Ulf Appel is a renowned marketing expert and strategist. Together with the designer Anne Julia Nowitzki he founded the agency APPEL NOWITZKI in Frankfurt in 2013. Since then he has been helping companies and brands to find or develop their identity by combining strategy and design. The agency’s recipe for success lies in developing an individual, differentiating and credible brand identity together with the client, based on the triangle of success: people, market, brand.
Frankfurt is for me …
Home, source of inspiration, playground, action space, a melting pot of creativity and business.
What do you love most about your job?
Helping people to realize their dreams. Because without the right brand identity, no one will ever know what a great product I have or what services I offer.
Where do you get your ideas from?
Sometimes more from the outside, sometimes more from the inside. But always from the heart.
My lunch break …
… looks different almost every day. Except for Wednesday. We always have something delicious delivered and have lunch together in our agency.
What trends do you think we will see this year?
In addition to what we already know about digitization, such as the constant blending of real and virtual, we are increasingly noticing a dissolution of familiar boundaries; this gives companies a lot of new freedom, but can also be unsettling here and there. To prevent this from happening, we advise our customers intensively and explain to them how to deal with all these possibilities in a sensible way.
What else can we still learn?
A lot. But above all very rudimentary things like respect, empathy or consideration. In the face of so much technical progress, we seem to care less and less about our human progress.
You should definitely do that in Frankfurt …
Come and have a look at our office, of course. Or take advantage of one of the city’s many cultural offerings. Or simply stroll along the Main to Sachsenhausen to drink an Äppler or eat ice cream. Or explore the Berger Straße. Or, or, or, or … The list is endless.
