Down the road, Puma's chief executive is clear cut about his vision of the brand known by its leaping cat logo.
"We are international," said Jochen Zeitz, who spends many of his working hours in Boston and speaks five languages. "Many people don't know that we come from Germany."
Given the weight of scepticism about Germany at home and abroad, advertising executives say the rebranding will not be easy.
"It's much more complex than branding Coca Cola," said Eber-hard Beutler, managing director at Saatchi and Saatchi in Frankfurt. "We have an image problem but there is a lot of potential. People need to stop being so pessimistic. There are lots of strong points about Germany, people just need to wake up to that."
Commentators say that Germany needs to modernize its reputation to shake off persistent World War II prejudices.
This was underlined by a high-profile spat over the summer when an Italian minister called Germans "hyper-nationalistic blondes" and Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi compared a German politician to a Nazi concentration camp guard.
In Britain, while the tabloids often return to headlines about "krauts," young Britons like Lee Anthony, a 28 year-old postman, have other stereotypes for the rebranders to worry about.
"Everyone says the war but I wasn't around," he said. "I always think of football when I think of Germany, that and the beer and the fact that they nick the sunbeds on holiday."
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