References and Further info
One subject I picked up an interest in back in college was advertising. I found out while studying graphic design that I was good at making ads. This led me to study the subject, learning how it works, its history and the people who made them.
The following resource is worth highlighting. This catalogue of the ads was first published in 1982. The 2014 edition includes billboard ads which are rarely mentioned in other sources. As a result, this particular book has become a collector's item, demanding collector prices (£45 on eBay in my case … plus postage and packaging).
Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads? - Alfredo Marcantonio, David Abbott, John O'Driscoll (Merrell, 2014, ISBN: 9781858946344)
Video - Remember Those Great Volkswagen Ads? (Joe Marcantonio, 2016)
This next book is a stripped-down version of the above book. The copy I bought belonged to a long-time British fan of VWs since his RAF days posted in post-war Germany. His son wrote a letter in it for me, thanking me for the purchase hoping it has good new home.
Is The Bug Dead?: The Great Beetle Ad Campaign - Alfredo Marcantonio (Stewart, Tabori & Chang Publishers, 1982, ISBN: 0-941434-24-9)
For those wondering how the Beetle was advertised before DDB took over, these two books are a good resource.
VW Advertising: The art of selling the air-cooled Volkswagens - Richard Copping (Herridge & Sons Ltd, 2014, ISBN: 978-1-906133-63-4)
And for a British perspective ....
Advertising the Beetle 1953-1978 - Daniel Young (Yesteryear Books, 1993, ISBN: 1-873078-14-5)
A collect of VW Beetle ads - www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/ads/adst1.php
Ugly Is Only Skin-Deep: The Story of the Ads That Changed the World - Dominik Imseng (Matador, 2016) Kindle Edition.
'I just wrote some ads': Julian Koenig, the legendary copywriter behind Volkswagen’s 'Think small' campaign, looks back on his advertising career - Dave Birss (The Drum, 13th December 2013)
An interview with Helmut Krone (DDB News, September 1968)
Krone on Brodovitch (DDB News, February 1974)
Helmut Krone, Period. – Michael Bierut (Design Observer, 23rd August 2006)
The Real Mad Men: The Remarkable True Story of Madison Avenue's Golden Age, when a Handful of Renegades Changed Advertising for Ever - Andrew Cracknell (Quercus, 2011, ISBN: 978-0-85738-427-0)
The Mirror Makers: A History of American Advertising & Its Creators - Stephen Fox (University of Illinois Press, 1997, ISBN: 0-252-06659-6)
The Advertising Age Encyclopedia of Advertising - John McDonough, Karen Egolf (Taylor & Francis, 2015, ISBN: 978-1-135-94906 8)
Twenty Ads That Shook The World: The Century's Most Ground-breaking Advertising and How It Changed Us All - James B. Twitchell (Three Rivers Press, 2000, ISBN: 0-609-80723-4)
Just Doing It.: 100 people who made advertising and our lives different - Pia Elliott (Homeless Books, 2014, ISBN: 978-88-98969-34-0)
Get Smashed: The Story of the men who made the adverts that changed our lives - Sam Delaney (Sceptre, 2007, ISBN: 978-0-340-92250 7)
Advertising Today - Warren Berger (Phaidon Press, 2001, ISBN: 0-7148-4387-3)
20th Century Advertising - Dave Saunders (Carlton, 1999, ISBN: 1 85868 520 6)
US Sales figures of the VW Beetle
Think Small – the ad that changed advertising
If you flick through a book cataloguing
advertising in the 20th century, you will notice a big change in the
design and approach in ads from the 1960s onwards. Before, many ads were passive
works of art of a fantasy that involved the product in some way, presented in
the best way possible. Many featured a lot of text, wax lyrical about the
product or service, even occasionally creating new words, like “futuramic”
(invented by Oldsmobile in 1948). It’s like the artwork and copy were done
separately, which is exactly how these ads were made. The art and text rarely
interacted with each other in ads until the 1960s. So, what changed? The simple
answer is that some ad agencies began having the copywriters and art directors
collaborate to create art and copy that work together to communicate a more
effective message. Advertising people call this simple change in how ads were
made the "Creative Revolution,” and many credit one particular ad for starting
it all off – an ad that first appeared in America in 1959 telling us to “Think
Small” about the Volkswagen Beetle.
“Our job is to kill the cleverness that makes us shine instead of the product. Our job is to simplify, tearaway the unrelated, to pluck away the weeds that are smothering the product message.” – Bill Bernbach
“Imitation can be commercial suicide. It’s not
just what you say that stirs people. It’s the way that you say it.” – Bill
Bernbach
“I wouldn’t hesitate for a second to choose the plain looking ad that is alive and vital and meaningful, over the ad that is beautiful but dumb.” – Bill Bernbach
Bill and the Creative
Revolution
“Think Small” is the product of ad agency Doyle
Dane Bernbach, founded in Manhattan by James Edwin Doyle, Maxwell Dane, and
William Bernbach in 1949.
From the start, DDB (led creatively by Bill) used
the “soft-sell” approach in making ads. Instead of “hard-selling,” where ads
just had a picture of the product and a bunch of copy saying “this is the
product and here’s why you should buy it,” (which everyone else was doing at
the time).
