Hamburg, October 20, 2026 — When scrolling through social media today, users are routinely met with a relentless flood of digital content, yet almost none of it possesses the kind of cultural resonance or quality that makes it worth watching a second time. For industry veterans Kevin Claus, Felix Ebell, and Finn-Jordan Max, this phenomenon represents the core problem facing a modern creative sector that has spent years anxiously fretting over dwindling attention spans, shifting platform algorithms, the rise of artificial intelligence, and its own supposedly imminent demise.
In response to this pervasive industry anxiety, the trio is launching PATHOS, a new Hamburg-based agency specializing entirely in branded entertainment. The venture debuts with established clients and a distinctly blunt perspective on the current state of marketing: advertising as a discipline is not dying, but a vast majority of what currently passes for advertising richly deserves to fade away.
While prominent industry figures continue to declare the entire trade dead—with notable voices like Amir Kassaei repeating the declaration "It’s over" like a desperate mantra—PATHOS offers a drastically different diagnosis. Perhaps advertising isn’t entirely done for good; rather, too much of it simply lacks quality. For the agency’s founders, emerging technologies like TikTok, shrinking client budgets, and generative artificial intelligence are not the primary culprits behind the medium’s current malaise. Instead, they argue that the advertising industry’s problems are largely self-inflicted, characterized by generic creative concepts, timid execution, and increasingly forgettable output churned out faster and cheaper than ever before. Artificial intelligence did not create this foundational issue; the subsequent flood of cheap AI-generated content has merely amplified the problem, making it significantly bigger and harder to ignore.
Rather than looking to complex modern innovations for a remedy, the newly founded agency turns to an approach conceived two millennia ago by the Greek philosopher Aristotle. While it has admittedly been a considerable length of time since the philosopher’s last marketing campaign, Aristotle famously outlined three primary modes of persuasion: logos, ethos, and pathos. Of the three, he considered pathos—the strategic appeal to human emotion—to be the most powerful and dangerous tool of persuasion, recognizing that moving people emotionally remains the most potent way to win them over.
For an industry currently fixated on hyper-rational business solutions, engagement rates, click-through rates, cost-per-mille metrics, and growth hacking, this philosophical foundation serves as a sharp reminder of an age-old truth: raw human emotions are what genuinely move people. It is also the core concept that gives PATHOS its name.
"My parents told me they used to go to the cinema to watch compilations of Cannes-winning ads. Voluntarily! To them, advertising was entertainment. Now some people hate advertising so much that entire businesses are built around paying them to avoid it," explains PATHOS Managing Director Kevin Claus. "That says a lot about how far our industry has fallen. Advertising needs to entertain people again, move them, or at least make them feel something other than the immediate urge to throw up. We want to put everything we’ve got into turning that around."
According to the agency’s leadership, lazy project managers and a widespread lack of production know-how are the primary forces that quietly kill good ideas before they ever see the light of day. PATHOS views its corporate mission as extending far beyond the initial conception of a clever pitch. In the founders’ collective view, the creative industry is rarely short of interesting ideas; rather, the real trouble typically begins much later, buried within endless rounds of corporate approvals, cautious budget negotiations, protracted production hurdles, and conservative presentations that gradually dilute a bold creative concept into a safer, more palatable version, and ultimately into something utterly forgettable.
"In our industry, good ideas die at an alarmingly early stage," notes Co-Founder and Executive Creative Director Finn-Jordan Max. "Not because they wouldn’t work, but because, somewhere along the line, nobody is willing to keep fighting for them or put in the effort it takes to get them produced."
PATHOS intends to put that vital commitment into daily practice with a primary focus on branded entertainment. The founders are avid, lifelong fans of music, gaming, television, and film, giving them an intuitive understanding of the complex stories, nuanced cultural references, and distinct communities that define each of those creative worlds. Their professional track record demonstrates a proven ability to apply this deep cultural fluency to the creation of branded entertainment that audiences actively want to watch, play, or spend their leisure time with.
A beautifully designed pitch deck that promises the world while ultimately ending up forgotten in a desk drawer is simply not enough for the agency. From the very outset of any project, PATHOS works out precisely how even its most ambitious ideas can be executed realistically within established budgets and utilizing available resources, taking total creative responsibility from the initial conceptual spark all the way to the finished product.
True to the principle that anyone selling entertainment must inherently be entertaining themselves, PATHOS is putting this philosophy to work immediately within its own launch campaign. Rather than posing stiffly in front of a concrete wall and staring solemnly into the camera for standard industry trade publications, the founders commissioned a provocative piece of branded entertainment starring Jürgen Milski, a well-known German reality television personality and presenter historically associated with the nation’s notorious late-night phone-in quiz shows.
