(EXPANDED FROM 3/20/2023)
Back in 1963, advertising executive Fred Manley presented a slide show parody about how to improve Volkswagen’s legendary “Think small” ad. The “best practices” he presented look hilariously misguided when applied to this 1960 VW Beetle ad, but they had a lot in common with advertising for U.S. compacts.
The slide show was posted by David MacGregor (2014), a strategist at a marketing firm called BrandWorld. He noted that the presentation was “still relevant and funny today — not just for advertising practitioners but for anyone who feels the need to apply conventional wisdom to idea generation or product development.”
VW takes risks in defending itself against U.S. compacts
We have discussed here how VW’s ad campaign has been called the best “ever conceived” (Hiott, 2012; p. 367). To give a more granular feel for how radical the “Think small” ad was, let’s compare it to those for the five U.S. compacts offered in 1960. Although none of these entries were as small as the Beetle, their mission was to undercut VW’s accelerating sales.
When the Big Three launched its first wave of compacts cars in 1960, Volkswagen responded with a new national ad campaign that was intentionally designed to be different. You can immediately see that by scanning the gallery of ads below.
Click on images to enlarge (Automotive History Preservation Society and Old Car Advertisements).
By traditional standards, the VW ad was boring
In contrast to the ads from domestic automakers, the VW ad had no color, minimal graphics, a fair amount of text and a small headline. The genius of the ad is that it stood out by not doing the visual equivalent of shouting.
The sales pitch was equally unconventional. For example, the headline intimated a weakness — that the Beetle was small during an era when bigger was usually considered better. This violated of one of the parody’s rules: “Don’t use negative headlines.” Our story’s banner image shows the recommended approach. The collage includes a sketch of an alternative VW ad with the headline, “Think BIG!” To drive home that point, the Beetle’s image was supersized rather than tiny.
The parody slide show’s advice was not just typical of how marketeers in general thought back then — it also reflected the mindset of U.S. auto industry executives. The Big Three only reluctantly came out with compact cars in response to booming import sales in the late-50s. And as we have frequently discussed at Indie Auto, within a few years Detroit would gravitate back to making all of its cars — including compacts — bigger, glitzier and more powerful. The surviving U.S. automakers preferred that car buyers “Think BIG!”
Being different turned out to be a big advantage
Meanwhile, Volkswagen stuck with its ad campaign through the decade. This gave the brand’s marketing an extraordinary degree of consistency. That, in turn, was in perfect alignment with VW’s rejection of planned obsolescence and its sidekick, the annual model change.
Despite tearing up the rulebook for how to market and design a car, VW sales in the U.S. went from almost 120,000 units in 1959 to over 582,000 in 1968. This was a powerful sign that Detroit’s expensive early-60s attempt to drive the imports back into the sea had failed. And that failure was partly the result of business-as-usual advertising.
Of course, one could point to other factors in VW’s success such as the increasing neglect of the compact market by all of the domestic automakers, with the partial exception of Chrysler. Even so, VW marketeers deserve credit for turning a most unlikely car into one of the bigger successes of the 1960s.
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NOTES:
This story was originally posted Dec. 5, 2015; updated on Nov. 6, 2020; expanded on Jan. 17, 2022; updated on March 20, 2023; and updated on Aug. 14, 2025. Domestic production figures from the auto editors of Consumer Guide (2006) and Gunnell (2002); VW sales figures are from Gunnell (2004).
RE:SOURCES
- Auto editors of Consumer Guide; 2006. Encyclopedia of American Cars. Publications International, Lincolnwood, Ill.
- Gunnell, John; 2002. Standard Catalog of American Cars, 1946-1975. Revised 4th Ed. Krause Publications, Iola, WI.
- ——; 2004. Standard Catalog of Volkswagen, 1946-2004. KP Books, Iola, WI.
- Hiott, Andrea; 2012. Thinking Small: The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle. Ballatine Books, New York, NY.
- MacGregor, David; 2014. “Nine Ways to Improve an Ad.” MacGregor Media. Posted July 10.
BROCHURES & ADVERTISING:
- autohistorypreservationsociety.org: Volkswagen (1960)
- oldcaradvertising.com: Chevrolet Corvair (1960); Ford Falcon (1960); Rambler (1960); Studebaker Lark (1960)
I wonder what if the other imports of the time like Austin, Renault, Peugeot and Fiat would have done if they have imitated the VW ads formula? (Mercedes, BMW, Alfa-Romeo and Jaguar aren’t in the same league as VW and Citroen having both the modern DS at the time and the 2CV as a affordable model is more harder to class)
Good question. I suspect that the ability of another import brand to successfully mimic VW’s marketing would have partly depended upon the caliber of their product and dealer network. It’s hard to see how even the best marketing could have given the likes of Fiat and Austin much traction, but Peugeot might have had some promise with a more inspired ad campaign. I vaguely recall Renault ads from the second half of the 1960s that essentially functioned as an apology for the significant shortcomings of previous models; VW didn’t have to do that.
Mercedes-Benz’s “defiantly different” ad campaign was one of the more memorable of the late-60s, which of course was after they were no longer distributed in the U.S. by Studebaker. Mercedes may have been too upper-crust to experiment with the sense of humor — and humility — displayed in VW ads.
Stephane, the problem with copying the VW’s copy is you end up reinforcing the second-tier status of the client’s automobile. “Give us a shot=we’re trying to be just like VW. Visit your local dealer, formerly Honest Al’s used car lot and bait shop” Marketing and selling the Citroen 2CV would have been interesting. I could see selling it now through ATV/UTV dealers. Then? It made the VW Beetle look like a BMW. Add French ergonomics and French quality and reliability?