Entering Germany, I already knew that the advertising industry there was not nearly as strong as the American industry. The Germans were skeptical of anything that could be interpreted as propaganda, and there were several obstacles to advertising with certain media outlets, especially television which served as a primary form of advertising for Americans. I thought I was coming in to my research with a strong base of knowledge about the current state of the advertising industry to build upon… Oh, how wrong I was.

I didn’t understand the full extent of the lack of interest in advertising in Germany, until I actually showed up there. Driving along the Autoban, I would see outdoor advertising (billboards) that were faded and illegible, with too much writing to make out the message as you drive by. A blunder that any American marketing student (or at least a William and Mary marketing student) would have spotted and corrected in a heartbeat. Furthermore, television advertisements were nearly irrelevant, due to the bizarre spacing of 15-minute-long advertising blocks at the end of programming rather than interspersed throughout… Making it incredibly easy for Germans to simply stop watching the TV for the commercials.

And finally, the kicker. The German Museum of Advertising, a huge draw for me in visiting Frankfurt, was no longer in operation. An online search had provided me 3 different addresses in the city where I might locate this Museum. The first took me to the P.O. Box for the German Museum of Advertising… Nope. The second took me to a row of German advertising agencies, which were all located in Frankfurt. Interesting to my project, but still not the Museum… Finally, the third address took me to the Warehouse where all the Museum’s stuff was being stored now that the Museum was no longer up and running. Great. Although the lack of national interest in keeping up the Museum was certainly supportive of my conclusions about the German advertising industry, I needed to rethink my research plans.

And so I decided to take a different approach, if I couldn’t visit the German Museum of Advertising, then I would analyze various advertisements around different German cities, including those on the radio, on television and those seen outdoors. And so I hopped in my rental car and took off for a new city to begin to discover what advertising looked like outside of Frankfurt…

Concluding the grunt work of researching, and finally beginning to make connections within my work, was one of the most exciting phases of this project for me. Towards the end of the Spring semester, I had just finished up 5 weeks of continuous reading and note-taking, all for the overall goal of successfully drawing conclusions to assist me in my journey overseas. I needed to fully understand German historical and cultural impacts on the advertising industry, so that I could more effectively target my research on my trip to Frankfurt. And just when I was close to despairing that I would never finish my long hours in the library, it happened. Light bulbs started going off, and I started drawing connections between various events…

“Of course the German people are skeptical of the advertising industry, after being subject to years of propaganda during the Nazi Regime! And obviously the Nazi Party tightened regulations on advertising in the media, resulting in a weakened advertising industry!” These connections became glaringly clear as I worked through my notes on various historical readings.

And when I compared the German advertising industry to the United States, I was increasingly able to identify similarities between the two countries. The global economic crisis, the impact of technological developments such as the Internet, and the consolidation of the global advertising industry all played a role in the development and characteristics of each.

Finally, I began to develop a sense for the German advertising industry itself, and how it appealed to the German people, which was inherently different than an American advertisement targeted to the American people… The Germans preferred a more logical outlook to an advertisement, rather than a whimsical or emotional tactic. The Germans were completely comfortable with nudity and sexuality in their advertisements, compared with the more stiff American ads. Furthermore, Germans had little interest in celebrity endorsements or the “high society” as compared to the U.S. obsession with stage and screen personalities.

These revelations became a very exciting and rewarding time in my project, and helped form the basis of my research questions as I set off for Frankfurt the next month. I had already known where I would look in Frankfurt to find some answers but now, thanks to my background research, I had effectively figured out what my questions were! And it was time to pack my bags!

Starting work on my research last Spring, I felt unfocused as I tried to encompass so much into my project. I felt the scope of my research becoming wider and wider until I was barely sure where to begin. I was drowning in my own research.

So I decided to create a research plan. Sort of a course-syllabus-style document, that would organize my research logically and divide up my readings and work from week to week. I would begin with a broader view of the topic, focusing on current trends in the advertising industry of Germany and general changes to the industry in the last decade. Then I would delve deeper into legal and political influences on the advertising industry, and then cultural and social influences. Finally I would begin to investigate the history of Germany in the Twentieth Century and evaluate how historical events had shaped the nation’s opinion of advertising and that industry. After concluding my research with Germany, I would shift to the United States and analyze similar advertising trends in our country, in order to compare and contrast the two industries.

Once a plan was in place for my research, that would slowly progress and build upon previous research, delving deeper and deeper into the topic, I felt immediately comforted, knowing that I would in fact find a way to stay afloat amidst an overwhelming sea of knowledge.