DDB used images first, then a small amount of
copy, involving catchy slogans and witty humor to sell the product. This was
achieved by a seemingly radical idea – getting art directors and copywriters
(who once worked separately) work together as a team to create ads. This has
become common practice in advertising since.
Beginning with department store Ohrbach's, DDB created ads in their revolutionary way for Avis Car Rentals, Levy’s Rye Bread, Polaroid, Life breakfast cereal, EL AL Israel Airlines, and … Volkswagen.
The Bug Comes to America
On the same day DDB opened shop, the first officially
imported Volkswagen arrived in America. (a few were imported by G.I.s who liked
them when they were stationed in Germany after the war.)
However, World War II was still a raw memory, with
many Americans seeing it as the “Führer’s car.”
Also, Americans were falling in love with big cars
that looked like planes, making the Beetle look out of place on the American
highway.
In 1949 Volkswagen only managed to sell two
Beetles in America. However, the Beetle got a few favorable reviews in the
press, citing it as a cheap and reliable low-milage car that can cope with in
rough conditions.
By 1953, VW sold a total of just over 1,500 Beetles
in the U.S.
But as the 1950s continued, Detroit continued its
pattern of making large shiny gas guzzlers that were made to only last a few
years to make you buy the next new model. Some Americans were getting fed up
with this con and saw the Beetle (and other small European cars) as an
attractive alternative.
Additionally, two-car households were increasing,
and a cheap second car freed up cash for other purchases.
A base-model Beetle sedan cost $1,495** in 1954.
For comparison, the cheapest new car Chevrolet
sold in 1954 cost $1,539*
The cheapest Ford cost $1,548*
The cheapest Hudson cost $1,621*
The cheapest Plymouth cost $1,947*
The cheapest Studebaker cost $1,758*
(The 1954 Nash Metropolitan hardtop coupe cost $1,445* But it was manufactured in England, so it doesn’t count.)
As a result, by 1959, Volkswagen sold nearly190,000 Beetles total in the U.S. And another 88,857 in 1959 alone … and there was a six-month waiting list.
And all this was achieved without traditional advertising!
** https://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/info/salesfigurest1.php
*American Cars, 1946 to 1959, Every Model, Every Year - J. Kelly Flory, Jr (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2008, ISBN: 978-0-7846-3229-5)
Autos: Import Revival - Time (24th November 1961)
“I’ve always objected to the materialism of the American Way of Life, and of course I was attacking Detroit by making the Volkswagen the antithesis of planned obsolescence. But Think small and the other ads that I did were not created to create a different society. I only wanted to position the Volkswagen as distinctly as possible, not tear down the establishment.”- Julian Koenig, copywriter of “Think Small”
Detroit Reacts to the Bug
American carmakers took notice of Volkswagen’s
sales in the late-1950s and announced the creation of their own “compact” cars
to compete against the Beetle.
They were confident, with each compact having a marketing budget of $10million. The over-confident general manager of Chevrolet, Ed Cole, actually said “Volkswagen will be out of business in this country in two years.”
Chevrolet Corvair avg. Price $2,082*
“Specifically designed the way a compact car should be.”
Plymouth Valiant avg. Price $2,341*
“Valiant is the car you’d want at any price.”
Ford Falcon avg. Price $2,100* “The new-size Ford”
*American Cars, 1960 to 1972, Every Model, Every Year - J. Kelly Flory, Jr (McFarland & Company, Inc., 2004, ISBN: 978-0-7846-1273-0)
Until this point, Volkswagen only ran corporate
ads, produced by their own advertising department in Wolfsburg.
It was a low-profile strategy that was approved by legendary ad man Howard Luck Gossage. He believed the Beetle didn’t need advertising. The car could sell itself.
“Volkswagen came to [Howard Luck Gossage] … and they wanted him to do the advertising … he looked at the car and then told them ‘You know, this product is like a Hershey Bar … You don’t need to advertise this. It isn’t necessary. It’s going to sell well.’” – Sally Kemp (Howard Luck Gossman’s widow)
But with Detroit pulling out the big guns against
them, Volkswagen of America decided it’s time to invest in proper advertising.
DDB comes to Volkswagen via
Arthur
Arthur Stanton was the American who bought the
first imported Volkswagen, from a Dutch importer, in 1949. That same year he
was awarded the franchise to sell the Beetle in North Africa.
After been successful there, he recommended
Volkswagen to set up an organized distribution system, which they did. Arthur
was then given the rights to distribute Volkswagens east of the Mississippi.
His distributorship, World-Wide Volkswagen Crop, was founded in 1954.
Arthur was the owner of Queensboro Motors, a
Volkswagen dealership in New York, and was curious about the ads for Ohrbach’s.
During a dinner party, his wife asked photographer Richard Avedon about who
made the Ohrbach’s ads, and he answered DDB.
Arthur contacted DDB and invited them to develop a
concept for the dealership’s grand opening. He liked what they made. So much so
that he asked DDB’s account supervisor Ed Russell to take their ad to
Volkswagen of America and show it to their PR chief Scott Stewart and Helmut Schmitz,
assistant to advertising manager Paul Lee.
Apart from a tiny disagreement with the copy, the
two men liked the ad. Convinced that DDB should handle Volkswagen’s national campaign,
Arthur invited Ed, Paul Lee, Manuel Hinke (VW’s export chief) and Carl Hahn to
a breakfast meeting at the Plaza Hotel in New York. He told Ed to “Bring that
Grand Opening ad along, … I want you to show it to them.”
