NEXT Came to Be

“Creating Radical Relationships”. For Matthias Schrader and the staff of now almost 400 employees in the Group, this is more than an agency claim. Creating radical relationships is daily work and the company philosophy at the same time. It is based on the conviction that consumers have decided on the Internet as the No. 1 place for getting in touch with brands and products. Technology is what is driving this changing consumer behaviour. Companies have to react to this radical shift. SinnerSchrader helps its customers to find the right answers – and has been doing so successfully for 15 years.

Matthias Schrader and his then partner Oliver Sinner were early in recognising the economic and revolutionary explosive force of the Internet. Since SinnerSchrader was founded in 1996 the web has entered more and more areas of everyday life, entire industries now live on and through the Internet. SinnerSchrader has grown with it and now has four locations dedicated to making companies successful in the Internet. The newest addition to the Group: Haasenstein – its own advertising agency that consistently plans campaigns from online to offline, thus creating relationships between brands and consumers.

The triangle of consumer–technology–marketing is also at the heart of the NEXT Conference. This is where marketing decision-makers and business developers meet technical experts and creative minds to discuss what will be important in the next 12 months. This is a mix that is totally unique among European conferences. NEXT started as a party for SinnerSchrader’s tenth anniversary in 2006. But things were not destined to remain this way. The demand for tickets was too great; the feedback from the event was too overwhelming. Today NEXT leads the way as a meeting place for the digital industry in Germany and a vital driving force across borders. To take account of increasing internationalisation, NEXT moved to Berlin in 2010. In the capital, it found the right partner and a home for the future in the form of STATION-Berlin.

NEXT11 is under the motto “Data Love”: a declaration of love to data and a farewell to the omnipresent hysteria of so-called data protectors. Matthias Schrader is convinced: “Empower your customers with data and they will love you!” He believes that data are the basis for better understanding consumers and their needs – a basis for radically improving products and services. “Data are the raw materials of the future. The mineral oil of the digital age,” Schrader continues. “We have to liberate data, out of silos. Data can create massive added value for customers. We are far from imagining the full potential of data.”