The Real Mad Men (13 page)

CARL HAHN HAD ALREADY
written the VW strategy. It was the measure against which all the agencies he had visited had failed. He wanted everything about VW to be honest, transparent, and straightforward—the product, the pricing, the dealers, even down to the policy of changing the external appearance of the car as little as possible. This was in direct contrast with Detroit who deliberately made major design changes every year to make their cars obsolete and force an image-conscious public to continue forking out for the latest models.

It was therefore a simple matter for Ed Russell, the head account man, to write a strategy calling for honest advertising. The first line of the “Statement” as the strategy paper at DDB was called, was “The VW is an honest car.” Reading the body copy you immediately appreciate the candor with which Koenig approached the reader, very much following the strategy. In one way it's Page One advertising copy, packed with product features and USPs. But it reads like a friendly chat—enthusiastic, yes, but more of a tip from one friend to another about something he or she ought to know.

“We just took [the] product and said what made it good. And we were fortunate that there was a lot to say about the VW.”

JULIAN KOENIG

What is more startling is the apparent challenge in the headlines, not just of the reader but of the product itself. They were all fundamentally negative, and that simply wasn't done.

It's impossible to imagine the jaw-dropping amazement with which Detroit executives and their advertising agencies must have viewed these ads from a rival car manufacturer, apparently advising their potential market that the car was a failure and of limited ambition. But it was all part of the same candor—tell 'em like it is and it'll intrigue them and then amuse them. But don't leave it there—while they're busy appreciating you, gently insinuate some sales points.

THERE'S A CURIOUS STORY
around the origination of the “Think Small” ad, one which enhances the already noble role of another bold and prescient client who would put his money behind such an unorthodox and, at that point, unproven and manifestly risky strategy.

The ad was originally meant to be a corporate ad, advertising the marque rather than a specific model, and it showed three huge American cars. Koenig wrote the headline “Think Small” to contrast with this visual. Then, as Koenig remembers it, “Helmut wouldn't use it. And he who controls the [layout] pad in those days, controls the ad. So we finally come up with Willkommen, which I didn't want but Helmut wanted, and with ‘Think Small' in the copy. In DDB, copywriters and art directors didn't go to the client with ads, the account people went. So they presented the ad, came back and said ‘Willkommen is out'. Fortuitously, Helmut Schmidt—the client—didn't want Willkommen, which I knew they wouldn't because that made it a German car, and we wanted to be as American as apple strudel, as the ad says. He saw the line ‘Think Small' and thought that should be the ad.”

1959–60, early examples from the DDB campaign for VW.

So one of the most famous advertising headlines of all time was, if not exactly written by a client, certainly spotted and promoted by one. Koenig says, “I'm told in Germany they credit the ads to the copywriters Helmut Schmidt and Julian Koenig.”

According to Koenig, it took the famously grumpy Krone two days to bring himself to put the line down on paper. Meanwhile, the requirement had changed from a corporate to a product ad so it needed to show a VW. Initially, this further exasperated Krone by suggesting that logically, this meant the car should be shown small, which he didn't want to do.

But he calmed down and, encouraged by Bob Gage and others around him, worked fastidiously at the layout. Eventually he placed a small car at a slight angle in the top left hand corner of the page—and an advertising icon was created.

THE CREDIT FOR “LEMON,”
too, has a convoluted path. “The art directors used to put their advertising ideas up on the walls,” says Koenig, “and Helmut had put up my headline ‘This VW missed the boat'. Rita Seldon came into Helmut's office and she said, ‘Lemon!' Helmut said go tell Julian and she walked about thirty-five feet down to my office and said ‘Saw your ad, Lemon!' I said, ‘Terrific'. So Lemon became the ad and I took my headline and made it into the first line of copy.”

This version is disputed by George Lois, who claims that Koenig wouldn't listen to Seldon, and it took her two weeks to persuade him to make the change. But as the two have been, and still are, in a high-energy spat over who did what on all sorts of ads they worked on, some of which were created fifty years ago (with one of them even going to the extent of preparing an ad for
The New York Times
to “set the record straight”) it's difficult to know who to believe. But it is to Koenig's credit that he'll cheerfully admit that the provenance of the world's two most famous advertising headlines were not his and his alone.

