From Small Quantities to Thinking Small

This past January marked the seventieth anniversary of the first time Volkswagens were offered for sale in the United States, thanks to an enterprising Dutch car importer named Ben Pon (left, below).

Pon failed to interest any dealers stateside to take a Volkswagen franchise despite having been successful at selling Beetles in the Netherlands, the first country outside Germany where VWs were available.  In 1949, Volkswagen sold two Beetles in the United States.

In 1950, Volkswagen sold even more of them in the U.S. :-D

By 1959, Volkswagen had set up an official network of dealers, with its U.S. headquarters working out of a building in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, just across the river from Manhattan.  VW sales were respectable, with minimal advertising and word of mouth moving the metal, but Volkswagen of America's recently installed president, Carl Hahn, wanted to sell more cars, and so he decided to hire an advertising agency to launch a coordinated campaign.

And so it was sixty years ago that the most memorable car ad campaign in history was launched. :-)

While other car ads of the late 1950s presented incredibly glamorous illustrations and superlative copy to promote the product from Detroit's Big Three and the smaller domestic automakers still around then, Doyle Dane Bernbach, the small New York ad agency that Hahn employed, opted for a quieter, more subtle approach to selling cars.  Knowing that the Volkswagen Beetle was not glamorous, was not flashy, and - to most people - was not even pretty, the ad campaign it created preferred to be honest about the car.  It wasn't big or glamorous.  It was small and slow without many amenities.  But Doyle Dane Bernbach capitalized on the Beetle's strengths, particularly how its four-cylinder engine and its size made it economical to run and maintain.  Its beetle shape was streamlined and simple.  It was a car that made small a virtue in a country then (as now) obsessed with bigness.

The Doyle Bane Bernbach ads even acknowledged that the Volkswagen wasn't a perfect car, ironically underscoring Volkswagen's commitment to quality and reliability.  The "Lemon" ad reminded buyers that the factory in Wolfsburg was prone to making a defective car but that none of these lemons would ever make it to a VW showroom.  And the ads turned the VW's unchanging appearance - at a time when visible model-year changes from Detroit were commonplace - into a plus, saying that the changes VW made annually were under the skin and designed to make a VW run better and last longer, not look better or even look different.

Sure, GM or Ford might give their long, low-slung coupes a two-tone paint job.  But unless a Beetle owner was willing to do it himself on his car, you'd never see a two-tone Beetle anywhere.

Volkswagen made fun of itself in these ads for daring to offer such an ugly car.  But heck, VW was proud not to be what Ray Davies would call a "dedicated follower of fashion."  When it did make a beautiful car, as it did with the Type 3 Fastback, VW ads expressed mock concern about the car ruining the brand's image.

And yes, a Volkswagen was slow.  VW had no problem admitting that.

Because a slow car that gets you where you want to go is better than a fast car that breaks down a lot.

Volkswagen's ads were honest, simple and direct, communicating to the prospective car buyer of its features and how it provided reliable, economical transportation in a quiet, conversational manner.  The font, Franklin Gothic, was as low-key and as subtle as the copy, which was written with intelligence and wit by Doyle Dane Bernbach copywriters Julian Koenig and George Lois, who were always mindful to tell people what a Volkswagen was and show awareness of what it wasn't.

Volkswagen ads explained how the engine was cooled by air, highlighted the available traction from the rear-engine/rear-rive configuration, and explained the various improvements under the skin.  You knew what you were getting when you bought a Volkswagen.

Volkswagen mostly eschewed gimmicks like celebrity endorsements, though one memorable ad featuring basketball star Wilt Chamberlain showed him trying - and failing - to get inside a Beetle, the message being that while the Beetle was too small for Chamberlain, it was still big enough for most people. 

(Aside: Doyle Dane Bernbach retained a touch of that wit even in the watercooled age, when Volkswagen began to lose its way in the United States, when it brought back Chamberlain to show how he could fit in a Volkswagen Rabbit.)

Carl Hahn was pleased with his choice of Doyle Dane Bernbach for the Volkswagen campaign.  He found the ad men, including agency boss Bill Bernbach, to be people of integrity.  The Volkswagen Beetle ad campaign remains the gold standard for automobile advertising, both for the sales they generated and for their own refreshing honesty.  To show here even all of the best ads from the campaign would take too much bandwidth.

Today, Volkswagen doesn't want us to think small.  It's encouraging us to "drive bigger" - not drive a bigger car, like its SUVs, but a bigger idea . . . electric cars that return Volkswagen to the honesty and economy that the Beetle once offered, with a commitment to reducing greenhouse gas emissions, and admission of VW's guilt for the TDI scandal and a sincere desire to move on and redeem itself.  It's all very noble.  But, as vehicles get bigger and become more pretentious and less about getting from one place to another, I look at the old Doyle Dane Bernbach ads for Volkswagen and realize how thinking small was and could still be a big idea.