Sat in the VW Head Office, 128 Weidenstrasse Dusseldorf, Chairman Rudolph Helmut Müller, addressing the five heads of the various departments of the company, VW, began his presentation of the company's intended manufacturing shift. This had been decided on unanimously by shareholders, who knew the manufacturing of motor vehicles, which had sustained the company, and saw it thrive on a global scale, was not a viable commercial direction to follow.
'Weapons', Rudolph said, 'are the future'. 'further, they are the immutable present. To put it another way, we are at a game of American Football selling freshly prepared salad and bottled water. We are fooling ourselves if we think motor vehicles are what is wanted.'
'Yes the Volkswagen group has manufactured the highest quality vehicles for over a century, but we must evolve, develop, adapt to the market as it is, not was we wish it to be. But I don't need to tell this to you, my heads of departments, whose only job is to read the market and make sure that you adjust your people and praxis accordingly. Whose job it is not to long for a long faded glorious past in German motor vehicle manufacturing.'
Stefan Fisher, sat solemnly to the left of Herr Müller, three places down the long boardroom table. Insulated from the Chairman by the head of Manufacturing and Development Herr Ulrich Schur on his immediate right, and, to his right, Augustin Clemens Falkner, head of Propaganda and Information. Herr Fisher was focusing his eyesight on the corner of the vase that occupied the central position of the long boardroom table. It was a metallic square thing, belonging to some artistic or cultural movement that had happened before he was born. Inside of it were some wild spring flowers. The collection of which Chairman Müller had developed the habit, and reputation for; on his way to work daily, he indulged a 4 kilometre digression, through the Völkspark. Taking in the air, collecting newly bloomed flowers, listening to the birds singing, thinking of amusing and novel ways to commit and get away with the murder of the many homeless people that called the streets of his dear city their sleeping and living place; his home, a place he had never left, and felt a fondness for that far surpassed how he had ever felt, or ever will feel, about any person he had known or ever will know. Upon arriving at work, a bouquet, arranged, in brown paper, in his left hand. Grinning a self-fulfilled smile. He would put the flowers in the metal vase. This was his thing, people in the office knew about it, VW salesmen on the other side of Germany, who had never stepped foot in a boardroom, who relied on commission from sales to eat properly and pay rent, knew of this quirky habit. In the office, this habit was seen as a likeable character trait, something their Chariman did that set him apart from others. He was no tyrant, how could he be, with his fondness for flowers, and his proclivity for walks in the park, propensities for beauty and the permutations that made up his beastly personality. This habit had been appropriated by the VW marketing department, and deployed as a subject of a new, trendy, real seeming marketing campaign. Breaking from the traditional advertising conventions that had long since been rendered obsolete, belonging to the world of television and radio. Entering into the modern world of free advertising, social media, influencer type shit, to make the company seem more relatable, human and likeable. But of course, as all commercial attempts at marketing, that try to seem relatable, real, human, end up, it seemed un-homely, unreal, something about it, a bit off. With the inevitable result of just seeming out of touch. Because, after using the allure of wealth, indulgence, glamour, decadence, as an theme that defined advertising, for like 50 years, a company whose public image was that, cannot just immediately flip to producing public content that seeks to resemble popular online content, produced by influencers and content creators who too are doing their best to produce believable 'real' or 'relatable' content, which is just as fake as the VW attempt for most influencers are either already rich from like having parents who like sold guns to every country involved in WW2 and then invented space travel, or something, or they simply don't exist, like they are completely fake. So nothing is real, at this point, not even the purportedly 'real' content on which the VW marketing chairman flower collecting content, is supposed to be based on. Everything, one fake loop, inheriting suggestions from fake media before it, producing imagery and an imaginary world from fake worlds before it. In total, all producing this fake, hovering world, that only kind of, in an un-homely way, represents the real world, but does not in any real or accurate kind of way. Because the world of images, semiotics, cannot re-create the real world, obviously.
The advertising campaign took the form of like a day in the life format 'hey watch me get ready...' and the chairman would film himself waking up, shaving, eating, walking through the park collecting flowers... and so on. In the office, this was celebrated, seen as a creative breakthrough. But the salespeople, across Germany, who were forced to attend a company dinner that celebrated that launch of the advertising campaign, mocked it ruthlessly, relentlessly. Held him and the campaign in total disdain. Said unthinkable insulting, hilarious things, about the Chairman, his clothes, his house, his voice, anything. The mocking of him and his advertising campaign became so thick at times, in tea rooms, at bars after work where occasionally colleagues would gather for a beer, or even just on the factory floor, in the official space itself where appearances were to be maintained, the idea of joy and satisfaction and success presented to the general public, under breath, mouthed, and by some of the more unrestrained salespeople, to the customers themselves. It was at a point where it would be hard to imagine, a situation in which Chairman Müller could walk into one of the showrooms across Germany, and he would emerge with his body not torn too peaces, or, where he was not hung, his body subject to gibbeting out the front of the showroom. Left as a warning to other would be grifters, fraudsters.
Stefan Fischer stared at the vase, keeping his gaze locked on a certain spot, thinking about keeping this gaze locked there, so he did not have to emotionally engage with the direction of the presentation. His focus his shelter and protection.
