It’s official: I am one of these old 👴🏻 white men and I am not ashamed of it. A few weeks ago my awesome strategist Jennifer Rauner made a target group analysis for a B2C client project and defined the old white man as her target group persona for this. Her strategy description for this person matched me 1:1.

I love fast, loud cars 🚘, I read Playboy and love the art of Mel Ramos, to name just a few things. I am that creative who thinks about communication and UX concepts in a western-oriented style. I know I can’t create products for the Asian culture or for women from my bubble. I need to do it with them, together.

For me, this means that to be the best 🙌 version of ourselves, we need to be open-minded. We must accept, include and acknowledge others.

In my time as an art director, my mentor was the great Anja Tonn @Echtzeit GmbH & Co. KG - Werbeagentur. She made me the creative I am today and the leader, too, I think. She taught me so many things, among others to bring sexiness to my design and images. Big respect to you and thanks for everything, Anja ♥️.

Later in my career, I was honored to work with Nikki York in Düsseldorf (I respect your decision to start down a new path, but I’ve never understood it 😂) and with Madeleine Haug in Stuttgart as my creative partners for a long time and we created amazing stuff together. Thank you, ladies, for this wonderful time. You rock!

I think we don’t have to mask our true selves in this time of change. We are on the right path and we all know we are far too late. I believe that’s why we have to give all our strength 💪 to fairness, diversity and accessibility for everyone in our society. We are all responsible for this. So stay who you are. This is you. But don’t stay in the past. Walk with us in the present. Bleib geil!