There are many good media professionals. Few of them are content-savvy.
SUSTAINMENT
SUSTAINMENT brings both skills together: Kilian Rüfer is a trained media designer and engineer for renewable energies, and has been communicating exclusively for sustainable companies, projects and NGOs since 2005.
SUSTAINMENT is a well-connected network agency. When needed, we bring in trusted media professionals. We are equally happy to work on your media together with your employees and trusted agencies. Depending on the need, we support specialists with media expertise and media professionals with content expertise. With us, the content of your media is communicated in a technically correct, understandable and engaging way.
free initial consultation
And me?
I was still in the stroller when my mum protested against tree felling. After I came from design school and was fortunate enough to train as a media designer with Marc-Philipp Graf von Bethusy-Huc, it became clear to me that a working life without purpose was out of the question for me.
This “just work anything to survive” story didn’t catch on with me. How could it: We always had everything, thanks to the music professorship that our dad had achieved.
Instead of design, business psychology or business administration, with the fantasy of doing outdoor coaching, I stumbled into a degree in urban trees, during which I built websites for the industry and traveled the world on the fees.
The idea of creating advertising for sustainability came to me several times. Once at an uncle’s house in Bavaria, another time on a flight to family in Canada.
On another flight to Costa Rica, I decided to pursue a master’s degree in renewable raw materials and renewable energies. Renewables are clearly the future. I also found the international nature of renewables attractive.
I wanted to study renewables so that afterwards, as a media maker, I would know what I was talking about. Creative work has always come naturally to me. I most enjoy working together with cheerful creatives. When creatives laugh together, quality emerges.
Inclination + purpose = profession
After my studies, I worked as a media all-rounder communicating for the energy transition. In my early years, I repeatedly received questionable assignments that didn’t seem very meaningful to me from a media perspective. So the need grew in me to take on an advisory role. The earlier I was allowed to have a say, the more I could steer the communication in a media-plausible direction.
I like to start on a blank sheet of paper. Some people simply give me very loose ideas and goals to take along and then let me get on with it. Others already have a fully thought-out plan, within the framework of which I then set about implementing my sub-project.
I came to writing through blogging for the energy transition. My texts were often carried by political outrage and the hope that they would surely lead to a rethink.
My extensive Energieblogger episode ended with the birth of our son and a moving interview with Gerald Hüther, in which it became clear to me how challenging it is to win people over to sustainability whose values, priorities and convictions lie elsewhere. Approval within your own bubble – preaching to the converted – is not enough to win over, for example, classically conservative-minded people for proactive change.
Since then, I have been interested in research findings on climate communication.
What is truly sustainable in its effect? I ask myself this question with every project. It shaped the development of the portal nachhaltig-investieren.com.
I believe in the interplay of diverse – sometimes contradictory – commitments. Every climate protection concept states that the efforts will only be sufficient if almost all measures are quickly implemented.
On an individual level, I believe that our attitudes and how we deal with difficult emotions are just as important as tackling what is feasible. I believe our quality of life increases when we define for ourselves what is enough – less is more.
Knowing what is enough has a sustainable effect.
I am a person who always seeks meaning, thinks along, questions and says what he thinks. I love creative team processes including the associated experiments, mistakes and the justifiable selection from which functioning media emerge.
Do you feel like working with me?