EOC Week 1 : Volkswagen Lemon Ad

 

The 1960’s campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle is one of the most influential pieces in advertising history. Given the circumstances of the company Volkswagen in that time, they were given quite the challenge. This was the very first time that the American people would be introduced to this new product so they were brought with a challenging task. “the car was manufactured in Wolfsburg, Germany, at a plant built by the Nazis. Given that World War II had ended only 15 years earlier, it's easy to envision a public relations nightmare.” The Volkswagen was also invented by Hitler making this particular case even more difficult to promote. What made this campaign so different from all the others was that it was simple. All other ads in the U.S were way more flamboyant. In that time there was color printing available but this Lemon ad was printed in black and white making it even more simple than the average American advertisement. This ad also managed to piss a lot of people off in that era. Many Americans were used to the big basic American cars and with this new car company manufacturing a tiny “ugly” automobile it shocked many people. "The driving force behind the Volkswagen campaign was William Bernbach of DDB. Bernbach is considered the father of the “creative revolution” in the advertisement industry." He took on a very minimalist approach to selling to the customer on a personal level. It was direct and to the point, with a little bit a humor added to it.  They took something that people knew was a funny looking car and made humor out of it. Made something that people would end up talking about for 5 10 minutes even if they were talking bad about the ad they were still talking about it. Even till this day, this very ad is known as "The Worlds Greatest Ad"

http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/1999/11/22/smallb7.html?page=all
http://www.writingfordesigners.com/?p=1731
http://fontsinuse.com/uses/1976/volkswagen-of-america-ads-1960-66

http://think-small-the-book.net/