Volkswagen advertising history

In 1949, William Bernbach[1], along with colleague Ned Doyle and Maxwell Dane, formed Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB), the advertising agency that would create the revolutionary Volkswagen ad campaigns of the 1950s and 1960s.

Bernbach's artistic approach to print advertising was innovative, and he understood that advertising didn't sell products. The strategy was to try to keep customers, creating and nurturing "brand ambassadors" rather than attract the attention of those who were uninterested in the product. Bernbach's team of "agency creatives" was headed by Helmut Krone, who pioneered the idea of simplicity in print advertisements. His repeated use of actual photographs as opposed to the embellished illustrations of competing agencies spawned comfortably consistent, yet unique print ads that met DDB's goal of stark departure from the current advertisement techniques.^[1]

Because Volkswagen’s ad budget in 1960 was only $800,000^[2] DDB’s bare-bones, black-and-white approach, coupled with a projected common theme of irreverence, fit Wolfsburg’s needs well. Each Volkswagen ad was designed to be so complete that it could stand alone as a viable advertisement even without addressing all aspects of the car, and research by The Starch Company showed that Volkswagen advertisements had higher reader scores than editorial pieces in many magazines, a sign of the campaign's runaway success, as Volkswagen’s advertisements often didn't even include a slogan or logo.