The impact of the campaign was immediate, with the ads getting unusually high readership figures. Imported car sales at that time had halved in two years under the onslaught of the simultaneous launch of brand new compacts from all the major players in Detroit. But in the same period, VW sales actually rose by nearly 25 percent.

Reinforced by this obvious endorsement from the only meaningful measure, the marketplace, DDB forged ahead with the campaign in the style which Bernbach, Krone, and Koenig had set. In less than a year, Koenig had left to set up his own agency with George Lois, their big fallout yet to come. But there were plenty of other brilliant writers to carry on the idea, amongst them Bob Levenson, who went on to write the definitive book about the agency's groundbreaking creative output,
Bill Bernbach's Book
. Other art directors, too, would come along to work on the account, but all followed the template and attitude set by the original team.

In TV, too, executions were conducted with the same spare directness, but still with the knowing wit of “Think Small” and “Lemon.” In one, “Funeral,” the solemn occupants of a long funeral cortege of huge cars are shown one by one as the voice of the deceased intones over each:

“I, Maxwell E Snavely, being of sound mind and body, do hereby bequeath the following: To my wife Rose, who spent money like there was no tomorrow, I leave $100—and a calendar. To my sons Rodney and Victor, who spent every dime I ever gave them on fancy cars and fast women… I leave $50—in dimes. To my business partner Jules, whose only motto was ‘spend, spend, spend', I leave nothing, nothing, nothing. And to my other friends and relatives who also never learned the value of a dollar—I leave a dollar.” At the end of the procession we see a young man driving a VW Beetle, clearly upset. “And finally, to my nephew Harold, who oft times said ‘a penny saved is a penny earned' and who also oft times said ‘Gee Uncle Max, it sure pays to own a Volkswagen', I leave my entire fortune of one hundred billion dollars.”

In another, “Snow Plow,” one of the consistently most admired TV ads of all time, principally for its simplicity, we see a car covered in snow traveling through heavy drifts to a shed where the driver gets out and opens the shed doors. We hear the roar of a powerful engine and he drives out on a snow plow. The voice-over says just twenty-seven words: “Have you ever wondered how the man who drives the snow plow—drives to the snow plow? This one drives a Volkswagen—so you can stop wondering.”

Ad after ad after ad, the same playful self-deprecating wit, the same chatty, knowing but economical copy—and always the same instantly recognizable layout and look. Very few people ever appeared in the ads,
there were almost never any props that weren't directly part of the car and very rarely was it shown against anything other than a white background.

Further DDB ads for VW, from 1963–80. VW advertising is still with DDB today.

THE CAMPAIGN'S IMPACT
goes way beyond just VW, DDB, and the New York advertising scene of the early sixties. This campaign, more than any individual ads or campaigns that had gone before, epitomizes the Creative Revolution, and that revolution changed the face of advertising. Ohrbach's, Levy's, El Al were all terrific pieces of work, but none of them was a nationally-advertised brand competing in a mainstream product category.

Of course there had been people creating entertaining, witty, simple, and sympathetic advertising before, people who recognized a value in directness and candor. But they tended to be in isolated pockets and their efforts were easily snuffed out. They were shouted down by the orthodox who believed that empathy had no place in advertising; that anything other than the tried and tested was too risky; that any money spent on making friends with your potential customer was money wasted; that simple repetition, like the pounding of a jackhammer, was the most effective way to get a message to stick; that he who shouts loudest gets heard clearest; that more is more.

These people will forever be confounded and bewildered by the early VW ads, wondering how those who did them ever had the nerve. The consistency of approach and the high standard of thinking has ensured that to this day, when many DDB agencies around the world still handle the VW account, generations of creative people who have followed the original team more than half a century ago feel obliged to try to live up to their standard. Today's VW advertising is still consistently winning awards and selling VW's across the globe.