Volkswagen comes to DDB
In 1959 Carl Horst Hahn was appointed General
Manager of Volkswagen of America. He had been Head of Sales Promotions in
Volkswagen’s export department back in Germany.
He learned about the power of advertising during
his youth, when his dad was senior manager of DKW and co-founder of the Auto
Union (later Audi). He admired the work of Auto Union’s head of advertising,
Ludwig von Holzschuher, who later created propaganda posters for the
government. “I thus knew about the power of effective advertising.”
During his first months on the job, Carl looked
around for agencies to create their new campaign. Despite initial impressions,
most of them were producing subpar work….
“We had looked at about a dozen agencies, the
biggest and most beautiful Madison Avenue had to offer. They all made huge
presentations in wonderful meeting rooms full of chairmen of the board,
Executive Vice Presidents, Senior Vice Presidents, and Vice Presidents. But we
were extremely disappointed. All we saw were Volkswagen ads that looked exactly
like every other ad – an airline ad, a cigarette ad, a toothpaste ad. The only
difference was that where the tube of toothpaste had been, they and placed a Volkswagen.”
Then, Carl was invited to that breakfast at the
Plaza Hotel, where he was introduced to DDB. Weeks later Carl visit DDB, and
the experience was very different….
“Bill Bernbach, Ned Doyle, and Maxwell Dane received us in Bernbach’s windowless office, with nothing offered but water. Bernbach didn’t make any presentation in the proper sense. He just showed us work that DDB had done for other clients and explained to us his way of thinking.”
Bill believed that clients should be able to judge an ad agency by their work with other clients. “We didn’t prepare anything special for them. We just show prospects [potential customers] ads we’re done for other clients. The only thing we try to sell them on is that we are advertising man and know our business. We told VW, ’You know your business better than we’ll ever know. But we know advertising better than you.’”
Carl was such a client. “I especially liked the ad ‘No Goose No Gander’ for El Al and the campaigns for Polaroid and Ohrbach’s.”
In 1957 El Al became the first airline to offer non-stop transatlantic flights. Before, westbound planes had to stop and refuel at Goose Bay, Labrador, or Gander, Newfoundland. DDB created the ‘No Goose No Gander’ slogan to emphasize this.
Carl’s first impression of Bill was of an intelligent,
factual, warm-hearted, honest and extremely creative man. “He was no primitive
salesman, more of an erudite philosopher with whom you could discuss things
really well.”
After his experience with around 120 other agencies,
DDB was a breath of fresh air. In the end “We chose DDB because of its
outstanding creativity.” In July 1959 Volkswagen and DDB signed a contract for
a nationwide ad campaign, with a budget of $600,000.
DDB go to Germany
“In ten short years the Volkswagen has risen from total obscurity to become a household name on every continent … Because it does not pretend to be anything but what it is—an honest car.” – Heinz Heinrich Nordhoff, Managing Director of Volkswagen, introducing the 1958 Beetle
After awarding them their account, Carl invited DDB to Wolfsburg to learn more about Volkswagen’s philosophy from the source “From the men at the assembly line to the managers. How they functioned. How they lived.”
“We spent days talking to engineers, production men,
executives, workers on the assembly line. We marched side by side with the
molten metal that hardened into the engine, and kept going until every part was
finally in place … We were immersed in the making of a Volkswagen and we knew
what our theme had to be. We knew what distinguished the car. We knew what we
had to tell the American public. We had seen the quality of materials that were
used. We had seen the almost incredible precautions taken to avoid mistakes. We
had seen the costly system of inspection that turned back cars that would never
have been turned down by the customer. We had seen the impressive efficiency
that resulted in such an unbelievably low price and such a quality product. We
had seen the pride of craftmanship in the worker that made him exceed even the
highest standards set for him.
Yes, this was an honest car. We had found
our selling proposition.” – Bill Bernbach
The King and the Crown
DDB had a practice of hiring talent from varied
backgrounds.
Until DDB came along, most of Madison Avenue was mostly
populated by white protestant males.
DDB broke the trend by been founded by Doyle (a Catholic), Dane and Bernbach (who were Jewish). DDB was a multicultural place, employing many second-generation immigrants and minorities. This led to many ideas that no white protestant male American would have even conceive been used in ads, such as Yiddish humor.
Additionally, DDB drew from graduates from art schools and English departments, instead from economics and law school, where other agencies got their staff. This led to DDB having a less rigid business culture than typical ad agencies at the time, resulting in more creative output.
This is reflected in two visitors to Wolfsberg - art
director Helmut Krone and copywriter Julian Norman Koenig. Their names suggest
a great partnership (Koenig is German for “king” and Krone is German for
“crown”). The two worked on the grand opening brochure for Queensboro Motors.
“Among art directors there’s Helmut Krone and then there’s everybody else.” – Bob Levenson, copywriter
Helmut Krone (1925-1996)
Helmut was the son of German immigrants in
Yorkville. He originally planned to be a product designer, enrolling at the
School of Industrial Art in New York. But changed his mind after seeing the
work of Paul Rand, Lester Beall, and other graphic designers.
