“It’s time to end the clichés about Germany,” says the blonde supermodel who helped to promote her country’s bid to host the World Cup.

The tournament kicks off on Friday and the spotlight will shine on Germany for five weeks, exposing its cracks and self-doubts but also providing Angela Merkel, the Chancellor, with a unique chance to change the national image.

A million tourists are expected to visit the country; hundreds of millions will watch on TV. The audience for the final on July 9 will be more than one billion. It is an ad man’s dream.

“We want to do this with lightness,” said Schiffer in an interview with The Times. “We need to show that Germans really do have a sense of humour and a creative flair.”

The London-based model is promoting a campaign called The Land of Ideas, which is supposed to show the world that Germany is more than Hitler and the Nazis: the country is, among other things, a land of inventors who came up with the aspirin, the laptop and the spiked running shoe.

Schiffer’s own Big Idea is to wrap herself naked in the German flag, which — since the result will be shown on billboards in London, New York and Tokyo — is not a bad idea at all. The caption will read: “Come over to my place.”

Everyone passing for a celebrity has been signed up for the last-minute surge of image-boosting propaganda. President Köhler, who coined the phrase The Land of Ideas, appears on posters wrapped in what appears to be a condom. Heidi Klum, the model, has been signed up by the Foreign Ministry to promote German cooking.

Using football to repackage a country may well have begun in Britain, when Euro 96 heralded the Cool Britannia campaign. The difference is that the Germans have ploughed massive resources into their self-promotion.

For a start, there are the dozen stadiums, refurbished, streamlined or — in the case of the remarkable Munich Allianz stadium — built from scratch. The bill for that is about €1.5 billion (£1.1 billion). Approach roads, motorway extensions and airport upgrading has nudged the bill closer to €4 billion.

There is, too, a surge of extraordinary new architecture, not all of it directly related to the World Cup — the railway station in Berlin and a new Mercedes museum, both unveiled in the past month — that underpins Germany’s claim to be the European centre of good design.

And then there is the sudden commitment to being friendly, to creating a service culture that could survive beyond the World Cup.

Waitresses are being trained to say: “Did you enjoy your meal?” (hat es geschmeckt?) rather than the more common “Well, are you full?” (Na, satt geworden?) Bus and taxi drivers have been learning English. There are Laugh Academies, Smile Schools. For many, an embarrassment.

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