Jürgen Klopp has been advertising for DVAG, a financial sales company, for almost ten years. A profitable business for both – but not necessarily for the customers.
“As a coach, I can only recommend being coached yourself,” says Jürgen Klopp. In an advertising film DVAG, Deutsche Vermögensberatung AG. The football coach has been an advertising partner of the Frankfurt financial sales company since 2015. Klopp, the top coach, advises coaching. On behalf of a company whose sales methods are considered controversial, consumer advocates have been advising caution for years.
DVAG brokers investments of almost all kinds, including insurance and savings contracts for retirement provision. Earnings are made from commissions, with sales last year exceeding two billion euros. This turnover is ensured by an army of more than 15,000 independent sales representatives, self-titled: financial advisors. The sales force is tightly organized, a so-called pyramid system: at the bottom the mass of salespeople, at the top a management team that lives very well from the commission shares passed on to subordinates, and at the top with an annual income of several hundred thousand euros. So it’s hardly surprising that DVAG’s offerings are classified as comparatively expensive by consumer advocates.
Celebrities against bad image
Celebrities like Jürgen Klopp are supposed to polish up DVAG’s image and give it seriousness. The company has always focused on class instead of quantity, on champions. And on long-term commitment, in keeping with the “family business” image that is often conveyed. In the 1990s, the company secured the advertising services of Formula 1 racing driver Michael Schumacher; today his son Mick is under contract with DVAG. A ten-year contract was signed with Jürgen Klopp in 2015. In 2020, according to the industry information service “Versicherungswirtschaft-heute”, estimates circulated that Klopp’s DVAG entry alone brought in a mid-single-digit million amount.
Jürgen Klopp in the deepfake spot
To achieve this, Jürgen Klopp has to put up with a lot, most recently so-called “deepfakes”: In the spring, the successful trainer, cloned using AI tools, flickers through a DVAG commercial in 14 different professions: healing guru, taxi driver, baker, dentist, Pilot, cook, farmer, construction worker, mountaineer, priest, fireman, rock star and leaflet distributor in the pedestrian zone. “There are so many ways I could have lived my life,” Klopp says in the spot. He couldn’t know whether this would have gone better or worse, whether it would have suited him better. He is “in any case happy to have people around me who give me good advice in the important moments.” Just like the DVAG consultants do, of course.
None of those involved seem to care that neither deepfakes nor some DVAG offers are particularly good advice.
Source: Stern