The launch film actively spoofs the current state of modern advertising by channeling the distinct aesthetic of Germany’s old-school phone-in formats and trash television, most notably 9Live, a now-defunct television channel that earned widespread notoriety for expensive, fast-paced TV games. In the narrative of the film, the three founders each attempt to explain the core mission of PATHOS in their own distinct ways, causing the promotional shoot to quickly descend into absolute chaos. Their earnest attempts go completely nowhere, Milski humorously lines his own pockets, and the trio ultimately finds themselves embroiled in a dramatic physical brawl—an outcome that arguably says more about the unpredictable spirit of PATHOS than any traditional corporate explanation ever could.
Along the way, a few familiar figures from the broader advertising industry are playfully roasted, with their faces deliberately pixelated simply to be on the safe side. The satirical film also takes direct aim at the industry’s seemingly endless, cyclical declarations that "It’s over."
"Of course you can launch an agency with three headshots and a press release. That approach has served the industry surprisingly well. But if you’re advising brands to entertain people, you ought to hold yourself to the same standard," says Co-Founder and Executive Creative Director Felix Ebell. "We want PATHOS to be an entertainment brand in its own right, from day one. The film is more than a launch stunt. It is the start of our own ongoing entertainment campaign."
Naturally, the agency’s debut still arrives accompanied by a traditional press release and an official press photograph, acknowledging that there is no real need to make life unnecessarily difficult. The launch film itself was expertly produced by cndy Film, with Thomas Cervenca and Clemens Hillinger handling direction and cinematography. Meanwhile, 2WEI Music provided the striking original score—an epic, reimagined arrangement of "Ständchen" ("Serenade") from Franz Schubert’s famous collection Schwanengesang ("Swan Song"), serving as a subtle musical nod to the agency’s distinct visual logo.
The leadership team steering PATHOS combines decades of diverse agency experience. Managing Director Kevin Claus began his professional advertising career as an apprentice at Jung von Matt. Following an intermediate stint at Kolle Rebbe—an agency now operating as part of Accenture Song—he returned to Jung von Matt, most notably spending seven and a half years at Jung von Matt SPORTS, where he oversaw specialized divisions including gaming and esports. It was during this tenure that he crossed paths with Ebell and Max.
Over recent years, Ebell and Max have collaborated extensively as high-level freelancers for some of the largest agency networks in Germany and internationally. Together, they developed ambitious entertainment projects and comprehensive brand communications for major global corporations including Samsung, adidas, and Netflix. For the streaming giant, this specialized work notably included crafting creative concepts for the promotional launches of prominent German original series, an expertise they are now bringing directly into their work at PATHOS.
The agency has no intention of remaining in a temporary start-up mode for long. Plans are already underway to assemble a permanent, full-time team of specialized strategists, project managers, and creative professionals, all scheduled to begin working out of the agency’s new permanent office located in Hamburg’s historic Zippelhaus district in January.
More importantly, PATHOS is not launching its public profile with a retrospective case study detailing the behind-the-scenes making of its own corporate website, but rather with an active client that already understands precisely what it wants to achieve through entertainment-driven partnerships. Sparkasse, Germany’s massive nationwide network of public savings banks, stands as one of the agency’s primary launch clients. Claus previously played an instrumental role in shaping the financial institution’s gaming and entertainment initiatives over recent years, which included serving as the lead on the horror-themed branded game "Schwein Gehabt." That project attracted widespread media attention across Germany over the past year and was featured internationally by prominent industry platforms like Ads of the World. PATHOS will now build directly upon that established foundation, further evolving Sparkasse’s ongoing footprint in the branded entertainment space.
Looking toward the future, PATHOS has clear ambitions for growth. The long-term corporate goal is to establish a recognized European agency footprint, operating primarily out of Hamburg while maintaining a distinct focus on international brands seeking to meaningfully engage audiences across Europe. The founders are actively seeking long-term commercial partnerships with forward-thinking brands committed to making entertainment a permanent, structural component of their ongoing marketing communications.
PATHOS does not hold the naive belief that traditional advertising will disappear completely from the modern landscape, nor do they subscribe to the notion that artificial intelligence will single-handedly save or destroy the creative industry overnight. Instead, their central message is far less convenient for the established players in the sector: if the industry genuinely wants people to care about advertising again, it will simply have to start producing vastly better work.
Put simply, the creative world needs a healthy dose of PATHOS.