After some time in the Navy (because of World War
II) Helmut studied under Alexey Brodovitch in the New School of Social Research
in New York in 1946, which was a “little Bauhaus.”
After graduating he worked for graphic designer
Robert Greenwell.
In 1950, he visited the New York Art Directors
Show, which was already dominated by work from DDB. Seeing their work, he
decided to enter advertising.
After some time in Esquire magazine, pharmaceutical agency Sudler & Hennessey and fashion agency Diamond Barnett, Helmut joined DDB in 1954.
“I was 29. Not a kid anymore. I had worked around a lot before then … I had stayed away from hardcore advertising, however. It’s not something you did if you had principles in those days. Instead, you took refuge in editorial design for magazines, ads for fashion agencies, annual reports, and pharmaceutical packaging. That was before Bernbach started his agency. When I saw those first ads out of Doyle Dane Bernbach, my eyes popped out of their sockets and I decided advertising could be so good it was worth doing. [Bernbach] changed the face of advertising. He turned it into a profession. You could now go into advertising and tell your mother what you did for a living.”
Apart from founding his own ad agency in 1969 (Case & Krone), Helmut worked for DDB throughout his life, where he worked on ads for Avis Car Rentals, Audi, Porsche, and Polaroid.
Helmut was a perfectionist who didn’t settle for
second-best… which wasn’t always a good thing.
Fellow DDB art director Bob Kuperman said the following…. “He would produce a thousand layouts all of which nobody could tell the difference of. I remember that they put him on a new account called Metrecal [a powdered diet food], but Helmut took so long to do the work that DDB lost the client.”
He was a hard person to work with. Copywriter Davis Herzbrun recalled: “When I told a couple of people that I was scheduled to work with Krone, they warned me to prepare for bluntness, rudeness, arrogance, intolerance, cruelty, and stubbornness, and to be prepared to deal with these for a long time.”
“I got on Volkswagen because I was the only one
who'd ever heard of the car. I had one of the first Volkswagens in the United
States, probably one of the first hundred, long before I ever worked here.”
Julian Koenig (1921-2014)
Julian was the son of a Jewish family of New York
lawyers and judges. He studied at Dartmouth College and (briefly) at Columbia
Law School before dropping out to write an unpublished novel.
In 1946, he and writer friend Eliot Asinof, co-owed
a semi-pro baseball team – the Yonkers Indians. It went bust a year later.
He became a copywriter in 1946 “out of lack of any
other opportunity.”
He worked a few agencies, including Hirshon
Garfield, where, in 1956, he developed the torture test ads for Timex watches
and their slogan “it takes a licking and keeps on ticking.”
After some time in the Ellington Agency, where he
couldn’t get a good ad through, he quit advertising and became a professional horse
race gambler.
In 1958, DDB copywriter Rita Selden told him about
an opening. He applied “because this was a new form of advertising where copy
and art worked together.” That’s despite the job offering “less money than I
was making at the track.”
One of his first assignments at DDB was the Queensboro Motors dealership ad.
Julian left DDB to find his own ad agency, Papert
Koenig Lois, in the end of 1959. Afterwards, he was involved in the creation (and
naming) of Earth Day.
He also claimed to have invented thumb wrestling when
he was a counselor in summer camp in 1936.
“We have to sell a Nazi car in
a Jewish town” – George Lois, at director (1931-2022)
George Lois, a son of Greek immigrants who worked in DDB at the time, summed up initial misgivings about the account with the above quote. The Nazi connection with Volkswagen was a thorny issue in an agency partly staffed (and founded) by Jews.
“Well, to be completely honest, I was wondering
what was going on in Bernbach’s head, because the car really had Nazi
connotations to it.
Then he said to me, ‘Not only do we now have the account, but you are it.’ And I said, ‘Me? Why me? What have I done?’” – Helmut Krone
George claims that “Bill told me that he only wanted to keep Volkswagen for a year or so, to prove that DDB could create truly great car advertising, too, and land the giant GM car account.”
But there is doubt in the claim, made more so by George’s reputation for stealing other creators’ credit for ads, including “Think Small.”
“Nonsense … It was one of Bernbach’s principles that the agency would never dump an account in order to take on a bigger rival.” – Julian Koenig
Whatever the truth, DDB was given the task of selling
“a Nazi car in a Jewish town.”
Not surprisingly, DDB’s creatives initially
explored the Nazi angle to get it out of their systems. Julian, for example,
proposed an ad showing a picture of Hitler with the headline “The man behind
the Volkswagen.”
And there is the time George made a flick book where the VW logo morphed into a Swastika. Bill saw it, and said “Very funny, George - Now burn it.”
Julian, on the other hand, thought differently. “Why
should I have had a problem with selling the Beetle? …
Its first U.S. distributors were all Jews, and by 1959, Germany and Israel had started getting along, with a lot of reparations from Germany to Israel. I don’t remember anyone at DDB—nor any of its clients for that matter—having a problem with the account, with the exception of copywriter David Reider maybe.”
Even George was persuaded in the end. One day in
his office …
“It had those fogged glass windows and I could see
Bill lurking outside. Then he opened the door a crack and stuck his head round
the corner, like The Shining – “Heeere’s Johney!” – and said “Look at
this”. Then he Shoved a newspaper through the gap and held it up so I could
read the headline; “Germany sells fighter jets to Israel”. He said “It’s
alright, see?”. So eventually I agreed.”
