Franka Stelkens

Why this persona fits the audience

She runs short-form video for a skincare startup in Berlin, maps ideas in Notion, scans niche creators and brand Reels each week, and tests concepts against recent engagement reports and customer comment themes.

• Age: 29
• Location: Berlin, Germany
• Occupation: Content marketer at a DTC startup
• Income: EUR 58k
• Education: Master's degree in digital marketing
• Company size: 12-person startup with 1 full-time content role (Franka)
• Years in role: 2

“I spent three hours yesterday building a Notion database for competitor tracking—then spent two more realizing I could've just used the TikTok 'watch history' function. My life is a series of systems built to fix problems I created by over-engineering solutions to problems that didn't exist.”

Franka Stelkens is a digital marketing pragmatist who stumbled into skincare content by default rather than passion. The daughter of dairy farmers in Schleswig-Holstein, she's the first in her family to leave rural life—and the first to have a job title no one understands. Her Master's thesis on 'user-generated content authenticity' landed her the Berlin startup role, but the reality is far less theoretical. Her tools? A 2023 M2 MacBook, Notion workspaces with 1,237 linked docs, and a Google Sheet that tracks 147 competitor brands across three platforms. Recent decisions include abandoning TikTok's 'trend predictor' tool (too vague) and implementing a 'content vibe' scoring system that ranks Reel ideas 1-5 based on brand alignment. Franka's biggest constraint? The startup's 'grow-at-all-costs' culture clashing with her data-first approach. She's currently trying to convince her CMO that 'spray-and-pray' posting doesn't scale—and that no, a skincare brand shouldn't try 'meme marketing' because 'it's currently trending.' Her relationship to time is meticulous—a symptom of her compulsive need to quantify productivity. Money? She's frugal but indulges in aesthetically pleasing tech (like that $500 standing desk converter) and skincare 'research' (read: impulse buys). Status? She cares about being known as the marketer who 'gets results,' but privately panics that her Notion templates are the peak of her career. Franka's current existential crisis? How to scale content strategy without turning the brand into a 'corporate TikTok account.'

Background & daily life

A day in their life

6:45AM: Franka crushes 30 minutes of yoga before her morning routine. 7:30AM: Cold brew + oats while skimming @DrunkElephant influencer collabs on her iPad. 8:15AM: 30-minute walk to her favorite coworking space (she pays extra for the standing desk). 9:00AM: Morning standup (that somehow always lasts 45 minutes). 10:30AM: Deep work on this week's Reel concepts—testing variations against her 'creator vibe' database. 12:00PM: Café lunch with her UX pal while debating 'quiet luxury' aesthetics. 1:30PM: Excel hell—comparing last quarter's performance against competitors. 3:00PM: Brainstorming session with the CEO (she secretly dreads this). 5:30PM: Evening walk home to prep dinner (usually a sad salad or pre-ordered Thai). 8:00PM: Notion audit—updating her content playbook before bed.

Lifestyle

Franka lives in a sun-dappled Altbau with a 2023 Notion-stickered iMac as her facade and a jumbled stack of beauty product swatches in her bathroom. She eats breakfast standing at the kitchen island ( overnight oats + cold brew ) while scanning competitor Reels on her iPad. Weekends involve running along the Spree, flea market thrifting, and a standing date with her cousin for Thai leftover feasts. She's tapped out her 'disco budget' for now (since moving to Berlin seven years ago), but admits the occasional 11PM 'treat yourself' purchase of a indie-skincare set. Her social life revolves around startup marketing slack channels and a close-knit group of former uni classmates who now work in e-commerce.

Work life

Franka spends 70% of her workday in Notion—creating content calendars with linked performance reports—or crouched behind her MacBook at a Berlin café cross-referencing Excel engagement dashboards. Her startup's 'move fast' mantra makes her nervous until she sees the data. She's currently testing TikTok's new 'spark ad' system against in-house UGC and figuring how to explain viral flops to her CMO. Her biggest pain point? The 45-minute weekly ritual of compiling competitor benchmarking in spreadsheets she'll never show to anyone. Coworkers describe her as the 'anti-hype' marketer who demands A/B test results before greenlighting trends.

Relationships

Franka's 'work bestie' (a NoPanic copywriter from Bologna) and her cousin (who runs an indie accessories shop) are her main influences. She has a love-hate relationship with her marketing mentor—whose harsh critiques ended up making her the artist-formerly-known-as-impulsive. Family visits to her parents' dairy farm in Schleswig-Holstein force her to disconnect, which she technically enjoys but secretly dreads as 'wasted productivity time.'

How they decide

Research-heavy pattern-recognizer who builds decision matrices for even minor choices, then occasionally overrides them on gut (but only when her Notion trackers show patterns). Hates being sold to but does respond to 'here's what the data shows' framing—even if the data comes from a friend's casual DM.

How they sound

Her speech pattern is rapid-fire German-English hybrid, laced with marketing jargon and abrupt pauses to self-edit. Uses 'literally' as an intensifier and avoids saying 'just' (because she read about women being conditioned to downplay expertise). She'll say 'I'm conflicted' when she's actually furious, and 'we need to A/B test this' when she wants to say 'this is terrible.'