Think Small was one of the most famous ads in the

advertising campaign An advertising campaign is a series of advertisement messages that share a single idea and theme which make up an integrated marketing communication (IMC). An IMC is a platform in which a group of people can group their ideas, beliefs, and conc ...

for the

Volkswagen Beetle The Volkswagen Beetle—officially the Volkswagen Type 1, informally in German (meaning "beetle"), in parts of the English-speaking world the Bug, and known by many other nicknames in other languages—is a two-door, rear-engine economy car, ...

, art-directed by

Helmut Krone Helmut Krone (July 16, 1925 – April 12, 1996) was an art director and is considered to be a pioneer of modern advertising. Krone spent over 30 years at the advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach. He was the art director for the popular 1960s campa ...

. The copy for Think Small was written by

Julian Koenig Julian Norman Koenig (; April 22, 1921 – June 12, 2014) was an American copywriter. He was inducted into The One Club Creative Hall of Fame in 1966. Early life and education Koenig was born to a Jewish family "Origin Story"
/ref> at the

Doyle Dane Bernbach DDB Worldwide Communications Group LLC, known internationally as DDB, is a worldwide marketing communications network. It is owned by Omnicom Group, one of the world's largest advertising holding companies. The international advertising networks ...

(DDB)

agency Agency may refer to: Organizations * Institution, governmental or others ** Advertising agency or marketing agency, a service business dedicated to creating, planning and handling advertising for its clients ** Employment agency, a business that ...

in 1959. Doyle Dane Bernbach's Volkswagen Beetle campaign was ranked as the best advertising campaign of the twentieth century by ''

Ad Age ''Ad Age'' (known as ''Advertising Age'' until 2017) is a global media brand that publishes news, analysis, and data on marketing and media. Its namesake magazine was started as a broadsheet newspaper in Chicago in 1930. ''Ad Age'' appears in mul ...

'',"Top 100 Advertising Campaigns"
''Ad Age''. Retrieved July 15, 2010. in a survey of North American advertisements. Koenig was followed by many other writers during Krone's art-directorship of the first 100 ads of the campaign, most notably Bob Levenson. 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.""Top ad campaign of century? VW Beetle, of course"
''Portland Business Journal''. Retrieved July 15, 2010.

Background

Fifteen years after

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

, the United States had become a world and consumer

superpower A superpower is a state with a dominant position characterized by its extensive ability to exert influence or project power on a global scale. This is done through the combined means of economic, military, technological, political and cultural s ...

; and cars began to be built for growing families with

Baby Boomer Baby boomers, often shortened to boomers, are the Western demographic cohort following the Silent Generation and preceding Generation X. The generation is often defined as people born from 1946 to 1964, during the mid-20th century baby boom. T ...

children and "Americans obsessed with muscle cars". The Beetle, a "compact, strange-looking automobile", was manufactured in a plant built by the

Nazis Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in Na ...

Wolfsburg Wolfsburg (; Eastphalian: ''Wulfsborg'') is the fifth largest city in the German state of Lower Saxony, located on the river Aller. It lies about east of Hanover and west of Berlin. Wolfsburg is famous as the location of Volkswagen AG's hea ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

, which was perceived to make it more challenging to sell the vehicle (since the car was designed in

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany (lit. "National Socialist State"), ' (lit. "Nazi State") for short; also ' (lit. "National Socialist Germany") (officially known as the German Reich from 1933 until 1943, and the Greater German Reich from 1943 to 1945) was ...

). 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.

Campaign

Helmut Krone came up with the design and headline for "Think Small" simultaneously. Krone teamed up with Julian Koenig to develop the "Think Small" and "Lemon" ads for Volkswagen under the supervision of

William Bernbach William Bernbach (August 13, 1911 – October 2, 1982) was an American advertising creative director. He was one of the three founders in 1949 of the international advertising agency Doyle Dane Bernbach (DDB). He directed many of the firm's breakth ...

. 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. The creative execution broke with convention in a number of ways. Although the layout used the traditional format - image, headline and three-column body were retained, other differences were subtle yet sufficient to make the advertisement stand out. It used a

sans-serif In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...

font at a time when serif fonts were normal. It included a full-stop after the tagline "Think Small." The body-copy was full of

widows and orphans In typesetting, widows and orphans are lines of text that dangle at the beginning and at the end of a block of text, either at the head or at the foot of a page or of a column of text. Definitions ;Widow: A paragraph-ending line that falls ...

- all designed to give the ad a natural and honest feel. The image of the car was placed in the top left-hand corner and angled in a way that directed the reader's attention toward the headline. Finally, the ad was printed in black and white, at a time when full colour advertisements were widely used. Over time, the layout changed but the essential executional elements were used consistently to give each iteration exhibited a sense of a "house style".

Books

A 1967 promotional book titled ''Think Small'' was distributed as a giveaway by Volkswagen dealers.

Charles Addams Charles Samuel Addams (January 7, 1912 – September 29, 1988) was an American cartoonist known for his darkly humorous and macabre characters, signing the cartoons as Chas Addams. Some of his recurring characters became known as the Addams Fa ...

Bill Hoest William Pierce Hoest (February 7, 1926 – November 7, 1988) was an American cartoonist best known as the creator of the gag panel series, '' The Lockhorns'', distributed by King Features Syndicate to 500 newspapers in 23 countries, and ''Laugh ...

Virgil Partch Virgil Franklin Partch (October 17, 1916 – August 10, 1984), who generally signed his work Vip,Virgil F ...

Gahan Wilson Gahan Allen Wilson (February 18, 1930 – November 21, 2019) was an American author, cartoonist and illustrator known for his cartoons depicting horror-fantasy situations. Biography Wilson was born in Evanston, Illinois, and was inspired by th ...

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 Harry Allen Wolfgang Smith (December 19, 1907—February 24, 1976) was an American journalist, humorist, and writer whose books were popular in the 1940s and 1950s. Family and early career Smith was born in McLeansboro, Illinois, where he liv ...

, Roger Price and

Jean Shepherd Jean Parker 'Shep' Shepherd Jr. (~July 21, 1921 – October 16, 1999) was an American storyteller, humorist, radio and TV personality, writer, and actor. With a career that spanned decades, Shepherd is known for the film '' A Christmas Story'' ...

. The book's design juxtaposed each cartoon alongside a photograph of the cartoon's creator. The campaign has been the subject of a number of books, with serious scholarly analysis of the campaign's key success factors, including: ''Think Small: The Story of those Volkswagen Ads'' by Frank Rowsome (1970); ''Think Small: The Story of the World's Greatest Ad'' (2011) by Dominik Imseng; and ''Thinking Small: The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle'' (2012) by Andrea Hiott; Hiott, A., ''Thinking Small: The Long, Strange Trip of the Volkswagen Beetle'' Random House Publishing Group, 2012

Background

Campaign

Books

See also

References

Further reading