“We just took [the] product and said what made it good. And we were fortunate that there was a lot to say about the VW.” – Julian Koenig
It was through a discovery by account supervisor
Ed Russell that the tone of the campaign was found.
He found that Beetle owners often had to justify their
choice of car to others. Why buy a small car? Why is the engine at the back? Why
haven’t they changed its styling?
This made Helmut and Julian think. What if we tell them why? Highlight why you should by a Volkswagen, despite been small and odd.
However, Helmut didn’t like this approach ….
“I was dead set against the Volkswagen campaign as we did it. I felt that the thing to do with this ugly little car was to make it as American as possible, as fast as possible. Like, let's get [singer] Dinah Shore also. What's that thing she used to sing? "See the USA in your Chevrolet." I wanted "See the USA in your Volkswagen." With models around the car and TV extravaganzas.”
Thankfully, Bill Bernbach prevented this from happening.
“… the whole concept of speaking simply, clearly
and with charm belongs to him. There was nothing new about the Volkswagen idea,
the only thing was that we applied it to a car.
Probably eight years before that, Bernbach did an
ad for Fairmont strawberries where he showed a whole strawberry in the middle
of a big page, just one life-sized strawberry.
And the headline was: "It seemed a pity to
cut it up." What they were selling were the only whole frozen strawberries
on the market.
The point being that a strawberry has to be
perfect in order to keep it whole.
Volkswagen is not any different from that ad that
he did a long time before.
The only thing different about it was its application to cars - and that's different enough.” - Helmut Krone
This honest approach to the subject gave the
product a personality. The product was no longer a mindless trinket sold in a
marketplace by a talky salesman (like most other ads at the time). It was a
sentient being with feelings you can have empathy with. The strawberry is too
nice to cut. The Beetle is tough but friendly dependable pal battling against
the big boys of Detroit. No car ad had given their car such treatment before.
Additionally, the ad broke the fourth wall, involving the viewer in the ad’s message. The ads don’t treat the viewer as a passive consumer. They make the viewer engage with it, getting their mind to enter the ad space to interpret it … and getting the product in the viewer’s mind while doing so.
Still, it took a while for Helmut to see the light....
“… I felt so strongly that we were doing the wrong thing … that I finished up three ads, went on vacation to St. Thomas [the Virgin Islands], depressed, came back two weeks later, and I was a star.”
Fairmont frozen strawberries ad
(c.1956)
The Ads Before Think Small
The first ads of Volkswagen’s new campaign ran in Life magazine in August 1959.
The first ad (August 3 issue), “Is Volkswagen
contemplating a change?” showed a 1959 Beetle next to a 1960 Beetle under
wraps. Despite the covering, the viewer can see that the 1960 car looks the
same as the 1959 one, the Beetle’s unchanging design.
The second ad (August 10 issue), “Why the engine
in the back?” showed the rear of a Beetle with its engine lid open, revealing
the engine. The copy explained why and its benefits.
The third ad (August 17 issue), “Why are people
buying Volkswagens faster than they can be made?”, was a long-worded ad,
highlighting eight good reasons to buy one.
The fourth ad (August 24 issue), “198 lbs (Why
Volkswagen’s aluminum engine is still years ahead of its time)”, showed a
Beetle engine held up by a person, highlighting its lightweight.
The fifth ad (August 31 issue), “Gerhard Baecker
teaches Volkswagen (Or why Volkswagen service is as good as the car)” showed a “teacher”
(who’s actually DDB art director Bill Taubin) in front of a blackboard,
featuring technical drawings of the Beetle, appearing to instruct VW mechanics.
The sixth ad (November 16 issue), “The only water a Volkswagen needs is the water you wash it with.”, showing a lathered Beetle, is when (in the words of Helmut Krone’s biographer Clive Challis) the “artillery had moved into position and found precise aim”.
There is a claim that this ad was the first to have a headline that featured a full stop … on purpose. Helmut Krone has said “Doyle Dane took the exclamation point out of advertising, …. I put in the period.”
The seventh ad (November 23 issue), “What year car
doe the Jone’s Drive?” is the fist two-page ad of the campaign.
The eighth ad (February 8 1960 issue), “Repair
‘em? I’ve got enough parts to build ‘em!” shows Dale Tuttle, Manager of Soo
Imports, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, presiding over a complete collection of Beetle
parts.
Then came the
ninth ad (February 22 issue), “Think Small” …..
After another ad (march 14 issue), “Why are so many people looking into the Volkswagen?”, came the other icon of the campaign (April 11 issue) …. “Lemon”
“I suppose you want to make the car small?” – Helmut Krone
The creation of the ad that changed advertising
began in the fall of 1959, when Volkswagen asked DDB for an ad to appear in a
publication from New Jersey’s chamber of commerce.
According to account supervisor Ed Russell, the brief
called for a corporate ad in which Volkswagen of America “would talk about how
much ‘Made in U.S.A.’ was used to make the Volkswagen” (such as Pittsburgh
steel stamped out on Chicago presses).
