Europe's largest motor show was caught in a perfect storm — the auto industry under regulatory and reputational pressure, exhibitors deprioritizing trade fairs in favor of in-house events, and tech companies rewriting what a mobility brand even meant. The IAA needed a new platform, not a facelift.

Created and directed New Mobility World from concept to execution — defining brand and business strategy, designing the experiential architecture, and owning multi-million-euro budgets, KPIs, and on-site delivery across four consecutive editions, plus numerous side events across continents. Central to the role: editorial leadership. Identifying the most consequential topics in mobility — electrification, autonomy, urban logistics, policy — at least a year in advance, then defining new program formats and activating the right industries, organizations, and speakers to bring those conversations to life at scale.

*including IAA. Female speaker ratio remained below target — a goal carried forward.

By the early 2010s, the debate between the German automotive industry and the environmental movement had hardened into mutual antagonism. Ahead of the 2013 federal election, both the Green Party-affiliated Heinrich Böll Foundation and the VDA wanted to break the deadlock — but any format that felt like a secret backroom deal would be politically toxic for both sides.

When Foundation president Ralf Fücks approached VDA president Matthias Wissmann with the idea, it fell to their respective chiefs of staff to make it real. Co-designed the entire program with Böll's Micha Walther — leading on subject matter, format architecture, and securing the right automotive industry participants across six non-public expert sessions held in different German cities over nine months. The series culminated in a large public two-day conference. Equal representation on both sides, rotating guests per topic, and continuous documentation kept momentum between sessions and prevented the format from calcifying into ritual.

A durable cross-ideological dialogue that survived its hardest test — the 2015 diesel fraud scandal — and inspired a follow-on format in Green-led Baden-Württemberg. By 2017, automotive CEOs were openly voicing frustration that federal coalition talks had collapsed before the Green Party could join — a public stance that would have been unthinkable five years earlier.

The low-cost carrier category was being introduced to Germany simultaneously by three players in 2002 — Ryanair, Lufthansa-backed germanwings, and TUI's HLX. HLX launched a month later and with fewer routes than germanwings. The real competitor was not another airline. It was the German public's assumption that flying was either a business necessity or a once-a-year holiday — planned in advance and never spontaneous.

Served as embedded external CMO — contracted specifically in that role, on-site at least two days a week — leading a dedicated team from concept through launch and the first three months of operations. The strategic goal: grow the overall market as much as capture share within it. Built a brand to own spontaneity and democratize air travel: fly for the price of a taxi. Low-cost was not a positioning line — it was a governing principle applied to every decision. The checkered cab identity in two-color black and process yellow made the promise visceral; it also slashed production costs and eliminated pre- and post-print checks that four-color printing demands. The brand was the strategy, all the way down to the ink. Mandatory air sickness bags became brand touchpoints — printed with "Thank you for your feedback." Zero additional cost. First passengers became ambassadors.

The Mercedes-Benz Actros launched in 1996 to mark the centenary of the truck — Gottlieb Daimler had invented it in 1896. As the first truck to introduce drive-by-wire technology, it was a technological breakthrough. But like pilots skeptical of Airbus' fly-by-wire systems, truckers pushed back. Daimler was seen as a fleet owner's brand, not a trucker's. Their resistance was not irrational: how a driver operates a truck directly affects vehicle performance and lifecycle, and independent owner-operators choose their own brand. Daimler needed drivers to want the Actros — not just accept it.

The insight began with empathy. In Germany, where passenger cars face no speed limit on the Autobahn, trucks are capped at 55 mph — making them, in the eyes of impatient car drivers, little more than moving obstacles. Truckers knew this. They felt it every day. Rather than selling drivers on the truck, the strategy flipped the equation entirely: advocate for drivers, to the public driving behind them. Turned the back of every Actros into a billboard — not for Daimler, but for trucks and truckers. Whimsical, self-aware copy addressed the car driver stuck in the trucker's wake directly, with wit and without apology.

The Actros proved to be the most successful truck launch in European automotive history. Owners and drivers embraced it with pride. Non-Daimler truckers requested the ads for their own trucks — the clearest possible signal that the work had transcended product advertising and become something drivers genuinely wanted to be associated with.

The campaign outlasted its launch phase by decades — on the road and online. In 2024, a Facebook post featuring one of the original tailgate messages received 3,300 likes, 177 comments, and 534 shares.