Damarko Taylor
1/11/17
Bus 125 Fundamental of Design
Volkswagen Lemon Ad
In 1960, Volkswagen ran what may have been its most famous
ad ever: Lemon. The one-word headline described a 1961 Beetle that would never
make it to a dealer. It had a mere blemish, enough for VW engineer Kurt Kroner
to reject the vehicle and inspire Julian Koenig, the DDB copywriter partnered
with legendary art director Helmut Krone, to pen the famous ad.
Above are the two main ads that launched the Volkswagen
brand in America.
“Lemon” ad copy starts: “This Volkswagen missed the boat.
The chrome strip on the glove compartment is blemished, and must be replaced.”
It was shocking, to say the least, for an auto brand to call
their car a lemon.
What made the ad even more appealing than the shock value,
was that the Bug was in fact (and still is) shaped like a lemon. https://www.buzzfeed.com/copyranter/all-the-great-1960s-volkswagen-ads?utm_term=.ko4Mmk83Y#.hqoaZNoqn
Unless you're old enough to remember, an advertising
professional or an ad buff (if there is such a thing), you probably don't know
much about the advertising campaign for the first Volkswagen Beetle. So a brief
overview is in order. Volkswagen hired the Doyle Dane Bernbach ad agency to
create a campaign that would introduce the Beetle to the U.S. market in 1960.
Now consider the marketing situation. http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/stories/1999/11/22/smallb7.html
The ad featured a black and white photo of the Volkswagen
Beetle with the word “Lemon” in bold san serif font. Below the image follows a statement that
proclaims that this particular car was rejected by Inspector Kurt Kroner
because of a blemish on the chrome piece of the glove box. http://www.writingfordesigners.com/?p=1731
While the Detroit Auto market was designing large cars with
many accessories, the Volkswagen Beetle remained familiar in its simplicity.
Echoed in the campaign for the car, DDB utilized a minimalist approach to
selling that related to the reader on a personal level. Inspector Kurt Kroner
is looking out for you, the car buyer, not a faceless corporation imploring you
to spend more, but a company that has people rejecting cars for something as
minor as a hair line scratch in the windshield. The ad relates to the consumer
that Volkswagen is held to a higher standard than other automobile producers,
in doing so, successfully selling the Beetle
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