When I founded HOPE, back in 1997 in picturesque Freiburg, Germany, I had just spent (after graduating from a very prestigious and surprisingly boring business school) 15 years managing branded products and services in different European markets. This experience had convinced me of two things:
- Effective international communications demand a high level of cross-cultural expertise.
- For most companies, using the services of truly global agencies is beyond reach, and in many cases, exceedingly time-consuming and complicated.
This has held true to this day, after a journey which brought me to relocate to the British Isles and the American mainland.
What I did not expect, though, is that the agency’s concept would appeal to unexpectedly large clients, and that, besides a lot of international work, we would be quite active on various single national markets. All the better.