A Real Shocker

West Germany's Lufthansa Airlines is one of the better European carriers, but it has long suffered an inferiority complex for lack of "image." Says a Lufthansa official of the line's old ads:

"Nice, sweet ads they were, which went unnoticed." To change that state of affairs, Lufthansa last November signed a $625,000 contract with Doyle Dane Bernbach, the Manhattan agency that had already done a superlative job of promoting West Germany's Volkswagen. The new account seemed right on the Bernbach ball. Says the agency's manager in West Germany, Joachim Schiirholz: "We felt we had to have something strong, a real shocker."

The Fanatical Approach. So they found something pretty strong. Read the ads:

> "If you've known many Germans, you know how precise and methodical they are . . . Keep this quality in mind just before takeoff on a Lufthansa jet. Think about the irritating German thoroughness of the mechanics who worked on your plane."

>"Germans have a way of taking minute things very seriously. Along with a compulsion to do everything very thoroughly. The combination makes fanatically fussy people. Who make fantastically good mechanics."

>"When it comes to the mechanics, nobody is quite as German as the Germans . . . They've got a very special kind of inability. They can't relax and take it easy. They do everything with painful thoroughness. As you may have noticed, that makes the average German a little stiff. But it also makes the average German a much better than average mechanic."

Studying the ads submitted, Lufthansa itself rejected several phrases, including one claiming that "German mechanics love their nuts and bolts more than their wives." The public rejected more of the ads. From all parts of the world suddenly came protesting letters. One U.S. reader tore out an ad with a reference to "fanatical thoroughness" and sent it to Lufthansa's Cologne headquarters with the marginal notation, "i.e., Eichmann." Another, objecting to the claim that Germans do everything with "painful thoroughness," commented, "particularly gas chambers." An Israeli sent in a six-page, handwritten letter of criticism. From London's Encounter Editor Melvin J. Lasky came this word: "Never in the history of public relations has there been a campaign in such incredibly bad taste. I have already called the attention of the German ambassador to the horrified amazement that your company should go in for something so ill-calculated to win good will."

Perhaps more to the point, the Bonn government is also disturbed--and though Lufthansa is independently operated, the government owns 75% of its shares. Last week one government bureaucrat accused Lufthansa of "stressing negative aspects of the German character." Said another: "They present the German as an automaton, a creature without a soul. We can't be happy about that."

Unrelaxing. Neither Doyle Dane Bernbach nor Lufthansa seemed daunted by the growing furor until last week, when the eighth ad in the series was scheduled. It showed a Lufthansa pilot after a rigorous training run-through, and the copy read: "All Lufthansa pilots get put through this ordeal regularly . . . Naturally they can relax a little more in a flight simulator. But being Germans, naturally they don't. Have you ever seen a relaxed German?" The ad showed the Lufthansa pilot on the ground, enjoying a postflight cigarette, and the airline's board of directors ordered it killed on grounds that it gave "a distorted picture of Lufthansa pilots."

Beyond that, afraid that the whole sell had gotten distorted, the board has scheduled an Oct. 1 decision on whether the campaign should be continued.

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