’t apply to us, and we manage to keep coming up with new things to surprise our clients. Moreover, we are able to react to trends and innovations in a way that enables us to give our clients effective solutions that make sense. I am convinced that this was the card our team was able to play, which ultimately got the client on board and won us the pitch.

The great part is that we are talking about 99 PORSCHE clients in total if we combine dealerships in Germany and the PORSCHE Centers we support in Switzerland. For our creation, being able to develop and realize such a variety of different independent concepts and projects is a challenge – but also the cherry on top. We have a lot in planning and that we are currently implementing. We never get bored, and if you follow our work, you certainly won’t either. What is, however, always essential to us, is pushing the right buttons for the consumer. Not bringing an idea to life just because we like it even though it wouldn’t do anyone any good in the end.

For customers, Porsche has always been a luxury product. But luxury works differently today: It’s more about expertise, about a community you ‘buy your way into’, and not simply about showing your status or ‘toys’ like it used to be. Status comes into play naturally with a 911 all by itself. But our job is to ‘deliver’ to this community and reach the people. What are the idiosyncrasies of potential customers, what stories can we experience with them, what do they care about, etc.? Knowing these things is our superpower and certainly hasn’t hurt us any.

That’s a difficult question. Since we also founded the Keko subsidiary there for Porsche as a client, there were, of course, many similarities. Singapore is a very wealthy country, and wealth plays an entirely different role. A license plate in Singapore, for instance, can cost as much as a Porsche in Germany. What did indeed help us though was the ability to analyze markets and needs while identifying various target groups. For me personally, it was realizing that there are more than one way to skin a cat, and that mine doesn’t necessarily have to be the best for everyone – which, I must admit, is still not that easy sometimes today.

It is an important matter for me not only in the agency world, but in general, too. Yes, we work with several workshops, organizations and facilities, but you can only truly show you are ‘all in’ by doing things differently at your own company. It’s so easy to talk about inclusion, but the real work begins with understanding. And not only with regard to people with disabilities; it’s about diversity in general. Whether ethnicity, sexual orientation, physical or mental disabilities, or everything together. Which is why it is such an important political statement that Anja Langer and I are making for our firm. It has in fact done us as a company quite good. I think everyone at the company benefits when we are more mindful of others. And it is how we have created a culture and team spirit that make KEKO so unique.

We now present you the ‘06911’ image campaign mentioned above, for which the Frankfurt area code 069 was combined with the iconic 911 while stories and images from 50 successful years have been transformed into a thrilling format.

Making a big splash was the ‘Art Car’ documentary – for which KEKO accompanied Swiss artist Alfredo Häberli up close when he transformed an original Porsche 356 into a work of art, with which Porsche Center Zurich befittingly celebrated its 75th anniversary. We can hardly wait to present KEKO’s next projects here on GoSee.