Ursula & Susanne met for the first time at the summer festival of their hometown’s high school in the summer of 1982. Paul McCartney sang “Ebony & Ivory” with Stevie Wonder, and Nena dreamily crooned “Nur geträumt.” Since their first meeting, Ursula & Susanne never lost sight of one another and spent much time together with mutual friends or each other’s families.
After graduating from high school, Ursula began training as an editor and ended up working in Munich for one of Germany’s largest IT PR agencies. Among her clients were major companies such as Microsoft, Intel and Apple.
Shortly before Ursula moved to the headquarters of McDonald’s Germany as Manager Communications, where she was in charge of corporate communications, Susanne finished a year’s stay in Rome and began her own PR career at the same agency, where Genesys, Telefonica and Informix were among her exciting clients. Susanne relocated to Regensburg to study business administration, but fortunately she remained true to Munich’s agency scene and returned to the Bavarian capital to work as Account Director for a large agency specializing in brand communication, where she skillfully staged global brands on the German market. There she met George Clooney (Ursula has always been a bit jealous of him) and introduced Nespresso to Germany. Afterwards Susanne moved to a mobile marketing company as Head of Corporate Communications.
Ursula founded Kafka Kommunikation in late 1999/early 2000. Her PR start-up grew steadily. One of its first clients was the IT security company Qualys, which had just relocated from Paris to Silicon Valley. This was a first and exciting contact in the world of cybersecurity for the young PR agency from Munich. Word of the agency’s expertise in the IT security sector soon got around and other companies from France and the USA came knocking on the door. After a few years, it was crystal clear to Ursula: She needed a partner!
And there could only be one: Susanne! Since then, Kafka Kommunikation has been a GmbH & Co KG and has had two managing directors with equal rights. Team Sursel, as their colleagues affectionately call the duo, is passionate about their work. Their goals are always to bring out the best for their consulting clients, to transform creative ideas into convincing reality and to continually further develop exciting topics. Sursel’s motto: “Nothing is impossible!” The agency soon moved to larger premises in Sendling and hired additional colleagues who were eager to grow along with Kafka Kommunikation.
The team at Kafka Kommunikation continued to grow, so the agency relocated from Sendling to Grünwald: first at Auf die Eierwiese 20 and later up the street at Auf die Eierwiese 1. An editor of the Süddeutsche Zeitung said of Kafka Kommunikation: “It’s the nicest agency in Munich!” Kafka Kommunikation won contracts in the USA and China, presented itself in Beijing and San Francisco, and continued to welcome new clients.
Dr. Bastian Hallbauer-Beutler und Claudia Leupold starten bei Kafka Kommunikation. Claudia leitet die Unit für den Bereich „Business to Consumer“ mit Kunden wie Bosch Siemens Hausgeräte oder Russel Hobbs. Bastian übernimmt den Bereich IT- und IT-Security bei Kafka Kommunikation und beide bauen sich ein Team auf.
Susanne und Ursula werden in Berlin von Wirtschaftsminister Sigmar Gabriel als Vorbildunternehmerinnen ausgezeichnet. Seitdem sind beide an Universitäten und Schulen unterwegs, um junge Frauen auf dem Weg zur Unternehmerin zu begleiten. Die Agentur feiert 15jähriges Bestehen mit einer großen Feier und 150 Gästen.
Dr. Bastian Hallbauer-Beutler and Claudia Leupold joined Kafka Kommunikation in 2011, Claudia heading the unit for the “Business to Consumer” area, which serves clients such as Bosch Siemens Hausgeräte and Russel Hobbs, and Bastian taking over the IT and IT security division. Each new unit head built a team of coworkers.