Initially, Helmut and Julian had the idea of an ad
featuring the new compact cars from Detroit, with the headline “Willkommen”
(German for “Welcome”). This idea was rejected for been “snotty.” But during
this creation, Julian hit on an idea….
“I suggested to Helmut an ad with Think small as the headline, because at that time, American cars were big, America thought big. But Helmut rejected the line, because it was an abstract notion. After a couple of days of arguing, I changed the headline to the German line Willkommen—in the sense of ‘Welcome to the Volkswagen’—and put the words Think small in the body copy. The ad, showing a small Beetle, was presented by the account people to Volkswagen in New Jersey. Helmut Schmitz didn’t like the line Willkommen, which he thought too German. But while reading the body copy, he discovered and liked the words Think small.”
So, through Helmut Schmitz’ intervention, “Think Small” was born.
However, Helmut didn’t like it and refused to finalize the ad.
Here’s when George Lois enters the picture….
“Julian came to me and said, ‘I want to do an ad
for Volkswagen, and I can’t get Helmut to do it.’”
So, Julian told George about his Think Small idea.
George responded …..
“Jesus Christ, that’s a great line. You got to convince Krone to do it. You got to force him to do it!”
It took two days for Helmut to finally relent and make Think Small. But, by then, the ad’s requirements had changed, from a corporate ad to a product ad. So, it had to feature a picture of a Beetle. Reluctantly, to Krone, the only logical thing to do was to make the car small.
It took him several days to decide where to put
the image of the car. He placed it in the upper left-hand corner at a slight
angle, to give the ad a graphical twist that was disruptive as the headline.
A couple of weeks later, Helmut labored on the ad
again, reducing the size of the headline, and sharpen the angle of the car, to
make a version of consumer publications.
Julian wrote new copy for this version, which began with the real story of “18 New York University students [had] gotten into a sun-roof VW; a tight fit”. It ended with: “In 1959 about 120,000 Americans thought small and bought VWs. Think about it.”
This ad appeared in the 22nd February
1960 issue of Life magazine.
The Anatomy of “Think Small”
Imagine its 1960 and you just obtained the 22nd
February issue of Life magazine. You flick through it, seeing the usual
ads for Philco television sets, Campbell’s soup, and cars from General Motors. Nearly
half way through it, on page 43, you notice a seemingly blank page. You examine
it further and find it isn’t completely blank. There is a small photograph of a
car on the left-hand corner. Below is some text, with a headline saying “Think
Small.” Curious, you read the copy, talking about how small and economical the
Volkswagen Beetle is, compared to typical American cars, ending with the words
“think it over.” “Ah!,” and you turn the page.
But the ad, with its unusual look, stays in your
mind. You begin to “Think Small” as you see another car ad. After seeing “Think
Small” all those other cars you see advertised look ridiculously big. In a
country where “big is better” this ad was a direct challenge to that belief. You
might consider getting a smaller car in the future … maybe a Volkswagen.
This ad is considered the advertising equivalent
to “the shot heard around the world.” It showed the world what ads can be when
art directors and copywriters worked together. It’s no understatement to say
this ad changed advertising.
Compared to earlier ads, this ad is a
cleverly-thought out example of Bauhaus-inspired modernist graphic design. Its
art director Helmut Krone claimed to hate advertising and set out to redefine the
medium, by stripping out anything that was not part of the core message,
distilling it to an essence of precision and clarity. The sans-serif typeface,
the use of photography and use of negative space to emphasize the ad’s message.
All of this communicate a whole message of efficiency and honesty, reflecting
Volkswagen’s brand. Ads rarely used such design to communicate the advertised
brand before this, only depending on the brand’s logo.
By having the ad made up of mostly empty space, the
ad stood out from other at the time. Krone wanted people to stop on his pages
and absorb their message. And that message is simple, honest, and a bit funny
(sometimes). Nothing like anyone in expected when flicking through their
magazines in 1960.
“Nobody counts the number of ads you run; they just remember the impression you make.” – Bill Bernbach
Photography
“The look, the practices, the techniques of advertising that had been evolving for more than 60 years, were swept aside or radically altered by the power and excitement of the creative revolution, Illustration and strong graphics, which had long dominated the appearance of most advertising, were replaced almost totally by photography, which generated a completely different feel.” – Larry Dobrow, When Advertising Tried Harder. The Sixties: The Golden Age of American Advertising (1984)
Until this ad, most car ads used illustrations, which can easily alter the product’s appearance. Volkswagen themselves were guilty of this in the past, employing illustrator Bernd Reuters, who even shrank the driver in some of his work to make the Beetle look bigger. The use of photographs (before Photoshop made altering them easier) gave a more honest, non-airbrushed, image of the product. Been black-and-white made it stand out from the many colorful ads at the time. Krone confessed that it was “mainly because we couldn’t afford much color”. Colour photos were used later.
Blank Space
An American art director once said “Car ads are full of broads, mansions, horses, surf, mountains, sunsets, chiseled chins, and caviar—anything but facts.” In this ad, the car is alone in a white space. No scenic landscape. No glamourous women. No animals. Nothing. Just the car. No fantasy nonsense. Carl Hahn said, “To me, presenting a car—or any other product for that matter—in such an artificially prestigious way was just plain vulgar. This kind of advertising was degrading America and its great people. They simply deserved better.”
