This book can take you back to the 1960s through the lens of VW ads

(EXPANDED FROM 6/19/2020)

If I may be honest, a goodly portion of the auto history books on my bookshelf aren’t very good. Many amount to little more than pom-pom waving for a given automaker. Most have been published by such small outfits that they suffer from basic fact errors that a decent team of copy editors would have caught. And often there seems to be an assumption that the targeted readers have all of the intellectual sophistication of a 10 year old.

What then do I consider a good book? How about Remember those great Volkswagen ads? In a way it has a child-like simplicity common to so many auto history books in that it is dominated by images — in this case, an extensive archive of advertising developed by Doyle Dane Bernbach for Volkswagen in the 1960s and 1970s.

This 364-page book has 500 ads. A goodly portion of them were made for the print medium, but you can also find television commercials displayed like a cartoon strip. Content is grouped in a dozen sections, most dedicated to specific types of VW models and geographic locations. Each section is introduced with a background essay.

The quality of the essays is partly what elevates this book above so many others. The authors — Alfredo Marcantonio, David Abbott and John O’Driscoll — tell in an understated way one of the most remarkable stories of the postwar period.

An unlikely automaker settles on an unlikely ad agency

The book begins with an overview of Volkswagen’s early years. For example, the authors note that after World War II the occupying powers offered the VW factory to domestic automakers.

Ernest Breech of the Ford Motor Company reportedly told his boss, Henry Ford II, that “I don’t think what is being offered here is worth a damn.” And British leader Lord Rootes concluded that “A car like this will remain popular for two or three years, if that. To build the car commercially would be a completely uneconomic enterprise”(2014, p. 8).

Then the authors move on to discuss DDB’s ad campaign. They offer interesting historical tidbits, such as that VW management decided that one way it could defend itself against an onslaught of compact cars that Detroit planned to launch in the early-60s was to invest in a national advertising campaign. VWs had mainly been sold by word of mouth.

The head of VW reportedly met with 400 admen over a three-month period — and was not impressed. “At that time the US advertising industry was infatuated with research, think tanks and brainstorm sessions,” the authors wrote. “Advertising was tested before it ran, while it ran and after it ran, in an attempt to ensure the sales message meant all things to all people. More often than not, the work that resulted meant absolutely nothing to anyone. Except of course, to the agency and client involved” (2014, p. 11-12).

DBB’s creativity was grounded in being run differently

VW settled on DDB, a relatively young agency that was building a reputation for off-beat ad campaigns. DDB was willing to break the rules around how ad agencies should be run. For example, Madison Avenue typically avoided hiring Jewish, Italian and Greek applicants, the authors noted. Meanwhile, women “were far more likely to have their bottoms pinched than their brains picked” (2014, p. 13). Not so at DBB.

The team that led the VW account settled on an approach that went against the standard practices used on American car ads. Their goal was to create something so different that it dominated the whole magazine it was published in — both ads and editorial content.

The authors provide insights into the making of iconic ads. For example, “Think small” was not one of the earliest ads to appear. In addition, the headline was controversial enough within DDB that it didn’t see the light of day until after a new copy writer was assigned to the account.

“The ad’s impact was enormous,” the authors wrote. ” The idea of thinking small flew in the face of everything post war America had been brought up to believe in” (2014, p. 48).

This book is a window into a fascinating time

Perhaps I am a bit of a marketing nerd, but I find the ads utterly fascinating. That’s partly because their quality is so exceptional. As discussed further here, “DDB’s Volkswagen campaign is considered to this day to be the best ad campaign ever conceived,” says Andrea Hiott (2012, p. 367).

However, this book also functions as a portal to the life and times of the 1960s and 1970s. It’s an opportunity to connect a society-wide phenomenon — the VW Beetle — with our individual memories.

The authors state that they decided to put this book together more than 30 years ago. “We had all owned Beetles in our day and we had all been involved in Volkswagen advertising. One of us as a client, one as an art director and one as a copywriter. To let the Beetle and its advertising pass on without a permanent record seemed a crying shame” (2014, p. 5).

Agreed. Thanks, guys.

“Remember those great Volkswagen ads?”

• Marcantonio, Alfredo and David Abbott, John O’Driscoll; 2014
• Merrell Publishers Limited, London, UK

“Back then, the copywriters and art directors who wrote and designed the ads worked separately, often on different floors. The headline and copy would be written, then sent to the art director to be laid out and mocked up. Bernbach put the writer and the art director together, because he believed that an ad’s copy and visual should be developed together. His hiring policy, like Grey’s, also swam against the tide. Italians and Greeks became his art directors, New York’s Jewish and Irish communities provided him with his copywriters. And tellingly, the new agency’s very first copy chief was a woman, Phyllis Robinson.” (p. 15)

“It was on the racecourse, not the graphics course, that Koenig found much of his inspiration; the language of ordinary New Yorkers. Humanity replaced pomposity. The headlines would frequently ask the reader a question rather than follow convention and make a claim. They were witty and disarmingly honest. They admitted that the Beetle was no oil painting, but boy, did it work.” (p. 16)

“It was twelve months and one copywriter later that the seminal version of the ad appeared. Koenig had left DDB along with George Lois to start their own agency, PKL. It fell to Krone’s new writer Bob Levenson to pen the ‘consumer version’ (of ‘Think small’).” (p. 48)

OTHER REVIEWS:

Speedreaders | Popmatters | Amazon

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RE:SOURCES

• Hiott, Andrea; 2012. Thinking Small: The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle. Ballatine Books, New York, NY.

ADVERTISING & BROCHURES:

• autohistorypreservationsociety.org: Volkswagen (1960)