A documentary that shows creative advertising ideas by Volkswagen, prevalent since 1960’s

A memoir of creative advertising and design campaigns by Volkswagen through the 1960’s by Joe Marcantonio is a fantastic reminder of the times when advertising campaigns told a story. The Ad agency DDB successfully used creative print ads to reach out to the people at that time. In the absence of Social Media Campaigns, their intelligent use of creative advertising ideas lead to some very popular advertising campaigns.

The assimilation of all the popular advertising campaigns from the 1960’s in the documentary has some very interesting features that are listed below:

1. Beetle was launched as a people’s car so their ad campaigns were aiming to show how everyone could relate to it and have it.

2. Beetle became a smart car to buy. It was easy to maintain so it attracted larger population.
3. The aim was to sell a Nazi car to Jew population so that advertisements were designed very carefully and creatively
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4. Singing commercial by Dinah Shore highlighting the American pride a strategic step by the creative ad agencies of Chevrolet but Volkswagen did a more intelligent advertising.
5. “Don’t underestimate the public” was the motive behind all their advertising campaigns.
6. The simple ads with black and white photos of the car actually managed to stick out in a bigger way than other vulgar ads of that time.

7. There were simple messages like the small car is easy to push if you run out of gas with a photo of a man pushing the car.

In short, Volkswagen brought revolution in the advertising agencies by being more direct and simple in their advertising. Just by looking at the refreshing short documentary about Volkswagen ads, you can start looking at ads with a simple yet strong message.

Credits:
Agency: DDB
Directed by Joe Marcantonio – marcantonio.tv