Anyone who a few years ago was looking for contact exchange did not start the computer or a mobile phone app, but instead opened the current newspaper edition armed with a ballpoint pen. While one person was busy rummaging through advertisements, all of which complained as if one could make a personal appointment with Brad Pitt with just one call, the other took the courage to place a contact ad himself. Even out of fashion today,  ads are still placed today that look deep into the wishes of the people who commission them.

Starting with partners, the range extends from escorts for leisure activities to best agers, who prefer to escort strangers to events “instead of always just sitting around” and don’t even charge a fee for it. Foundress of the Changemate agency Luise Loué has collected authentic newspaper advertisements for several years.

Best of newspaper ads

1.This man is tired of enjoying the sweet side of life alone and is therefore looking for a lady who shares his love of life.

2. Stop boredom, this gentleman probably thought when he placed an advertisement in which he offered himself as a companion for occasions and journeys.

3.The party company can also be increased in the twinkling of an eye.

4.The reference “no relationship” as in this newspaper ad often seems to be necessary, because not everyone is looking for a partner for “everything”.

5. This young man tries his luck and cries out for a patroness who will help him financially in return for social appearances and mental support.

Ask yourself what kind of newspaper ad you would place. Would it be a call for a family member? A good friend or a reliable companion who supports you at events and shares important events in your life with you? Or would you like to become part of the life of others and enrich them with your personality? Whatever the answer may be, the Changemate Agency is your contact.

Sources:
Collection of Luise Loué, ads from the Süddeutsche Zeitung, years 2008-2009

Rental family services are on the rise. Not only in reality, but also on the screen. In the following works, the focus is on creating a dream life – magnificently staged.

Here is our selection of film tips to suit the topic:

Family Romance, LLC

Werner Herzog’s 2019 film is about a man who is paid to imitate the missing father of a young girl. Between documentary and fiction, Herzog reports on the principle of the Japanese company Family-Romance, which offers family members for rent. In the leading role of the father is none other than founder and owner Yuichi Ishii himself. A must-see for anyone interested in the topic.

La Belle Époque

In this charming romantic comedy (2019), director Nicolas Bedos revives the France of the 1970s by having the main character Victor, a bitter, abandoned gentleman, stage the evening on which he met his great love Marianne. However, moved by his trip into the past, the lifelike atmosphere and the fascinating actors, Victor has to face the present after numerous productions of one and the same evening.

Heartbreaker

Again from France, Pascal Chaumeil’s (2011) comedy is about the contract seducer Alex, whose job it is to use his charm to get women to break up with their partners. Thus he is hired by an entrepreneur to prevent his daughter from getting married.

Real Humans 

A somewhat different, more futuristic version of the role cast in everyday life is staged by Lars Lundström in this Swedish series from 2012. Hubots – robots equal to humans – are part of society and support people in their daily lives. Their technical complexity allows them to develop feelings and thus provides the series with plenty of material for social drama.

We wish you a lot of fun checking out our film tips! And don’t forget: The life you want does not have to remain fiction – the Changemate Agency helps you to create your dream life. Get in contact with us!

The idea of substitutes replacing roles in everyday life is not yet widely established in Germany. However, there is a need for it, so this is about to change.

The answer to this question is clear: Yes, there is a need for substitutes in everyday roles!

It may not immediately seem easy to let a previously unknown person immerse into one’s own life, even in intimate roles such as that of a parent or good friend. Normally, these are the people with whom you have built up a stable basis of trust over many years and the associated ups and downs. The legitimate question arises whether this can be imitated from nowhere and without a shared history.

However, the psychology behind the scheme is clear: Substitutes in certain roles can contribute significantly to personal development and unfolding (Ruppert, 2007). More and more people are opening up to this idea, even though we are far from the situation in Japan, the birthplace of rental services for family, friends and business partners. Nevertheless, it is, among other things, the same structural social characteristics of modernity that explain the need for such services: Stereotypical gender roles as well as discrimination against women in everyday life and at work, fast pace and superficiality as well as complex living conditions with dense schedules and little capacity for fundamental relationship management.

“More than half of all single parents have no new partner at least until the child reaches the age of majority. The mere presence of a partner would help them find a new home. If you can’t organize a guy who walks around nodding in rooms during the inspection, in the worst case (which is very often) you end up in social hotspots. Again and again the man. He helps, even if only by standing next to you silently.” (Michèle Lötzner: Single, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazine)

Support according to individual needs in agency form is a solution that is already being specifically sought. People want to realize their life and themselves, to enliven their everyday life through inspiring personalities and thus reinvent themselves.

“If I were faced with the shards of my marriage again, I would hire someone to shout out to me all day long what a lovable person I am.” (translation from Jan Fleischhauer: Alles ist besser als noch ein Tag mit dir. Über die Liebe, ihr Ende und das Leben danach.)

There is therefore a need for substitutes in everyday roles. The Changemate Agency works on a professional basis and believes in the realisation of the individual through collective support.

Get in touch with us and stop asking yourself the question of what-if! Book your ideal mother, an attentive friend or a serious companion for your new start today!

Sources:
Ruppert, F. (2007). Seelische Spaltung und innere Heilung: traumatische Erfahrungen integrieren. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.
Michèle Lötzner: Allein stehend, Süddeutsche Zeitung Magazin, Issue 28/2020, 09.7.2020
Fleischhauer, J. (2017). Alles ist besser als noch ein Tag mit dir: Über die Liebe, ihr Ende und das Leben danach. München: Albrecht Knaus Verlag.

Family happiness, friends and business partners for rent? Rental family services make it possible.

In a fast-moving, materialistic world, the Asian region with its population conglomeration represents a special hotspot: Big cities bursting at the seams, superficial moral standards and social isolation shape the social image of the broad masses. The lack of satisfactory personal relationships, coupled with the pressure to marry from one’s own family and the fear of being banished to the social grave of the single person, led to the birth of a new concept in Japan in the early 1990s: the rental family service for friends, family and business partners. Acting agencies developed from this idea fulfilled two different functions. On the one hand, they served to uphold prevailing social etiquette and unwritten laws, and on the other hand, by escaping from loneliness, they enabled the clients to fulfil emotional needs and achieve more far-reaching personal development.

Satsuki Oiwa was the first Japanese woman to fill this market niche. With the Japan Efficiency Corporation, she made everyday roles in a real-life context available for purchase for the first time, and her innovative concept quickly met with approval. Further rental agencies for family members, friends, guests and business partners were subsequently established in Asia, but also spread to the rest of the world.

The agency Family-Romance from Japan, founded by Yuichi Ishii, also successfully continued the model: As temporary help for occasions and family reunions or as a long-term solution, mothers, fathers, brides, grooms as well as an entire wedding party, (grand)children, employees and numerous other roles can be booked in order to give a little help to reality. Rent-a-friend was founded in America in 2009 and is now a worldwide used platform for renting friends and companions for leisure activities. Billing is on an hourly basis – as the booked friend specifies.

If you want to learn more about the origin of the concept of rental services in the area of friendship, family and business, we recommend the radio play feature of Deutschlandfunk Kultur/ WDR 2019 by Jean-Claude Kuner entitled “Fake Family – Menschenverleih in Japan”.

Sources:
https://family-romance.com/
https://rentafriend.com/
https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/inszenierte-beziehungen-fake-family-menschenverleih-in-japan.3682.de.html?dram:article_id=461496
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rental_family_service