This is an interesting story, something from Germany that most of us english speakers probably never hear about. But now we certainly will, thanks to the Guardian.

Apparently there is a campaign afoot in Germany to make Germans more cheery, by the head of the leading German advertising company Jung von Matt, Jean-Remy von Matt. His campaign, ‘Du bist Deutschland‘ (You are Germany) met with criticism in the media and in the blogosphere (or, as he put it, “Little Bloggerville”), and he fired off a furious internal email, which was forwarded around the ‘net (see it here). Adverblog has some photo stills from the campaign, and Flickr has a few more.

Because of that criticism, Mr. von Matt‘s internal email included:

1. Our fellow advertisers, busily piping up in trade journals. Many of them find the campaign useless, “because advertising cannot be the adequate way to economically push a nation forward”. It is really sad that our trade doesn’t believe in the power of communication any more.

2. Weblogs, the toilet walls of the internet. (What on earth gives every computer owner the right to exude their opinion, unasked for? And most bloggers really just exude. This new, lowest level of opinion-forming becomes evident when you search for “Du bist Deutschland” on www.technorati.com.)

3. Intellectual Journalists from Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung to Die Tageszeitung who do exude their opinion “asked for” in so far as they have verifiable readers, but: “The campaign reaches its cynical peak in the spot showing gay and disabled people on the holocaust memorial in Berlin” (Die Zeit). Tough luck to have so much on your mind that you completely lose your gut feeling.

As Talk Politics put it, ‘Because we can.’ Well, I suppose we could say that journalists do far worse than bloggers, and undoubtedly have a far wider reach. The blogosphere (presumably the german part of it) responded and called Mr. von Matt a “low-level moron”. I’m sure there were far worse words, unrepeatable here though.

But here’s what the Guardian Unlimited pointed out, which I thought you might find interesting:

The £20m “Du bist Deutschland” – You are Germany – campaign launched last November with the aim of inspiring Germans to stop moaning and do something good for their country.

But the campaign quickly ran into trouble when it was discovered that the slogan had been used at Nazi rallies.

Great. At least he only spent £20 million regurgitating Nazi propaganda. Maybe he only meant, you are germany, if you’re blond and aryan? Those who criticize will be sent to *cough* “detainment” camps?

If anything Mr. von Matt, you should be embracing German bloggers for being the heart and pulse of a great nation who want to carry on the best traditions of Durer, Goethe, Nietzsche, Mann, Hesse etc., I bet you didn’t include bloggers in the ‘You are Germany’ campaign, now did you?