vald – agentur für nachhaltige kommunikation

Michaela Schwarz-Weismann / situated freedom

Johannes Kepler University - JKU / illustration

I dance Festival / Concept, art direction

Theater an der Wien / concept, art direction

We love customers with attitude because of the one we have.

We strive to use our decades of experience in working with and for agencies for a good cause: we want to work for customers whose products and services pave the way for a sustainable and more liveable future; customers who do everything in their power to make life better for everyone. We are committed to dedicating our know-how and skills to play our part.

This is why we understand “sustainable” as so much more than exclusively organic: it also comprises arts and culture enterprises, NGOs and companies that have the regional creation of value as well as the common good in mind. In a nutshell, customers who are willing to fully back a good and worthy cause.

Even the best products need the best ideas to be seen.

We offer marketing strategies, communication concepts and corporate designs that are made to last and able to grasp the bigger picture – communication with positive and sustainable effects for a brand, product and target group. Our experience from working with international brands enables us to distil a wide range of lessons learned for dealing with regional companies. We know what it needs to establish a brand, and what does more harm than good. Our concepts are carefully thought out, sustainable in effect and meet the highest international standards – as confirmed by numerous renowned awards for our past and present work.

If you seek a sustainable life, you will need to break new ground.

Our agency is beautifully situated in Austria’s Waldviertel (German for “Forest Quarter”) region – with lake views in the midst of nature – ample inspiration to call our agency “vald”. And more than enough inspiration to preserve what we love. Instead of excluding the environment, we prefer to develop concepts that work in harmony with nature – from the very first idea all the way to the materials we use.

We firmly believe that past experiences are the key to improving the coexistence between nature and humankind. And this also applies to our work: sustainable, considerate, persistent. We work paperless and climate neutral. The agency was built in accordance with environmental considerations; our electricity comes from alternative sources – and if that is not enough, we use 100% green power. Thanks to one of the benefits of digitisation, we try to avoid business trips as much as possible in order to reduce our ecological footprint and increase our contribution to sustainability.

Small teams for direct, targeted communication.

We, Catharina and Volkmar, form the agency’s core team and serve as sparring partners in consulting and creation – a successful approach tried and tested in past years. We work in small and efficient teams, which ensures better and more direct communication with our customers. This approach informs our practice and affects our ideas, implementation and jointly defined objectives.

We work with like-minded people that share both our goals and our commitment. In the last few years, we had the great honour of getting to know and appreciate many people along the way who think the same way we do and strive to contribute their experience for a good cause. They are the ones we work with as our partners.

Catharina was a project manager at Jung von Matt/Donau and Jung von Matt/365 for more than ten years. She started her career at the front desk in 2002 and learned the “craft” from scratch all the way to becoming budget director. Her work spectrum ranged from the classic brand relaunch for Austrian Airlines to the implementation of the exclusively digital youth campaign spark7 for Erste Bank & Sparkassen. She has been self-employed, working for her own customers, since 2015. Catharina and Volkmar have two children and live in Vienna and the Waldviertel region.

Volkmar studied Communication Design in Munich and spent the last few decades working at Jung von Matt (Isar/Alster/Donau) and Scholz & Friends Berlin. He received more than 300 international awards, including 14 Lions in Cannes (5 in gold). His concepts and creative direction have been celebrated on a regular basis (amongst others, 2 x Gold at the ADC, LIAA, NY Festival, One Show, D&AD) in recent years. His corporate design for Gut Oggau was exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art in San Francisco in 2010. The ADC recently presented Volkmar with an award in gold in the category Corporate Design for the project Superar – Association for the Promotion of Music.

Volkmar was in charge of many great campaigns as the managing director/creation at Jung von Matt/Donau. His time at Jung von Matt as well as Scholz & Friends has had a lasting influence on Volkmar in terms of creative quality, management and attitude. He most recently worked as the managing director at moodley vienna. In February 2020, Catharina and Volkmar founded vald – agency for sustainable communication.

Brands from our agency time before vald:

BMW, MINI, Mercedes-Benz, Sixt, Festspielhaus Baden-Baden, Theater an der Wien, Gut Oggau, Taubenkobel, Falter, Manner, derStandard.at, Bank Austria, Erste Bank, T-Mobile Austria, Austrian Airlines, Neuroth, Sonnentor, Hannes Reeh, Superar, Andraschko

We work together in a collective:

Belinda Swoboda is an expert in social media & content marketing as well as performance marketing, and has been assisting us for more than a year now. After several years in the design industry (both self-employed and for various companies), Belinda expanded her social media skills – at Jollydays, for example, and at the Büro für Interaktion since May 2019. In order to round out the content area, she graduated in Applied Photography in 2019. She has worked with numerous startups and knows the creative chaos of young entrepreneurs. It so happens that these startups were green and/or socially engaged (which rubs off rather quickly), making Belinda the perfect match for us and our approach.

Michael Wittmann returned to Vienna after living in Naples, Italy and Biel, Germany for a while. He knows Catharina and Volkmar from his time as a copywriter at Jung von Matt/Donau. Self-employed since 2015, his work has won multiple awards, including the Forum Land Literature Prize.

Jork Weismann is a photographer for international magazines like Interview, Purple, Self Service, Zeit Magazin, Monocle or Vanity Fair. Although his focus is on fashion photography, his images are never impersonal or distanced but always human and emotional. And he is excellent in advertisement, but with a different look than usually found in ads. He worked with Volkmar for such customers as Mercedes Benz, Down Syndrom Festival, Theater an der Wien or Superar. His first book “Asleep at the Chateau” was released in 2012. Among his numerous renowned awards in recent years is the Lead Award. Jork lives in Vienna and at Lake Traunsee in Austria.

Daniel Gebhart de Koekkoek lives and works in Berlin and Vienna. Among the stepping stones in his early career was Magnum Photos, NYC before he began making a name for himself as an independent photographer – independent also in terms of his style. Daniel’s images combine different genres such as documentation, fashion, arts and advertisement, and always with a razor-sharp sense for subtle humour. Daniel takes pictures, amongst others, for Wallpaper, Zeit Magazin, The New York Times, Monocle, brand eins and Helmut Lang. His first book “The World We Live In” received the PDN Photo Annual Award. His photographs are regularly displayed in international exhibitions. His surname is Dutch and means “cuckoo” – just add a “k” at the end and you know how to say his name.

Wolf-Dieter Grabner – our trusted partner in joint projects since 2010: Wolf is the mastermind behind everything digital, the programming of all websites, and takes care of many of Volkmar and Catharina’s product shootings. He provides IT support and works as a photographer for various own customers, such as Musikverein Wien and DerStandard. Wolf studied Business Administration and Information Management in Salzburg. He commutes to Linz every week to teach at the University of Art and Design. Needless to say, he always takes the train.