For three days November 12-14, billboards, benches and trucks in Berlin’s business district were being covered (as much as is possible) with massive words such as Grundstückverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung, challenging Germans to pronounce them. Why? To reinforce the message that Bürokratendeutsch, the bureaucratic German language, simply doesn’t fit anywhere. The activation promotes Finom’s petition to UNESCO to officially recognise Bürokratendeutsch as a dead language, and the brand’s support of entrepreneurs.

“Entrepreneurs shouldn’t need a dictionary to run a business,” stated Roman Bukh, brand director at Finom. “These words are symbolic of the bureaucratic complexity that distracts entrepreneurs from actuallyrunning their businesses. We wanted to emphasise Finom’s effort to simplify financial operations for SMEs by officially declaring Bürokratisch a dead language.”

The truly original and enormously large media placements include:

• The trucks near the Ministry of Finance in Berlin
• Newly installed benches covered with oversized German bureaucratic terms next to the Finanzämter
• Takeover of the landmark purple water pipes that run through Berlin’s city centre
• A massive projection on a building in central Berlin
• The official release of the first dictionary of “Bürokratendeutsch”

Germany’s bureaucratic vocabulary includes gems such as “Grundstückverkehrsgenehmigungszuständigkeitsübertragungsverordnung” (regulation on the delegation of authority for real estate transactions) and “Rindfleischetikettierungsüberwachungsaufgabenübertragungsgesetz” (law on the delegation of monitoring duties for beef labelling). The Berlin activation makes these absurdly long terms impossible to ignore – and equally impossible to display in full.

The campaign’s creative director, Roman Vydashenko, added, “Normally, languages survive because they help people communicate. But Bürokratendeutsch survived because people had no choice. For us, recognising it as ‘dead’ is a cultural statement: complexity shouldn’t be the price of running a small business.”

Finom serves over 200,000 businesses across Germany, France, Italy, Spain, and the Netherlands. The company’s platform handles financial management, payments, invoicing, and accounting for entrepreneurs who would rather focus on growing their business than decoding bureaucratic language.

The UNESCO petition is open for public signatures at finompetition.de.

Credits:

Client: Finom
Creative Director: Roman Vydashenko
Brand Director: Roman Bukh
Brand Manager: Anna Shevchenko

Creative Agency: Talent Creative Agency
Executive Creative Director:Anna Migaleva
Creative director (Art): Lucy Kulibaba
Copywriter: David Kaufmann
Designers:  Elizabeth Korotaeva & Ksenia Dubrovskaya
Client Service Director: Ksenia Luzhnova
Account Director: Alexandra Boettcher
Account Manager: Elizabeth Shaybina
Head of Production: Asya Grigoryan

Executive Producer Berlin: Anton Koba
Production Assistant – Danylo Romash
Line producer: Dara Zaporozhets
1st Camera Operator & Colour Grading: Andrii Kaplia
2nd Camera Operator & Editing: Orest Kovalchuk
Photographer: Alona Yarysh
Extra (monster): Danylo Khrypun
Newspaper Promoter: Elvis Gohlke

Media Partner: Echo Poster
Project Manager: Samuel Guimerans & Prak Piakot
Media Consultant: Francesco Pernice