Everything CEOs ask before booking a briefing.
What exactly is Hermann?
Hermann is an ongoing video communication system — not a one-off campaign. It's built on documentary-style films starring the company's own people, delivered continuously (26 films a year) to keep mission, priorities and expertise alive across the organization. Each film mixes on-camera moments with a brief, fly-on-the-wall look at the protagonist's day-to-day — some films center on one person, others are group stories. The problem it solves: organizational guesswork — the distance between what the CEO decides and what the organization actually executes. As companies grow, that distance grows too, and it shows up as inconsistent decisions, slower execution and diluted culture.
Who is Hermann for?
Purpose-driven companies with €20M+ in annual revenue and 70+ employees, where the CEO or Founder makes the final call — Hermann is a leadership tool.
Why does Hermann work?
Because unreinforced messages fade fast. The forgetting curve, first documented by psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus in 1885 and replicated by Murre and Dros in 2015, shows that most new information decays within a day without reinforcement — this is also where the name Hermann comes from. A 2006 meta-analysis by Cepeda et al., covering 184 studies, found that spacing information out over time — rather than delivering it once — measurably improves retention. Hermann is built on that principle: instead of one town hall or memo, the message is reinforced every two weeks, in a format the brain retains better. A 2021 meta-analysis by Mar et al. also found that people understand and recall information delivered as a story significantly better than the same information delivered as facts or slides. Full sources and figures on the forgetting curve page.
Why video?
Because people learn by observing people — it's how humans have absorbed behaviour for millions of years, capturing thousands of details in another person that plain text or a voiceover can't carry. That's also why screens alone rarely work in schools: what works is watching someone real. Hermann's films put a role model in front of the team: a brand ambassador who, every 14 days, reminds them what the expected behaviours and the mission actually look like in practice, delivered in a consistent, polished, feature-quality format. And because the films star real people from the company, they also create anticipation — people want to see themselves and their colleagues on screen, which is part of why engagement holds over 26 films rather than fading after the first one.
Why can't we do this internally?
Because no internal function was built for this — and any internal team that tries to solve it is already part of the same cascade that creates the problem. Not through incompetence. Through structure: a CEO decides, a manager interprets, a director interprets, a team interprets, and each layer adds distance from the original message. Hermann is the only agent external to that cascade — which is exactly what lets it break it. Its own system was engineered over thousands of hours across 15 years of making corporate documentaries — it isn't something an internal team builds in parallel to their day job.
What does Hermann actually deliver?
26 documentary-style films a year, distributed across the channels the organization already uses: internal screens, corporate website, social media, events, presentations, press releases, sales and M&A. Who appears: in Year 1, the CEO appears in 2 films. The CEO or department heads also choose 6 "ambassadors" — a mix of people fully committed to the mission and values, chosen for variety of profile — plus as many team members as possible for the group films. Distribution: Hermann delivers the finished material to the person assigned to project logistics on the client's side. The client's team then distributes it internally and externally. Why this is different from an agency or a campaign: Hermann is the only system built specifically to engineer organizational memory. Not a campaign, not an agency — an infrastructure that accumulates and increases in value every year.
How does Hermann evolve over the years?
Year 1 — everyone understands the mission, vision and values. Year 2 — people understand the product/service in depth: methodology, internal cases, operational excellence. Year 3+ — the company becomes the reference in its category: clients, expertise, science and industry leadership become part of the culture.
What does the CEO have to do?
4 hours total across the year, covering the 2 films the CEO appears in personally. Filming with the rest of the team runs 5 consecutive days, in one city — filming in more than one location is quoted separately. A single internal sponsor coordinates office access and any on-site logistics.
Where are the films used?
Internal and external events, internal screens, corporate website, social media, press releases, M&A processes and sales.
How quickly do we see an impact?
The first film — the CEO's — is delivered around 2 weeks after filming. From there, Hermann provides a delivery calendar for the remaining 25 films, released one every 15 days.
What is Hermann's impact on our organization?
Hermann is designed to reduce unnecessary meetings, cross-team friction and decision time, and to improve time-to-market and CEO hours spent repeating the same message.
What does it cost / what is the commitment?
The engagement is annual: one year, 26 films, delivered every 15 days to give the leader's communication a consistent, polished cadence. Filming happens in one region — typically one city per day of filming — and a second region can be added depending on the case.
If you are not the decision-maker,
do not schedule.