Twenty years of ING Deutschland and Dirk Nowitzki

A bench outside the head office

On 12 October 2023 ING Deutschland marks twenty years of working with Dirk Nowitzki by unveiling a bronze figure of him outside its head office at Theodor-Heuss-Allee 2 in Frankfurt am Main. The sculpture, by the Berlin sculptor Andreas Artur Hoferick, shows him life-sized and seated on a bench. On the same occasion the bank donates 50,000 euros to the Dirk Nowitzki Foundation.¹

Nick Jue, the chief executive of ING in Germany, calls the twenty-year partnership of ING and Dirk Nowitzki unique in the announcement, and describes an arrangement that began as a classic advertising contract and grew to take in sporting, societal and charitable work. Nowitzki's line in the same release is about the period rather than the deal: "In twenty years there were many wonderful moments and projects with ING that I look back on fondly."¹

The casting came before the career

The relationship began on 1 May 2003.¹ The German business then traded as DiBa and was renamed ING-DiBa in 2004, so the bank that signed him did not yet carry the group name it advertises under today. Nowitzki was 24 and four seasons into his time in the NBA.

Most of what he is now known for accumulated during the partnership rather than before it. He stayed with the Dallas Mavericks for his entire NBA career, 21 seasons, finishing with 31,560 points as the most successful European player in the league, and retired in 2019.^{2, 3} For a bank selling long-term saving, a biography of not moving sits close to the proposition. The fact was in the public record rather than in the advertising, and it did not have to be asserted to be available to anyone watching.

The contract stopped having an end date

In July 2017, fourteen years in, the two sides converted the advertising agreement into what both called a lifetime partnership, an arrangement of indefinite duration. It covered continued advertising appearances, including television, and work with Nowitzki's charitable foundations in Germany and the United States. Katharina Herrmann, then a member of the management board, described a relationship that had started as a classic testimonial arrangement and developed into a partnership reaching beyond advertising.⁴

A contract without an end date changes what the two sides manage. There is no expiry to negotiate against, no scheduled moment at which the relationship is re-priced and no point at which a successor has to be considered. It also moved the arrangement out of reach of the retirement that came two years later, because nothing in it depended on him still playing.

Kept while the name changed twice

The bank retained the same face through changes that would ordinarily prompt a review. Between 2003 and 2018 the German business was renamed ING-DiBa in 2004 and ING Deutschland in November 2018, the second of those a decision by ING Groep, the Dutch parent of the group's national banks, about how it named its businesses across markets.⁵

Two German assets were carried across that second change unaltered: the sound logo, which the bank confirmed at the time it would keep, and the testimonial, by then under a contract with no expiry.⁵ Neither was reopened at the moment the name was.

The part that is not advertising

By 2023 the joint work is described mainly in terms that have no media plan attached to them. BasKIDball, the programme the two support together, provides free basketball training and educational support at 23 locations across Germany. Champions for Charity, a series of benefit football matches, is named as a further joint project with the foundation.¹

This is the part that makes the arrangement legible as something other than a longer contract. Charitable work has no campaign period and no flight dates, so an agreement that includes it cannot be measured against a run of advertising. It commits both sides to activity that continues whether or not anything is on air.

What twenty years produced

Continuity of this kind generates no announcements. There is no relaunch to present and no new casting to approve, and the only visible evidence is that the same person keeps appearing. The bank now serves more than nine million customers in Germany and employs more than 6,000 people,¹ and it has kept one face while working under three names.

The anniversary is therefore a statement about the bank's own conduct as much as about the person. A bronze figure outside a head office is a permanent object, placed there by the party that commissioned the advertising rather than by the sport. What is marked is not the choice of testimonial but the decision to keep making it for twenty years, longer than the name ING-DiBa existed.