Klaus Flettner is the man behind Continental's advertising campaign. In an interview with ContiSoccerWorld, the head of the Frankfurt agency Change Communication speaks about the best ways to draw attention to tyres, how the world-famous tyre stadium motif came into being, and about the differences between tyres and panty liners.

ContiSoccerWorld: Mr. Flettner, your agency is responsible for Continental's advertising and communication strategy. You also make adverts for banks, panty liners and Penaten creams. Are there any special techniques you use for selling tyres, or does it not really matter whether the advert's about skin cream or tyres? 

Klaus Flettner: No, it matters. Tyres are very different from the majority of consumer articles, so the function or a tyre advert is also completely different. People don't buy tyres every day. Nor do they buy them on a whim – people only buy tyres when they need them. Most people probably buy new tyres every three years at most. This means that tyre adverts don't have a stimulating function in the sense of "Buy me now! I'll never be this beautiful and cheap again!" The function of tyre adverts is much more to do with reminding. In that sense, continuity is of great importance. This was what we had in mind when we developed the motif of the stadium in the car tyre – something very memorable, what we call a "key visual".

As it happens, adverts for Penaten cream work in a similar way to those for tyres. People only actually buy Penaten products if they have a baby. This is something that doesn't happen very often, so the main function of the advert is to keep saying: "Hey, I'm here". For panty liners, banks and many other products, the advertising process is completely different. In those cases it's about continually communicating innovations and new product ranges. 

ContiSoccerWorld: Tell us, how was the advertising motif for Continental developed? How did you come up with the idea of the tyre as a stadium?

Klaus Flettner: At the time, we were given a really tricky starting point: we had to develop a campaign in which one of a number of pre-requisites was that we weren't allowed to show any cars, because one of the other sponsors of the FIFA World Cup 2006 in Germany besides Continental was a car manufacturer. Then we had to think: "what do we do?". We must have developed fifty or sixty different motifs and ideas. As we went through this process it became more and more obvious that one of our very first ideas, the stadium in the tyre, was actually the most effective.

ContiSoccerWorld: Can you tell us what one of the alternatives would have been?

Klaus Flettner: We also wondered about things like getting world-famous football stars involved in the campaign like certain sports brands do, having Michael Ballack and Thierry Henry kicking the ball about. But doing that would have blown our budget almost straight away. The motif we ended up choosing turned out to be the ideal choice. The continuity of communication messages and images is extremely important in the tyres sector. In view of that, we had to develop a strong key visual, a motif the bridged the gap between football as a communication platform and the product itself– tyres.

ContiSoccerWorld: The motif has been used since 2003. Did you ever imagine that the tyre stadium would have such a lasting effect? No-one can see that kind of thing in advance, right.

Klaus Flettner: A pitch doesn't come off that well very often in an advertiser's life, I have to admit. But of course, such a dominant motif can also become a strait-jacket. It's in the nature of companies and advertisers to often want to do something new. Advertising with key visuals always has its good and bad points. The big advantage is that the measurable effect is generally very high. The disadvantage for the advertiser is that you're not always getting new jobs. Take the Marlboro cowboy as another example. He was pretty much a set motif. You could maybe change his hat now and then, but there wasn't much else that could be done with him.

ContiSoccerWorld: Michelin has its famous restaurant guide, Pirelli has its calendar. Did Continental have to compete with that? Did you feel you had to create something with a similar lasting effect?

Klaus Flettner: No. The Pirelli calendar and the Michelin guide were developed because they fitted in with how the world was at the time. These days, no-one buys Michelin tyres just because they own the restaurant guide. However, to stay with the previous example, Michelin also has a key visual – the Michelin Man. He almost disappeared for a while, but he's now being actively used in the advertisements again. Because he immediately triggers a well-known image in people's heads, we call him the embodiment of the brand.

ContiSoccerWorld: What embodies Conti's brand then? What makes people think straight away of tyres from Hanover?