Logo
“I’ve spent my whole life fighting logos,” Helmut
said. He regularly didn’t include a logo in the ads he designed, because “Logos
say ‘I’m an ad. Turn the page.’” He thought the design of an ad can act like an
identifier for a brand. “the page ought to be a package for the product, smell
like the product. Every company, every product needs its own package.”
In this ad, he originally wanted to show an image of an actual Volkswagen key instead of their logo. But he dropped the idea when Volkswagen kept changing their shape. So, instead he placed the VW logo in an odd place, aligned with the third column of the text, instead of the bottom right-hand corner where most would have placed it.
Headline
“Think Small” could work as the slogan for the entire campaign, but Bill Bernbach wouldn’t have liked that because he didn’t like slogans, because advertising is full of them. On why it has a full stop, Helmut Krone has said “Putting a full point in a headline was an act of sedition.” It was a statement about advertising. You don’t need to shout and use explanation marks!!!
Type and Copy
The choice of typeface, Futura, reflects the Volkswagen brand. It’s a modern sans serif typeface of German origin, which is clean-and-efficient looking. No ink-wasting serifs. Before, it was common for ads to have a lot of serif-fonted text that tell you as much information about the product as possible. Julian Koenig’s/Bob Levenson’s copywriting only focused on one aspect of the product – in this ad’s case, its size. The only thing a customer want’s to know about a product is why it’s different from the competition. They don’t want a long lecture. To make the text read more naturally, the body-copy is full of widows and orphans (spaces between paragraphs). Before, they were usually avoided in ads, but Krone “deliberately kept the blocks from being solid … and when I felt that a sentence could be cut in half I suggested it just to make another paragraph. I wanted the copy to look Gertrude Steiny*.”
*Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) was an American writer, noted for her round about way of describing things, with individual paragraphs breaking up the text, forming a “verbal collage.”
“When Helmut Krone was designing the look of the Volkswagen campaign, Julian Koenig’s copy was just a big block, and Krone thought, ‘This is too hard to read.’ So, he got his scalpel and started cutting windows into the copy. The next day, Koenig came in and Krone said to him ‘Can you rewrite the copy like this?’ Koenig said, ‘Well, I can, but some of the sentences will be only one word long, and that’s not grammatical.’ Krone said, ‘It doesn’t matter. It looks good, it looks accessible, it looks readable.” – Dave Trott
1959 or 1960?
There is some confusion when “Think Small” first
appeared. Some sources say 1959. Some date the ad to 1960. They are two reasons
for this. First, the ad was conceived in 1959 and published in 1960. Second, they
is more than one version of this ad. The ad began as a commission from Volkswagen
in the fall of 1959 for a corporate ad, to appear in a publication from New
Jersey’s chamber of commerce. This ad was later modified (with new copy, a
smaller headline, and a new photo of the car set at a sharper angle) a couple
of weeks later to be used in consumer publications in 1960. In fall 1962 Helmut
Krone and Bob Levenson reworked the ad. The copy was completely rewritten, the
headline was made smaller again, and the car was at a sharper angle. It’s this
version of the ad that DDB used in self-promotion in later years, becoming the
“official” version everyone uses in every publication that talks about the ad.
Lemon
“This Volkswagen missed the boat” was the originally headline for this other iconic ad, printed after “Think Small,” until copywriter Rita Selden intervened with a better idea….
“One day, my copywriter friend Rita Selden came into Helmut Krone’s office and saw a rough of an ad hanging on the wall. It showed a Beetle with the headline, This Volkswagen missed the boat, the copy explaining that the 3,389 inspectors in Wolfsburg were saying ‘no’ to one Volkswagen out of fifty after final inspection. ‘Why don’t you write Lemon,’ Rita said. I replied, ‘Terrific!’, and This Volkswagen missed the boat became the first sentence in the body copy.” – Julian Koenig
Helmut was initially hesitant, until he got a nod of approval from his old writer Bill Casey.
It was an ad like no other – one that actually said the product its selling is crap. But in this ad, the car pictured was a “lemon” because of a blemish on a chrome strip on the glove box. Something most people won’t even notice in a new car …. except the 100-odd factory inspectors in Wolfsburg whose job is to spot such imperfections. If the manufacturer cared about such detail, the main components (such as the engine, transmission, trim, etc.) should be more than alright.
“It was an ad that absolutely flew in the face of convention.” – Bob Levenson
But, of
course, not everyone liked the idea, especially Helmut Schmitz, assistant to
advertising manager Paul Lee. He thought readers would get the wrong idea. But
in reality….
“Everyone’s going to know that it’s a gimmick to induce you to read the ad, …. VW is not going to spend all those thousands of dollars to say we’ve got a bad product.” – Ed Russel, account man, to Helmut Schmitz, who didn’t like “Lemon.”
As Helmut continued to turn down the ad, Ed proposed a test run of the ad.
“Go ahead, but we’re not going to pay for it.” – Paul Lee, Volkswagen’s advertising manager
“If the ad fails, I’ll pay for it – me personally.” – Ed Russell
Ed kept his money. First printed in 1960, “Lemon” became the campaign’s most successful ad.
“We were fully aware how radical the idea was … But since our quality standards were so high, we decided to run the ad.” – Carl Hahn, General Manager of Volkswagen of America
The ad appeared in Life magazine in the April 11th issue.
