From a forgotten room came
a brand that lasts.

"It's a Long Way to the Top If You Wanna Rock 'N' Roll." What AC/DC sang about music careers in 1975 applies to rooms too. Most venues chase the quick hit. Few build brands that still hold up eight years later.

In 2017 the Jahrhunderthalle Frankfurt came to me. On the big stage upstairs, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Tina Turner, and Johnny Cash had played. History with weight. The hall is a Frankfurt institution. But the 1960s bar beneath it had been silent for years. A room with a past, without a present.

You know the situation: there's a place that has it all — location, history, atmosphere — and nothing is happening.

Working backward from the end

The real bottleneck wasn't "another new concert format in Frankfurt." There are enough of those. We went at it differently — from the end, step by step.

Why at all? Jahrhunderthalle's answer was clear: we want to bring this room to life. We want to give this second meaningful place back to the city. People meeting people. Drinking, celebrating, being there — the way it used to be. It wasn't about a concept for the sake of a concept. It was about breathing life back into a sleeping place.

What do we do with it? If we want to bring back the original spirit, we need what historically gave this room life: artistic flair. The medium was set — concerts. But concerts exist everywhere. And Jahrhunderthalle is in Frankfurt-Höchst, not the city center.

How do we make someone travel out there on purpose? That was the actual design task. People can stay in central Frankfurt. They need a reason to head out to Höchst and experience something they can't get anywhere else. We found an answer to that question.

The concept

The answer was the Musiksneak. Three stages, built in a circle around the audience. No frontal setting, no "us versus them." The room itself has a circular shape, so we used exactly that. Three acts per evening, no advance announcement. And a fixed host: the poetry slammer Finn Holitzka, whom I brought on for the format. He opens every evening from a swing in the middle of the audience, with a lyrical intro, before the first note plays.

Picture it: you come in, you don't know who's playing, the setting is circular instead of frontal, and the evening starts with poetry on a swing. The promise to guests wasn't an artist name on a poster — it was trust. In the booking, in the setting, in the evening.

Stakeholders built into the concept

A format only holds if everyone involved gets value out of it. For Musiksneak, that was four groups, and the answer had to land for each. The artists get a curated stage with serious sound quality and an audience that's there for the format, not for famous names. That's real attention. The Jahrhunderthalle gets a second pillar alongside the big events — a recurring format with its own brand that brings cultural radiance back to the city. The guests get something they can't get anywhere else: an evening where they can be surprised and bring friends, because the concept convinces — not the line-up. And we, the makers, get a format that sustains itself: economically, organizationally, artistically. When all four answers line up, you don't have an event month. You have a brand.

What I actually built

What wasn't there had to be created: the brand, the concept, the slogan, the logo, the room dramaturgy. I didn't advise — I built.

In detail: I sketched the stage layout and worked it through with the hall's technical team. I found Finn Holitzka and brought him in as the format's anchor. I set up the artist pipeline — the logic for which acts run in which position and with what promise — and defined the booking strategy. I managed the first concerts entirely myself, from artist acquisition to the evening itself. Ticketing and pricing we developed together with the Jahrhunderthalle.

What was hard

The biggest risk wasn't the format itself. It was the question of whether an audience would travel to Frankfurt-Höchst — for three acts whose names they didn't know. Trust was all we were selling.

We designed the format together, with a strong team on the Jahrhunderthalle side. That included the then Managing Director Uschi Ottersberg, the authorized officer Moritz Jaeschke (today Managing Director of Jahrhunderthalle Frankfurt), and Ellen Giersberg. Without this circle, Musiksneak would never have come together in the form it runs today.

The first evening was a direct success. Ellen Giersberg's PR work played a major role — she placed the concept in advance where it landed. What began as an uncertain experiment had an audience from night one.

What it meant

Today, almost eight years later, Musiksneak is a fixture in Frankfurt's concert calendar. Its own brand within the Jahrhunderthalle. A returning audience. Regular utilization of a previously unused room. A format that stands on its own — economically and as a brand.

It was never really just about music. It was about bringing a place to life. And the principle transfers — to other rooms, brands, structures that still have to find their meaning.