Klaus Flettner: In this case it's important to differentiate between Germany and the rest of the world. Internationally speaking, the embodiment of Conti's brand is obviously Germanness, the fact that the product is made in Germany. We know that the Continental claim "Do it with German engineering" carries a great deal of significance the world over. Germany is still the worldwide gold standard for car construction. The customer still thinks of German products as being of the highest quality available, and that also applies to tyres. In the German market, on the other hand, Continental stands for tradition – you could say the company is part of our economic DNA. The brand is extremely well-known. Continental is one of the brands in Germany which enjoys the greatest amount of trust from its customers, a premium brand.

ContiSoccerWorld: What are the basic ingredients for successful tyre advertising? Do you need to provide a spectacle, for example? As early as the eighties, Conti let a stuntman perform daring brake manoeuvres in a car on the roof of a tower block. The claim in the English speaking world was "German engineering where you need it most on the car".

Klaus Flettner: A good example of how to communicate Germanness. But the eighties were different to the present, people often just wanted spectacles. Market research shows that isn't as important today. These days, the advertiser is much more interested in seeing what they get back for every penny they invest. The spectacle alone is very helpful in the short term, but when they've seen the car driving across the rooftop three or four times, they need something new. It's a very expensive way of doing things.

ContiSoccerWorld: But tyre commercials often work based on the element of surprise, sometimes together with black humour. Goodyear ran a notable campaign for "RunOnFlat" tyres, where a series of people with flat tyres were run over by trucks or knocked off bridges. Bridgestone let a suicidal dog run in front of the car, only for his life to be saved thanks to the good braking behaviour...

Klaus Flettner: That's a discussion we have with our customers every day. Of course, they all love adverts like that which contain intelligent humour. The question is, what effect do films like that have? Do they make the customer think of that great advert when they're deciding which tyres to buy? Comparisons of Continental's recent market results to those of Bridgestone, Goodyear and Dunlop indicate that Continental are on top, even without stunt-dogs.

ContiSoccerWorld: What characterises a good tyre advert then?

Klaus Flettner: We need to be stored in the database of brands a consumer has in their head. If we simply close our eyes and think about brands, what names come to us first? Perhaps Coca-Cola, Calvin Klein or Cadbury's, maybe Nivea. Probably not a brand of tyres. Tyres aren't sexy; they don't necessarily make you more beautiful, richer or more famous. That's why the function of communication is so important: I need to get into the customer's inner circle of brands. When I ask people to name a big brand of tyres, I want Continental to be the first name out of their mouths. And that's what we've achieved in many countries with our key visual of the tyre stadium. In Spain and Italy, for example, we've achieved a truly dramatic increase in market recognition. The key visual has even worked very well in England, where adverts with black humour are very popular.

ContiSoccerWorld: Does the fact that a large part of tyre production doesn't go to the end customer play a role? The biggest buyers are the original equipment market – surely you don't need commercial slots for that kind of sale.

Klaus Flettner: That's absolutely right. The importance of communication in the tyre sector can't be over-emphasised. In that sense, I consider not only the original equipment manufacturer to be important, but also the role of the dealers. The dealership still has a great amount of responsibility in the tyre sector. For us it's not just about how you stimulate trade and commit yourself to it. It's important to note for example, that Pirelli still provides a calendar which is in demand – you can even sell a copy for a good price on E-bay if you manage to get hold of one. However, that doesn't necessarily mean that the dealers recommend more Pirelli tyres because of the popularity of the calendar. Overall, the business with the end customer isn't even the largest part of the business anymore. For example, few people know this, but Conti is number one for original equipment manufacturers in France – even higher than Michelin! Conti is number one throughout Europe.

ContiSoccerWorld: If Continental were to give you completely free reign, what kind of commercial or motif would you develop?

Klaus Flettner: That'd be great! Although to be honest, I wouldn't change a thing, because we already know the positive effects of our campaign. But if I were completely free to do what I wanted, with as much money as I wanted, I could see us doing a campaign that would make the world sit up and take notice, that would cause a huge sensation. I mean a campaign like the Renault one with the crash test advert. People still talk about the exploding piece of sushi today. That helped the Renault brand massively in a lot of countries. Or take Audi, who once had the Quattro drive off a ski jump. That commercial actually received relatively little exposure, but the effects of it were limitless. People were arguing in the pub over whether every Audi had four-wheel drive. That advert touched people. I'd love to do something like that. We've actually got a few things up our sleeves, but I can't tell you about them here.