“We pluck the lemons; you get the plums.” – The final line of the ad
This ad has a linguistic legacy. The term “lemon” has been used to
describe any sub-standard product since the 1900s. It was this ad that made the
term’s definition narrow to problematic cars.
Dear Charlie … Bob Levenson
(1929-2013)
Julian left DDB in the end of 1959 to start up his
own ad agency, with Fred Papert and George Lois. Initially, Bill Bernbach
decided to give DDB’s chief copywriter David Reider the Volkswagen account. But
David couldn’t stand working with Helmut. After the summer of 1960 David asked Bob
Levenson to take over.
Robert Harold Levenson grew up in the Bronx. After
studying English at New York University (gaining a bachelor’s and master’s
degrees) he worked in ad agency Scali, McCabe, Sloves Inc. before landing a job
at DDB in 1959.
He worked in its sales promotion department, where
he shortened the copy in ads to make them fit in smaller formats.
“I knew something about cutting copy, not writing copy.”
After initial hesitation, Helmut and Bob quickly became one of the most prolific creative teams in the Volkswagen’s account history. Although he didn’t create the tone and voice of the ads, Bob perfected it, becoming the most prolific writer for the campaign.
Apart from reworking “Think Small,” Bob and Helmut also created “No point showing the ’62 Volkswagen. It still looks the same,” which may be the first ad to employ no visuals at all.
VW ads Bob wrote include – “The ’51 ’52 ’53 ’54
’55 ’56 ’57 ’58 ‘ 59 ’60 ’61 Volkswagen,” “2 shapes known the world over,” “It
makes your house look bigger,” “We paint the paint”
and the English version of the iconic “Snowplow” TV commercial.
From this, and other ads for Sara Lee, El Al and Mobil, Bob became one of the greatest copywriters in advertising, winning many awards. After leaving DDB in 1986, Bob held various executive positions in other agencies, before retiring. Before his death, Bob was a consultant for the TV series Mad Men.
When it comes to writing great copy, Bob has this
great advice –
“When you really don’t know what to put on that
blank paper in the typewriter, you should just write ‘Dear Charlie’ at the top.
Assume that Charlie is a neighbor of yours, a very nice, bright, intelligent
guy, with a sense of humor. He’s got all the mental equipment you have, but
none of the information that you have about the Volkswagen. So just put down
what you want to tell him in this ad, and cross off ‘Dear Charlie,’ and you’ll
probably be all right.”
Did Detroit Squash the Bug?
Chevrolet’s General manager, Ed Cole, said
“Volkswagen will be out of business in this country in two years.”
Did they succeed?
According to Time magazine, within two
years of the launch of the first American-made small cars, the sales of
imported cars in the US fell, from 614,000 in 1959 to 375,000 in 1961. Most foreign
carmakers experienced a drop in American sales ….. except for Volkswagen.
Their sales remained high during this time. In
fact, the annual sales of Beetles surpassed 100,000* in 1960.
In 1961, Beetle sales reached over 150,000*
In 1963, Beetle sales reached over 200,000*
In 1966, Beetle sales reached over 300,000*
The Beetle continued to sale well in America, with
annual sales peaking at 399,674* in 1968.
The last factory-fresh Beetle sold in the U.S. in 1980, ending with the total sale of nearly five million Beetles!
“… while Detroit had to grant huge discounts to get rid of its cars, Volkswagen could raise the price of the Beetle every year.” – Carl H. Hahn
Whether “Think Small” was responsible is
debatable. But it can be argued that the ads did make Americans think
Volkswagen when they were thinking about buying a small car.
*https://www.thesamba.com/vw/archives/info/salesfigurest1.php
“After VW, everything else is a footnote.” – Dave Trott, creative director
“Think Small” (and the rest of DDB’s Volkswagen
campaign) has been considered by many in the ad industry as a “game changer,”
in the same way The Beatles changed pop music. It’s hard to write a history of
advertising in the 20th century without mentioning “Think Small” or
“Lemon.”
It’s so impactful that, in 1999, Advertising
Age and Time magazine ranked “Think Small” the No 1 ad of the 20th
century.
But this only came about because the right people
were given the right product to advertise at the right time.
“Think Small” is seen as a great example of how
advertising can change the world, if harnessed right. It turned a product of an
evil empire into a symbol of peace and rebellion. Many look back to these ads for
this reason. It was made in a time when many creatives thought they can change
the world through advertising.
“We wanted to make the Volkswagen a symbol of a completely different consumer philosophy,” – Carl H. Hahn
“… the Beetle was such a radically different car that the only way to sell it was though utter honesty, and this utter honesty appealed to the 1960s’ growing counterculture. The stars aligned. It was the right campaign for the right product at the right time.” - Dominik Imseng, Ugly is Only Skin-Deep: The Story of the Ads that Changed the World (2018)
Of course, the world changed, and the Beetle gave
way to the Golf/Rabbit. The cynicism that made the campaign successful had moved
on to the counter-culture it created. But despite this, the campaign showed the
world how ads can be done when art directors and copywriters worked together.
Volkswagen’s later advertising is directly
influenced by this campaign. Even directly referencing it a few times. They
helped build the company’s reputation for honesty and reliability … until
Dieselgate.
Comments
Post a Comment