Week 1, EOC Volkswagen

Ifenyinwa Anekwe

BUS125

1/17/15

VW “Lemon” Ad

Advertisements of previous generations seemed to focus on being “big.” Coming out of WWII, and a situation where America had to conserve, save and ration, the 1950’s had been about living it up. Bigger homes, bigger families, bigger meals, bigger hair, and bigger cars. The people wanted luxury and decadence; Can you blame them? But with the ushering in of a brand new decade, the 1960’s, there came quite the paradigm shift in the way people thought about their lives. Some might even say this was helped along by a German company by the name of Volkswagen.

Their Beatle car was everything American cars of the 50’s were not. The challenge given to advertising agency BBD was, “To sell a small, basic, ugly , economical, foreign car to a market used to huge, chrome-finned, gadget-stuffed, home-built gas guzzlers.” (http://www.brandstories.net/2012/11/03/vw-beetle-story-lesson-in-brand-persona-development/#sthash.JdBZ4NkZ.dpuf). BBD only took on the project as a means to acquire an account from GM in the future.

Most ads up until that time were fairly straightforward, or leaned on sentimentality, or even exploited consumer fears and anxiety. BBD picked a different strategy. In the words of James Russell, “That’s what Volkswagen’s ad agency, Doyle Dane Bernbach, did 50 years ago in launching a counter-intuitive campaign that poked fun at itself to sell the tiny Beetle. The “Think Small” and “Lemon” ads of 1959 launched a watershed campaign that proved William Bernbach’s “creative revolution” manifesto: “Good taste, good art (and) good writing can be good selling.” (http://www.hagerty.com/articles-videos/Articles/2009/11/02/Watershed-VW-campaign-turns-50).

Another key to their success was not bringing to light the German heritage of the car. With people still reeling from the war, that may have spelled disaster. BBD overcame this in a unique way. Marty Bernstien explains, “In a stroke of marketing super-genius … they ignored it! That’s right, not one VW ad from DDB ever spoke of its German heritage, history and association. The brand was literally invented in America in 1960 by the advertising – primarily print – at the time. There was no historical frame of reference ever. Contrast that with today, when German automotive heritage is a highly valued expression of excellence.” (http://www.businessweek.com/stories/2006-05-09/the-vw-storybusinessweek-business-news-stock-market-and-financial-advice). They were able to create this concept by using a creative team of writers and art directors, in tandem with the famous “Ad Men” who would lend the structure, words and the presentation to the project.

Mary Bernstien goes on to say, “By the late ‘60’s, VW was producing over 1 million Beetles a year around the world. In 1968, a great year for VW, the brand had a 5% share of the U.S. new car market.”