It’s not surprising that immediately after World War 2, there wasn’t any interest in owning Hitler’s car. After all this was a car that was designed, funded, and built under the Nazi Party regime. During the war the VW plant used german workers as well as forced labor from the concentration camps. There was a dark history here. It would be a challenge to overcome the history of this car.
The ability to overcome these dark roots and get the beetle into the American market (and elsewhere), was done through a brilliant advertising campaign. A creative ad campaign began at Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) advertising agency. Ironically it would be an advertising agency created by William Bernbach, who just happened to be Jewish, that would go on to create the most iconic car advertisements in history.
I read an article once that surmised that the beetle would never have been accepted had Bernback not been the one advertising it. In actuality, the majority of the folks working on the ad campaign were Jewish. The article stated that this may have helped buyers look beyond the roots of the car. An automobile that had been created by the Nazi regime just 14 years earlier.
These DDB advertisements went from the 1950’s through the 1960s. In 1961, DDB opened its first international office in West Germany just to service the Volkswagen campaigns.
The entire advertising budget of VW at the time was around 800,000 dollars. So the simplistic black and white advertising, fit within their budget. In addition, the ads were designed to use humor to sell the beetle. They pointed out how a disadvantage of the beetle could actually be one of its strengths. For example in the ad called “Your missing a lot when you own a volkswagen”. The real message is that the owner doesn’t need to worry about a drive shaft, radiator, or all those hoses. Those are all parts that are not needed in the beetle, and the parts you don’t need you’ll never need to repair!
In addition, the The Volkswagen series of advertisements were voted the No. 1 advertising campaign of all time in Advertising Age’s “The Century of Advertising”.
One of my favorite Ad’s from 1966 is “It does all the work but on Saturday night, which one goes to the party?” . It’s the story of an ugly bug, that in the end wasn’t so ugly after all.
I’ve tried to purchase all the beetle advertisements that were published in 1966, and there were quite a few. My office walls are covered in them, along with other VW related art. It’s nice to be surrounded by genius!
William Bernbach died in 1982, his creations live on in the VW ads that are still available to purchase online. Bernbach once said “It may well be that creativity is the last unfair advantage we’re legally allowed to take over our competitors.” That creativity was certainly apparent in all the Volkswagen advertising.
