The BMM brand lives on: Obituary of Bernd M. Michael

I will never forget my first encounter with the brand expert Bernd M. Michael, who himself had become the brand "BMM", at the Düsseldorf headquarters of Grey EMEA. After twelve years of independent entrepreneurship, as a freedom-loving non-corporate person, I wanted anything but to become the Swiss manager of a global agency. It didn't take an hour and BMM had convinced me otherwise. With the promise to remain an associate partner and his cell phone number for anytime access to him personally, I flew home and subsequently expanded Grey in Switzerland.

BMM was a charismatic boss, brilliant thinker and empathetic counterpart. He hated it when people beat around the bush, got to the point subito, and taught me to address even the very difficult, sometimes unpleasant issues. No one could fool him. He always recognized the cause and was already thinking of the next solution. Intuitive, creative and backed up with hard mafia data, he analyzed brands so clearly that he was as much in demand on the executive and supervisory boards of many German and global corporations as he was on the big stage.

People feel before they think. Those who appeal to ratio alone will leave their customers isolated in a cold world of knowledge. Emotion as an equivalent creates the desired balance of power, thinking connects with feeling. This is how trust is created in the world of brands.
- Bernd M. Michael

BMM was passionately committed to brands. His presentations on the power of brands inspired not only marketing professionals. Under him, Grey managed double-digit growth year after year as the second-largest agency in Germany. At the legendary annual media conferences, the Image-newspaper as well as the FAZ and the Manager Magazine. Now and then even the ARD and the ZDF. Hardly any industry personality or agency achieved more media presence at the time than BMM and Grey. At every appointment and all appearances, he always appeared with a red tie - the "brand signal," as he called his trademark.

I learned a lot about brand engineering from BMM. His "Workbook M for Brand was for many the bible for successful brand management. In the internal Academy, BMM impressively demonstrated what it means to live up to the Grey claim "We give brands character". He was jointly responsible for the success of countless German and also many a global brand, among others from the Mars Group and P&G. This was also documented by his winning many awards for efficient brand management and his appointment to the "Hall of Fame of German Advertising". After a terrible accident while playing his beloved game of polo, he lived in seclusion for the last few years. On April 20, he started his last journey. Thank you BMM, you have enriched the world of brands enormously.

Bernd M. Michael was Chairman & Managing Partner of Grey Global Group Europe until 2005. In the same year, Grey, then the world's fifth-largest advertising agency, was taken over by WPP, the largest global agency holding company founded by Sir Martin Sorell.

* Stefan Vogler and his former business partners brought their owner-managed agency BT&V into Grey in 1995 and built it into the fourth largest agency group in Switzerland. In 2005, he stepped down as Chairman & Managing Partner of Grey Switzerland. After the takeover by WPP, Grey was integrated into other Swiss WPP agencies and has not been represented in Switzerland since. Today, brand expert Stefan Vogler works as a marketing and communications consultant, lecturer and course director at the HWZ Hochschule für Wirtschaft Zürich and as a member of the Board of Directors.