2001 - quickly after I moved to Barcelona (with the main intention to learn Spanish) I started an internship in an independent owner-managed advertising agency - which happened to be part of a German Speaking network of advertising agencies across Europe: ComVort.
2002 - having falling in love the 'networking idea', I took over the lead and during the next 8 years completely transformed an old-school German speaking and telephone & fax contact-based agency network of 25 agencies across Europe into a global digital platform of 170+ agencies sharing 60+ multi-national accounts.
Thats's a 700+% growth and at this time the world’s largest network of specialized independent owner-managed agencies within marketing-communication.
My job consisted of talking to the owners of best independent agencies in each city and offering them a global platform to win against the big holding network agencies...
Don't forget, that was the era before whatsapp, Facetime, zoom & co... and 'networking' was done via emails, landline phones and even fax machines.
Hence, I particularly enjoyed organizing & moderating the networks’ global annual meetings where we gathered at the end 100+ people in:
- 2003 Frankfurt
"I was not allowed to attend because my boss wanted to save money!"
- 2004 Barcelona
"I finally met all my people for the first time!"
- 2005 New York
"First time out of Europe, directly into the Lion's Den"
- 2006 Dubai*
"Fascinated by what a Vision + the right Investment is capable of to create"
- 2007 Stockholm
"We invented to give the Noble Price to the network's most outstanding agency"
- 2008 Istanbul
"Meeting on a boat between 2 continents"
- 2009 Chicago
"I fell in love in & with the Windy City"
- 2010 London**
"Team building inside the world's famous Abbey Road Studios***: recording our network’s hymn"
* incredible to see that this fascinating city 17 years later became my #home
** 2010 in London I also came across an agency called 'BRANDO' and thought "Wait, that should be mine!"
