Think Small

The most popular variant of the Think Small advertisement features a bare background, with only the VW Beetle in view to shift the reader's focus to the vehicle immediately.

Think Small was an advertising campaign for the Volkswagen Beetle, created by Helmut Krone with the copy written by Julian Koenig[1] at the Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB) agency in 1959.[2] [3][4] It was ranked as the best advertising campaign of the twentieth century by Ad Age,[3] in a survey of North American advertisements. The campaign has been considered so successful that it "did much more than boost sales and build a lifetime of brand loyalty [...] The ad, and the work of the ad agency behind it, changed the very nature of advertising—from the way it's created to what you see as a consumer today."[5]

Background

Fifteen years after World War II, the United States had become a world and consumer superpower; and cars began to be built for growing families with Baby Boomer children and "Americans obsessed with muscle cars".[4] The Beetle, a "compact, strange-looking automobile", was manufactured in a plant built by the Nazis in Wolfsburg, Germany, which was perceived to make it more challenging to sell the vehicle[5] (being that the car was designed in Nazi Germany).[6] Automobile advertisements back then focused on providing as much information as possible to the reader instead of persuading the reader to purchase a product, and the advertisements were typically rooted more in fantasy than in reality.[5]

Campaign

Julian Koenig, who started many famous advertising campaigns, teamed with Helmut Krone to create the "Think Small" and "Lemon" ads for Volkswagen under the supervision of William Bernbach. DDB built a print campaign that focused on the Beetle's form, which was smaller than most of the cars being sold at the time. This unique focus in an automobile advertisement brought wide attention to the Beetle. DDB had "simplicity in mind, contradicting the traditional association of automobiles with luxury". Print advertisements for the campaign were filled mostly with white space, with a small image of the Beetle shown, which was meant to emphasize its simplicity and minimalism, and the text and fine print that appeared at the bottom of the page listed the advantages of owning a small car.[4]

Book

A 1967 promotional book titled Think Small was distributed as a giveaway by Volkswagen dealers. Charles Addams, Bill Hoest, Virgil Partch, Gahan Wilson and other top cartoonists of that decade drew cartoons showing Volkswagens, and these were published along with amusing automotive essays by such humorists as H. Allen Smith, Roger Price and Jean Shepherd. The book's design juxtaposed each cartoon alongside a photograph of the cartoon's creator.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "Origin Story"
  2. ↑ "Ad Age Advertising Century: Top 100 Campaigns". adage.com. Crain Communications Inc. March 29, 1999.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "Top 100 Advertising Campaigns". Ad Age. Retrieved July 15, 2010.
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Kabourek, Sarah. "Game-changing ads". CNN. Check date values in: |accessdate= (help);
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 "Top ad campaign of century? VW Beetle, of course". Portland Business Journal. Retrieved July 15, 2010.
  6. ↑ "Did Hitler really invent the Volkswagen?". Yahoo!. Retrieved July 15, 2010.

Further reading